Monday, June 13, 2011

Does the road toll for thee?

Here is the beginning of this week's column in The Times Herald. I've put a link to the rest of it at the bottom so you can read it all if you'd like. I guess the question to ask is, shouldn't we the people decide if Route 422 should be tolled?


“…Because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne, the English poet, may not appreciate me using the above quote to go off on a rant about the tolling of Route 422 in Montgomery County, but I found it oddly appropriate.

What has been translated into a poem was originally written by him as an essay in “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, No. 17”

When I started researching the quote for this column I had no idea the entire essay is appropriate for an analogy to what appears to be happening with the possibility of tolling the state road.

The essay begins, “No man is an island…” and continues to convince us that we’re all somehow connected; that whatever affects one, affects us all.

Yet it appears as if the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission thinks itself an island.

Why else would the authority approach the governor’s advisory committee on transportation funding, and our own county commissioners two days later, without putting the plan before the public?

We are the pocketbook from which the commission wants to filch, so why not come to the public first?

Perhaps it is because the public is becoming too savvy for such antics.

The rest of the story.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

After an Exit from Trooper Road (North) is completed, then a Toll would make sense. I use 422 about twice a week - no problem. LP needs relief, so I'm for it.

Anonymous said...

This is all about politics as usual. Whether tolling is a good idea or not, this is about creating a job for Joe Hoeffel when he is booted out of office t the end of the year. He he wants to head the authority in charge of tolling. And, of course, a toll on 422 affects mostly Republican areas and Not Joe's beloved Democrats. Always, always, always: Hoeffel's motive is political gain. No matter what. Subtle sometimes, true, but always politics. That's why he and Matthews are perfect together. Neither one has a shred of decency or ethics. Just political advancement for themselves, their cronies, and their supporters.

Anonymous said...

The exit from Trooper Road will be WEST young man go west.

Anonymous said...

There's no toll NOW on 422 and L.P. still gets the cut thru's. I understand that Mr. Hoeffel has applied for a job sitting on the Pawlings Road bridge counting cars and trucks. Don't worry about good old Joe and Jim Matthews they have a tendency of falling into dung and coming out of it smelling like a rose. We do have the power of a vote, any politican voting for this should not, and will not, get the voters support.

Ruthiness said...

The tolling they are proposing will NOT relieve congestion on Rt 422 unless you have big bucks to afford the expensive tolled lanes. There will still be untolled lanes on 422 and that is where the majority of folks will STILL be stuck in traffic while the people who still have jobs can afford to pay the exorbitant toll to avoid the congestion. PLUS these tolls will NOT be used to fix 422. They will be used to fund the dream of progressives to build a train line paralleling 422.

If you pull back even farther from this one issue, you will see that this push for train travel is all connected to UN Agenda 21 and environmental n@zis who think driving your car is killing the planet. Agenda 21 wants to get rid of car travel and push people to live in "high density mixed use" living - which the UN calls "human settlements". The UN is here manipulating these planning commissions to follow an international treaty (UN Agenda 21) which is wholly unconstitutional for these groups of people to be aligning with.

Tolling 422 is NOT in the best interests of the people who use the road and neither is a new train line that at MOST 20% of the drivers on 422 will ever use.