With toll road, daily drive may be more taxing

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is seeking an I-69 toll road that extends from Evansville to Indianapolis, but some Southern Indiana Hoosiers like Thomas Tokarski have drawn a line in the limestone sand, saying I-69 is "beginning to look more and more absurd."\nTokarski, president of Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads, an advocacy organization aimed at protecting the integrity of farmlands, forestlands and rural communities through its support of fiscal conservative policies and environmental friendly transportation projects, said he and more than 140,000 petition-signing Hoosiers are opposed to all I-69 alternatives, including tolling. He attended the I-69 "Tier 1" Reevaluation Study presentation by the Indiana Department of Transportation June 29 in Bloomington, and he said he's "madder than hell" about Daniels' and INDOT's preconceived conclusions.\n"The reevaluation study was to look at the feasibility of making a toll road and the results look very bad for I-69 because the cost goes up and the benefits go down," Tokarski said. "The I-69 project makes no transportation or financial sense. I-69 as a transportation project is brain dead and it is being kept alive by political resuscitation."\nAccording to CARR, an I-69 toll road will amount to "double taxation" because toll revenue will flow into international corporation coffers, suck the piggy banks of Hoosiers dry from tolling because of an American dependence on automotive transportation, force increased traffic onto local roads, causing increased congestion and accidents -- and tax-payer expenses associated with those two items offer the toll road "non-compete" clauses to prevent state and local officials from upgrading local roads near or around the toll road and tax Hoosiers for decades to come with ever-increasing toll rates.\nIndiana State House of Representative Matt Pierce, D-61, said the INDOT Reevaluation "Tier 1" Study is "flawed." Similar to the Indiana Toll Road sold for $3.8 billion dollars to an international leasing operation, he said the I-69 toll road will tax Hoosiers well beyond the life of Daniels and most elected officials who voted in favor of the project. \n"The study that's been done is flawed -- it doesn't answer the questions. It admits there will be negative impacts, but it underestimates the magnitude of those impacts," Pierce said July 25. "Clearly the governor and the Republican leadership -- when they passed the Major Moves bill -- did ignore the will of the people. All the polling data, all the feedback that I heard statewide, said (Hoosiers) did not want the Indiana toll road turned over to a foreign corporation and turned into some kind of private enterprise operation. The second part that is still up in the air is the fact that the bill authorizes the governor to build an I-69 extension as a private toll road, including State Road 37, so I've got to focus in on trying to prevent tolling from being forced upon our community."\nThe out-of-pocket cost of an I-69 toll road might tax Hoosiers more than money, according to CARR. A new terrain tolling tax road along the State Road 37 corridor might destroy 5,100 acres of Hoosier farmland, 1,600 acres of Hoosier forest, 140 acres of Hoosier wetlands, 400 Hoosier homes, 76 Hoosier businesses and 135 existing Hoosier roads.\nEstimated tolling taxes between Evansville and Indianapolis might start at about $10 per round trip for cars and approach $35 as the decades roll by, and trucks might receive tolling taxes of about $13 to start but could increase to $50 throughout time. Daniels' office was unavailable for comment by press time.\nTokarski said Daniels' I-69 toll road ignores logic because a democratic Hoosier electoral body has indicated their opposition for the project, and taxing Hoosier families and their children well into the next century will make for bad political policy. He said his experience has taught him a project conducted at "warp speed" often equates to "warped results."\n"Transnational companies are looking for more than roads -- they are looking for financial incentives, an educated workforce. Transportation is a minor cost for doing business for most corporations," he said. "Indiana has more damned interstate highways than most any other state in the country ... Americans are addicted to driving. If they are addicted to driving, the corporations want to get into that and make money off their addiction -- take advantage of the so-called 'freedom' we've had"