Taking Transportation to the People

I am very interested in transportation in this state. As a life-long resident of more than 50 years, I remember what life used to be like in this state - back when every small town had several operating farms and a viable village center, and would drive to Rochester on Saturdays to do the shopping. Now we have super highways, sprawling housing developments and ugly commercial strips with big-box stores surrounding decaying city centers. All in all, I think it was better before the highways were built.

There are three issues that are on my mind relative to transportation: 1) the widening of I-93; 2) passenger rail and 3) the highway toll system.

1. We must NOT widen I93.
I have driven on I93 and have seen the traffic back-ups that have now become routine. This does NOT mean that making the road twice as wide will fix the "problem". Adding the planned 4 more lanes to 93 will dump an additional 2000 tons of road salt into the surface water, ponds, lakes and streams. For this reason alone it is a very bad idea! Now let's look at the "problem": for a few hours each day the traffic is congested - most of the congestion is caused by people who have CHOSEN to live in NH and work in Mass. So, say that for 3 hours a day, the highway is operating above capacity and the rest of the day the load is below capacity. This means that 87% of the time the road is under-utilized. This does not sound like a problem to me. The real problem is that the existence of the highway led to development which led to population increases which caused the congestion. So, the problem is the highway. The solution is not to make the highway wider, but to get traffic off the highway. This can be done by 1) leaving things as they are and some people will move closer to their jobs. 2) provide alternative means of transportation suitable to masses of people who's travel needs are predictable.

2. We must bring back passenger rail service to the state.
By rebuilding passenger rail transport - at least to the Merrimack valley cities and towns - we will see many benefits. Rail will provide an option for commuters who need to travel to and from Massachusetts every day - this will alleviate traffic on I93. Properly implemented and operated, rail is the most efficient form of transportation, so overall energy consumption will be reduced. Elder citizens will have a convenient travel option so they won't need to drive as much. A rail system with stations in cities and large towns tends to help concentrate development around the town centers, thereby reducing sprawl. Rail travel adds a transport option for tourism. A passenger rail line through Manchester could easily have an airport station, providing another ground transport option to air travelers from NH and Mass.

3. The highway toll system must be abolished.
If you were to visit an insane asylum and ask a few of the inmates for advice on funding roads and highways, I can easily imagine getting responses such as "stop people passing on the highway and collect money from them". The fact is that toll collection is about the most inefficient and inequitable means of revenue collection one can imagine. It only makes sense in cases where the structure that it supports is so extraordinarily expensive - something like a tunnel under Great Bay - that to fund it through general gasoline taxes would be patently unfair. The Everett, Spaulding and NH turnpikes are simply modern day highways - nothing extraordinary - they do not warrant a toll revenue collection system.

The toll system causes slow-downs and car crashes, it wastes gasoline, it wastes capital, it is unfair to the poor who must drive on these roads, it adds to the enforcement burden of the police, it diverts traffic onto secondary roads, and it imposes unnecessary overhead onto revenue collection. The system must be abolished and the net revenues replaced with a few cents on the gasoline tax. Connecticut eliminated road tolls many years ago and they seem to be doing just fine.

- Steve Omand
Manchester NH