A Cape Cod city official says he’s advocating for tolls to be “imposed” on the Sagamore and Bourne bridges, charging motorists from exterior the area to enter the favored trip getaway.
Mashpee Choose Board Vice Chairman David Weeden is pitching the thought, estimating that tolls might herald tens of tens of millions yearly and suggesting that the cash must be earmarked to deal with “coastal and water quality issues.”
“Massachusetts reaps the benefits of Cape Cod tourism,” Weeden mentioned throughout a board assembly on Monday. “It is a significant amount of money that comes into the state through the tourism that we receive here on the Cape. They come over here and leave their stuff behind, and we are left to deal with it.”
In 2023, direct customer spending on the Cape tallied $2.7 billion, whereas greater than 14,000 folks labored in tourism-related jobs, and $163 million in state and native taxes have been collected, the Cape Cod Instances reported final month, citing numbers from the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce.
Chamber officers are reportedly “cautiously optimistic” about what tourism will seem like this summer season on account of “current economic uncertainties and anxiety over diminishing international travel,” native shops have reported.
Speak about potential tolling has popped up through the years, however nothing has materialized. Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt didn’t rule them out final 12 months as a possible supply to fund replacements of the Bourne and Sagamore bridges.
“Tolls at the crossings over the Cape Cod Canal are not being considered,” MassDOT spokeswoman Jacquelyn Goddard mentioned in an announcement to the Herald.
Weeden means that officers on the native and state degree think about “some approach” the place Cape Codders aren’t being charged to cross the bridges. He added that there may very well be an E-ZPass exclusion for residents throughout the area.
The Masphee Choose Board member highlighted that over 35 million autos cross the bridges mixed yearly.
“Even if you did $2 an axle, only calculating cars, you’d bring in about $70 million a year,” Weeden mentioned. “We could generate a lot of money towards helping the local Cape Cod communities address the lack of infrastructure.”
“We are all facing it,” he added, “We are all recognizing the environment needs help, and looking for the state to support us in our efforts to do so and help with some funding for that.”
The regional board, Cape Cod Fee, floated a congestion pricing concept in 2009. Drivers’ license plates would have been captured by a high-speed digicam. Officers might have then matched a plate quantity with a corresponding mailing tackle and despatched a invoice for utilizing a selected street or bridge.
The cost would have been restricted to drivers who don’t stay on the Cape, however the concept obtained sharp backlash.
The Nationwide Transportation Security Board has included the Bourne and Sagamore bridges, inbuilt 1935, on a listing of spans really helpful for assessments to find out their threat of collapse from a vessel collision.
Companies are working to switch the spans owned, operated, and maintained by the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers. Officers had obtained $1.7 billion in federal funding for the trouble as of final 12 months.
MassDOT has began to have contractors conduct subsurface investigations and vegetation administration operations close to the Sagamore, requiring momentary lane/shoulder closures on space roadways.
Tibbits-Nutt obtained robust opposition final 12 months after she prompt inserting tolls on the Massachusetts border to spice up long-term transportation funding. Gov. Maura Healey later mentioned such statements did “not represent the views of this administration.”
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