Citizen group urges state to cancel Good to Go toll increase for Narrows bridge drivers

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge citizen advisory committee wants to give Good to Go users a reprieve from toll increases this summer.

Tolls are set to go up 50 cents across the board July 1. But a recommendation from the citizen advisory committee would cancel the increase for Good to Go users while hiking the July 1 increase for tollbooth users.

“Our recommendation is a little provocative,” said Bruce Beckett, citizen advisory chairman. “About 69 percent of transactions on the bridge are Good to Go, either daily commuters or regular users. This would give them a little bit of a breather.”

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Good to Go users currently pay $5, toll booth users pay $6, and pay-by-mail users pay $7.

Under the committee’s latest recommendation, Good to Go users would continue to pay $5 after July 1 while tollbooth users would pay $7. Pay-by-mail, now at $7, would remain the same.

The proposal differs from the recommendation the committee made last year at this time when it endorsed a 50-cent increase in 2015 and another one this summer.

“This is the first time in my memory that there is an opportunity to actually scale back a forecasted increase,” Beckett said.

Beckett and committee member Randy Boss made their pitch to the state Transportation Commission on Wednesday afternoon.

“If you approve our recommendation … we will not have to have a toll rate increase, we don’t expect, until around the 2019 time frame,” Boss told the commission.

If traffic rates continue to rise like they have in recent years, Boss said it could be closer to 2025 before another toll increase is needed.

That’s according to state transportation data that show traffic has gradually increased in recent years. Traffic counts were up about 3 percent last year.

The small increase and a desire to lessen the financial burden on frequent bridge users is what prompted the new recommendation, Beckett said.

Approximately 69 percent of tolls are collected from Good to Go users, according to state transportation figures. Toll booth transactions account for 24 percent.

Beyond offering a break for regular bridge users, the committee sees its recommendation as an incentive to move more people to Good to Go passes, Beckett said.

“The committee itself had a really robust discussion about this and unanimously adopted this approach,” he said of the recommendation.

Boss noted if the pay-by-mail and tollbooth amounts were the same, there would be no reason to maintain the tolling facilities. That could save the state significant money, Boss said.

Under the state’s debt repayment plan, toll increases are the only way to meet rising payments on the 8-year-old bridge unless there’s a significant increase in bridge traffic or legislators agree to subsidize it with other revenue.

The state has already refinanced what few bonds it could. That saved $9 million — a drop in the bucket compared to what’s owed.

Last year the Legislature agreed to move back repayment of the deferred sales tax on the bridge until 2032 in an effort to help minimize dramatic toll increases.

The state is set to pay $62 million in 2016 and $70 million in 2017 for bridge debt. Because the state backloaded the debt when it financed the bridge, payments will continue to rise until final payoff in 2030. The deferred sales tax is due two years later.

Following the recommendation, transportation commission chairwoman Anne Haley said the group would take it “under serious advisement.”

If the commission agrees with the proposal, it will move it forward. If a different scenario is proposed, it would be sent back to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge committee for review.

The state Transportation Commission has the final say on whether to change the toll amounts. If the commission chooses to change the toll rate, a public hearing would be held before a decision is made this spring.

This story was originally published February 17, 2016 at 8:47 AM with the headline "Citizen group urges state to cancel Good to Go toll increase for Narrows bridge drivers."