John Curley doing battle with 520 bridge, taking Good to Go to court

Since the beginning of toll collection on the 520 bridge, KIRO Radio’s John Curley has been staging a single-man protest.

He hasn’t been fully boycotting the bridge, but each time he goes over it, he flips the cameras the bird. On each toll check he sends in, he scrawls the same message in the memo line “F the bridge.”

But this week, Curley was forced to go face-to-face with his enemy. Good to Go claims Curley missed a toll payment and owes $366 in fines. Curley went down to the Good to Go office to dispute the charges, but said it was a depressing site seeing his nemesis in person.

“I went to the Good to Go office in Bellevue. It’s deserted. They’ve got the new carpeting and it’s got that smell of nothing going on,” Curley said. “You’ve got three people all in their Good to Go green shirts. They’re just sitting there and there is no one there. It was so depressing.”

He walked in angry, but really tried to not take it out on the Good to Go worker who assisted him.

“I’m trying not to get mad because I realize it’s just him and I can’t get mad at him. I did feel like venting on him. But then I just said, ‘I don’t want to pay the $366.’ Then he explained to me the fine will remain $366. That is not going to change.”

Curley thought to himself, “I’m never going to pay that, screw you state of Washington.”

“Then he [the Good to Go worker] says to me, I’ve got bad news for you, every time you go over the bridge and you pay the $4, that $4 that you think is going to pay for the $4 toll, it is actually going to pay down the $366,” Curley said. “So the $4 becomes delinquent and then the $4 turns into $366 babies all over the place. Then you can’t get away from it.”

After that news, Curley decided his only option was to go to court to battle the fines.

“So on March 31, I’m going to court at 1:30 to fight it because I’ve got all my checks.”

“Here’s the unfortunate thing,” Curley said, “as I go to show him the evidence, here’s a check, here’s a check, he looks down at the bottom and there it says ‘F the bridge,’ which I think is not going to play well for me in court. Then the judge is going to see that I’m sort of coming in as a biased individual.”

Some listeners have suggested Curley explain to the judge that it stands for “Fund the bridge,” or some other similarly positive thing.

But the real punchline of the story for co-host Tom Tangney is the other victory for the bridge.

“What did you just show Producer Bryan and me?” Tom asked Curley, encouraging him to share it with the show listeners.

“I bought a Good to Go pass,” Curley admitted, before erupting into a fit of laughter. “I had to. It just goes to show you what happens. The fascist wins. You happy now? I’ve got it stuck on there above my rear-view mirror.”