Dori: SR 99 tunnel tolls will hurt the poor, advance toll-every-road plan

As we found out Monday, the new SR 99 tunnel is going to start tolling in early November.

The Washington State Department of Transportation is worried that at the beginning, a lot of people may avoid the tunnel because they can’t afford $2.50 or more a day.

It may not sound like a lot, but that’s $12.50 a week, or roughly $650 a year. If you are working class, if you are working poor, $650 is a serious dent in your income. It’s devastating to have to come up with $650 to turn over to government.

As I’ve told you, I have only used the 520 bridge maybe twice since the tolls were reinstated. Out of principle, I will not use it. I give the government plenty of money already.

Dori: Highway 99 and Sound Transit tunnels digging up trouble

I refuse to use the SR 99 tunnel. I will not get a Good2Go transponder in my car. I do not want to help government to begin the process that they are so desperate to carry out. It’s a plan I’ve been telling you about for 20 years, and a plan that is well on its way to fruition. They want to toll every single road in the region to punish us for using our cars and take more of our money.

Some, like me, refuse to drive these tolled roads out of principle. Others choose not to out of absolute financial necessity.

Here is where this gets so insidious. There are going to be a lot of people who can’t afford to give $650 more dollars a year to the government. But the City of Seattle has come along and said, “If you can’t afford the tunnel — if you’re trying to avoid the tolls — we will work to mess you up on your commute as much as possible.”

Jenny Durkan’s ultimate plan is to make you pay anytime you drive downtown Seattle. Through congestion pricing, all of downtown Seattle would be a giant toll. As Jenny Durkan said:

If you look across the globe, those cities that have implemented congestion pricing have had the greatest success in getting people out of vehicles and reducing vehicles in cities.

What is Jenny Durkan thinking? London and Stockholm and these other European cities she cites have century-old subway systems with multiple criss-crossing lines that can take you anywhere in the city and suburbs. There is no equivalent alternative in the Seattle area. We have one light rail line that is way behind schedule, and our buses get caught in the same gridlock as our cars.

Jenny Durkan has also stated, “If you’re going to be the person driving in there, you’ve got to pay more.”

Yep — you’ve got to pay more. You’ve got to give government its due.

Mike O’Brien, the outgoing Ballard council member, said the same thing at a community forum. If you’re too poor to pay the tunnel toll and you try to avoid it, we’re going to figure out a way to get you anyway.

Folks that are on 99 that are going to try to divert to get out of the tunnel because they don’t want to pay that toll, do we have some sort of toll that says, ‘Hey, you’re going to pay a toll one way or another, so if you’re going to use the tunnel, just use it?'”

How does he sleep at night? What about the minimum-wage workers, the people making $30,000, the people whom politicians like O’Brien claim to care so much about? Is that why these politicians get into government — to transfer money from hardworking people to government control?

And for what? We’re gridlocked. They’ve made things so much worse with all of the bike lane nonsense and road diets. And then they say, “If you can’t afford to pay the tunnel toll, we will toll you anyway.”

That’s a disgusting thing to tell a poor person. I know what it’s like to be desperately poor. I remember the panic in my mom’s eyes when my dad was nowhere to be found, and she had to get me to school, and her car was on empty. I remember her running around the house, lifting up sofa cushions, trying to find a single quarter to put a little bit of gas in the car.

Mike O’Brien and Jenny Durkan have this condescending attitude about poor people. “If you can’t afford the tunnel, we’ll toll the downtown streets. We’ll find a way to get your money.” What a miserable way to go through life — trying to suck people dry.

The tolls are coming to the 99 tunnel, and that means that the Seattle politicians will do everything they can implement their ultimate dream of tolling every downtown street.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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