Editorial: The Free Way

15 May 2008 // Just when we thought no one was reading — or worse, that all of government was conspiring against not just us but also plain common sense — a group of federal lawmakers decided to try to put the brakes on county plans to initiate tolls on carpool lanes of area freeways.

Led by Republican Congressman Gary Miller of Brea, The Free Way Act, as Miller calls it, would “prohibit states and localities from charging carpoolers to access now free carpool lanes built with federal taxpayer money,” according to the congressman’s Web site. It has support from Democratic Congresswomen Grace Napolitano of Santa Fe Springs, Hilda Solis of El Monte and Diane Watson of Los Angeles, as well as Republican David Dreier of San Dimas.

“There’s absolutely no reason to take freeways built with federal dollars and start charging people to use them,” Miller recently told the Pasadena Star-News. “You’re hurting the very people who paid to build the freeways.”

A developer by profession, Miller has had some legal problems over the past few years, being investigated by the FBI in relation to capital gains tax claims involving two highly questionable land deals in Monrovia and Fontana. And in 2006, the Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), headed by Melanie Sloan, an attorney helping former CIA agent Valerie Plame in her civil case against Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, named Miller one of the top 20 most corrupt politicians in Congress, primarily because of his land dealings.
But be all that as it may, we think Miller’s headed down the right road in this case. He’s calling his bill

“The Free Way Act” for a simple enough reason: People should be able to use these roads free of charge.

Seems like a no-brainer to us, too, that penalizing people who already own an eco-friendly vehicle or ride with two or more people in their cars deserve a break — not another tax simply to drive from home to work or school and back on a road that they are already paying to maintain.

But that’s exactly what the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is planning to do, and on roads that run through the districts of the powerful bi-partisan collection of federal politicians that are now signed on to Miller’s bill.
According to Saturday’s Star-News report, the project would begin with tolls on the 210 to the 605

Freeway, and on the 10 Freeway from the 605 to downtown Los Angeles. On the 110 Freeway, a toll would be imposed from downtown LA to the 91 Freeway.

All of this is the result of the MTA’s deal with the US Department of Transportation to initiate experimental carpool lane tolls in exchange for $213.6 million, earmarked for the purchase of 60 new high-occupancy buses. Granted, that’s a pretty fat carrot, but what usually isn’t mentioned in all of this is that the MTA also plans to soon raise fares on buses and trains.

In one of the few editorials critical of the idea of putting tolls on carpool lanes, we said two weeks ago that this plan was tantamount to both penalizing folks for doing the right thing and conducting social experiments on poor people — portions of these freeways service some of the poorest working-class neighborhoods in LA County — who have little or no political clout.

But after reading about Miller’s bill, all we can say is “Shut our mouths!”
We don’t know if any of these folks read our paper, but we are happy to see that we are in agreement, at least on this issue.

Now, just in case you really are reading, let’s talk about a salary freeze, then a voluntary 10 percent pay cut for you and your legislative staffs, then raising the minimum wage to an actual living wage. That would restore even more faith in a system that for too long has ignored the struggles of everyday people.

We’ll save all that for another day.
For now, it’s enough to keep our FREEways exactly that.