A plan to raise weekend tolls on Del. Route 1 has been approved as a short-term alternative to the proposed gas tax increase by the Bond Bill Committee of the Delaware General Assembly.
The authorization, acknowledged DelDOT’s existing authority to increase by $1 the tolls charged on weekends at the Biddles and Dover toll plazas on the mainline of Delaware 1.
The toll is currently $2 per passenger vehicle on weekends, a time when beach traffic is heavy during the summer months. The tolls charged at on and off ramps to Delaware 1 would remain unchanged.
Since the tolls run in both directions, a weekend Route 1 user would pay $6 round-trip. Motorists on I-95 have been hammered with an $8 toll eastbound at the bridges over the Susquehanna in Maryland. An additional hike in Delaware would have increased the pain in the wallet or EZPASS Transponder.
The Bond Bill Committee went on to call on DelDOT to leverage the new toll revenue – estimated to bring in up to $10 million annually – against $20 million in new borrowing. The $8.375 million in Community Transportation Funds will come from DelDOT’s prior year authorization and the $30 million in new funding will go toward paving and the Municipal Street Aid program.)
Under state law, DelDOT has the ability to raise tolls on its own authority. The discussion and vote by the Bond Bill Committee made clear that DelDOT would not be acting unilaterally or without the appropriate consultation with the State legislature.
“While $30 million in new revenue is only a fraction of our agency’s original funding request for the next fiscal year, everyone seems to now agree we need more revenue so we can invest in our infrastructure,” said DelDOT Secretary Shailen Bhatt. “Because these additional funds will not be dedicated to new project construction, we will really need to work together as a state over the next year to figure out how we will fund our long-term transportation needs; the problem is not going away.”
DelDOT’s total capital projects budget will increase to about $158 million under the language adopted by the Bond Bill Committee today, as contrasted to the $228 million DelDOT had requested under Governor Markell’s \ budget. The $228 million capital projects budget would have been funded through an increase of 10 cents per gallon in the state motor fuels tax and $50 million per year in new borrowing. That plan had little support in the General Assembly during an election year.
Bhatt said that while he remains opposed in principal to increasing his agency’s indebtedness without a full matching offset in new revenue, borrowing $20 million and raising the tolls on Delaware 1 will create more employment for those who maintain the state’s infrastructure and keep DelDOT’s debt trajectory on a downward path.
“Increasing tolls is helpful and was one of the revenue raising options suggested in the state’s Transportation Trust Fund Report. We will need to work out the details of exactly when the tolls would be increased, calculate a more precise revenue estimate, and determine how much notification EZPASS customers and other road users would require,” he said. “At that point we can refine our revenue projections for the fiscal year based on how quickly we can implement the toll increase.”
