OLYMPIA, Wash. — Tolls likely would not increase on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge over the next four years under a bill the state Legislature considered Monday, but taxpayers around the state would be tapped to pay more for the debt-laden span.
The state Transportation Commission told the Legislature last month it would need to provide $14.9 million over the next two years to avoid a toll-rate increase July 1 on the bridge.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Christine Kilduff, D-University Place, raises the ante.
Kilduff asked the House Transportation Committee to back her bill calling for the Legislature to appropriate up to $30 million for bridge debt in the upcoming two-year budget and the one after that, 2021-2023. The funds would come from the state’s gas tax or other sources. She told fellow lawmakers that she would need to amend the bill because the precise amount needed is up to $36.4 million.
Her proposal would wipe out a toll-rate increase of 25 cents on July 1, 2021 or later. It also states tolls should remain at current prices until 2031, when the state would stop charging tolls.
The intent of the bill is to freeze toll rates at current prices, but the state Transportation Commission would have to consider toll increases next decade if more revenue is needed, said Carl See, the commission’s senior financial analyst.
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“We, of course, would not raise rates if there was no revenue need, but if funding did not materialize, there would be an obligation of the commission to move forward as the state tolling authority with a rate increase,” See said.
The elimination of a proposed 25-cent increase on July 1, 2021 or later would require an additional $26 million in state funds in future budgets, See said.
Escalating payments to repay the bonds sold to build the eastbound bridge have prompted the state to tap taxpayers’ dollars to avoid steep toll increases.
The bridge, which opened in 2007, was built with the expectation that tolls would supply its funding, but it’s been plagued by lower than anticipated traffic.
“The original projections were for higher traffic volumes across the bridge. The (2008) recession hit, and, as a result, revenue went down,” Kilduff told the committee.
The bridge’s toll on a two-axle vehicle is $5 for those who use an electronic Good to Go pass, $6 if motorists pay in cash and $7 if people pay by mail. For trucks with five axles, the toll is $12.50 for the electronic pass, $15 for cash and $17.50 to pay by mail.
The current toll rates have been in effect since July 1, 2015. There were repeated toll increases before that, doubling the amount for drivers paying cash at a toll booth and tripling the price for those Good to Go electronic passes.
Rep. Jake Fey, the Tacoma Democrat who is chairman of the House Transportation Committee, was the driving force last year behind a law that stated the Legislature’s intent to provide up to $85 million in loans that would be repaid after the bridge’s debt is retired. It extended the end of tolls to 2032.
Kilduff said state funds to pay the bridge debt over the next four years should be appropriations, not loans.
“Loans have to be repaid by the toll payers,” she said.
Tolls also should end in 2031, which Kilduff said was the original plan.
Kilduff outlined her bill accompanied by Rep. Michelle Caldier, a Port Orchard Republican. They both served on a work group in 2017 that studied the bridge’s finances and other issues.
“We’re hoping to get real toll relief for the Tacoma Narrows bridge and hopefully get a little bit of equity with the project,” Caldier said.
Legislators attempting to avoid toll increases on the bridge often cite the state Route 520 bridge across Lake Washington between Seattle and its eastern suburbs to bolster their argument. Kilduff’s bill states that toll revenue was committed to pay 72 percent of the 520 bridge’s
construction cost, compared to 99 percent for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
A companion bill to Kilduff’s in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Emily Randall, D-Bremerton, received a hearing Monday in the Senate Transportation Committee.