By GREG JORDAN
PRINCETON — Southern West Virginians with opinions to share about possible increases in West Virginia Turnpike tolls will have an opportunity to voice them today at the Mercer County Courthouse.
The West Virginia Parkways Authority is conducting a public hearing from 4:30 to 8 p.m. to receive input about the amount of money motorists must pay at the turnpike’s toll booths. Turnpike authorities will meet with the public in the court room of Judge Derek Swope. People will be able to meet authority representatives starting 4:30 p.m., and the hearing begins 6 p.m.
Plans call for increasing tolls from $1.25 to $2 per toll stop for passenger cars and $4.25 to $6.75 for five-axle trucks. Motorists using the West Virginia E-Z Pass program would pay $1.50 per stop if driving a car and $5.06 when driving a truck.
Local turnpike travelers said Thursday that they did not want toll hikes.
“I’m definitely against the turnpike tolls going up, but I know all the ways around it. I used to go to Charleston a lot,” said Larry Lester, 55, of Athens. “It’s $7.50 on top of your gas.”
Lester said he often shops in cities like Winston-Salem, N.C., and Christiansburg, Va. rather than drive the turnpike to Charleston and pay tolls.
“Anything I would do in Charleston, I just go elsewhere; and I see lots of people from here every time I go down there,” Lester added.
Residents in Mercer County and other southern West Virginia counties have said they feel singled out because only they pay tolls in order to drive on a state highway.
“I think it’s terrible because the people it will affect most are the citizens of southern West Virginia,” said Blanche Morton, 55, of Bluefield. “I think the increase needs to be gradual, maybe a quarter, because a 75 cent increase is a huge leap.”
Businesses that drive the turnpike have also opposed the toll hike. One Mercer County business owner said the proposed discounts would help.
“If they do the reduction in the cost of the E-Z Pass, that’s going to help a whole lot,” said Kevin Weiss, owner of Weiss Trucking, Inc. near Princeton.
How much a hike would affect a business depends on the amount of traveling it must do, said Weiss, who planned to attend today’s hearing.
“It just varies with different contracts,” he said. “If you do only two or three (trips) it’s not that bad, but when it’s 50 or 60 runs, then it begins to affect costs.”
Legislators for the region planned to attend today’s hearing.
“Almost everybody I have spoken to is vehemently against the toll increase as I am,” said Senate Minority Leader Don Caruth, R-Mercer. “Most people to whom I have spoken are as angry as I am that the parkway’s authority, in particular its leadership, has sought no other method of financing the parkway either in whole or in part. They present these various studies, but never ask them to investigate any other funding possibilities.”
“The entire focus of the parkways authority has been since I’ve been involved for at least the last seven years now and continues to be to raise turnpike tolls to the determent of people and businesses in southern West Virginia,” Caruth said. “An increase, most people believe, is adding insult to injury by popular expression and will just make it more difficult to compete in business in southern West Virginia.”
Senate Majority Leader H. Truman Chafin, D-Mingo, also planned to attend today’s hearing.
“I think it’s an economic survival sort of thing,” Chafin said of the issue’s impact. “It’s how they’re drawing down federal money for the turnpike and not using it on the turnpike. Not only the present administration, but former administrations have admitted to getting $10.5 million a year for maintenance of the turnpike and spending it on other interstate systems.”
West Virginia is also receiving $1.8 billion in federal stimulus funds, and $212 million of that is eligible for state Department of Highways projects, Chafin said.
“Why shouldn’t we use some of that for the turnpike and leave tolls where they are?” he said. For years, the turnpike has been an “orphan child” among highways, he added. A round trip from Bluefield to Charleston costs a truck $40.50.
“This is a real economic deterrent,” Chafin said.
Delegate John Frazier, D-Mercer encouraged county residents to attend today’s hearing.
“Turnout was light in Kanawha County and Fayette County,” Frazier said of previous hearings. A strong turnout in Mercer County would show the turnpike authority that the toll issue is of great importance to the county’s citizens, he said.
— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com
