Emergency vehicles could face toll on Tacoma Narrows Bridge

TACOMA – Ambulances, police cars and fire trucks might have to pay tolls when crossing the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Some Pierce County officials, including Sheriff Paul Pastor and Executive John Ladenburg, are lobbying against the idea.

“It is silly to have us pay an admission fee to save lives,” Pastor told the News Tribune of Tacoma. “I understand they want to pay the bridge debt, but they are, by this policy, creating a far more urgent problem and creating a potentially dangerous situation.”

The state Transportation Commission, a seven-member citizen board that sets highway tolls and ferry fares, has informally discussed possible toll exemptions but has not made a final decision.

Commissioners have discussed exempting state Department of Transportation maintenance vehicles that service the bridge and Washington State Patrol troopers who work near it, said Reema Griffith, the commission’s executive director.

They’ve also discussed requiring that other emergency vehicles and first responders pay the toll fees, likely to be $1.50, by using windshield-mounted devices that automatically deduct toll payments from electronic accounts.

Under such a scenario, Griffith said, ambulance, fire or police crews could apply for credit to their accounts if they crossed the bridge while responding to emergency calls with their vehicles’ lights and sirens on.

The commission takes up the issue today as part of a formal proposal that will include toll costs. The proposal will be open to public comment for five weeks.

Griffith said commissioners are trying to make sure the tolls raise enough money to cover debt payments on the $849 million bridge.

“It’s going to be a cost for everybody,” she said. “If we don’t have enough toll revenue coming in, then some highway projects could be compromised. We certainly don’t want to go in the red.”

Griffith suggested the commission could re-examine the toll exemptions after the first year.

Pierce County’s 2007 budget did not set aside money to buy transponders to equip scores of patrol cars and other county vehicles or to pay for tolls.

“It really never was part of the conversation,” said Terry Lee, the County Council’s chairman. “We had assumed, shame on us, that first responders and public service vehicles would be given a bye.”

Based on the commission’s initial discussions, agencies would be able to get the first six transponders free, but would then have to pay $10 per device.

Pastor said he did not know how many vehicles would need to be equipped with transponders or how much the equipment and tolls would cost, though he said it could be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Other government agencies are watching what the Transportation Commission does with tolling on the new Narrows bridge because it could guide policies on other toll projects in the future.

“It’s not just about the Narrows bridge,” Ladenburg said. “They are setting a tolling policy that may be in place for the next 30 to 40 years.”