Should the Cape Cod bridges have tolls? Massachusetts town official proposes "modest rate" for tourists.
An elected town official in Massachusetts wants tolls to be added to the Cape Cod bridges. Mashpee Select Board Vice Chair David Weeden said at a meeting Monday that there should be a "modest rate" charged to tourists crossing over on the Bourne and Sagamore bridges.
In Weeden's comments, first reported by The Boston Herald, he said, "I'd advocate for tolls to be imposed at the bridges."
"There's over 35 million cars, vehicles coming across those two bridges combined annually," Weeden said. "Even if you did $2 an axle, only calculating cars, you'd bring in about $70 million a year.
Weeden said he'd want to see the money go toward coastal and water quality issues. He said tolls could be a "long-term funding mechanism, recognizing that Massachusetts reaps the benefits of Cape Cod tourism."
"It's a significant amount of money that comes into the state through the tourism that we receive here on the Cape," Weeden said. "And they come over here and leave their stuff behind and we're left to deal with it."
People who live on Cape Cod should be exempt from paying any tolls, he said.
Tolls on the Cape Cod bridges?
State officials do not currently support adding tolls for Cape visitors.
"I don't support tolls on the bridges," Gov. Maura Healey said. "I hope to make continued progress on the bridges, that's been something that we prioritized and want to move ahead on but no tolls on the bridges."
"MassDOT is not considering tolls on the Cape Cod bridges," the agency said in a statement.
Barnstable state Rep. Steve Xiarhos is among those who have opposed the idea in the past.
"Tolls are just a tax, and I'm opposed to expanded taxes and tolls for Massachusetts residents," he said in a Facebook post last year. "The last thing we should be doing right now is to make our state even less affordable."
Preliminary construction work has started on replacing the bridges, which are more than 85 years old and have been deemed structurally deficient. The state is replacing the Sagamore first because it experiences more traffic and crashes than the Bourne. The project is expected to cost billions of dollars.
