Adding insult to injury as tolls escalate

Great article, Thanks Donn.

Do I look like a cleaned up Nick Nolte? I never though about it. My kids compare me to Bravehearts Mel Gibson. I don’t think I look like him but Freedom is worth fighting for.

Haven’t signed the petition yet? Sign it here at noGItolls.com

Adding insult to injury as tolls escalate

Adding insult to injury as tolls escalate
Donn Esmonde

Do not tell him it cannot be done. Do not tell him it is futile. Do not say that fighting City Hall is hard enough, but fighting the stone wall of a state authority is nearly impossible.

Rus Thompson knows all of that. It does not stop him. It does not change his mind. This is less of a cause than it is a crusade. Thompson will not let up until the tolls come down.

Thompson is a 51-year-old contractor who talks in a sandpaper rasp, looks like a cleaned-up Nick Nolte and brings the conviction of a monk to the issue of a bridge toll.

This is not just any bridge toll. It is arguably the largest single insult to the sensibilities and wallets of local drivers from the state’s Thruway Authority.

In the last three years, the cost for nonresidents who pay cash to cross the Grand Island bridges — on the main road between Buffalo and Niagara Falls — has been elevated from 50 cents to 75 cents to, as of Sunday, a full dollar each way.

Jacking up a toll by half is arrogant. Doubling it within three years is downright appalling. A lesser man might see the $1 toll as cause for capitulation. Thompson sees it as a call to action. “It merely underlines my point that the Thruway Authority does whatever it wants, simply because it can,” said Thompson, over coffee in a Grand Island restaurant. “There has been public outcry, political criticism and public hearings. These state authority [boards] are unelected and unaccountable.”

Thompson is an ordinary guy trying to do an extraordinary thing. By day, the father of four replaces floors and slaps up drywall. In spare hours, he fights a shadow government.

Thompson has collected more than 8,000 signatures on an anti-toll petition, dropping off the forms at pizza places and convenience stores. He drove his pickup truck to Albany to appeal to state legislators. He created a Web site ( www.nogitolls.com) and, along with developer Carl Paladino, pried data out of the Thruway Authority with Freedom of Information requests. His reward has been the thanks of toll-battered drivers. His frustration has been ever-rising tolls. “Commuters are getting buried,” Thompson said.

Authority officials say the tolls are needed to maintain the bridges. But toll dollars also prop up the state’s canal system and pad Albany’s budget. “With the amount of tolls we’ve paid,” Thompson said, “we should be driving on gold-plated bridges.”

His argument is simple: I-190 and the Grand Island bridges should not be part of the Thruway system, just as spurs off the mainline in other cities are not. Take I-190 away from the Thruway Authority, and the tolls end.

The problem for Thompson is taking the money-generating Grand Island bridges away from the Thruway Authority. It is like trying to pry a candy cane out of a toddler’s hand. Worse, the extraction depends on state legislators — a notoriously foot-dragging, buck-passing, excuse- making lot more inclined to duckand- cover than to stand on principle.

Thompson has rallied some of the Western New York delegation to the cause. It is a worthy effort. But any result from state lawmakers beyond the usual hollow rhetoric would come as a shock.

I hope I am wrong. But barring an overhaul of the Thruway Authority, it is hard to imagine the Grand Island toll booths coming down.

Thompson is not discouraged. He sees a wrong and wants to right it. It is a classic American story: one man against the system. In the movies, we know who wins. In real life, the shadow government takes a toll.

desmonde@buffnews.com

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