Seriously - the toll booth jokes are old and stale. If you can't post to me about something else

[LynneSin]

then don't post.

My roommate's daughter lives in New Jersey and needed a new Mac Computer. She spent $3 on a toll bridge over the Delaware Memorial Bridge to come into Delaware to buy her MAC

Why would she do that?

Let's see 7% times $2500 means a Sales tax of about $175 would have to be paid. Being that she spent about quarter tank of gas (we'll say $8) plus the $3 toll that means she spend $11 to come to our state and saved $175. One the way home she bought a bunch of smokes for her friends and some booze too. Yeah our booze & smokes are cheaper here too.

Everyday I go shopping at my favorite malls or stores they are FILLED with license plates from New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Of course there are no tolls between PA and DE although they should put one just for all the traffic that goes to Total Liquor World, 2nd largest liquor store in the COUNTRY and located conveniently over the the boarder from Pennsylvania.

So while you mock the tollbooths of Delaware I'll go on enjoying my ZERO sales tax.

I should mention that rumor of a sales tax has been floated since we're in a budget crisis just like everyone else but even then they've been talking less than 2% on limited items so that we still would be way cheaper than anyone else but the Governor is fighting it.

[madinmaryland]

1. You are re-running your posts from last year?

How about the "village idiots" thread next?

:hi:

[LynneSin]

3. Because there are STILL village idiots out there

who think they somehow rate 'cool' if they can slip in a tollbooth comment.

That was a great thread though!

Seriously, if you don't live near Delaware, what does it matter to you. And if you do live near Delaware you've probably bought enough stuff sales-tax free to justify us charging you a toll.

[madinmaryland]

6. The only money I have ever spent in Delaware is a bottle of water at a convenience store,

and of course the tolls to get through your state.

:shrug:

[NewJeffCT]

11. I didn't even know Delaware was considered a "tollbooth" state

until i saw it posted in the Lounge. I had always considered NJ to be the tollbooth state. But, I'm in CT and we have no tolls.

[LynneSin]

16. We're not, we're the home of tax-free shopping

trust me, you can't get in or out of New Jersey without a toll.

I can get to Pennsylvania without a toll and I can get to Maryland but not using 95 (Maryland dumbasses don't know this and pay the toll).

[JVS]

26. They're the home of funding the state budget by sponging off of the people who drive through on I-95

There aren't many tollbooths, it's too small to fit many. But the problem is if you look at the cents of highway per mile figures, you realize that Delaware charges a lot for the privilege of using a US interstate. But hey, as long as their constituents benefit and all the people who get soaked have no vote...

[sasquatch]

27. Yay, the village idiots insult

:bounce:

[madinmaryland]

29. When all else fails..

:shrug:

[arcadian]

2. Why did the chicken cross the road?

To pay a toll.

[LynneSin]

4. You're an asshole if you don't get it

think about it.

[arcadian]

40. Just kidding.

I thought you were too. Sorry.

[petronius]

5. You know, I never understood the flood of tollbooth posts

Does DE have a toll to get into the state? Or toll highways (like in Europe) with booths every x number of miles? Or private highways operated by non-governmental businesses? Or just tolls over bridges?

:shrug:

[madinmaryland]

7. There is like a ten mile of stretch of I-95 going through DE, and there

are two tolls in that ten miles. One to get over a bridge and the other to drive on the rest of I-95 in Delaware. Depending on traffic you can get through DE in about 15 minutes, though it has taken me nearly an hour to get through it once.

:shrug:

[cwydro]

10. Jeez, going through south Florida

there's a bunch of them. Very expensive.

I never got the toll booth jokes either, but figured it was just another injoke I wasn't in on.

[madinmaryland]

12. As with everything else in the lounge, what started as joking around about

our states, we all continued to beat it to death and then a few more times for good measure.

Of course if you start a thread about tollbooths, complaining about tollbooth jokes...

[cwydro]

13. Oh hell, there's nothing anyone could say about Florida

that could possibly insult me:rofl:

Now, I can get testy about NC, where I grew up...

[LynneSin]

15. although what MIM fails to mention is the $5 toll on Maryland's stretch of 95

nuff said!

[madinmaryland]

17. If you want to perpetuate this toll booth thingie, that's fine. BTW, that would

be $5.00 for a total of 218 miles. DE on the other hand is more like $10 for 10 miles.

:shrug: And I still have not bought anything other than a 20 ounce bottle of water in DE.

[LynneSin]

18. Not my fault you enjoy paying sales tax

:shrug:

And Maryland - 5% on EVERYTHING!

[madinmaryland]

20. No. I just don't have a large budget for buying crap that I don't need.

Anything else does not justify whatsoever driving three hours (at a minimum) for crap that I don't need.

Sorry, but we just don't spend enough money on crap we don't need.

:shrug:

[Heidi]

8. I grew up with toll roads.

Way of life if ya wanna go anywhere quickly in Oklahoma. And it's fair: everyone who uses the road pays for it. I've got no problem with toll roads.

[Gormy Cuss]

19. With due respect, they're not fair. Freeways are fair.

Toll roads cost the same whether you're driving a SMART car or a Chevy Suburban even though the latter causes more wear and tear. Trucks are assessed tolls by weight, but cars aren't.

Tolls also can present a barrier to lower income drivers who will choose to use the local roads rather than pay the additional fee. Combine them with the drivers who are just too cheap to pay the toll and there's more congestion on the local roads for everyone. Freeways on the other hand encourage all drivers to use the limited access road as much as possible.

Then there's the issue of building or managing infrastructure via sweetheart deals to private companies and how much that may cost taxpayers who don't even use the roads, but that's another post.

[Sanity Claws]

9. I have to drive through DE next week

Sounds like I should stop and do some shopping.

[jmowreader]

14. I just wish every toll state had the setup Illinois and Oklahoma do

I think all the tollroad states have some variation on EZPass--an RFID system that is used in monthly toll billing. Drive past it and your account is charged the price of the toll. Most states, though, require you to drive through the tollbooth. In Illinois, you drive under this metal arch and it takes care of the problem. Oklahoma's is even better--they've got PikePass transponders under bridges; no arch needed.

[krispos42]

21. Ah, you mean the government keeping track of your movement?

They have that in NY.



How about we just raise the income tax percentage to something approaching fair and fund our highways from the generan fund?

[madinmaryland]

22. Perfect Answer!

Thanks!

[jmowreader]

36. I have an even better idea

Raise the income tax percentage to something approaching fair, then fix all the REST of the shit that's broken before we start trying to fund highways from the general fund. (On edit: isn't road maintenance pulled out of fuel taxes, at least in part?)

The really sick thing about toll roads is I don't think they reserve the toll revenues for road maintenance. I've been on toll roads that were worse than tax-funded freeways.

[krispos42]

39. Well, obviously we have a lot to do

But we can't have commerce and thus the means for a healthy tax base if the roads suck and the bridges are collapsing into rivers.


I understand New York City's particular problem... they're a port city and a major commuting hub for people from two other states AND they're spread out across a half-dozen islands. Many of the people that use NYC's highways and bridges don't live there and don't pay other taxes.

But other states don't have this excuse. It's just a regressive tax.

[jmowreader]

42. I wish there was a non-invasive way to implement IFTA for cars

IFTA means International Fuel Tax Agreement. It's administered through the International Fuel Tax Association. If you look at any truck or bus used in interstate commerce (I don't know if you HAVE to register through IFTA if you only run intrastate, but you probably do on the off chance you need to go to a neighboring state.) you'll see an IFTA sticker on it. Said sticker has a serial number, and each serial number requires a separate report.

Short description: you record all the mileage you run in each state you run in--you can either use paper logs or an electronic recorder. I would hazard to guess that all interstate carriers just use the vehicle-position function on their Qualcomm system to do this. These reports are then submitted to IFTA, who calculates your total fuel tax and sends you a bill, then disburses your fuel tax payments to the states you operated in.

You folks with two axles don't get the opportunity to do this. Instead, you either fuel in your home state and use neighboring states' roads free of charge, or you fuel in a neighboring state with a lower tax rate (assuming you live close enough to make this a viable option) and use your home state's roads free of charge.

One place this would REALLY come in useful is Illinois, specifically the Chicago area. Right now, the road tax on gasoline in Illinois is 37.3 cents per gallon. The road tax on the same fuel in Indiana is 29 cents. (That sticker on the pump? The one that reads "total taxes are 57.9 cents per gallon"? That includes federal taxes of 18.4 cents per gallon.) I would imagine a lot of Chicago residents fuel in Indiana. I know I get my fuel in Burns Harbor, IN, when I'm up there--my closest authorized fuel stop is Effingham, and that's a hell of a long ways out of route if my drop is in Chicago.

New Jersey and New York are in a similar fix--total gasoline tax in NJ is 32.9cpg, and in New York it's 59.6. Diesel's higher, because the federal diesel tax is higher. If you lived within a gallon of New Jersey and you had a big enough gas tank to make this worth doing you'd be a damn fool to buy gas in New York state. A car with a 10-gallon gas tank wouldn't be worth doing it in (unless you were planning a big shopping trip) but a pickup with saddle tanks could do it profitably. Pennsylvania's got a similar problem--their fuel tax rate is just as high as New York's, but their problem is worse: the NJ/PA border's longer than the NY/NJ border.

But yeah, paying fuel taxes to the states you actually drive in instead of the state you fueled in would help.

(I was also going to point out that North Carolina and South Carolina also have a tax rate disparity problem, but so far North Carolina has very few toll roads.)

[krispos42]

44. In a generation it's not going to matter anyway

Our cars will be electric; no fuel to burn and therefore no fuel tax to collect. But the wear and tear on the highways will be the same. So they're going to have to figure out a way to tax fo rthe highway fund.

We could do a per-kilowatt-hour tax on recharging batteries, but that might get complicated with home chargers.

We could charge a hefty tax on battery packs when they're sold, but asking people to pay the tax equivilent on 4,000 gallons of gas all at once might be difficult and unfair.

We should probably just change over as soon as possible We need to repair the crumbling infrastructure and the economy can't take a doubling of the federal gas tax, so now's the time.

[JVS]

23. You just don't get it, do you? Not only does your state charge outrageous tolls considering...

the short distances involved, but then you try to justify it by pointing out that your state poaches shoppers (and thus tax revenue) from the neighboring states because you don't have a sales tax (which you don't need because you keep shaking people down for the toll). Predatory behavior at its finest

[Tektonik]

24. ^ This

[madinmaryland]

25. +1

:rofl:

[JVS]

30. Someday we'll get a bypass built and they'll be fucked! Fucked, I tells ya!

[sasquatch]

28. +2

:hide:

[LynneSin]

31. Whatever

thing is - I didn't put them there and the joke is old and tired.

If people have nothing else better to say to me than a damn snide remark about the tolls then perhaps they should say something.

As for the shoppers we get - so what? Why yell at us because people would rather drive over here and buy stuff then pay the taxes back home. We're not the only tax-free state in the union.

[JVS]

32. As for the shoppers, welcome to the Walmart of states. And don't get me started on the credit cards

[KamaAina]

33. One of my favorite bloggers just posted about Rehoboth

http://toulousestreet.wordpress.com

thing was, he said "Rehoboth, Maryland"!! :dunce:

I slipped him an email, which he apparently read, 'cause he fixed it!

Also, UD tried to recruit me on the basis of my outstanding PSAT scores. You know what? I should have gone.

[CreekDog]

34. It's a cheap shot at Delaware. If you don't like tolls you can drive around Delaware.

It's not like that's asking very much. :evilgrin: :hide:

[madinmaryland]

35. Heh!

Nice one!

:D

[JVS]

38. It's just this place that gets in the way when you're trying to go somewhere

[Fran Kubelik]

37. psssst...

the only reason they do it is because you make it very clear that it bugs you. ;)

[CreekDog]

41. States without sales taxes are kind of weird

:rofl:

[WillParkinson]

43. What kind of troll lives under the bridge?

Just curious.