Poll Center: Toll Booths at the District Line?

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WHEN MARION BARRY has ideas, people listen. Especially when it involves visions of never-ending traffic jams waiting to get through theoretical toll booths on the District's border. Barry's idea to turn New York Avenue into the New Jersey Turnpike, reported by The Washington Times and Examiner on Wednesday, was picked up by the Associated Press and distributed to every news source in the city (including Express), stirring the populace.

Of course, charging a toll in lieu of a commuter tax isn't as easy as erecting a toll booth at every crossing between D.C., Maryland and Virginia. According to Free Ride's survey of the District's border, there are approximately 193 potential locations for toll booths, depending on what you classify as a border crossing. (What do you do with District roadways that have access only from Eastern, Western and Southern avenues, e.g. Valley Terrace SE, Stuyvesant Place NW. Do you put up a toll on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge? Technically, it crosses, albeit briefly, into District territory. Or what about the George Washington Memorial Parkway? It crosses over the District-controlled Columbia Island, a place most everyone assumes is in Virginia.)

In reality, if Barry's proposed D.C. Council legislation to study the possibility of forcing commuters to pay a toll each time they cross the District line eventually becomes reality, it would most likely look more like central London's congestion charge zone than Breezewood, Pa.'s massive turnpike toll plaza. New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is toying around with the idea of instituting a London-style congestion tax-zone camera-equipped automated toll-collection system for a majority of Manhattan. Being D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's big-city mayoral mentor, Bloomberg's consideration of such a scheme has various people in the Wilson Building thinking about introducing something similar for the District.

Of course, such talk is sure to freak out the region's population of car-based commuters who currently head in and out of the District with ease. For today's Poll Center question, we ask: Should commuters be forced to pay a toll to enter D.C.? Go vote (and comment) here and see how your fellow commuters weighed in, station by station, line by line.

» "Barry Urges Worker Tolls" [WT]
» "The District's Territorial Waters" [Free Ride/Express]
» "Congestion Charging" [TfL]
» "Do Mayor's 2030 Plans Include Congestion Pricing?" [Gothamist]
» "Fenty Explores D.C. Congestion Tax" [WRC/NBC4]

Photo by Kevin Clark/The Washington Post