COLUMBUS, Ohio —States and municipalities must sometimes feel like they’re between the proverbial rock and a hard place: they want and need the money toll hikes can generate, but they hate the cost in terms of safety consequences.
A report to the Ohio General Assembly on the impact of the Northern Ohio Freight Strategy and Traffic Safety pro-gram submitted by the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Ohio Department of Public Safety notes the impact toll hikes and subsequent diversion of traffic to secondary roads have had on safety in that state.
The two agencies analyzed crash data for calendar years 1994 to 2003 ? which includes the time period (1995-99) when toll increases of up to 82 percent were phased in ? on rural two-lane routes with total traffic volume between 5,000 and 15,000 vehicles daily. They then compiled the worst routes in terms of fatal crash rates.
Of the top 10 worst routes, seven were roadways parallel to the Ohio Turnpike, including U.S. Highway 20 in Fulton County, which had a fatality rate 3.91 times higher than the state average, and U.S. Highway 224 in Medina County, which had a fatality rate 3.04 times higher than the state average. Fulton County is in western Ohio midway between the Indiana border and Toledo.
Medina County is just south of Cleveland and west of Toledo.
Others were U.S. 20 in Lucas County, with a fatality rate 2.67 above the state average; SR 2, also in Lucas County, with a rate 2.36 times higher than the state average; U.S. 20 in Lorain County, with a rate 2.36 higher than the state average; U.S. 6 in Wood County, with a rate 1.86 higher than the state average and U.S. 20 in Wood County, exceeding the state average by 1.8 times.
The agencies’ report called the heightened fatal crash rates on the state’s two-lane highway system “the most troubling aspect of the truck traffic shift caused by the toll increases.
“Crashes between cars and trucks are usually more severe in terms of injuries and fatalities and the increase in truck traffic on routes parallel to the turnpike increased the likelihood of car-truck crashes.
“In addition, trucks create more congestion on two-lane roads because they take up more road space, are slower to accelerate and more difficult to pass. This congestion can frustrate automobile drivers, causing them to attempt unsafe passing maneuvers around slower trucks,” the agencies’ report said.
As horrible as any wreck or fatality is, if there is a bright side at all perhaps it’s that they can focus attention on the safety problems inherent in diverting truck traffic onto lesser roads.
Larry Davis, president of the Ohio Trucking Association, remembers a particular fatal during those years of hefty toll increases: a drunken four-wheeler side-swiped a family in an Escalade, causing the Escalade to hit an 18-wheeler head on, resulting in multiple fatalities.
That got the governor involved and he started pushing to get something done to bring trucks back to the turnpike, Davis said.
Meetings were held with the Ohio Turnpike Commission and the commission agreed to lower tolls 28 percent and increase the speed limit to 65 mph, “and we brought trucks back to the turnpike,” Davis said.
And even though in 2007 rates for large trucks went up a penny per mile and “people were not happy,” it was better than if toll rates had gone back up 28 percent, again, Davis noted. One cent a mile is better than a $14 increase, he said.
Ohio Gov. Steve Beshear has ordered state agencies and universities to cut spending by 3 percent and has warned that more cuts may be necessary because of a $434 million budget shortfall this year, The Associated Press reported.
Davis said he hadn’t heard anything about tolls going back up to make up the shortfall. “I’ve heard they were going to cut spending,” he said.