Florida Senate Transportation Committee Unanimously advances bill to eliminate Express Toll Lanes

Click the image to view video of Sen Frank Artiles presenting the bill to end express toll lanes in Florida. Advance to 42:00

The Florida Senate Transportation Committee today unanimously passed bill SB250 out of the committee calling for the elimination of all express toll lanes in the state of Florida and preventing any new ones from being built.

This is profound because here in Washington, WSDOT defended the #405ETL by citing the I-95 ETL in Miami, Florida as a “successful example” of ETLs, even while Florida was struggling to keep their toll lanes working.  They were reaching the $10.50 max and still failing every single weekday even before the #405ETL were opened as reported in the Sun Sentinel on Oct 29, 2015.  Currently Miami’s tolls can reach $17.

This is further evidence that the concept of Express Toll Lanes being sold to states by Robert Poole and the tolling industry is the “snake oil” of the transportation industry.  View the video of the proceedings from timestamp 42:00 to 48:54.

Earlier in this same hearing, a bill is presented to provide refunds to drivers when they are charged a toll, but the toll lanes do not move faster than the general purpose lanes.  That bill also passed unanimously.

We continue to push to eliminate the tolls on I-405.  We are in the process of getting funding in the transportation budget to have a committee that includes public stakeholders and a 3rd party to evaluate the success criteria of the tolls to determine if they should continue after the 2 year trial period ends this September.  If you would like to help support our efforts, please consider donating the price of a toll.

Also, if you have not already signed the petition, please do so HERE.