the tolls may not toll for thee, 2nd Street Bridge

From Marcus Green in the C-J...

The current scenarios for using tolls to pay for the Ohio River Bridges Project would leave the Clark Memorial Bridge as a “free” route, a step that could increase traffic on the bridge to the highest levels since the mid-1960s and create chronic traffic jams....

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet spokesman Chuck Wolfe said, “It seems reasonable to expect that, in the event of toll bridges, many motorists — at first — would seek to avoid tolls by some route. If the Clark Memorial is the only such route, serious congestion could be expected.”...

While motorists might initially take the Clark to “be real frugal,” he said, they won’t continue “if they can’t get on it and it takes forever to get across it. So I think all that will work itself out,” [Jeff Mayor Tom] Galligan said....

The one time I spoke to Mayor Galligan at length, we talked about gas prices and he was busy telling me how much he understood Economics. In this case, he is, indeed, right on the nose!

How many drivers go out of their way to use a free route depends on how easy it is to divert from the toll roads and how much the tolls are, said Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington....

Hallenbeck said drivers’ decisions often boil down to a simple question: Is the money saved by not paying a toll worth possibly taking a longer trip?...

Money vs. time. Opportunity costs. E101.