EDITORIAL VIEWPOINT
Raising Mackinac Bridge Tolls Lacks Imagination
By Wesley Maurer, Jr.

When the Mackinac Bridge was formally dedicated in the summer of 1958, two green ribbons, one stretching from the Lower Peninsula and one from the Upper Peninsula, were tied together at the dedication site, a symbol of unity and passage.

The bridge was built with great imagination and with a vision that prosperity might one day come to the U.P. It was a gateway to "Cloverland," as we were then called, and it was fully expected, in time, to be a free gateway.

Fifty years later on November 1, to commemorate the first car across the bridge, a green ribbon was stretched across the toll plaza and cut apart, and hours later that symbolism became apparent: The Mackinac Bridge Authority proposed the highest toll in bridge history, up to $4 for an automobile.

The gateway to the U.P. is now a tollgate to it for sure.

The toll increase is needed to finance painting and deck replacement, says the Authority. Otherwise, the bridge will fall into disrepair.

What scares us is the uniformity of the Authority in thinking this is a good idea. One would think that somebody there would want to explore alternative financing of these never-ending projects.

What scares us is that they just raised the rates from $1.50 to $2.50 in 2003 for the same reasons. If they were that far off the mark four years ago, maybe something else is at play here, like a state budget in crisis and a "save-yourself" order from Lansing.

What scares us is that this can just go on and on, with no apology, no rationalization. And this scares us the most because no one seems to remember the original vision that this bridge would be a free link between Michigan's two peninsulas.

To us, continued collection of these tolls is a subterfuge. The people who envisioned this bridge also envisioned that the tolls would disappear once the revenue bonds to finance it were paid off. When they were paid off, the state decided that highway department subsidies had to be paid back, too, so the tolls would be continued.

At this news, the venerable John Goudreau, now deceased but then the retired president of First National Bank of St. Ignace and one of the men who drew up the original revenue bond proposals, stopped by our office, mad as heck, and said there was never an intent to pay that money back; that the tolls were to be eliminated, and that was that. Mr. Goudreau was one of the shrewdest men around, and we had no reason to question him then, or now.

Raising the tolls now seems to be a way of life for the Mackinac Bridge Authority. We think it is unimaginative and short-sighted. The bridge isn't going to fall down; it is part of the state's infrastructure. But the psychological barrier to traveling north, not only to the U.P. but to the entire Straits of Mackinac area, will continue to do harm to the economy here.

Of course the Authority could respond that we live in the clouds, that this idea of free passage is a pipe dream and that it ignores financial and economic realities of the future, political realities of the day. But those were the same arguments against the bridge in the first place, and that is our point: The Mackinac Bridge Authority of today should exercise the same creative spirit, the same imagination, the same gumption, and the same willingness to come up with something new as their predecessors.