Marc Perkel Rantz

Eliminate Toll Booths to reduce Global Warming

Letter to the Editor

These days everyone talks about ways to reduce carbon emissions to fight global warming. One simple way to cut carbon emissions is to eliminate toll roads and toll bridges. Toll collection requires people sit in traffic with their engines running generating useless smog while waiting in line to pay a tax. If these tolls were eliminated then millions of tons of greenhouse gases would not be dumped into the air we breathe and it would reduce our need to buy Arab oil and avoid gas shortages that drive up prices.

A toll is a tax with a high cost to the environment. If we must pay a tax then we should raise the tax on gasoline to make up the difference. A gasoline tax doesn't require that we sit in traffic with our engines running to pay the tax. If we are going to fight global warming then we need to make changes in a carbon friendly way. So lets close down those toll booths before the ice caps melt and it's too late.