Drivers crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge would pay tolls for an extra year or two, but the tolls would not increase while the span is being paid off, under a bill approved by the Legislature earlier this month.
The bill, co-sponsored by Gig Harbor Republican Rep. Jesse Young, would hold tolling at no higher than current rates until 2022 – with the possibility for a one-time 25-cent increase that year or in a following year – by authorizing a series of loans totaling $85 million.
The money would be pulled from various state funds, providing funding to cover the escalating costs of the bridge's construction bond payments, which would have meant toll hikes as those payments increased.
The loans would require the state to continue collecting tolls longer than originally expected, but they'd keep tolls from increasing, Young said.
The measure garnered bipartisan support in both houses, with only a pair of votes against, and is currently awaiting Gov. Jay Inslee's signature.
The loans could mean a year or two of added tolling, but if traffic volumes continue to increase, Young said, payments could be made faster and the tolling could come off sooner. Young said he was adamant that the bill establish that tolling would end once the payments were finished.
"The tollpayers of this district have given a gift – by virtue of the fact that they've paid almost 100 percent of the bridge – to the state," Young said. "We bore the entire cost and in exchange, the state can pick up the maintenance and operations costs. We effectively built out Highway 16."
The debt structure used to pay for the bridge meant payments and tolls were cheap early on, but would gradually increase. Tollpayers have been saddled with covering nearly 100 percent of those payments. Currently, they pay $5 with a Good To Go! pass, $6 at the toll booth and $7 through the mail.
"Look at (the Highway 520 bridge) or Big Bertha," Young said. "If you look at those projects that have been commissioned or are about to be, the benchmark the state uses is tolls will only account for 70 percent of the cost of the project. By comparison, we got a raw deal. That's why we were able to get nearly unanimous support for this."
The old Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the westbound span, opened in 1950. Tolling began on the newer, eastbound bridge – built for about $729 million – in 2007 and had been scheduled to continue through 2032, first to fund payments on the bonds used to finance construction and then to pay off deferred sales tax on the project.
In 2017, the Legislature established a work group made up of state lawmakers and local officials to study the bridge tolling issue. It recommended the Legislature provide $125 million in state funds to rectify the inequity caused by funding the debt payments through only toll revenues.
Another House bill designed to provide toll relief would have given that sum over the life of the bridge payments – with no loans or toll increases. That bill – sponsored by Rep. Christine Kilduff, D-University Place, the lone House "no" vote on the bill the Legislature eventually approved – didn't gain any traction this session.
"We got a loan on a loan," said Rep. Michelle Caldier, R-Port Orchard, who co-sponored Kilduff's bill.
"Instead of getting $125 million from the Legislature for the bad deal that the people got when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge tolls were being set up, instead they got a loan, an $85 million loan. ... I don't think that's a win," she said. "I think we're going to be paying on it longer, and I think we should have gotten the $125 million we were committed to getting."
