The terrible toll taken by tolls

Don Grady is a CPA and Professor of Accounting at National Louis University, Chicago.

I mentioned in my last col­umn that Sue and I had just returned from a trip that took us through 20 states west of the Mississippi. Sue was our navigator, and she kept care­ful notes of our journey, log­ging all the wonderful sights and keeping stats on dates, locations, mileage, etc. One statistic on her list was high­way tolls. Take a guess on how much we paid in tolls outside Illinois as we completed our 7,350 mile trip. The correct answer is zero. We didn’t pay a penny in tolls outside of Illi­nois. That’s right, not a penny.

When we arrived back in Il­linois, we noted the progress that had been made on the Route 47/Interstate 90 inter­change. We thought – “It will be nice when it is finished, but what are those arches that are being put up on each of the ramp ways? No, they couldn’t be adding toll collectors, could they?” As we got caught up on our mail, we found the flyer entitled “Opening Soon” with the tolls identified on the in­terchange ramps, $.45 on the west-side ramps and $.30 on the east-side ramps.

My campus at the Univer­sity is located in Elgin at the intersection of Route 31 and I-90. The trip to the campus from my residence is about 12 miles via I-90 – less than 10 miles of that travel is on the interstate. My trip takes me through the Elgin toll station. I already have an I-Pass device that automatically collects the toll of $.75 both coming and going to work. I thought $.75 was a bit high-priced to go less than 10 miles on the toll road. After the interchange is com­pleted, I will be going through two tolls, and the total cost each way will be $1.05. That’s more than 10 cents a mile for the tolls!

That is a 40 percent in­crease in tolls to go less than 10 miles. That will add up, at $2.10 per day, $10.50 per week, and over $525 per year – just to commute to campus each workday – that’s just the tolls! I forgot to mention that only one of the 20 states we traveled through had gasoline prices comparable to Illinois. That was California. All the other states were considerably less than what we pay in Illi­nois.

I pondered this for a moment and thought about the trip we just completed. What if each of those 20 states we trav­eled through collected tolls at $.10 per mile? We would have had to pay $735 for just tolls on the trip. Whew! That’s a nightmare! I am glad I woke up. When will Illinois wake up and realize what they are do­ing to us?

• Send your questions and ideas to: Sun Day, Frugal Forum Column, P.O. Box 761, Huntley, IL 60142, or, by email to: thefrugalforum@ gmail.com

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