On Tuesday, Connecticut voters elected a new Governor who has vowed to fund highway repair projects by making truckers pay for them.
During Tuesday’s midterm elections, Democrat Ned Lamont defeated Republican Bob Stefanowski to become Governor Elect of Connecticut, according to reporting from WTNH.
While delivering a Wednesday afternoon acceptance speech in Dunkin Donuts Park in Hartford, Connecticut, Lamont reaffirmed his plans to start tolling truckers as soon as possible. Lamont told his crowd of supporters, “I’m going to do everything I can to put electronic tolls just on tractor trailer trucks, nothing else, going forward.”
Lamont’s plan is to toll out of state semi trucks in order to fund infrastructure repairs and to pay for more frequent train services. Lamont believes that he can generate $100 million per year from truck-only tolls.
While on the campaign trail, Lamont told his supporters that “when it comes to transportation I need a more reliable and predictable revenue stream that we can leverage and make the investments we need. That starts with electronic tolling, when some of our biggest trucks, coming in from out of state, using our roads, tax-free, create tons of maintenance issues, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”
Trucking groups like the Motor Transport Association of Connecticut staunchly opposed Lamont for his “anti-tractor trailer” policies.
Truck-only tolls were put in place by the neighboring state of Rhode Island earlier this year. Since then, Rhode Island has been sued by the American Trucking Associations, which argues that the truck-only tolls are unconstitutional because they “discriminate against interstate trucking companies and impede the flow of interstate commerce.”