I think most of us can agree that twinning major highways in Nova Scotia, especially the 103, is beneficial. If you disagree you’re either a closed-minded moron or you’re dismissing their worth as a ruse to hide your aversion to any associated price tag, which I will get to later. Case and point: the Cobequid Pass. There were close to 50 deaths in the 10 years prior to its twinning vs. 3 in the 19 years after construction. This lower death rate is not a coincidence. And then you had the ill-informed audacity to say that twinning “does not work” without any credible evidence to back up your sorry excuse for an argument. Sure there will still be accidents on twinned highways but most of them are single car rollovers. Fatalities and critical injuries are what matters. Yes, distracted driving and human error are usually the cause of accidents but highway design is also a contributing factor in the case of head on collisions. If two cars driving 100 KPH collide with each other, the impact speed is doubled and you’re not going to walk away from it. You don’t need to be Isaac Newton to understand this. There is no disputing that twinning almost nullifies the occurrence of head on collisions and significantly decreases fatalities. If there is a Speedy Gonzales on the road, I would feel much better about him or her going by me than towards me. We can toughen laws and educate people until we are blue in the face but there will ALWAYS be people who choose to drive while impaired or distracted and just plain make stupid decisions. Not to mention the fact that even if you have adjusted your driving for adverse weather conditions, accidents can still happen and there is not a lot of room for error on an undivided highway. This utopian world you’re dreaming of where we only have law abiding, attentive drivers on the road will NEVER exist. You know what else will always be a reality? A lot of things aren’t free! Highway twinning costs BILLIONS of dollars and this penniless province just doesn’t have that lying around. It has to come from either increased taxes or tolls. You have no business throwing out the poor card while you buy Starbucks (or Roll up the Rims), lottery tickets, smoke cigarettes or pay interest on your credit card. If you do any of these things and complain about tolls, you’re the epitome of a hypocrite. If paying $8.00 (maximum) per round trip is really going to put you in the hole, you need to get your shit together. There are likely some adjustments you can make to your fiscal mismanagement to allow for tolls in your budget. If there aren’t, you probably shouldn’t be driving at all because that means you’re not in a position to pay for any unexpected car bills. As for me, I’m more than happy to spend money on a toll for a well-maintained highway that is safer to drive on (and I just might sip on a Starbucks while I’m doing it!) because I see the value in them. I don’t want to die because a car is coming towards me due to driver error or circumstances that may be out of their control. Your cheap ass can always take the back road while you risk beating your car to pieces and ending up getting a nasty car bill you can’t afford. —The Toll Troll
This article appears in Feb 2-8, 2017.
Hay, “Team Coast” – spare us the op-ed headers for Bitches. Most of us, – be we Trolls, Crank-yankers, or serious commenters – can make up our own minds about the content of the Bitch.
“You have no business throwing out the poor card while you buy Starbucks (or Roll up the Rims), lottery tickets, smoke cigarettes or pay interest on your credit card.”
And what if we don’t do any of that but still think the toll is ridiculous? Especially if you live/work in the area. That becomes a $40/week cost at least, or close to $2,000 a year. Not exactly chump change for most families.
I still say a Jersey barrier down the road would accomplish the same thing but cost a fraction of what is proposed. Add in passing lanes where necessary down the line if the existing one aren’t enough.
Wish some of these bitches were restricted to 140 characters. Yawned after the 1st two sentences, lapsed into a coma by the 4th.
“It has to come from either increased taxes or tolls.”
Or by not paying for (insert your favorite government waste here…teacher’s extra vacation days, etc.).
Good governance is not necessarily about spending more…
The point was made in the first few sentences. I didn’t read the rest.
Yes OB, they should be twinned but the economic situation in Nova Scotia does not permit that.
Bitchers: please educate yourself on a topic before posting. And keep your bitch concise and clear; otherwise your not a bitcher, you’re just an annoyance.
so anyone that disagrees with you is a closed minded moron?
OB, don’t go away mad.
I think twinning highways is good for safety but all of the highways that lead to Halifax should have tolls beginning a certain distance from the city.
There are already too many long distance commuters coming all the way from the South Shore, the Valley, Truro, etc. This creates a lot of congestion, pollution and GHG emissions. Tolls would help cut down on vehicle traffic by getting more people to car pool, drive more fuel efficient vehicles, or take one of the shuttle services.
Twinning the highways used by commuters without charging tolls would have the opposite affect – encouraging people to commute longer distances from the city and to continue to commute alone in their vehicles.
“There is no disputing that twinning almost nullifies the occurrence of head on collisions and significantly decreases fatalities.”
There are highways that are unable to achieve this perfect world that you dream of, so now they are having to install high tension cable barriers.
Start making licensing requirements a lot harder..test people in all conditions, not just a 20 minute road test to see if you can fucken park. Using a cell….$1000 fine, impound the car for a week. Next infraction, make your insurance triple, you’re a risk on the road. Enforce the rules of the road…cops are nowhere to be seen, pull excessively fast AND slow drivers over as they’re generally why people get frustrated and make stupid decisions to pass. Twinned highways still have fatalities, predominately caused by fuckheads who are bored of the long stretches and decide they don’t wanna pay attention any more. People lived with two lane highways for years, driving old boats on bias-ply tires and them fuckers could drive, now it’s a shit show, even with all the fucken “driver aids”…..proof positive that people lack common sense, judgement, skill and attentiveness required to pilot a 3000 pound piece of steel down the best of roads…So, you can take your tolls and fucking shove them.
Fuck you Troll toll. The working/middle and lower class are already taxed to the max out here for shittier and shittier basic services. Enough already of the systemic passing of the buck by the NS government. Making us pay for essential services like a fucking normal, regular highway which every other province has and that could’ve been twinned 5X by now is fucking bullshit. -Toll for morons in office
You got to pay the troll toll if you want in this boys soul…