Published: July 01, 2009 08:29 pm      

‘It’s certainly going to affect all of us...’

PRINCETON — How the economy of Mercer County and the rest of southern West Virginia may be impacted was considered by the area’s residents Wednesday when they learned that tolls on the West Virginia Turnpike will be going up.

The West Virginia Turnpike Authority voted unanimously to raise tolls during a special meeting in Charleston. Tolls on passenger vehicles will increase from $1.25 to $2.00, and drivers of heavy trucks will see tolls jump from $4.25 to $6.75. The increases are effective August 1.

“It’s a bittersweet situation,” Princeton Mayor Dewey Russell said soon after being sworn in for a new term. “Obviously, there needs to be repairs on the turnpike, and you have to have money to do it.”

The turnpike’s current condition became apparent to a new member of Princeton City Council when he had an opportunity to compare it to other highways in the nation. Council member Chris Stanley said he recently took a 1,200 mile road trip from Princeton to Ontario, Canada.

“The worst roads we traveled were between here and Charleston,” he said. “I think it (increase) is probably a necessity, but I feel it became a necessary step because of mismanagement in the past by the Turnpike Authority as well as the Legislature.”

Mayor Linda Whalen of Bluefield said the increase will have “a tremendous affect on businesses, maybe even more so than individuals. It will affect local businesses.”

“We do think people coming in this direction are penalized; if you’re going north or south, you’re going to pay a toll if you’re coming to Bluefield,” she said. “I do want to say that I really appreciated what our local legislators tried to do in getting that toll alleviated. They were trying to do what’s best for southern West Virginia.”

Bluefield business person Art Riley, who has the Landmark Antique Mall in Bluefield and the mining equipment company Southwest Holdings in Bluefield, Va. said the increase will impact local enterprises.

“It’s certainly going to affect all of us who travel through the southern part of the state to Beckley, Charleston and any other city,” Riley said. “Our trucks run it (turnpike) three times a week, so it’s going to increase my costs tremendously. We’re in a position where the southern end of the state is the one that’s going to suffer the most, and even with the EZ Pass in place, it’s going to cut back on traffic. We may cut back and run just once a week.”

Truck drivers may start seeking alternatives to the West Virginia Turnpike, Riley said.

“That’s ridiculous,” business owner Elizabeth Osborne of Elizabeth’s Boutique in Princeton said she heard about the increase. “We can’t go anyplace in West Virginia unless we use the turnpike. I personally have a lot of customers who come in from Beckley. That’s going to hurt. You know as far as tourism goes, people coming north will find some other place to go.”

However, more expensive highway travel may keep more business in local stores, another Princeton merchant said.

“It’s a two-edged sword. It will cost us more to go up there (Charleston), more to come down here,” said Randolph Evans of The Bronze Look. “But it may encourage people to look at local stores and shop more locally rather than be so ready to run up the turnpike.”

Senate Minority Leader Don Caruth, R-Mercer, one of the more vocal opponents in the Legislature, warned the turnpike board the higher fares would put businesses in his district at an unfair disadvantage with those across West Virginia where no one pays to ride.

“We in southern West Virginia have been penalized terribly under this circumstance,” the attorney told the board. “We’re being treated as second-class citizens. We have been for a long time. To add insult to injury would be a toll increase here.”

Caruth said the increase would “doom maybe for a whole generation” of residents in his region by having to compete on an uneven playing field with counties that don’t pay to drive on roads in their home areas.

Another Mercer County representative compared the hike to the departure of former West Virginia University coach Rich Rodrequez.

Fetching that unpleasant memory, Delegate John Shott, R-Mercer, used the former head football coach as an analogy to the higher tolls coming on line Aug. 1 on the West Virginia Turnpike.

Two facts surrounding Rodriguez are synonymous with the West Virginia Parkways Authority’s move to raise the road’s tolls, Shott told the board.

First, he said, Rodriguez had promised to stay at the helm until the end of his coaching career, and “that was the big lie.”

“The second part is the most unforgivable,” he said. “We’re used to being overlooked by outsiders. It really hurts when one of our own does it to us.”

Thus, Shott said, southern West Virginians were given “the big lie” that tolls would vanish once the original bonds were paid off.

“The second part is ... who’s doing it to us?” he asked. “Our own West Virginians. It’s not the federal government. It’s not someone else. It’s our own West Virginians that are sticking it to us every time we have to pay those tolls.”

Shott said the Legislature is willing to work with the turnpike’s governing board, but, “If you’re not interested, we’re going to do what we have to do to fix the problem.”

Reporter Mannix Portferield of the Beckley Register-Herald contributed to this report.