One state agency believes the antidote to tackle its inflation woes is to use Oklahoma’s motorists as a neverending ATM machine.As it turns out, the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority’s ambitious, 15-year toll road expansion project, more popularly known as ACCESS, is $3.2 billion over budget.To be clear, ACCESS includes laudable safety projects like widening the Turner Turnpike, which runs from Oklahoma City to Tulsa. It also has planned improvements to other toll roads including the Oklahoma Cityarea John Kilpatrick, the Will Rogers, which runs from Tulsa to the Missouri line, and the H.E. Bailey, which connects Wichita Falls, Texas, with Oklahoma City. But it also includes controversial plans to construct even more new toll roads that critics argue are unwanted and unnecessary.OTA officials said their costs have ballooned because of an inflation rate of about 60%. That’s a shockingly high number.But rather than slowing down or cutting back like the average Oklahoman, the authority’s tone deaf governing board has decided to put the pedal to the metal like a driver trying to avoid a reckoning with a state trooper.“Inflation is real. We’re all affected by it,” said board chair John D. Jones last week when his governing oversight body blindly voted to press forward, acting like $3.2 billion in cost overages is the equivalent of a few pennies.And maybe the staggering overages are the equivalent of a few pennies to an agency that is under a mistaken belief that they can endlessly use motorists as their cash cow. After all, we have an agency that over the past 77 years has positioned itself as the gatekeeper to many of our largest and most direct thoroughfares.OTA’s latest solution is to put the squeeze on that captive audience by passing the costs of the $8.2 billion expansion project onto them in what is shaping up to be a series of unending toll hikes.Maybe, just maybe, I could stomach one, average 15% toll hike, which is slated to take effect Jan. 1. After all, I like driving on safe, well-maintained roadways, and everything does cost more these days.But my problem is that even before the toll booths can snap a picture of my license plate, agency leaders have announced that they foresee another 6% increase coming down the pike. And then another and another and another. They’re expecting one every two years for Lord knows how long. They say that would help cover their ...
