Monitoring a tollway in transition
An "incomplete" may not generally be considered a good grade on a report card, but there is something gratifying about the word when Illinois Tollway Chairman Paula Wolff uses it to describe the system's performance at the end of her first year at the helm.
It has a ring -- unfamiliar from past regimes -- of recognition of the tollway's profound duties to its customers, not just its opportunities to make money off them.
To be sure, Wolff and the new tollway board have money-generating opportunities to review and consider. She talked about them in an article written this week by Daily Herald transportation and projects writer Marni Pyke.
She spoke of the challenges that remain even as the tollway catches up on a backlog of controversial mailed violation notices, for which thousands of tollway users found themselves confronting often hundreds of dollars in fines for violations caught on camera years before and virtually impossible to fight.
She talked about new ways of generating revenue in years ahead, including so-called "congestion pricing" that would charge commuters more for using certain lanes at rush times or if they have no passengers.
But in her tone, there is a clear respect for the vast majority of tollway customers who rely on the system and are willing to pay for a well-run operation, rather than a strong-arm defensiveness out to ensure that even the rarest abuser of the system will not get away with it.
"It's a hard balance to strike," Wolff told Pyke, "between wanting to make sure we don't mistreat people ... and making sure we're tough enough on people who don't pay their tolls."
And it is. But Wolff seems to recognize that managed properly, that balance can produce valuable benefits.
"We've got the capacity to determine the economic future of the region," she observed, and while such an assertion may be a slight overstatement -- for surely a host of other factors will also play an important role in the region's economic future, not least of them O'Hare International Airport -- it still shows an awareness of the important function of the tollway not as a revenue producer but as an aid to development and growth.
That kind of thinking will be critical as the tollway contemplates other significant projects, ranging from simple upgrade of the Jane Addams Tollway to complicated expansions of the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway or Route 53 in Lake County.
Wolff talked about the challenges in terms of finding a "tipping point," and so far, legislators and public service agencies that monitor the tollway seem happy with what they're seeing.
They will continue to be -- as will tollway users -- as long as leaders recognize that the "tipping point" comes when revenue generation is a more important goal than satisfying a customer base that has few, if any, alternatives.