One easy step to eliminating toll barrier delays

First off, the delays at the recently vanquished toll barriers sound much worse in today’s Buffalo News article than they actually are. The day the tolls ended was bad. Every day since then, they haven’t been significantly worse than when they were taking our cash. Possibly a minute or two slower at the Black Rock booths on the drive home at most.

On the days where there has been some delay there’s always one thing in common – there’s a cop sitting there making sure people are only going 20 MPH through the barrier. And when someone sees a cop car, their first reaction is to stop immediately and then proceed at 2 MPH so there’s no chance whatsoever that they could be misconstrued as speeding.

Since it’s impossible to force that ingrained reaction from people’s brains, the easy solution is to take the trooper off of babysitting duty. The tolls booths are pretty self-regulating when it comes to traffic speed. For every person that shoots through at 30 MPH, someone else is going to slow down to 10. I don’t think you’ll find many brave/stupid souls who are going to try and drive full speed through the barrier even if traffic wasn’t in their way. If they do, Darwin will make corrections.