Crossing Mackinac Bridge should be free, one lawmaker says

If you’ve traveled to or from the Upper Peninsula this summer, you likely had to pull out your wallet and fork over a small toll.

But one Michigan lawmaker wants any future trips across the Mackinac Bridge to be free.

“I think we should just count the bridge as a highway,” Rep. James DeSana, R-Carleton, told MLive in an interview.

The conservative from downriver Detroit, who said he doesn’t favor any toll roads aside from Michigan’s international crossings, is sponsoring House Bill 4869. It would nix the $4-per-car toll to cross the Mackinac Bridge, linking the Upper and Lower peninsulas.

For larger vehicles, the toll is currently $5 per axle. On-duty bridge personnel are exempt, as are authorized emergency vehicles when they’re responding to an urgent situation.

More than 4.2 million vehicles crossed the bridge last year, bringing in $23.3 million in toll revenue, according to the Mackinac Bridge Authority, a bipartisan commission within the Michigan Department of Transportation that oversees bridge operations.

That yearly revenue would disappear if DeSana’s bill becomes law, but he argues those millions are a “drop in the bucket” that could be made up by the billions of dollars of surplus that Michigan is sitting on even after next year’s record-breaking budget dips into it.

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Right now, the Mackinac Bridge doesn’t get a penny of state funding because it’s financially self-sufficient through toll revenue, bridge authority chair Patrick “Shorty” Gleason told MLive. Making the bridge reliant on the state budget process, he said, would badly complicate matters.

“I’ll guarantee you that bridge wouldn’t be maintained the way it has been for the last 66 years,” Gleason said, “because there would be times where the appropriate amount of money wouldn’t be allocated to provide maintenance for that bridge from year to year.”

DeSana’s cosponsors are eight Republicans, some of whom are considered hardline conservatives, like Reps. Steve Carra of Three Rivers and Matt Maddock of Milford.

In a Democrat-controlled legislature, however, GOP bills are rarely a priority. With that roadblock, along with DeSana’s feeling that there are fellow Republicans who don’t support his bill, he predicts the legislation won’t even get a committee hearing.

“I’m realistic about it, but I do believe it should be a free crossing,” he said, as charging a toll is “just another road tax. We’re already taxing people for gas, we’re taxing sales, it’s just another tax.”

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