{"id":44638,"date":"2019-03-15T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home\/opinion-collect-tolls-on-state-highways-to-save-ferry-system\/"},"modified":"2019-03-15T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T11:00:00","slug":"opinion-collect-tolls-on-state-highways-to-save-ferry-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-collect-tolls-on-state-highways-to-save-ferry-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Collect tolls on state highways to save ferry system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&rsquo;s shocking that we in Southeast and coastal Alaska are being asked to consider a not-too-distant future without the Alaska Marine Highway System while residents of the state&rsquo;s largest cities use state highways free of charge on a daily basis.<\/p>\n<p><ins><a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/frustrations-run-high-as-many-testify-in-support-of-ferry-system\/\" target=\"_blank\">[Frustrations run high as many testify in support of ferry system]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n<p>If the 40,000-plus daily users of Glenn Highway paid the same toll amount per mile that we pay in Southeast, the entire ferry system funding shortfall could be covered with cash to spare. It&rsquo;s my understanding that legislators laughed when this proposal was mentioned in the House Transportation and Public Facilities Committee hearing.<\/p>\n<p>I promise, this is absolutely no joke to those of us who are seeing our bridge, our school activities travel, our freight shipping and our vacation travel eliminated in one fell swoop.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stephen Courtright,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sitka<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>\u2022 My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.<\/b><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is not a joke. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":44639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-44638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44638"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=44638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}