On Friday, I gave a talk at Bowling Green. My drive on the turnpike cost me $7.25 each way, for a total of $14.50. That is $7.25 to drive 2 hours on the turnpike.
Now for $7.25 I did not get to a free beer, a free coke, or a free movie. I did get to buy overpriced gas and buy an overpriced coke at an oasis.
I am sure there is some logic to this pricing structure. Maybe they are trying to get more people to drive on old-fashioned 2 lane roads. But no wonder we have trouble attracting business and young people to Ohio.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
People don’t want to live in NE Ohio because the entire state if not the entire Rust Belt continues to be strangled by a blue collar elderly population whose only daily desire is to be fed, clothed, medicated and entertained.
This is about changing the culture and you can’t do that when there are simply too many of those people holding vital assets and making decisions in the region. You have to get rid of them or at least remove them from power and you’re clearly not willing to able to do that…so, to hell with it. We moved west in 1995. Problem solved.
THE factor in people not wanting to live in northeast Ohio is………lack of good jobs, period. If Ohio could attract jobs many people would think about moving back, including me!
Gee if they started giving free beer on the turnpike I’ll bet more people would move back! Well, at least more people would start travelling through.
The logic is simple: the Tollroad exists to extort money from people (ie: non-Ohioians) who dont know better because locals would have saved the $14.50 by taking US224 to Findlay then up I75.
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Please. The Ohio Turnpike is why people don’t live in Northeast Ohio? If that were true, then why isn’t New York vacant?
Blaming the turnpike for a dying area of the country is akin to blaming adult acne for the death of a 95-year-old man.
Paying $7.25 for a 2-hour drive bothers you? Drive slower.
Tolls in Oklahoma ran us 32.00 per car to cross the state.
People don’t live in the rust belt because the jobs all went to China, Korea, Pakistan etc. It’s all because of the World Trade Association, which consists largely of a bunch of aphids sucking the juice out of a dying tree. We’re the tree.
If the United States had joined the WTA in the 1920’s Germany would have conquered England and there would be Imperial Japanese Naval bases on our West Coast. If the United States had joined the WTA in the 1840’s the South would have won the Civil war.