TROLL HOUSE: Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler says tolls may be needed to maintain Portland’s bridges. IMAGE: lukas ketner

Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler told WW recently he was certain drivers will someday pay a toll to cross Willamette River bridges.

Six days later, in a follow-up interview, Wheeler backtracked. “I probably have to tamp my enthusiasm,” he said. “Just raising the idea of tolls on bridges is near-heresy.”

Not in San Francisco, New York City or even Cascade Locks, where drivers have paid tolls for decades. But here in Portland—a city that hasn’t paid a bridge toll since 1895—free rides across the river are seen as a divine right.

As Wheeler’s see-sawing makes clear, tolling on the Willamette—if it’s ever done—is probably a long way off. But with a hefty backlog of unfinished bridge repairs and Wheeler preparing some sort of transportation-funding proposal for the May ballot, local attitudes on tolls may need adjusting if the county wants to avoid a Minnesota-style meltdown.

“We need to start talking about how we are going to fund these bridges—not just today, but 50 years from now,” Wheeler says.

He’s in a position to know. The county has an estimated $600 million in work that needs doing on the six Willamette River bridges it maintains. That includes the decrepit Sellwood Bridge, which scores 2 out of 100 points on a federal bridge sufficiency scale.

The other county-maintained spans are the Broadway, Burnside, Hawthorne, Morrison and Sauvie Island bridges. (The state maintains all the other Willamette bridges except the Steel Bridge, which is run by Union Pacific Railroad.)

Yet in Portland, tolling is met with a skeptical eye. In a 2006 survey on funding done by Davis, Hibbitts&Midghall, Inc. for a new I-5 interstate bridge, 36 percent of 400 likely voters in the tri-county area and Clark County were strongly opposed to tolling. Just 16 percent were strongly in favor.

“The possibility of tolls on Willamette River bridges is slim to none,” says Tom Miller, chief of staff to City Commissioner Sam Adams. “I just don’t think that there is the political appetite for that. I certainly could be wrong. But I don’t think I am.”

Adams has appeared with Wheeler in a series of town-hall meetings to persuade voters of the need for more street funding. Wheeler spokesman Rhys Scholes says the two faced questions from residents both for and against bridge tolling.

“It’s one of those issues where the public is quite divided,” Scholes says.

Yet the need for more transportation funding remains. Five insiders say Adams’ plan for a city gas-tax hike for transportation maintenance has been spiked at the request of Gov. Ted Kulongoski (as first reported on WWire). But the county is forging ahead with plans to put a vehicle-registration fee hike (amount undetermined) on the May 2008 ballot.

A chunk of that new money would go to bridges, but Wheeler says more is needed—and tolls “should be on the table.” The idea has support from John Charles, president of the libertarian-tinged Cascade Policy Institute—especially if it includes congestion pricing at peak hours. “It’s a big twofer,” Charles says. “Not only do you pay for [bridge] rehabilitation, but you make the whole traffic situation flow much more smoothly.”

If tolling ever happens, the Legislature would have to rewrite state law to give the county—or a new Willamette Bridge Authority—the power to collect. Some observers, including County Commissioner Jeff Cogen, doubt the Leg would cede that authority.

Under a toll regime, Wheeler says most—or all—of the city’s bridges would have to collect. Otherwise, drivers would simply veer for the nearest free crossing. Wheeler says he’s not sure how much drivers would pay, but the fee would probably increase during peak hours or be free during off-peak times.

Electronic tolling makes it possible to collect without slowing traffic or making drivers toss coins in a basket, Wheeler says. In Toronto, Charles says, local residents have a card attached to their car that gets scanned. Out-of-towners have their license plates photographed and get billed by mail.

Yet Cogen remains skeptical—especially if voters are asked to pay more for their vehicle registration. “I don’t think tolls on the Willamette River bridges are going to be an easy sell,” he says, “nor a particularly good idea.”

Certainly, local history works against the plan. When the Morrison Bridge—the first across the Willamette—opened in 1887, there were tolls of 5 cents for pedestrians and 20 cents for two-horse wagons, according to Jewel Lansing’s Portland: People, Politics and Power 1850-2001 .

When the cities of Portland, East Portland and Albina merged in 1891, civic leaders sold the plan with a promise to make the bridges free. The city then bought the Morrison and Madison bridges and tossed out the tolls. Free bridges became a fixture of city life ever since.

Lansing says it would be difficult to go back now. “I don’t think it would go over well with Portlanders, particularly because that was part of the reason for merging these cities 120 years ago,” she says. “I doubt it would happen.”