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COMMENTARY: Holt’s road to ruin: Erecting tolls at border sends wrong signal

The first time I saw the toll plaza perched at the top of the long hill, travelling north from Truro, N.S., on the Cobequid Pass, it, like the blacktop we were travelling on, was shiny and new. In fact, the freshly completed highway was technically not yet accessible to the public. I was on a media tour with officials from the Highway 104 Western Alignment Corporation prior to the 1997 opening of the controversial project.

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In the 1990s, then Nova Scotia Liberal premier John Savage approved the construction of the region’s first tolled highway in an effort to bypass what was one of the deadliest stretches of road in the country, a two-lane section of the Trans-Canada Highway through the Wentworth Valley commonly referred to as Death Valley due to the multitude of serious crashes every year.

With public pressure mounting, Savage needed the highway built quickly but wanted to add as little debt as possible to the provincial spreadsheet, so he pushed through a controversial public-private partnership to get it done. In the end, the 45-kilometre bypass cost much more to complete but was built faster.........

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