Tag: Louisville

The Louisville Toll Bridge Scam: Who it really hurts and why bringing it to Cincinnati would be a disaster

There is a bridge extending from Louisville over into Indiana that is part of the 1-65 highway system managed by RiverLink, which is a toll collector that has been very controversial. I was quite surprised to learn after going across that bridge a few times to visit destinations on both sides of the Ohio River that I received a bill in the mail after cameras photographed my license plate demanding payment for a bridge that did not have the traditional toll signs that we have all come to expect from such toll collecting activities. I wrote an article about it which continues to be one of my most popular. It has many tens of thousands of impressions since I wrote it a few years ago, including from RiverLink which attempted to defend their poor signage and toll collecting practices. That article can be found at the link below along with the many comments from people inspired to contribute their thoughts.

https://overmanwarrior.blog/2018/01/21/the-river-link-scam-louisvilles-theft-of-the-innocent-through-a-toll-bridge-to-depraved-economic-activity-in-clarksville/#comment-63440

I don’t get many comments, not because people aren’t reading, but usually because the nature of my content is not conducive to it, and just like in any classroom setting, the audience does not feel comfortable raising their hand first. Once a few people do string together some thoughts, more join in, but most of the time, reader engagement is low due to the nature of my content. But occasionally a contributor like Christina chimes in, seen below, and the true scope of the issue comes into focus. I present it here as she wrote it. She is obviously upset and the sentence structure and emphasis show that. Essentially she represents why RiverLink is a massive scam created by stupid politicians who wasted the money we gave them on everything but what they should have, and they’ve passed on their incompetence onto this bridge for people like Christina to fund out of desperation and massive amounts of inconvenience. In her case, such as many other stories of people who move onto one side of the river and may not know about the toll bridge, but simply need to get to the other side to get to a job, they could unknowingly rack up many hundreds if not thousands of dollars before they get their first bill in the mail. And it does cause them a lot of pain, which is the nature of her comment.

christina
November 10, 2019 at 5:38 pm Edit

are you SERIOUS? i ONLY went across the bridge to go to work to feed my family!!!!!!!! yes i know that i owe them money and i was paying them what i could but then the charges got bigger and BIGGER! i was charged a total of $170 in fines just to send me a BILL!!!!!! now they have a lean on my car because i can not afford to pay them $511.40 that i KNOW I DO NOT OWE! THEY HAVE SENT ME OTHER PEOPLES BILLS AND HAVE CHARGED ME WHEN I WAS HOME AND NEVER WENT ACROSS THE BRIDGE!!!!!! not only that but i find out that you not only get charged when you go across the bridge but if you take exit 0 you are charged TWICE BECAUSE RIVER LINK “SAY’S” THAT IS ANOTHER BRIDGE!!!!!! HOW IS THE HELL IS AND EXIT A BRIDGE????? now i am screwed because i can not get tags on my car because they out a lean on it, and when i called to ask to make payments they said quote “MUST BE PAID IN FULL” then when i called a few months later i was told that i could have been making payment’s and when i asked why the other person said that i could not make payments she said IT IS NOT THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO LET US KNOW THAT! IF WE DON’T ASK THEY DON’T TELL. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TOLD BY THE SUPERVISOR!!! THIS IS WRONG!!!!! PEOPLE LIKE ME THAT WORK PAY CHECK TO PAY CHECK AND DO EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE PAY THE BILLS TAKE CARE OF THEIR KIDS SHOULD NOT BE DONE THIS WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this bridge was paid off a long time ago and we SHOULD NOT HAVE TO KEEP PAYING TO CROSS IT! AND THEN YOU GET CHARGED NOT ONCE BUT TWICE BECAUSE YOU TAKE EXIT 0????? THIS NEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH AND FAST! NOW I HAVE TO DRIVE ILLEGAL UNTIL I CAN PAY OFF RIVER LINK SO I CAN GET TAGS ON THE CAR I WORKED SO HARD FOR AND IS PAID OFF JUST TO GET TAGS AND INSURANCE!!!!!!!!

THEY NEED TO HELP PEOPLE LIKE ME THAT WAS JUST GOING TO WORK TO FEED THEIR FAMILY AND NOT OVER CHARGE ME SEND ME LATE FEES THEN PUT A LEAN ON MY CAR! AND I TRIED TO PAY THEM IN PAYMENTS AND WAS TOLD “NO” THEN WHEN I CALLED A FEW MONTHS LATER WAS TOLD I COULD HAVE MADE PAYMENTS AND WHEN I ASKED WHY THE PREVIOUS LADY SAID THAT I COULD NOT MAKE PAYMENTS THE “SUPERVISOR” SAID I QUOTE “IT’S NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO TELL YOU, YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I was upset in a similar way over a $19 charge, much less than what she has gone through. It wasn’t the money; it was the silent intrusion into my mailbox that really pissed me off. That some cowardly collection agency just took a picture of my license plate and could bill me from behind some computer somewhere was revolting. It makes me wonder how many Christians are out there going through the same thing for the same reasons. RiverLink will say that they have up signs and that people should know that they are using a toll bridge. But for people unfamiliar with the area just trying to make sure they are on the right road, it would be easy to make the mistake of staying on that road until you cross over into the other side of the river, where it would then be too late. I think it represents the worst of the mismanagement of highway funds and politics in general, and just like Chicago, the tolls will likely continue far into the future as a money racket that is intended for oversized union pensions and other wasted dollars spend on worthless government employees.

It concerned me because I do travel to Louisville a lot and it bothers me that something so corrupt is so close to my home in Cincinnati. But even worse, politicians on both sides of the Ohio River in Cincinnati are looking to do the same thing to pay for the I-75 bridge replacement that is projected there. The corruption is migrating, and politicians are intent to provide the same type of RiverLInk scam in Cincinnati. I remember in the 90s when Cincinnati was building more bridges than they needed just to use up highway funds that were in the bank, yet 30 years later nobody can come up with the money to provide a badly needed bridge replacement on one of the busiest highway arteries in the nation. With the amount of money that we do pay in taxes, the money for a new bridge should be there, we shouldn’t have to fund bridges with these toll roads. If government wants to lower taxes, then maybe we can talk about tolls, but at this level of taxation, its just another tax on us all collected in a different way, behind some cowardly camera by lazy trolls. And the cost of that stupidity isn’t just economic, it hurts people like Christina much more than anybody, and that pain comes straight out of political mismanagement and bad fiscal planning. It certainly isn’t fair to the population in general.

Rich Hoffman

The River Link Scam: Louisville’s theft of the innocent through a toll bridge to depraved economic activity in Clarksville

What a scam I ran into in Louisville Kentucky! It was a few weeks before Christmas and my family was going south to celebrate early. This year my kids were going with their grandparents and cousins to a dinner theater over in Clarksville which was across the river from Louisville and just upstream from the Falls of the Ohio. My wife and I were going to watch their kids while my kids went to the show. So we dropped off everyone, kept the kids, then went back across the river to keep the little ones busy so their parents could enjoy the show. As we approached the 1-65 bridge over into Clarksville we saw signs indicating that it was a toll bridge, but I never saw a booth for collection, so we figured being out-of-town that the toll had expired some time in the past and that the local government hadn’t taken down the signs. That’s the way it’s worked in other places in the country, so we just went about our way doing our business and figured the issue was over. 6 weeks later, on the night of the government shut-down ironically, we received this letter in the mail from some loser outfit called River Link saying that we owed $16 for our use of that bridge that day which I thought was astounding. They sent an invoice with a picture of our car on it and our license plate demanding payment and my first thought was—where were the pricing indications so I could have made a decision? If I had known the price, I would have found another way across the river. But it was clear that this River Link organization with the politicians behind them meant to use that bridge as a revenue trap—and that their information postings were deliberately vague, because they wanted nice families like mine to do just as we did—and pay for the mismanagement of Louisville’s resources with a bunch of lazy losers who let intrusive street cameras do the work of toll collecting to satisfy their inflated budgets and scandalous activity politically over the years.

http://www.wdrb.com/story/30483478/louisville-area-toll-bridge-system-to-be-called-riverlink

My wife wanted to just pay the fee, and I imagine that there are many thousands, if not millions of people just like her who are willing to say “it’s only $16 dollars, let’s just pay it.” But I told her that we should shit in the envelope and send that to those bastards because what they did was deliberately deceitful and a practice which tells a story about our greater needs as a nation as we debate how to fund all our infrastructure projects. This River Link organization and the toll on that bridge is only a few years old as of this year of 2018—so it’s a very new thing this idea of a toll booth free collection racket. I suppose from their point of view its better than backing up traffic on a bridge, so the local government can pay for it. Such contemplations have been going on in Cincinnati where there is a tremendous need for a new bridge serving I-75 going from Cincinnati to Covington, Kentucky—and a toll has been one proposal for funding it. But the problem of stopping traffic to collect the toll is not attractive because of the volume of traffic that goes through that region. It was essentially the same situation in Louisville, the main artery north out of the city is the I-64/I-65 bridge. The bridge looked nice, but I was surprised how few people were using it—now I understand why.

While we were waiting for our kids to finish their show we had a lot of time to kill. We were getting hungry but didn’t want to miss the pick-up time so my wife and I drove around Clarksville to grab a bite to eat, and I was pretty shocked at how run down and swanky everything was. I could see downtown Louisville literally just a mile or so away yet there was nothing in Clarksville worth doing. We found a Hardees restaurant—which was the only place off the highway to eat for several miles and it was in such bad shape that we passed. For me that’s a big deal because I never remember passing on a good hamburger. The condition of the building and the look of the people inside sent enough alarm bells that we drove away hungry and happy to avoid the experience—and no the workers were not black. They looked like toothless Appalachians that had the sanitation of a dirty diaper. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why several exits of a nice highway that is the main artery out of the city of Louisville didn’t have more to offer consumers. I mean wasn’t there a lunch crowd and dinner rush that would leave the city for a break? After I received the invoice from River Link I understood what the locals already knew. The toll to go across the bridge and come back into the city was too great—it would exceed the cost of lunch—so nobody was using the bridge or buying food in Clarksville—which is why there were so many undeveloped storefronts everywhere we drove.

When I picked up my kids we all had a laugh at what a dump the dinner theater was. It was pretty nice inside but on the outside, it looked like the whole building was about to fall over. Across the street was a campground that had a bunch of hippie losers sitting around a fire in the dead of winter so I had to ask if this was Louisville’s idea of “social life.” My wife’s parents live in a million-dollar home on the east side in Oldham County where a lot of horse breeders live. My past impression of Louisville was cast by that part of town, I don’t typically get to see the results of all the liberalism that has destroyed the inner loop of the I-264 band around the downtown area. But it was obvious going across the river and looking south back into the city and the results of the surrounding communities like Clarksville what had happened to them—liberalism had destroyed their opportunities and robbed them of a future. The hippies outside of the dinner theater where just one result—those people were reserved to give up on life and sit by the fire making smores on a Saturday afternoon ahead of Christmas—and that was all that was going on in Clarksville. My wife and I drove down to the river and along it and noticed several developments that had been attempted, but were left unfinished, likely because the toll bridge had destroyed their opportunities for profit. We drove down to the Falls, and there was still nothing, just a bunch of empty opportunities—an economy in decline.

To us, my wife and I, $16 is a typical tip for a dinner—but I remember very well when it was like a million dollars to us. On principle, I consider that toll to be a major rip off in Louisville. As I told my wife not to pay the fee I was certain that the issue could be fought in court and that my state did not have an agreement with Kentucky to collect such horrendous abuses of authority. Indiana and Kentucky have such agreements with each other, but Ohio does not as of yet. Fighting that in court however would cost more money than the stupid fee and that’s what these liberal toll collectors are counting on, nice people like us to just pay the fine and go about our business while they mismanage the undisclosed tax under the guise of “paying for a bridge.” What did they do with all their federal and state dollars which should have built that bridge without a toll? They wasted it is what they did. Louisville is a liberal city ran by liberal losers and those types of people are always starving for money—because they lack discipline and a basic understanding of value. To a liberal empathy is a value. To a conservative—its an emotion. Emotions don’t pay bills, value does. This toll across Louisville’s main bridge over into Indiana is a theft of value to fund those who don’t have it. It’s that simple. Clarksville is the proof and as long that toll bridge is in place—they’ll get more and more of the depraved conditions for which I have described.

Rich Hoffman
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