Rockford Register Star
  • Chuck Sweeny: Gov. Pat Quinn gets a thumbs-up, thumbs-down on 2 vetoes

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  • You’re familiar with the effort in the state Legislature to return the Illinois Tollway and freeways in the state to their designed speed limit of 70 mph. We who advocate traveling the speed for which the roads were designed thought we’d won when a law passed last year that we thought did that.
    It turned it, the law did no such thing. Instead, what passed was a watered-down version that gave the nanny state the authority to decide where we could travel 70 and where we couldn’t. And on most of the tollway system, we found out we couldn’t.
    This spring our legislators passed a bill rectifying that. The margin was lopsided: 49-6 in the Senate, 111-4 in the House. But Gov. Pat Quinn took out his veto pen last week and squashed the bill sponsored by Rep. Jim Oberweis, R-Sugar Grove.
    Quinn’s reasoning was puzzling: People already go too fast, and this will just make them go faster. My reasoning is that people are already going 70 to 75; this will just make them legal because state cops generally give you 10 mph over the official speed limit on an interstate before pulling you over. In most cases, if you drive at 65 mph, you make yourself a traffic hazard and the object of other drivers’ road rage.
    Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, said Quinn’s veto is illogical: “When we passed legislation to raise speed limits to 70, it was with the clear intention that it would apply to all interstates and tollways. This bill was meant to clarify that, but now Quinn used his veto power and decided not to apply the new limits to the toll highways and other areas, creating a hodgepodge of limits that confuse drivers and reduce safety.”
    Let’s look at that hodgepodge. The speed on Interstate 90 (when it isn’t under construction) is 65 through Boone, McHenry and Kane counties. Only when you reach the big turn at Cherry Valley does the limit change to 70. That’s when you leave the rural area and enter metropolitan Rockford! It’s 70 to the Wisconsin line.
    Obviously, bureaucrats who’ve never been west of O’Hare dreamed up the fiction that a “rural interstate” started at Rockford and an urban interstate started in the flat, farm fields of Boone and McHenry counties.
    So this is all very silly. The legal limit is 70 mph in Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri and Indiana. In Wisconsin and Kentucky, it’s 65 mph. So 70 seems reasonable. I hope the Legislature overrides this veto in the fall veto session.
    Page 2 of 2 - While I give a thumbs-down to Quinn on the speed-limit veto, I give him two thumbs up for his veto of the anti-Uber bill.
    The what?
    The anti-Uber bill. OK I’ll explain. Uber, Lyft and Sidecar are ride-sharing services. They’re in big cities in North America and Europe, but one day you could see them in smaller cities like Rockford, Freeport and Belvidere, where taxicabs are few and far between.
    Ride-sharing services feature drivers who sign up with one of these online companies. Someone who wants to go from A to B clicks the app on their phone and sees who is available to take them from A to B. Then that driver shows up in his or her own car and provides the service.
    That’s the problem. The taxicab lobby, an entrenched monopoly with plenty of clout, does not like this new form of competition. In Illinois they had a bill written to basically regulate it out of existence, or at least severely limit ride-sharing services’ ability to make any money. (In London and in cities in continental Europe, cabbies staged one-day strikes and blocked traffic.)
    Bruce Rauner, Quinn’s Republican opponent for governor, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel support the gov’s veto, but taxicab companies may have enough pals in the Legislature to override it.
    The entrepreneurial spirit of ride-sharing allows safe drivers to earn extra money to make ends meet, drive full time if they want or crank up the minivan on weekends to take people to and from entertainment venues. It’s good for people needing transportation and for people providing it.
    Of course, entrenched interests always seek to use the political process to stop progress. In the 20th century, taxicab companies and bus/streetcar companies got the then-popular jitney services outlawed.
    Ride-sharing could provide a service sorely lacking in towns and rural areas without buses and taxis.
    Don’t override the gov’s veto, lawmakers. Give more people, including cab drivers getting the short end of their fares from their companies, the chance to make a buck.