IT SEEMS just about everything related to motoring is getting more costly these

days. If it's not gasoline, insurance or the vehicle prices, it's taxes and that other source of government revenue, the speeding ticket.

A "heads up" from the Ontario Good Roads Association notes that as of March 31, fines for going more than 30 km/h over the posted limit will be sharply higher.

For example, anyone clocked at 90 km/h on one of the many paved rural highways in Dufferin and Caledon where the politically correct speed limit has been dropped to 60 km/h from the "normal" 80 faces a fine of $210, up from $135.

Had the new fines been accompanied by a return to realistic rural speed limits, there would have been reason to see this as something more than the tax gouge it is.