TxDOT: We don't need no stinking toll limits

Well of course they don't want limits... (0.00 / 0)

Toll roads are about providing private roads for an exclusive set of people. Obviously since Austin is building so many toll roads that are the only way to get to certain destinations, people are going to be forced to use them. This will create congestion which defeats the toll proponents reason for creating the roads in the first place. The toll proponents can then just increase the tolls to keep the riff-raff off the roads. It's kind of brilliant or maybe I'm just too cynical.

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by: tthomas48 @ Tue Jan 02, 2007 at 21:39:55 PM UTC

Partially true (0.00 / 0)

You're probably right. There are a lot of places in states that build toll roads and then very few people use them (case in point 2 highways in Kentucky which were the least traveled toll roads in America, but just recently removed their tolls).

But in Texas's case, a lot of these new roads are in urban areas, where you will be forced to use them or face the consequences in the traffic as you said (like the above mentioned bypass). Or in other cases, travel many miles out of the way to get around it (like Hwy 121 north of Dallas).

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by: John McClelland @ Tue Jan 02, 2007 at 22:34:41 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Look at the proposed roads (0.00 / 0)

If they get what they want, 71 from 35 to 183 will be toll. 183 will be toll. 290E will be partially toll. There will no obvious way to get to the airport without taking a toll road. And that doesn't even get into the fact that all of those roads circle the poorest parts of town.

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by: tthomas48 @ Tue Jan 02, 2007 at 23:29:39 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Great write-up, John (0.00 / 0)

Well done. I hadn't heard about this. Thanks for fidning it out and writing a good post about it.

Now, a very great man once said that some people rob you with a fountain pen.

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by: Phillip Martin, Progress Texas @ Tue Jan 02, 2007 at 23:40:49 PM UTC

Thanks (0.00 / 0)

But, I do have to credit Dallas Blog's Scott Bennett for digging it up first from that toll road news site.

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by: John McClelland @ Wed Jan 03, 2007 at 17:09:41 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Write, and then don't stop sounding off! (0.00 / 0)

The current issue of the Texas Observer has a cover story called The Highwaymen.  Great background on these schemes.

I have written to my (mainly Democratic) city, state and federal leglislative reps about TxDot lobbying to lift toll caps and about The Highwaymen article.  I intend to keep doing so.  My mainly Democratic city and state legislative reps just don't get that it's not right for RMA's to have planning, but no funding, authority.  El Paso County's not in the cross hairs of super highways and toll roads (yet) so they don't see that this has been a carefully thought out strategy by prvate investment bankers to squeeze money out of and profit off of public works. 

I read in an article at the Toll Road News website that a Clinton transportation secretary declared in 1996 that the concept of government funding road construction would soon be obsolete.  This has been going on for a long, long time.  My question is, if privatizing our roadway infrastructure is such a great idea, why have they been keeping it such a secret all these years?

The only solution I have right now is read as much as you can from as many sources as you can, and never stop writing to your elected representatives to let them know you're not going to stand for this.  Whether they agree with you or not, the message has to be sent that we're watching.

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by: carmelita @ Wed Jan 03, 2007 at 19:54:10 PM UTC

It's a bipartisan issue (0.00 / 0)

This is definitely not a party issue, so everyone needs to pay attention. There are lots of people of both parties on both sides of the issue.

And what you pointed out is correct. The "private -public partnership" concept for funding highways has been handed down from the federal DOT. Both Norman Mineta and the current Secretary Mary Peters have both echoed the idea and have secretly filtered it to the states. So states like Texas are saying to themselves- hey if the feds say it's ok, why not do it?

I still want to know where our gas tax is going, if it is not going to be "enough" to fund our highway system anymore. I just find it odd that when states like Texas have a 20 cent per gallon gas tax and North Carolina has a 30 cent per gallon gas tax, that the retail price in each state is roughly the same. That to me means suppliers have the option to lower their bottom line to keep the retail price the same to the customer, even if Texas were to raise its gas tax to fund its roads.

I was born in New Jersey and toll roads are not a new concept to me. But it is a failed concept in today's world.

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by: John McClelland @ Wed Jan 03, 2007 at 22:19:13 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It definitely is a Bi-Partisan Issue (0.00 / 0)

And I didn't mean to single out Democrats particularly with the 1996 reference, I was just shocked that this movement had its roots back then.  This is an issue around which most Texans and Americans -- conservative, liberal, Republican, Democratic, Socialist -- really can rally and agree upon. 

The federal gas tax began as a 5 cent a gallon surcharge to fund maintenance and construction of roads. Beginning, I think, in the '80's, at the inception of "Reaganomics" (cut taxes while running up deficits and increasing military spending - sound familiar?), politicians and lobbyists began to realize that you could add other surcharges to the gas tax (and probably other taxes) to pay for programs that had their budgets cut, so you could continue to fund programs without actually raising taxes.  It's a shell game that has continued, in different variations, to this day.  It doesn't help much, either, that states can add their bite onto the gas tax, too.

Where does it all go?  That's a good question and the answer is well-buried.  Probably to pay for pork.  This article from The Tax Foundation explains a lot, and shows the variances by state, but doesn't specifically state what-all the gas tax goes toward.  I dimly recall reading somewhere an itemization of what the gas tax is presently being used to pay for, but I did not bookmark that reference. D'oh! 

However, I think it is not at all coincidental that the greatest leap in the gas tax coincided with the inception of Ronnie the Budget Cutter Reagan's first term.  This November 2006 Cato Institute article confirms that the gas tax is not only the preferred mechanism to some for avoiding raising income taxes, but also to provide incentives to the public to conserve energy.

The public needs to hold the politicos' (and the media's) feet to the fire and demand these people do some 'splainin' about what taxes pay for, why taxes are important, and why a tax cut here really translates into a tax raise there, and just stop playing these silly shell games.  Public works are for the public, dammit, and should not be privatized.

These issues need to be aired in public, and not just to people tuned in to politics.  Toll roads and highway funding, mass transit, light rail -- I can assure you these are better attention-grabbers than Britney's and Paris's escapades.  I don't think it's a coincidence, either that the Fairness Doctrine was repealed during the Reagan Administration. 

Between demanding accountability from our politicians and debunking this "money is free speech" theory that funds bad campaign finance and which was the basis for repealing the Fairness Doctrine, we really have our work cut out for us.

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by: carmelita @ Wed Jan 03, 2007 at 22:54:27 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Link (0.00 / 0)

Here is a press release where Mineta supports the idea, during the opening of a San Diego highway.

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by: John McClelland @ Wed Jan 03, 2007 at 22:23:24 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

AHA! Found it! (0.00 / 0)

It's at the bottom of the "About us" page of the Toll Roads News, whose newsletter I recommend if only to keep up with what the other side's doing.

Here's the quote:

"Road building is not a government monopoly any more. Those days are over."

- Federico Pena, US Secretary of Transportation, Transportation Research Board address, Washington DC, January 8, 1996. TRnews 2003-10-23

Some other tidbits from the Quips & Quotes section of the link above:

"Holding out our tin-cup to Congress and begging for funding is simply not going to work. The days of standing in the congressional budget line pleading..are over."

- Darrell Rensink, new President of American Association of State Highway & Transport Officials 1996

"There's no such thing as a free road. There's a toll road, or there's a taxing road, or there's no road." Our adaptation of an IBTTA (the tollsters trade association) slogan. 1996

I would suggest a logical starting point would be:

1.  Lobby the legislature to amend the really bad provisions of HB 3588 (need to look up what section of the Transportation Code that ended up being) and its subsequent legislation, such as the provision for paying millions of dollars to the losers of highway contracts.

2.  Research how to repeal a Constitutional Amendment, and then either get to work organizing Texas voters to either repeal Prop 2 and Prop 15, or organize Texas voters to call Perry on his BS when he cites those two propositions as authority for building toll roads.

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by: carmelita @ Thu Jan 04, 2007 at 14:59:22 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thanks! (0.00 / 0)

Glad you found that from 96. I need that for another article :)

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by: John McClelland @ Fri Jan 05, 2007 at 20:06:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

AustinTollParty.com (0.00 / 0)

AustinTollParty.com has been fighting Phase II tolls in Central Texas since Spring of 2004. See the brand new video about our elected officials voting to toll roads we've already paid for, and the upcoming CAMPO re-vote for Phase II Tolls at http://www.AustinTol...

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by: salsal @ Wed Jan 03, 2007 at 23:17:31 PM UTC