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Tolls in SA, I hope they know half of SA can't afford a 1 dollar toll fee.
The ignorance on the issue of toll roads is pervasive, but not surprising. Generally, people like public goods, but don't like paying for them.
In Texas, road construction and maintenance is supposed to be funded by the gas tax. This worked well for a long time. Then the Legislature got the bright idea to amend the state Cons ution so that 25% of the taxes go to fund public education.
The other problem is that the gas tax is a fixed amount that is not indexed to inflation, much less the price of gas, and it hasn't been raised since 1992. In the last 15 years, the US dollar has lost a third of its value, so in effect, gas taxes have gone down by a third.
However, Texas has a whole lot more people, most of whom live in cities, and people in cities tend to need big, wide, controlled-access expressways to get around, since so many of them are trying to get around at the same time. Those kind of facilities are super-expensive, even more so in cities where the land itself is costlier. The roads also are more expensive to build than they were 10-15 years ago because of tighter design standards and more stringent environmental requirements.
So, we have more people, but each paying less tax in real dollars, and now a big hunk of the proceeds now go to fund education. This does not add up to a huge windfall to build nice, wide, expensive freeways everywhere to relieve traffic in major cities.
So, this leaves the state some choices:
1. Restore the 25% cut of the gas taxes back to roads, raise the gas tax by 5-10 cents a gallon or so to make up the remaining shortfall, and slash education spending.
Who likes this option?
2. Same as #1, except some other tax, like sales tax or property tax, gets raised to cover the shortfall in education.
Who likes this option?
3. Raise the gas tax around 15-20 cents a gallon or so in order to make up the shortfall.
Who likes this one?
4. Delay building expanded roads for a couple of decades until the funding becomes available.
Anyone like this one?
5. Use tolls on the new roads themselves to finance their building and maintenance.
Obviously people don't like this one.
6. Find people somewhere else and take their money to pay for roads in San Antonio.
Ooh, free ice cream!! This is the option people usually prefer. Unfortunately, those other people somewhere else don't exist in reality.
Thus... toll roads.
Toll roads are prone to abuse. The intended idea is for toll roads to justify themselves, that is, for demand to be such that the tolls on the road itself pay for its construction. If any of you are project engineers, you know that is how projects are supposed to work.
The temptation, though, is to abuse this system, by erecting or raising tolls on existing roadways and tollways for new roads that are non-justifiable. This is generally done in return for kickbacks, campaign donations, or other favors from developers. This was done, for example, on the Fort Bend Toll Road near Houston, which was built largely to accomodate a new housing development. It was funded by raising tolls on the highly successful Sam Houston Tollway by 25 cents. Developers are clamoring for something similar to build the Grand Parkway, a far-outer loop in Houston that would go through what today is empty prarie and wetland, but on which developers would like a nice, wide road to be built so they can start putting up more tract homes 35 miles from downtown Houston.
This same corrupt idea has been proposed by a Cintra employee named Rick Perry, who purportedly is also the governor of the state of Texas. He proposed erecting toll booths on rural Interstate highways in Texas to help fund the Trans-Texas Corridor, a.k.a. "The Golden Calf of Road Builders."
I think tolls are OK on NEW lanes only. if you have six at-grade free lanes on 281 now, and you're going to have six at-grade free lanes on 281 after the project, you haven't lost anything; you simply have a new toll road in the median. If that's not good enough, then basically you're expecting a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Tolls in SA, I hope they know half of SA can't afford a 1 dollar toll fee.
I would rather pay an additional $0.20-0.25 per gallon gas tax than pay $5 to use a damned road every day, which is what it's getting to in Dallas. As I have said on many occasions, gas has gone from $1 to $3 and you know what, people are still driving. Another quarter is just noise.
But tax increases are the third rail these days and we don't have any leaders willing to take on the idea. Pity.
we all know that building more roads always fixes traffic problems
historically speaking
I'm a little late but damn, that made me laugh out loud.
If you don't want to pay extra. You should have to pay a heavy load fee every day anyway. Damn, toss in a salad every now and then.
Last night at the meeting, the planners voted for $475 million to be spent tolling 8 miles of Highway 281 from 1604 to the county line. This is to put in toll lanes, three overpasses, and the non-toll frontage roads. But in testimony, TXDot said that 2.5 years ago they had a plan to to improve Hwy 281 by adding one additional lane north and south and build three overpasses......all for a whopping $100 million plus inflation.
There is a little better profit margin for the toll road gig for all the s at the toll road feed trough: road builders (H. B. Zachary), engineers, lawyers, landscapers, etc and of course all those lobbyist like Terry Brectel, Bob Thornton, et al getting real rich on this deal!!!!
That $475 million is quite obviously thievery. That's a higher cost per mile than the freaking Katy Freeway project!
And the Katy Freeway is being built as:
4 toll lanes
8 free lanes
6 frontage lanes
2 flyover stack interchanges at the Sam Houston Tollway and at IH-610
The frontage that had to be purchased was fully developed land heading into the interior of Houston.
And yet 281 is more expensive than that? Bull. Y'all need to go shoot somebody. You're being robbed.
And $112 million for the project is coming from public funds????
Look, I don't oppose toll roads in principle, but those details are telling me that your elected officials are stealing $300 million of your money, San Antonio. That project should cost $175 million, tops. Light your freaking torches.
To think I've left threads before thinking, "Damn, they are sure tough on Tpark." Asshole brings it on himself as far as I'm concerned. Tear him up fellas.
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