Hikes and un-hikes don’t mean a reduction in the number of toll plazas which appear every 100 yds. I’ve seen lower building density in Hong Kong.
I had a good laugh when traveling south on one toll road - if you didn’t have a transponder then the next cash exit was ‘only’ 54 miles away.
Taxes and tolls. Two constants in life. We have tolls in Richmond, VA that were supposedly only going to be in operation until something or other was paid for. That was 20 years ago and they’re still in operation.
Well that’s all well and good, but former congressman John Mica suddenly revearsed his decades long pledge to not allow tolls on our interstate highways. So I-4 is being rebuilt from Kissimmee to Daytona with a nice toll road in the center, which will have a sliding rate. When traffic is heavy it will cost more.
Gee, I wonder why the powerful and connected Mica got thrown out on his are?
I lived in Orlando for forty years, from 1966 to 2006. When I left, the Greenway was 3/4 finished; the part between I-4 and West State Road 50 had just been completed.
Did they ever build the northwest part of the Greenway, which would have run through the Apopka area? If not, the stories about cash shortfalls and corruption posted here could explain why.
Personally, I prefer the name former Orlando Sentinel columnist Bob Morris proposed for the Greenway. Since a lot of the land it is on came from former orange groves, he suggested calling it the Fruit Loop.
When we arrived in Central Florida in 1986 the only toll roads were the BeeLine and of course the Turnpike. It was amazing to see the BeeLine Toll Authority actually tear down two toll stations in those days...the 0.10 toll in North Merritt Island/Cape Canaveral and the 0.25 toll at the Hwy 520 entrance. Apparently promises made to only keep the tolls up to meets the debt obligations and promises kept.
Now it’s just about revenue without regard to whatever the project costs were or even the ongoing maintenance.
I was recently in Upstate NY. Interstate 90 in NY has tolls of a nickle a mile and is in worse shape than the stretch in Pennsylvania that I drove. Tolls do not benefit the road unless they are actually used for the road - might as well be a tax on oversize soda pop.