Posted on 06/18/2018 8:13:18 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The Eisenhower Interstate Highway system was also designed to provide about a one mile long straight stretch every so many miles, so those could be used as runways and landing areas for military aircraft.
>> The end result is that the customer gets crappy food, and eats too much of it anyway. This is a perfect comparison to a congested highway.
Surface streets are also ill maintained and clogged by congestion.
Should we turn surface roadways into toll roads as well?
At a point, there is no right of passage anywhere.
And Rick Perry (R-TX) planned to sell off our toll roads for a quick cash fix (to a company in Spain, with non-compete clauses to prevent construction of free feeder roads or alternate routes).
Our assets are on the chopping block at liquidation prices (and that goes for parks and stadiums and convention centers, etc.).
Approximately 40,000 people lost their lives in motor vehicle crashes in the U.S. last year, and every one of them -- along with multiple times more people seriously injured -- represents an enormous potential civil liability for anyone who owns a road.
Governments are mostly immune from lawsuits in these crashes due to sovereign immunity. Private companies are not, despite legal attempts in some of these cases (the Indiana Turnpike being one of them, a few years ago) to extend the government's sovereign immunity to toll roads operated by private companies.
“And Rick Perry (R-TX) planned to sell off our toll roads for a quick cash fix (to a company in Spain, with non-compete clauses to prevent construction of free feeder roads or alternate routes).”
Yep, it all seems like a bad dream now, but at the time, he wasn’t hiding his plans, and I was freaking out. The state legislature reaction to this plan to toll people thousands of dollars to use what today are freeways was “Duh, ok, if you want it, no problem, as long as you don’t raise taxes.”
It got so bad, that I started voting Democrat at the state level, even against Perry, hoping that people would start to wake up. They didn’t.
So he continued to move out with the plan, but then, when it came time to start seizing the millions of acres from landowners needed and handing it over to foreign companies, people started noticing his horrific plans, and they were pretty much trashed before the real damage was done.
The level of corruption regarding the whole scheme was never exposed, but was horrible - such as having a state Transportation Director who first sat on the board of Cintra (Perry’s favorite foreign toll road company), then became the state Transportation Director and pushed through this crap, and then went right back to Cintra. Thankfully he dropped dead not long after.
Governor Perry’s other brilliant plan was to sterilize young girls by forcing them to get the HPV Vaccine (the sterilization ‘feature’ of the vaccine was finally disclosed a week ago under the more polite term of ‘lowering fertility’). Luckily that plan didn’t get too far either - but the damage from the vaccine, even without Perry pushing it, is just starting to show up now.
You are not required to drive on toll roads
Texas is because of entrapraneurs that built toll roads, ferrys and bridges
Problem is that highway trust funds are huge pools of money. Politicians steal this money for unrelated social spending projects.
“Exactly. I get ~32 MPG in my car on the highways. It’s closer to 25 for city driving. Given the taxes here in TX, at most I’m looking at about 2¢/mi. Yet, when I get on tollways, it’s anywhere from 50¢/mi to almost 75¢/mi. It’s crazy.”
A few of the things that REALLY gets on my nerves about all of this are the following:
1) We need more money for roads. We can either raise your gas tax by 1 penny per mile, or we can hand over our roads to private companies to charge you 25 cents to $1.00 per mile to drive on those same roads. Since we’re Republicans, and we abhor increasing taxes, we won’t - we’ll hand over your roads to private companies.
2) All these electric cars are out there, and they don’t pay any gas tax, therefore we need to start charging everyone by the mile to drive. [first of all, there are still very few electric cars, well under 1%, and second, I thought the push was to get people to use electric cars...I guess not when it conflicts with this crap, that is]. If electric cars really take off, which they won’t, then maybe raise the gas tax by a nickel a gallon - that would cover the loss for DECADES.
3) Get with it, BobL, it’s the future. Bull shit. The future DOES NOT require that we change things that are working fine...maybe raise the gas tax a bit, but we’re far from needing to scrap the system. And, by the way, government-run healthcare is also ‘the future’, since that is what virtually every other country went to - but I don’t see a lot of people here calling for it.
Good Ol’ Rick never met a crony capitalist he didn’t like and do business with. He left behind a comptroller’s nightmare of slush funds.
“Good Ol’ Rick never met a crony capitalist he didn’t like and do business with. He left behind a comptroller’s nightmare of slush funds.”
How the hell did he get away with it? After all, he’s a Republican, and reasonably conservative, the media should have chewed him up.
Too many people eating his pie and not paying attention.
Stop misappropriating funds and giving tax dollars to foreign countries we would have more than enough to care for our highways
Didn’t we make America paved again over obama? Do we get more fancy signs with more shovel ready jobs? Or does everyone endorse it as party pimps.
Want to make a real difference in American roads by saving lives instead?build the wall, every inch completed.. then let’s talk. Otherwise this is just a tax and spend union bailout just like the previous administration.
Not a word mentioned about unions nor 30$ hour for fixing potholes...
...in addition to the ‘mandatory’ police presence (overtime).
Bring back road gangs. The numbers of illegals in our prisons could fix and build a helluva lot or roads.
Free.
“...in addition to the ‘mandatory’ police presence (overtime).”
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I think that’s only Massachusetts.
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I have seen cops protecting construction zones in Maryland, too. I’m not sure that it’s mandatory for all the zones, however.
Massachusetts has just allowed flagmen for 10 years but there are so many restrictions and waivers available that you rarely see anything but police doing it.
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