“It’s also become an easy way to employ the politically connected and hand out patronage jobs. Governors since the 1980’s have had tollway scandals. Political hires and contracts with friends of politicians from both sides of the aisle have been common at the authority.”
Well, as the Cintra shills (probably on their payroll) used to say to me 15 years ago here: “If you don’t like the tolls being imposed on our Texas Interstates, find other roads to drive on”.
Now we know why they wanted tolling so badly...
Reminds me also of the Red Light Camera Karens who said: “If you don’t want a ticket for running a red light*, then follow the law.”
They too were later caught paying bribes to politicians.
*by the way, ‘running a red light’ ticket, at least 90% of the time, consisted of not coming to a full stop, behind the line, when making a right turn.
I don’t find tolls repugnant in and of themselves, but if a tolling entity makes a promise to remove tolls, it should keep that promise.
I recommended the other thing in the OP because most of these entities seem to have no intention of keeping those promises, and you can keep the tolls for maintenance and improvement of the tolled roads, and so on. They should also run a clean shop, rather than using the agencies to hire the low-IQ relatives of politicians.
JMO.