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Why do you consider a gas tax good but tolls bad? Both get us to the point of building needed roads, but with very different outcomes:

-- Tolls get roads built faster.

-- Tolls are spent 100% on roads. A good part of the gas tax goes to fund public education and DPS. So, penny for penny, tolls are more efficient than a gas tax.

-- Finally, I only pay a toll if I choose to take the road. If I don't want to pay the toll, I don't have to take the road, since there is a free alternative. Also, tolls stay local, whereas gas tax money can and would probably be spent on road projects I'll never drive on.

Seems to me tolls are the preferable conservative option.

"-- Tolls are spent 100% on roads. A good part of the gas tax goes to fund public education and DPS. So, penny for penny, tolls are more efficient than a gas tax."

Let's try to get accurate here. Cintra is NOT Mother Teresa, and they could not give a damn about the road system in Texas (other than behaving long enough to sign a bunch more secret contracts with Perry). That is what capitalism is, and you well know that.

So, Cintra is here to make money. And that is fine. And if they want to charge a lot of money, that is also fine. After all, any other company can just condemn a 400 mile strip of land and lay in a competing toll road, right next to Cintra's. In your dreams, pal. We're talking monopoly here and you well know it.

But if you think, for one moment that all of the money that Cintra collects will stay in Texas, I've got a 6 Billion dollar road to sell you. Cintra will take our money and spend it anywhere they want. It's probably safe to assume that a whole lot of Spanish shareholders are going to make out like bandits on the backs of Texans. You may be fine with that, but I sure as heck am not.

Now, if you meant that tolling by TXDOT could keep the money spent in Texas, then you have a much stronger case. Actually, I think that you've confused Government Tolling with Private Sector tolling, so I'll forgive you.

"If I don't want to pay the toll, I don't have to take the road, since there is a free alternative."

That's speculation, unless you have insight into the contract and the negotiations that the rest of us do not have (and please share it, if you have it - I may be wasting a lot of time speculating). We do not know what Texas will be allowed to do with its freeways, once we sign with Cintra. If it's anything like the experiences in California and Canada, the answer is: let them rot. I did not vote for Perry in 1998 to have him sign away control of the freeway system, and I don't think very many others did - either in 1998 or 2002.

So DON'T tell me that I'm not affected, unless you can PROVE to me that the State of Texas can do anything they want with I-35 and any other state-built highway (and, by the way, proving means something in Texas law guiding the negotiations). It is our business. You may not like us "little people" speaking up, but it sure as heck is OUR BUSINESS.

"Seems to me tolls are the preferable conservative option."

You may call a government-protected, private-enterprise monopoly "conservative", but most of us little people think that it is highway robbery.