Posted on 12/29/2006 4:21:21 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
ping
I voted for him.
Yeah, and Kinky wasn't a viable alternative.
maybe instead of a road he should build a pyramid.
Funny how they never say who owns these companies. Can you say middle east oil as in someone like Ben's family.
There was info on the non-compete clause in the document release a few months ago. The Austin American Statesman assessed the non-compete clause a being very similar to the non-compete clause for Hwy 130, which seemed reasonable to me.
The operator gets a 10 mile buffer zone. If TxDot builds something detrimental, it has to pay the operator. TxDot can also build something that benefits the operator and use it as an offset.
This is theft at the highest levels of state government. I-35 was initially built with public funds and, over its lifetime, it has been bought and paid for several times over. It can no more be given away to someone than it can be abandoned, the road belongs to we, the people!! The gas taxes we pay for every gallon we pump are supposed to go toward building, maintaining and updating these roads.
If Texas wants to build toll roads, there isn't anything in the world to keep them from doing it. However, there is a huge trick being played on us before our eyes. For Texas to commission toll roads at the expense of the interstates AND to keep the gas taxes, is theft and fraud. Texas is trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
Keeping the gas taxes and NOT applying them for the purpose they were intended amounts to a hidden tax increase. To charge the gas tax and fail to maintain the public roads AND to charge tolls on roads that the public's input is being ignored to build is theft, fraud and malfeasance.
Folks, we're being had - and so are our children and grandchildren.
Texans not very bright or something?
If they're buying that dollar forty line, then I've got my answer.
Texas hasn't borrowed. How many times has your state raised the debt limit on highway borrowing? Three?
I have no idea, and I could care less. Arizona was listed last week as the fastest growing state in the country, no doubt accomplished on the back of miles and miles of brand new free roads. The growth will pay for whatever debt increase there was, which was the point of doing it in the first place. How do you think companies grow? They borrow money, duh. Governments can and should do the same thing and for the same reason.
Growth brings money, and borrowing brings growth which pays off the debts. If Texans are too stupid to know that, then I'm glad I left there in 84.
Any Texan that buys the line that it would take a buck forty per gallon tax increase to fund roads is a few cards short of a full deck. And the fact you're trying to sell that line demonstrates other things.
Arizona has almost a Billion (with a 'B') dollars surplus in the state treasury. Whether we've borrowed for highways I don't know. But if we have, good. We're driving on the roads now, growing the state, and we have lots and lots of money.
Texas (the French Toll Road State) doesn't.
What's wrong with Texas?
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