Posted on 03/11/2007 6:00:35 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
AUSTIN – Four years of simmering frustration boiled over at a recent Texas Senate committee hearing with just one thing on the agenda: toll roads.
An overflow crowd bashed and booed the Texas Transportation Commission in front of mostly like-minded senators. For eight hours, lawmakers and audience members alike questioned the state's increasing reliance on tolls.
"We can't simply build roads at any cost," Sen. John Carona said to cheers. "We've got to build them smarter."
Some argue that toll roads are the only smart play in a state where the Legislature has refused to raise the tax on gasoline, which pays for roads. In Texas and beyond, officials have turned to private companies like Cintra, which on Feb. 27 won a 50-year contract to operate State Highway 121 in Collin and Denton counties as a toll road. The companies build the roads, and motorists pay them back a trip at a time – for decades.
A growing number of lawmakers are mobilizing against Texas' toll road policy. But barring a legislative roadblock, tolls are coming to plenty of other North Texas roads, and they will be central to the mammoth Trans-Texas Corridor project. Privatization of roads is happening across the nation and, indeed, around the world.
Proponents, who include Texas' governor and Transportation Commission chairman, say it's the only way new roads will be there for motorists who want them. Critics say the deals to build toll roads are too generous – handing over valuable highways in exchange for quick cash – an easy way out for politicians unwilling to raise taxes. Critics also say that motorists will be stuck paying higher-than-necessary tolls.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Rick Perry former Texas A&M cheerleader ping!
Gotta love the biggest RINO in Texas!
Perry is available to be VP if anyone should ask.
and he has nice hair.
The problem here is the NAFTA HIGHWAY. That issue should be kept separate from the issue of toll roads. It's a bad idea no matter how it's paid for.
"In 2009, Peters says, the highway trust fund, largely filled by the federal gas tax(18.4 cents per gallon), will go into deficit."
"largely filled by the federal gas tax(18.4 cents per gallon), will go into deficit."
How about the 2 billion that our heros in Austin stole from the fuel tax the last time the met in 2007? They used that to balance their budget and go home proud.
OOPS! Now they want to get a double payday. Raise the tax on a "voodo" formula, and get their "booze and whores" paid for by a company from Spain.
Damn they miss Enron!
Yeppir, create the crisis, then propose the solution that makes Rick rich.
The solution to that is don't give them anymore gas tax money.
Toll Roads are an excellent idea.
You drive on the road, you pay for it.
You don't drive on the road, you don't pay for it.
Government maintains road with money from tolls.
So simple, its obvious that our idiotic public and legislators will screw it up somewhere.
Thanks for the ping!
You're welcome. :-)
The people and roads of Texas won't get a red cent from these tolls - the tolls will be owned in full by a private foreign corporation, Cintra Zachary. Once the initial payment is gone, no more money will go into the public coffers.
The roads of Texas will no longer belong to Texas; they will belong to a FOREIGN CORPORATION. How about them apples?
BTTT
"the highway trust fund,"
Trust Fund? Anytime they start talking *trust fund*, you know they're lying. (25% to education or to balance the state budget)
So, instead of talking about state road tax money being converted to education, it is about federal road tax money being used to build bridges to nowhere.
"it is about the feds, not the state."
Whichever.......trust funds are lies in general.
bump.
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