Replies

"-- 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.

Gee, thanks for forgiving me. That's big of you. However, by all press accounts, Cintra is putting up $7.2 billion to build this corridor -- $1.2 billion of that is cash to the state to be used for other transportation needs. The tolls on the corridor will repay Cintra for taking on the risk. Therefore, all the toll money is going to pay for roads. Gas tax money, on the other hand, doesn't. Public education gets 25% of the gas tax. So right off the bat, your 20 cents per gallon gas tax increase becomes only 15 cents for actual road building. And that's before you take out the $400 million or so DPS currently takes from gas tax revenues for public safety.

Also, last time I checked Cintra can't condemn land. The government can, but the government is going to have to condemn land to build any type of highway, whether taxpayer funded through a gas tax or toll funded. You go on and on about expanding I-35, but how much do you think I-35 can be expanded???? Do you drive it? If so, you will see that the frontage road of I-35 is highly developed. Highly developed means very, very expensive to expand. Think prohibitly expensive, unless you think all those McDonald's and Dairy Queen franchisees are going to donate their land for the expansion...

By the way, Zachary, a San Antonio based company is actually going to build the road, not Cintra.

Finally, do you honestly believe the state is going to shut down I-35?!?! Not to mention the fact that it is a federal highway, so something tells me it's still going to be around. And, according to the link you provided, TxDOT has plans to add additional lanes to the whole of I-35.

I'm sure if blogs existed during te days of Eisenhower, the same debates would have been held about the interstate highway system.