Posted on 05/01/2013 3:31:48 PM PDT by thetallguy24
On Tuesday, the Texas House paved the way for the possible introduction of more tolls to state highways.
Supermajorities in both chambers passed SB 1730, allowing the Texas Department of Transportation to enter into “a comprehensive development agreement with a private entity to design, develop, finance, construct, maintain, repair, operate, extend, or expand” a number of state highways. These “comprehensive development agreements” (CDAs) are partnerships between the government and private corporations, where the latter agrees to pony up money for road construction and maintenance in return for some sort of return on their investment, ie tolls or cash payments.
If you live or work near any of these following roads, don’t be surprised to see more tolls coming your way:
(Excerpt) Read more at hardhatters.com ...
And people believe Texas is the best place to live? Really? I know that property taxes are through the roof and now they are taxing even more roads than the millions they already tax through tolls. Yieks! We dodge a serious bullet getting rid of that horrid Governor Perry as the Republican nominee.
For the past decade, this issue has been a political career killer in Texas.
Look for major players in trying to shove this through to be missing after the next legislatoral elections.
You are so right, Texas is horrible. Please stay away.
And yea, we stuck with that horrible guy that was one of the few Governors with the cojones to stand up to zero and his medicaid fraud, but thank goodness everyone got to vote for Mittens instead. Definitely a real man.
Incomming. LOL
Yeah I’m no fan of toll roads. Sold on a promise that never materializes.
Texas is a horrible place to live. All kinds of bugs - super hot.
Yeah, you’ve got your head on straight here naps.
NO income tax. I love the aspect of “user pays.” I can choose to got the airport via I-45 (free,) provided that I get up an hour earlier, or use the Hardy toll road. In Dallas, you can get everywhere you need to go on free roads, given enough time.
The first “good” roads were private gravel thoroughfares in the NE, hence the operator, “turned the pike.”
Toll roads are the ultimate expression of consumer choice.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, et cetera, et cetera.
— Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2: Tenth Plank of Communism
I agree with you on that. My only “complaint” about toll roads is that the concept needs to be extended to most public assets. Everyone should pay for their own education, their own health care, their own retirement, etc.
Don’t get toll roads!!! I live in Washington State and they never go down. When I first moved here just a few years ago, the toll was $1.25. Now it’s $5 and there is a plan to raise it another .25 cents this summer and again next summer.
The closer you can push the tax collecting agency to the end user, the better. If my property taxes go up, I run into the selectman after church and we can discuss it. Sending money to Boston and DC is just tossing it away.
“I know that property taxes are through the roof...”
Sorry, only property tax RATES are high. Property taxes are in line with both the West and East Coasts, simply because their property values are much higher than ours.
As to the rest of the country, yes we pay more, but most of the country also has income tax and non-deductible sales taxes.
“Toll roads are the ultimate expression of consumer choice.”
Not at 75 cents per mile. That is NOWHERE NEAR what the highway costs, and instead most of that toll money is going to the general fund.
At least that’s the history of unregulated private toll roads, where they charge monopoly rates, and pay HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY to governments for that right.
And the Indiana Toll Road is PERFECT EXAMPLE of that. The Spanish paid something like $6B - which went straight into the state general fund - and now those drivers have to pay SUPER-HIGH TOLLS (much more than the road costs to otherwise operate) to pay down that that debt.
This is far from capitalism and much more like Solyndra, where sweetheart deals are cut between politicians and well-connected players.
Tolls are alive and well in Illinois. Average is 1.50 cents to go through a toll.
Big Corruption that lines the pockets of Politicians is all it is. They will find all the money misappropriated.
Actually it has been rather mild.
Toll roads built privately can be an expression of consumer choice.
Toll roads built with the power of eminent domain are bastions of socialism, and the people who support them are not different in any way from the other socialists who support government medicine.
The problem is there are already a ton of “user pays” in Texas that are supposed to support transportation. The fuel tax gets 25% taken out to go to education. 100% is taken out of the motor vehicle sales tax to go to education and the general fund. Texas treats these taxes like Social Security. They steal from it. If Texas just used their funds like they’re supposed to, we wouldn’t need toll roads.
When the government concretes up the pathways from here to there and charges you a toll fee every time you want to move around, they are wrong, taxes are one thing, but a toll is another.
Coronado (California) loved their $1.00 toll, because they knew that it kept people off the island even though it sounds minor.
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