Oh, like the new SH 130 roadway project in the Austin area that's months ahead of schedule and millions of dollars under budget?
Drove through there yesterday, ain't no way in hell they'll finish on time. And its going to cost how much per mile again?
SH-130 was already paid for via taxes and bond issues. How much of it's going to be tolled giving us double taxation? Same for the parts of MOPAC they will be tolling, and 290, and 183, ect...
Combine that in with the TTC and you've got a fleecing of the public not seen since Tammeny Hall.
What I object to are the cronyism, fraud, double/triple taxation, ect... that I see at every turn on this deal. All pushed through as "emergency" funding bills due to the last decade or so of their inaction on upgrading infrastructre while trying to push us into light-rail/commuter rail/buses.
Government caused these problems. Let's be VERY careful about any "solutions" these same idiots may come up with.
Real Cynic No More:
Oh, like the new SH 130 roadway project in the Austin area that's months ahead of schedule and millions of dollars under budget?
The opponents have brain dead arguments against the toll road plan. The "Big Dig" in Massachussetts went over budget precisely because it is funded by federal tax dollars and the contractors had no incentives to keep costs low. The TTC is ultimately funded by tolls people pay to use the facilities. As the owners and builders of the improvements built in the state owned corridors, both Cintra and Zachary have tremendous incentives to keep costs down and build the corridors quickly in order to start getting their money back.
Toll roads are a conservative method of financing roads. Tolls are users fees for using roads. The exise tax on motor fuels was supposed to be a type of user fee, but politicians divert those funds according to the seniority of the politicians in Washington not according to how much each state paid into the highway fund. The system the DemocRATS wanted set up would have been even worse. They wanted to build the Interestate Highway System out of general revenues as a way of redistributing income. As far as I am concerned the federal excise tax on motor fuels should be abolished or it should never be increased letting inflation erode the real value that tax. There is no way to reform budget allocations short of taking the money away from Washington politicians. I am even more against funding roads out of the income tax.
The toll roads I am familiar with in Houston were all built much faster and under budget compared with state and federally funded highway projects of similar capacity. TxDOT has been upgrading I-35 between San Antonio and Hillsboro for over 15 years and they're nowhere near finished rebuilding that highway from 2 lanes to 3 lanes. By the time they're finished with that upgrade in maybe a decade, it will be obsolete. In fact it would have been obsolete if it had been completed in 1990.