Posted on 12/21/2020 5:51:54 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
With the Texas House Committee on Transportation currently studying the funding of highways in Texas, advocates of toll roads and other funding methods are making their voices heard. As part of the interim charge by Speaker Dennis Bonnen, the committee was tasked with investigating whether “the current mix of use fee-based funding for the state highway system, including registration fees, tolls, and fuel taxes, and [determining] if current funding generated is sufficient to maintain cost demands” — making recommendations for additional methods for funding road infrastructure projects.
Ordinarily, the committee would hold meetings and receive testimony from relevant state agencies and interested citizens and groups regarding transportation funding.
However, this year, only written testimony will be received, which must be submitted by September 18.
Recently, the Texas Association of Business (TAB) launched “Keep Texas Moving” as a coalition to encourage private funding of roads. The website says, “Texas should welcome and harness private investment and managed toll lanes,” as a way to help with highway congestion.
The group is hosting meetings around the state with many local chambers of commerce to promote its ideas.
In Lubbock recently, Aaron Cox, senior vice president of TAB, said, “…it’s time that Texas again look to the private sector, public-private partnerships and solutions like optional toll lanes to address the serious funding shortfall facing our state’s transportation system.”
He pointed to the anticipated $5 billion budget shortfall recently announced by Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar adding that “[a]llowing private investment for major highway development would offset state revenue losses…”
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is not currently authorized to use private financing. In his State of the State address in 2015, Governor Greg Abbott recognized the congestion on Texas highways but proposed a budget “without raising taxes, fees, tolls or debt.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thetexan.news ...
NO NO NO !!! I lived in Plano, TX and was surrounded by toll roads. ENOUGH.
Right. Because the tolls are supposed to drop off after the road has been completed.
Yep.
The Check Is In The Mail.
Your Vote Matters.
I’ll Still Respect You In The Morning.
More......
I30 used to be a toll road; once the bond was paid, the toll booths came out.
The Texas constitution prohibits the state from carrying more than 10% of its bi-annual budget in debt. Anything above that must have a self-funding mechanism so that the debt doesn’t fall on the back of the tax payers. Hence, if the budget doesn’t allow for the construction of more roads but more roads are needed, the funding mechanism is tolls.
This clause in our state constitution is one of the reasons we have been able to avoid the soul-sucking, money-grubbing, graft-ridden disaster known as state income tax.
The government should just cut to the chase and install motion detector chips in babies.
Just another way for these @$$e$ to separate you from your money.
Toll roads are a huge revenue generator in Texas.
They tax every freaking gallon of gas, charge you stupid amounts of money to license your car every year, and it’s never, ever enough. You must pay for every single mile you drive, according so some of these statist assholes.
IMO, they can go to hell.
Tolls or taxes either way the public pays
THis is true, however, since we now have a 'Toll Authority', not a single toll booth in the state has been torn down to my knowledge. Nor, will they ever.
The I-30 deal was a good deal. Tolls end when the road is paid for.
However these new toll road where the we pay to build the roads but then lease them to a foreign company for 99 years and the roads are never paid off is not a good deal. On top of that the so called free lanes have bottlenecks designed into them to cause traffic-jams to encourage use of the toll lanes that have constantly changing rates that can cost you well over a dollar a mile.
Not only is it not Texican it’s UnAmerican.
I used to work at a place overlooking a tollbooth to a Thruway. They had a full-time employee collecting tolls during the day but at night it was just a coin drop into a basket.
I counted the cars one day, and I estimated that the only purpose of collecting tolls there was to pay the salary of the employee.
>>Tolls or taxes either way the public pays<<
Tolls AND taxes and fees and levies and surcharges..municipal, county, state and federal. Enough already!
Yep, Texas is often held up as a low-tax state, but rather than a state income tax, they find other ways to “get you” (property tax, licensing, toll roads, etc.). They’ll still get their hands on your wallet one way or another.
“”
Yep, Toll Roads are just a traffic restriction designed to increase and fund gov’t Bureaucracy. Essentially to create white-collar welfare jobs.
“I estimated that the only purpose of collecting tolls there was to pay the salary of the employee.
“
Yep, Toll Roads are just a traffic restriction designed to increase and fund gov’t Bureaucracy. Essentially to create white-collar welfare jobs.
Something for all to consider:. There is nothing more Capitalistic than a Toll Road.
Let those who actually use the road be the ones who pay for the road.
Growing up in West Texas, I despised moving to Dallas and seeing all the Toll Roads. Later, I realized that all the money I had paid in gasoline taxes were used to fund roads in Houston because that is where the voters were. Why would I want my tax money going there?
Now, I gladly pay my Toll Tag bill on time.
Just make sure Texas doesn't go the way of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority, with its $450 million/year payment to transit agencies (Act 44). This will be reduced to $50 million/year in 2023 by Act 89.
Some folks call the state “Taxes.”
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