Posted on 10/21/2008 9:06:44 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Savor the occasional cause for optimism that top leaders can value teamwork over turf in the contentious area of transportation financing. Take the years of squabbling over how Texas can scrape up billions of dollars to catch up with road-building needs.
Suddenly, there's positive movement, first from Gov. Rick Perry last week. He told this newspaper's transportation writer, Michael Lindenberger, that he would not use his veto to obstruct a move by lawmakers to index the lagging motor-fuels tax to inflation.
"If it is the will of the people, and of the Legislature, I suspect I would go along with it," the governor said. Mark his words. They represent a move off a hard line that tolls, not taxes, should bear the burden of building major new highways. The transportation deficit has become so daunting that no reasonable scenario can be ruled out.
Another hopeful sign came a day later, when the North Texas Tollway Authority and Texas Department of Transportation caught the collaboration bug. Famous for throwing elbows at one another, the agencies instead shook hands over a complex deal to help the NTTA complete State Highway 161 in western Dallas County by Super Bowl time in 2011. Failure to finish that lucrative toll project on time would have been an embarrassment, and we're relieved to see reality sink in.
Still, North Texas lawmakers must focus on the wider problem – the swelling number of highway projects that won't get started any time soon because fuel-tax revenue can't keep up. The Regional Transportation Council this month lopped more than $1 billion of improvements off the planning list for the next 10 years. These projects would make a difference for people, like those bedeviled by the Interstate 30 interchange at Loop 12 or the Interstate 35E gantlet in Denton.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
BTTT
TXDOT or some research firm they’ve hired is asking people to participate in a *pay as you drive* campaign to see if it could be a alternative or offset to the gas tax.
All this while screaming about our school funding system being broken. (25% of gas taxes go to education)
Anyone see a pattern here?
They could build toll roads throughout the state and they would never lower the gas tax. I would bet my husband that they’d continue to increase it. Our country is corrupted with greed and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
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