Toll foes want a review of plans

Patrick Driscoll, San Antonio Express-News Staff Writer

A growing number of motorists critical of proposed toll roads in San Antonio asked Monday for an independent review of plans for the roads at a meeting of the Metropolitan Planning Organization.

It was the second consecutive month that members of a new chapter of TexasTollParty.com had converged on the monthly meeting. But this time there were six to seven times more people, about 40, and half addressed the board.

"We have every indication that a horrible fraud, including abuse of power and gross malfeasance at every level of government, is taking place through the toll road system now being implemented in Bexar County," said Spring Branch resident Terri Hall....

..."You have to be a moron to sit there and say you still have your (free) road," said Brad Holt of Spring Branch.

Toll opponents also said state documents from a public meeting in 2001 show that proposed freeway lanes on 281 from 1604 to Stone Oak Parkway had already been funded with gas taxes and that construction was supposed to have started by this year.

And as plans for those freeway lanes morphed into tolled express lanes, the cost ballooned from $48.1 million to $78.6 million, they pointed out.

"Who dreamed this up to begin with?" Mike Wikam, a resident of the Woods of Shavano, asked the planning board. "I've had it. I want my public servant to do what I want them to do, not what he wants to do."...

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