A highway venture in Orange County, Calif., was torpedoed by a lack of vision for the future.
Investors paid $130 million for the right to build and operate four express toll lanes for an existing highway (freeway toll). In 1995, the lanes opened. Drivers paid tolls electronically, and the tolls went up during high-traffic hours.
The contract, however, prevented the state from modifying non-express alternative lanes or adding new interchanges (there was a non-compete agreement). By 2003, the alternative frontage roads needed $1.6 billion in improvements.
So Orange County paid $207.5 million to buy back the express lanes.
12/12/2005
Tolling Existing Highways: Vision of the future
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from today's Bandera Bulletin
Toll roads a disturbing trend
Reading the articles about Toll Roads in the San Antonio paper was quite disturbing. The concept of placing toll booths along Hwy. 281, an existing highway, should cause the taxpayers in this state to be alarmed. The paper states that the cost of using Toll Hwy. 281 will be 14 cents per mile. Fourteen cents per mile sounds fairly inexpensive until you put a pencil to the figures. If a taxpayer has a car that gets 20 miles per gallon, and we ignore all of the other maintenance costs, that car will cost approximately 10 cents per mile in fuel costs, assuming cost of gas at $2 per gallon.
When that car is on a toll road, that taxpayer is now paying 24 cents per mile. This is a 240-percent increase in operation costs. If a car gets 15 miles per gallon, the increase in operation will be about 207-percent, if the car gets 30 miles per gallon, the increase in operation will be about 312-percent.
Not only is the placement of toll roads an unethical taxation on roads that have already been funded by taxpayers, but it unfairly punishes the taxpayers that have downsized their family vehicle for efficiency.
Private corporations wanting to build toll roads with privately funded resources, while conducting their business in a fair and ethical manner, would not likely be an issue. What, however, is fair and ethical when state officials are willing to turn over taxpayer-funded highways to private corporations to fleece the taxpayer?
Dan Zavorka
Lakehills
http://www.banderabulletin.com/articles/2005/12/06/news/letters/867.txt
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