Special Interests, who profit off tolling our public highways are hard at work using every excuse on the planet to become the middlemen, as they feast on our tax dollars, debt and infrastructure. Elected officials gain fat contributions to ignore the publics will. In Austin, Sen. Kirk Watson and other tollers voted to spend $910 million tax dollars to shift our freeways to toll roads in Oct of 2007. Tolling freeways create traffic congestion. And, they are a wasteful way to collect taxes.
CONVENTIONAL TOLL ROADS vs. AUSTIN FREEWAY TOLL ROADS
Conventional toll roads in the U.S. have always been perceived as being fair, since they supplement our public highway system, and they offer a public expressway as an alternative. It's also important to note that conventional tolls have always been whole new routes and primarily funded with investor dollars.
Freeway tolls don’t offer crucial free expressways as an alternative. Instead, frontage roads with stop lights and growing traffic congestion are touted as an alternative.
With freeway tolls, TxDOT has a financial incentive NOT to address traffic congestion on frontage roads since increased traffic congestion provides higher toll tax revenues. This is a severe departure for TxDOT, since its focus has always been solving transportation issues -- not generating revenue through traffic congestion. Freeway tolls simply shift public
highways intended to be freeways into tollways.
Those who support tolling public expressways never mention the true cost of public subsidies involved. The total cost to the taxpayer, especially the taxpayer-funded right-of-way (ROW), is never shared with the public. Freeway tolls create expressway monopolies and are the most expensive solution to our need for roads.
For the most part, the finances of conventional toll roads have been segregated from public funds. While freeway tolls are primarily funded with tax dollars intended for free roads.
Pro-toll advocate and TollRoadsNews.com writer Peter Samuel made this statement about TxDOT and its freeway tolls:
"It has no coherent explanation for its project selection, or for the way tax and toll monies are mixed. It has been cavalier in proposing tolls on highways already funded -- breaching a long-established piece of political wisdom about tolling."TOLLS: AN INEFFICIENT FORM OF TAX COLLECTION
At a TxDOT commission hearing in October 2004, TxDOT had admitted it costs 25 cents to collect a cash toll, and 11 cents to collect an electronic toll. So, if the toll tax for a short span of road is 50 cents, 50% of the money paid for that toll goes to collect the toll.
NEW TEXAS TOLLS: 10 TIMES THE PROMISED RATE PER MILE
TxDOT and the local Regional Mobility Authority are on record promising a 12 to 15 cents/mile rate. Conventional toll roads in the US have an average toll rate of 9 cents/mile.
The Austin American-Statesman recently reported that the newly-opened Central Texas Phase I tolls cost as much as $1.50 per mile.
That's 10 times the cost promised, and 16 times the cost of the average toll rate in the U.S.
TOLL ROADS COST MORE THAN FREE ROADS TO BUILD
Toll roads cost much more for construction, right-of-way, utility relocation, maintenance, and service than do non-tolled roads. For example, Central Texas Phase II freeway tolls would cost $123 million more to build as toll roads than they would cost to build as free roads.
The footprint of a freeway toll project is larger than what's needed for the free road since toll lanes and free lanes must be separated. Therefore, extra land for right-of-way must be acquired and utilities must be relocated. Our existing roads have right-of-way corridors for expansion, but were never planned for the larger footprint required by freeway tolls.
To illustrate, a typical roadway project devotes about 90% or more of the cost to build the road. Compare that to TxDOT's toll analysis for SH 71 in Central Texas where only 35% of the cost of the project is for roadway construction. Over half the cost of the $168 million project goes to buying new right-of-way and having to relocate utilities for the freeway toll road.
COMPTROLLER REPORT: FREEWAY TOLLS CREATE UNACCOUNTABLE DOUBLE TAXATION
In 2005, the State Comptroller came out with an investigative report showing how Regional Mobility Authorities that toll public highways are creating double taxation, by diverting tax dollars intended for free roads, into toll roads. The report also showed RMA board members giving NO BID CONTRACTS (using tax dollars) to themselves and their friends. Board members of RMA's have property in the vicinity of toll roads that have increased by as much as 989%.
TOLL TAX: MANY TIMES THE COST OF INDEXED GAS TAX
Assuming your car gets 20 miles per gallon, and an increase in indexed gas tax was less than 20 cents a gallon, you would spend less than 1 cent a mile for an indexed gas tax. Compare that to tolls of 15 cents a mile, which would be 15 times the cost of an indexed gas tax. A 20 cent toll per mile would be 20 times the cost of an indexed gas tax, and so on. But freeway tolls are costing more like 45 cents a mile to 65 cents a mile.
The Texas Transportation Institute report says tolls are NOT needed, that indexing the gas tax and placing the incremental revenue in the mobility fund to pay off bonds allows us to build the roads we need now.
4 comments:
"Conventional toll roads in the U.S. have always been perceived as being fair, since they supplement our public highway system, and they offer a public expressway as an alternative. It's also important to note that conventional tolls have always been whole new routes and primarily funded with investor dollars.
Freeway tolls don’t offer crucial free expressways as an alternative. Instead, frontage roads with stop lights and growing traffic congestion are touted as an alternative.
With freeway tolls, TxDOT has a financial incentive NOT to address traffic congestion on frontage roads since increased traffic congestion provides higher toll tax revenues... "
This has been my main point of contention all along. Tolls should supplement the infrastructure, not replace it. It seems that TxDot is trying their best to make traffic so unbareable that we will have to use tolled roads as no other route will be available. New roads are needed in Austin, so far no one has been accountable for the idiotic design of roadways here to begin with. Most major roadways are elevated, so they cant be expanded. None of the traffic issues have been addressed south of Downtown, its seem that only the north has traffic, (or the money to use tolls). It seems to be, nobody is accountable for the infrastructure design, and the public are just sitting back like sheep thinking tolls are the answer. They are not! They are designed to empty your pockets not make things better.
yeah, the engineers here build elevated highways instead of bridges over ground level highways. In St. Louis, most highways don't have frontage roads. The roads passing over or under the highway often intersect with the highway using a cloverleaf, alleviating the need for stoplights. 10 years ago, when the divided portion of 183N stopped just beyond McNeil, I went to a community meeting. I suggested cloverleafs to a highway engineer as a means of improving traffic flow. The engineer said "sure, these improve mobility but the land near the highway is so valuable we can't do that." I then said "why not build bridges over 183 and remove the stoplights." Again, the answer was that the land near 183 was super valuable and that elevating the highway was the right way to do this. Mobility is clearly not the goal of TxDOT. Preserving the value of land seems to be the focus... but if the traffic is so awful because there is no mobility, (as it is with toll roads now) the land value will be nothing.
Very clear and complete information here. Only problem I see is that all these arguments against toll roads are based on reason and the priciples of sound government.
The push for the corridor and the local double tax toll roads are not based on reason and will not respond to reasonable arguments.
I do not think that local double tax toll roads are simply to financially subsidize the Trans Texas Corridor or simply to make Perry and his contractor cronies richer. I think these local double tax roads are the plan for all states. The goal is to limit (control) individual transportation and transportation rights and eliminate private property.
They ARE going the have a Trans Texas Corridor and all that they deem goes with it NO MATTER WHAT.
We are being treated to fake fights, fake debates, and fake "angry" politicians.
"why not build bridges over 183 and remove the stoplights."
This is what I keep saying over and over again. Take 183 East for example: There's absolutely NO reason to force neverending tolls on 183 when all that's needed are overpasses. How much does it cost to build overpasses for krissakes??? Why the need to make everything a damn tollway?? The worse part of that PHASE II proposal (other than the egregious double taxation!) is that it's all about tiny little patchworks of toll roads. None are contiguous like SH45 or SH130. Can you imagine people visiting Austin and having to navigate through highways that are sometimes free and sometimes not, AND with no way to pay cash for the NON-free portions (TXDOT is moving towards all electronic payment for ALL new toll roads).
Those idiots in CAMPO should be ashamed of themselves for voting to approve that PHASE II atrocity!!!
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