Sign and share -- End the Tollroads

[Chili]

^^^^^
This poster seems upset...dropped the f-bomb eight times. Should have used ALL CAPS!!!

Who's Orwell? Is that a contestant on American Idol?

He wrote 1984.. You know, the novel about a world that is all toll roads?!?

[The King]

Animal Farm > 1984

...and those are troll roads, not toll roads

[mstng86]

Animal Farm > 1984

...and those are troll roads, not toll roads

The pigs will never take over the roll toads.

[Chili]

The pigs will never take over the roll toads.

They will soon!

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-plague-of-pigs-in-texas-73769069/?no-ist

[The King]

1984 as it turns out happened to be the very year that the Great State of Texas became my new home (hold the applause). No toll roads around here then, the DFW Turnpike had been paid off and the only evidence of it having been a toll road were the remnants of the booth pads in the median, at least on the west end. The DNT may have already been a toll road at that time but I never went north out of Dallas back then to have known.

[Tremor14]

did anyone sign and share the petition tho?

[The King]

I neither signed or shared.

[Tremor14]

you dont even click links old man, i know you wouldnt be able to figure it out.

[The King]

You are partially correct Naynay, I do not click links on this site.
Especially links posted by bozos like you.

[Tremor14]

i know. thats why i said that.

[Whiteboy]

Use public transportation or don't drive during peak hours.

Sorry i'm white.

[mikeb]

Folks continue to bitch about toll roads but aren't willing to consider a gas tax hike to pay for new roads that would eliminate the need for a toll road. We haven't raised it in over 20 years and last I checked, building roads didn't get cheaper. A gas tax is a helluva lot cheaper than paying a toll everyday. Folks that don't drive toll roads just don't care. They don't see how this is becoming a trend that is going to eventually bite them in the ass. 35E is getting Lexus lanes. LBJ and 820 already have them. More are being planned. When those financially fail (and they will) I bet you'll see the NTTA either coming to Texas for a bailout or expanding tolls to existing public roads.

I'm not totally against toll roads. I-30 is a good example of how a toll road should be conducted. "But I-30 isn't a toll road", you say. That's because they turned it onto a normal highway after the tolls paid for its construction. The NTTA has zero intention of doing that for any road.

The thing is, if you do the math, raising the gas tax ends up being cheaper if you have to drive any significant mileage on a toll road.

Texas charges 20 cents per gallon. If I drive to my office in Plano, I have to pay that gas tax + the tolls. Round trip, I'm using 3 gallons for 60 cents in taxes. The round trip toll is $4.04. So, $4.64 a day in which over 4 bucks is used to cover just 10.2 miles of my commute. You could double the gas tax and I'd still come out ahead if the tolls disappeared.

Setting all that aside. Just wait until they move from a gas tax to a road use fee based on miles driven. Other states are already testing it. Your driving habits will be tracked and you'll be billed on your miles driven.

The problem with raising the motor fuel tax is that the existing tax is split several ways, for things that have absolutely nothing to do with road construction:

Texas's state gasoline tax accounted for about 29 percent of revenues into the state highway fund, the major source of funding for TxDOT, in fiscal 2009. However, a sizable chunk of that gets used for purposes other than road and bridge repair. One quarter of Texas' 20-cent gas tax goes into the Permanent School Fund before it even reaches TxDOT's accountants. Another $908.6 million of the remaining $2.2 billion from the state gas tax is spent for purposes other than TxDOT; of that, $688.6 million went to the Department of Public Safety (which does in fact perform highway-related functions), and the rest to other causes, such as the arts and historical commissions.

http://www.texastribune.org/2010/12/21/texas-mulls-alternatives-gas-tax/

If the motor fuel tax was ONLY spent on road construction then I think most folks would not have a problem with an increase. However, politicians see this tax as just another revenue source for them to spend however they wish.

Its a big shell game that is played on the public, much like how the lottery was sold on the premise that the revenue from it was going to be spent on education. The implication was that the lottery revenue would supplement the existing educational funds. What actually happened is that money came into the educational fund from the lottery while an equivalent amount of money was being taken out the back door for nefarious purposes - the politicians rigged the lottery as a new slush fund for them.

If they do raise the motor fuel tax look for A) more tax money being siphoned off by politicians and lawmakers for non-road maintenance purposes, and B) future cries that we need to raise the motor fuel taxes again because the last increase wasn't enough.

The mileage tax is a new tax that will A) never go away, and B) will eventually wind up as a standard tax that everyone will have to pay, and C) the new tax will steadily increase over time.

As an example - the income tax was supposed to be a temporary tax.

[Broncojohnny]

All of that is exactly true. I don't know how many times people will fall for the same old sad tale about increasing any tax. They didn't spend the last dollar you gave them in a responsible way, why would any sane person give them another one and expect a different result?

If you want to see where endless funding for the government leads just look at Cook County, Illinois. This is the county that most of Chicago sits within. The property taxes there are so out of control that the taxes paid are typically three to five times what they are here in Dallas. Yet the governments are on the verge of bankruptcy and all you hear about is how the schools need more money. It's all bullshit.