Texas Politics
No more tolls roads in Texas? This bill would eventually end all toll collections
Is this the beginning of the end of toll roads in Texas?
Drivers can dream, can’t they?
State Rep. Matt Shaheen introduced legislation last week that would end collections on Texas toll roads — once each toll road project had been paid for, he announced in a news release.
The end result, Shaheen says, will be “to rid our roadways of toll roads,” the Plano Republican said in the release.
“The government’s job is to provide roads that are funded through existing tax structures, and historically the legislature has underfunded transportation causing the need for toll roads,” Shaheen said in the release. “With recent increases in transportation funding, Texas needs a strategy to rid our roadways of toll roads.”.
But House Bill 436, which was pre-filed in late 2018 before being read on the floor of the Texas House on Wednesday, Feb. 20, according to KTRK, wouldn’t end the practice of funding roads with tolls. Under the bill, the Texas Department of Transportation would “create subaccounts in the account for each project, system or region” to keep track of when toll collection should be stopped on each existing toll road in the state.
Shaheen’s district includes west Plano and far north Dallas, areas that have seen an explosion of toll road projects in recent years. But this issue hits taxpayers in the pocketbooks in suburban areas surrounding Houston, Austin and Fort Worth as well, where the bulk of Texas toll roads are already established, according to TXTag and the North Texas Tollway Authority.
“Collin County citizens are paying a disproportionate amount of their earnings on toll roads, and that needs to be addressed,” the lawmaker said in the release.
Shaheen and two other state representatives introduced nine anti-toll road bills during the 2015 legislative session, according to the Dallas Morning News. None of those nine bills made it out of committee in the Texas House that year.
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