Greene and toll roads; new airport cargo
Toll roads
Richard Greene’s Sunday column on toll roads and taxes (“We all pay for new roads, but users pay for toll roads”) was timely during these days of massive road improvements.
But he omitted an important issue — the mixing of toll roads and free roads, such as with the recent toll road addition to Loop 820 and Texas 183 and 121.
Mixing toll and free roads is not a good idea.
That project required massive extra construction to isolate free from toll lanes.
If it had been all free, there was room for four additional lanes.
The isolation ramps more than doubled the cost and required the removal of several on and off ramps. This hurt local businesses.
Doubling the state gas tax from 20 to 40 cents a gallon would have paid for all toll roads.
The price of gas changes that much overnight these days.
Those tolls can total well more than $1,000 a year per car.
What were they thinking at the Texas Department of Transportation and in Austin?
Curt Lampkin,
Azle
I wholeheartedly disagree with Greene’s statement that toll roads are paid for by users.
Under our current system, once toll roads are paid for, tolls are still permanently collected and can be sent to help pay for other roads in different areas.
Therefore, these tolls are not “user fees” if they pay for roads that I will never use.
Greene also espouses the so-called libertarian/conservative principle of “small government” and the “feedom to choose” tolled vs. non-tolled roads.
I’ll cite former Gov. Rick Perry’s TransTexas Corridor toll road as an example of the fallacy of that argument:
The now-defunct TTC would have used the government’s almighty power of eminent domain to seize hundreds of thousands of acres from farmers/landowners across the state.
How can you claim “small government” when this giant toll road was all about a massive government land seizure for the sake of a toll road operated by a profit-driven toll company?
And, is it really a “choice” to get stuck in traffic if you can’t afford expensive toll charges?
Linda Lancaster,
Arlington
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This story was originally published October 8, 2015 at 7:15 PM with the headline "Greene and toll roads; new airport cargo."