10.08.07
CAMPO Board Set To Approve More Tolls
Without trying to formulate any other plan tonight CAMPO Board will, more than likely, vote overwhelmingly to toll ALL new highways in the Austin/Central Texas area. Despite a huge majority of the public being opposed to tolling, many area politicians will bet their political futures on toll roads tonight. In essence believing that the purported “congestion relief” that toll roads will bring, will make voters forget the economic drag toll roads will put on their pocket books.
While much of the framing of this issue has been centered on tolls being the only way new highways can be built, there’s almost never any mention of the fact that other options are available and are not given serious examination, or just accepted as non-starters. Whenever the gas tax is mentioned it’s just written off having no chance of passing the Legislature. Instead of helping to inform the people of the fact that paying for our roads with a gas tax is the fairest and least expensive way to build our roads.
Ben Wear’s article is more of the same, Decision time - again - on toll roads. His main point seems to be that this current plan is more palatable than the previous plan.
But what is not debatable is that this plan is substantially, and substantively, distinct from its strife-torn and ultimately extinguished 2004 ancestor.
That plan had seven roads; this has five.
Your still going to pay a lot more for your roads than you should, but it’s three years later.
Anyway folks, what tonight’s vote boils down to is this. Our elected representatives think it’s a better plan to toll roads, than raise the gas tax. Despite the fact that they know the gas tax is a much fairer and cheaper way to pay for our roads. The neglect of our infrastructure caused by “conservative” rule over the past 30 years in our country, and 15 years in our state, have drained our much needed resources to pay for our infrastructure needs in the economical way we previously did. Instead our elected officials want us to pay much more for our highways then we ever have or force us to drive on access roads.