For Whom the Toll Road Tolls

Did you ever wonder where people got the idea that toll roads are inherently good things?

Did you ever wonder how toll roads have become so numerous around these parts?

I have, and so have the Fort Bend County voters in Precinct 1 who came out and voted against a toll road authority candidate and for a Democratic candidate, Richard Morrison, whose call to battle was “No Toll Roads.” At the time, it was Section C that created the hue and cry. Section C, also known as the Toll Road to Nowhere. Section C would have created a ribbon of concrete through a quiet development known as Greatwood. Then onward to the south over a treeless plain.

That issued was settled with the voters in 2008. But now another toll road has reared its ugly head.

Section D.

Section D is a stretch of the Grand Parkway that has already been built between the Westpark Tollway and US 59. It’s free. The proposal is to finish the project by building a tollway in addition to the existing 4 lane artery currently handling the traffic.

Then charge commuters money to drive on it.

According to Bob Hebert, “Ph.D.” it is completely fitting and necessary to build the thing.

From The Chron:

“County Judge Bob Hebert said tolling would be the only option to build the
road as taxpayers would be opposed to county using their tax money for the
project.”

As if that is the only option.

There is another option.

Don’t expand it.

And who said the taxpayers will object to their tax money funding the project? Where does he get his facts? The funny papers? If memory serves, the taxpayers in Fort Bend County overwhelmingly approved a county bond issue to expand existing county roads all over the place. It was Fort Bend County Proposition 1 on the May 2007 Ballot.

Take a look. It’s here 79.21% of the voters voted in favor of selling millions of dollars in bonds to improve the county road system.

That’s 12,932 votes, by the way.

Now my point is twofold.

One, what the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks are we doing listening to this guy talk about expanding the Grand Parkway by having it paid for in tolls when the county road expansion project has yet to show any results? If congestion is such an issue, or prevention of it, where are the road expansions that were meant to alleviate the situation?

Two, what is this about taxpayers will oppose having their taxes go to expanding the Grand Parkway. Has he asked any of them yet? I can count 12,932 voters out there who will vote for anything that Judge Hebert and his cronies want to buy. All he needs is another off-off year election in May to get another bond issue passed.

2011 sounds like a very good year for something like that.

Face it. Until the voters catch on about these guys and their construction company cronies we will continue to have these ribbons of pavement foisted on us and there isn’t a thing we can do about it until the voters wake up and smell the concrete.

Paraphrasing John Donne who said it best when he wrote in his Devotions:

“…never send to know for whom the toll road tolls; it tolls for thee."

SB 220: Texas Senate Gets Punked

When the Texas Senate sat down to consider Senate Bill 220, a bill “relating to the conversion of a nontolled state highway or segment of the state highway system to a toll project” you have to wonder what they were thinking.

Clearly from the wording, this bill seeks to create toll roads out of roads that were built with taxpayer dollars, and used by the taxpayers for free.

But that’s not what its author, Texas State Senator Robert Nichols claimed.

In fact, Nichols claimed the bill would do just the opposite, which would allay the fears of Texans that “the roads they drive on this year will not have toll booths on them next year.”

Not true, says TURF, or Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. a non-profit organization whose mission is to educate the public on Texas’s new shift to tolling. TURF is one of the organizations that stood up and educated the public on the evils of the Trans Texas Corridor, a project that has since been killed by an almost universal public loathing from folks of any political stripe.

From TURF’s website:

“SB 220 authored by Senator Robert Nichols actually opens a NEW loophole that would allow existing highway lanes to be tolled and the free lanes to be subsequently downgraded to access roads. This bill would legalize the conversions of at least three highways: 281 N and 1604 in Bexar County and 290 E in Travis County. SB 220 passed the Senate 31-0 despite citizen concerns, TURF testimony, and our action alert notifying EVERY single senator of this problem.”

“‘It's an outrage that the author of this bill, Senator Nichols, is out there touting that he's ended the tolling of existing highways, and he knows his bill does just the opposite! He's an ex-Transportation Commissioner who not only was involved in writing the first bill to address tolls on existing highways that had the original loopholes back in 2005 (SB 2702), but also he was present when Governor Perry signed the contract with Cintra for the Trans Texas Corridor, and he has plenty of ties to and funding from the highway lobby. He knows exactly what he's doing. The leopard is showing his spots,’ explains Terri Hall TURF Founder.”

So all 31 state senators swallowed Nichols’s story hook, line and sinker and voted for it after having considered it for all of 2 minutes.

And you thought the scammers were all on Wall Street.

TxDOT Will Use 53% of Taxpayer Stimulus Money For Toll Roads

Take a look at County Commissioner Richard Morrison’s website “As the Court Turns” for the latest news on how TxDOT and Rick Perry plan on using taxpayer-supported Economic Recovery money, also known as “The Stim,” to improve Texas’ transportation system.

“The Texas Transportation Commission (TxDoT), appointed by Gov. Perry, has recommended that the East Region; including Beaumont, Bryan, Houston and Lufkin receive $431,516,770 for transportation projects. From this amount over 53%, or $231,000,000, will be spent on the construction of toll roads. These recommendations ignore the federal law that requires these funds to be spent in economically distressed areas and ignore the will of ordinary Texans who are opposed to our tax dollars being spent on Toll Roads and see these schemes as a type of double taxation.”

Rick Perry is living in a fantasy world. In Rick Perry’s World, Texans live to toss handfuls of coins into toll booth receptacles so they can blissfully drive their SUVs down foreign-owned and maintained (and now, apparently, taxpayer-supported) pay-as-you-go toll roads. In Rick Perry’s World, Texans admire foreign corporations that can wheedle taxpayer money out of the hands of the Obama Administration. In Rick Perry’s World, Texans love them some toll road.

Is this guy nuts?

Didn’t Texans of all colors and stripes outright reject any notion of a Trans Texas Corridor to the effect that it is now DOA? Didn’t Fort Bend County voters roundly reject any notion of a toll road (as in Section C of the Grand Parkway) in the last election when they rejected a Republican toll road cheerleader running for the Commissioners Court?

The only thing that galls me more than this gross misuse of Economic Recovery funds is the fact that we stand to lose this money when the Feds see how Texas state government plans on mishandling and totally mismanaging this money.

Causing me to wonder if it all isn’t on purpose. Does Perry want to purposely lose this money just as he wants to reject the federal funds for unemployment benefits?

No, frankly, I think I am giving Governor Perry far too much credit for analysis. Quite frankly, these days when you look into Rick Perry’s eyes, all you see is the back of his head.

An Open Letter to Joe Biden and Earl Devaney

Dear Joe and Earl,

I hear that President Barack Obama has named you, Mr. Biden, to oversee stimulus spending, and you, Mr. Devaney, to be the “Stimulus Czar.” To that end he has entrusted the two of you with ensuring that the billions that were voted to stimulate economic recovery across the nation were not wasted by the cities and states.

So I just wanted to call to your attention something that my state’s Department of Transportation is planning, and planning to use about $700 million of federal stimulus funds to accomplish the plan.

It seems that the Texas Department of Transportation has a love affair with toll roads. Our governor, Rick Perry, has similar amorous feelings. They have repeatedly over the years tried to foist on Texans such projects as the Trans Texas Corridor, as well as God knows how many toll road projects (21 at present count). No one, neither Republican nor Democrat, seems to be on their side on this. Apparently the only ones who seem to be in favor of toll roads in Texas are the foreign-owned corporations who will build and maintain the roads . . . and collect the tolls.

The reason that we are given for going the toll road route is that TxDOT has no funds for construction and maintenance of needed roads. That this is largely due to the fact that state government has failed to let gasoline taxes rise with inflation, and has diverted funds that would normally go toward road building and maintenance toward other projects has not escaped anyone’s attention.

So as a result of their poor management, we are now hearing that the Texas Transportation Commission will vote next week to use more than $700 billion of federal stimulus money to build toll roads.

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Devaney, this is something I think you should be looking into. In times of economic crisis, the last thing someone thinks of doing is taking the toll road. Since the local toll road authorities raised the toll rates last year, my automobile has not seen a single square yard of toll road. The only beneficiaries in this deal, as I see it, are the toll road corporations that TxDOT and our governor seem to be beholden to.

Really, in general, you have to watch out when you give any money at all to a Texas government agency. Since 2003 or so Texas has been ruled by a new order that I like to call a "Kleptocracy," government by kleptomaniacs. You need to keep a close watch whenever money goes out to Texas. You really do.

President Obama has promised that he would “use the full power of my office and our administration to stop” the waste of billions of federal funds, and I was wondering what he meant by that. I recently hit upon the fact that he is the Commander-in-Chief of all branches of the military. So I was wondering whether you could ask the President to send in the cavalry, or maybe a tank battalion, to surround the commission as they meet next week, and persuade them in the error of their ways.

White phosphorous rounds, I hear, are especially persuasive.

With warm regards,

Hal at Half Empty