The beast that is TxDOT has been running amok for years, looking out for special interests, rather than the citizenry of Texas. The conflagration which occurred at the end of the Texas Legislative Session which spurred Governor Perry’s calling of a Special Session was in part to cover funding ‘requirements’ for TxDOT to keep it operational. The CDAs which were proposed were thankfully shot down, as they would have handed our roads over to foreign companies to mismanage. Hey, Texas can do that quite well on it’s own, thank you very much! But seriously, the Powers That Be have been allowing TxDOT to just run around willy nilly proposing all sorts of idiocies. Instead of building a new toll road to “alleviate traffic congestion” they come up with ideas like converting existing roads which have been BOUGHT AND PAID FOR by you the taxpayer into a toll road. Their reasoning is that you can still drive along the access road without paying a toll. Yes, I kid you not. The ACCESS road can be considered your ‘Freeway’ once an existing highway is turned into a toll road. The issues of CDAs and the abuse that often is associated with them is not over. It is merely waylaid for the moment. It will no doubt resurface in the next Legislative Session. So, we must stay vigilant against them in all their incarnations. Here we see evidence of the inadequacies of toll roads and their manipulations of congestion to their own ends. The government that governs the best is the government that governs the least.

from http://voices.mysanantonio.com/terrihall/2009/07/privacy-pricetag-make-toll-roa.html

Literally drowning in debt and losing ridership, the North Texas Tollway Authority, NTTA, just raised its toll rates 32% and baked-in automatic rate hikes every two years thereafter. If the Authority is losing so many riders that it can’t cover its debt obligations, to anyone with common sense, it defies logic that the solution is to hike taxes that will price yet more drivers off the road and further jeopardize its ability to pay-off its debt. But commons sense is scarce these days and so is privacy. In a frightening scenario, Henry Lamb’s article cautions that the federal government is crossing the line with “road pricing” toll road schemes through a recent research grant to develop a system to give the government the power to “deactivate” your vehicle for failure to pay your “road use tax.” It’s coming if every freedom-loving taxpayer doesn’t put a stop to it. Add to all that, the fact that TxDOT and tolling authorities have been out of control jacking-up toll fines so high it borders on usury (up to $11,000), and you have a recipe for runaway taxation. In hopes of FINALLY getting people to pay something, anything, it seems their only way out is to “forgive” millions in fines. Couple this with the fact some Texas toll roads are SO EMPTY a plane landed on one during RUSH HOUR, and it demonstrates how costly and ineffective this new “toll everything” push actually is. By and large, toll roads don’t solve congestion, they manipulate it for profit. Or in the case of SH 130, even the profit fails to materialize. Enough with the grand experiments at the taxpayers’ expense! Between the billions in unsustainable debt (read more about the multi-generational debt in this prior post), the runaway taxation, and the invasions of privacy inherent in government tracking of law abiding citizens, it’s crystal clear the cost of toll roads is just too high. CAUTION: Toll roads are hazardous to your freedom!