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Follow TURFTURF disagrees with Wolff, TxDOT who insist no way to fix roads except tolls
Wolff is the architect who STOLE $96 million in ATD road taxes to build a street car downtown where there NO congestion (exclusively to benefit some well-connected downtown developers). Meanwhile, he tries the same ol' tired rhetoric that we taxpayers are just too stingy -- we're not giving them enough of our money to go around so they starve us by looting the gas tax, ATD tax, vehicle sales tax, etc. so they can continue to promote toll roads as the ONLY solution. Don't buy it. Your freedom to travel depends on it.
Anti Toll Activist Hall: Wolff Has "No Credibility" on Toll Roads
Says officials had no trouble finding millions 'for a streetcar system that nobody wants.'
WOAI Radio
Friday, February 17, 2012
Anti toll road activist Terri Hall says Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff has 'no credibility' when he says the 'only way' to build new lanes on Loop 16-4 across the north side is to add tolled lanes, 1200 WOAI news reports.
Wolff told 1200 WOAI's Michael Board that 'only if somebody has a tooth fairy' could the county find enough funds to expand the highway, which is packed with congestion and badly in need of expansion.
"He just snatched $96 million in Advanced Transportation District funding to use on a downtown streetcar system that nobody wants and where there is no congestion," Hall said. "96 million would go a long way toward fixing 281, in fact it would fix at least half of the area where all of those lights are backing up all of the traffic out there."
Hall says all of the 'love for toll roads' at the Texas Transportation Forum underway downtown is out of bounds, considering that the state does little to protect the funding which is already available for roads.
"We're now at a billion dollars a year in our gas taxes that the Legislature is raiding for other purposes," she said. "And yet these same officials are telling us there is no money, no money, no money for the roads we need and we have to submit to those toll tax increases."
She says the state could also do more to get a better return on the gas tax money Texas sends to Washington. Texas is one of the biggest net losers in federal gas tax money which is returned for road construction.
"This Legislature has absolutely no credibility on raising any taxes for roads, until we spend the money we give them properly."
Hall says studies done by toll road builders themselves show that use of toll roads starts falling sharply after gas goes above $3 a gallon. She says if Loop 1604 lanes are tolled, she is convinced that existing free roads will have to be tolled to repay for the losses of the toll road companies building the Loop 1604 lanes.
"Very few toll roads in this state are in the black," she said. "That's one thing they're not talking about at the Forum."
Read more: http://radio.woai.com/pages/localnews.html?feed=119078&article=9776845#ixzz1mr31sn00