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Follow TURFDMN Editorial: Obama's call to toll existing roads 'a stick of dynamite' in Texas
Put tolls on free interstates? That’s what Obama wants to do
By Rodger Jones/Editorial Writer
Dallas Morning News
May 2, 2014 |
The Obama White House is showing its ignorance on how the public boils over about slapping tolls on roads that are free now. We have experience with that in Texas that policy people apparently don’t have inside the Beltway.
I say that because the Obama administration advanced a transportation proposal to Congress this week that would eliminate the ban on putting tolls on interstates that are free today.
That means Obama doesn’t want to advocate the honest way of paying for more roads — raising the gasoline tax for the first time in 20 years. The tax is not pulling its weight today, since cars are more efficient, and the Highway Trust Fund is going broke. Congress is limping along with a soon-to-expire transportation plan that backfills the trust fund with general fund money.
Scrounging around for something more sustainable — and less politically combustible than a tax proposal — the White House does the chicken thing and hatches the idea to let states lay on tolls, if they have the courage.
That’s just handing the locals a stick of political dynamite. We know that in Texas.
One of the things we’ve heard a lot in Texas is that the state should not convert a free road into a toll road. That was a prominent gripe when SH 121 (now the Sam Rayburn Tollway) was being widened and tolled. Planners pointed out that the number of free lanes would, in fact, multiply, with development of the Collin County road, and that toll payers could pay for speed if they wanted.
Still, critics have piped up all across the state as toll roads and toll lanes become common. One prominent statewide group, TURF, and activist Terri Hall have been go-to voices. A lot of critics see a corporate money grab for road profits. The anti-toll fervor is particularly strong in Central Texas.
(In North Texas, we’ve been more docile, probably owing to the fact that we had the “old turnpike” for years joining D and FW, then had the Dallas North Tollway. The NTTA and TxDOT have since criss-crossed the area with toll roads.)
Strong anti-toll sentiment led to passage last year of a bill to ban conversion of free lanes to toll lanes, with some exceptions. It was signed by a governor, Rick Perry, who almost had his political head handed to him a few years back for his expansive Trans-Texas Corridor concept of tollways. He later had TxDOT ban the term from its political lexicon. That’s how touchy tolls can get in this state.
So along comes Obama with his toll-em plan. I’m not sure what latitude Texas would have if the idea got through Congress, considering the new ban adopted by the Legislature, but lawmakers well know that converting roads can be dangerous to political careers.
That’s something the lame duck president doesn’t have to worry about.