9/27/2023 0 Comments Pay toll road texas![]() With the national average price of gasoline at $3.69 a gallon, increasing the gas tax is a non-starter with most politicians. It currently costs about one penny a mile to use a gas-tax funded road (closer to two cents when you add in state gasoline tax). TURF and TFF want that protection to remain in place. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas ensured Texans were protected against tolls on existing interstates when she imposed a ban in 2007 when the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) sent a report to congress asking to do so. Public pushback kept that from happening. In 1998, Congress established the Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program, authorizing three toll pilot projects to toll an interstate highway, bridge or tunnel. It grants these entities government-sanctioned monopolies, guarantees profits, include massive taxpayer subsidies and/or loan guarantees, and places the power to tax in the hands of private corporation that taxpayers cannot hold accountable. P3s hand our public highways to private corporations, most of them foreign companies, in sweetheart deals that last for a half century at a time. ![]() Another new financing mechanism was born in HB 3588 called Comprehensive Development Agreements (CDAs), known as public-private partnerships (P3s) globally. Texas now leads the nation in road debt – totaling $31 billion (in principle & interest). It started with a nebulously worded ballot proposition in 2001 that authorized debt and a follow-up omnibus highway bill, HB 3588 in 2003 that also opened the door to massive new powers to impose tolls, without public consent. Bush and his successor Rick Perry turned to a reliance on debt financing and tolling to bailout lawmakers from having to prioritize spending. In Texas, the highway program started as pay-as-you-go. Neither the federal nor state gasoline tax adjusts with inflation, causing a structural revenue shortfall leading congress and state lawmakers scrambling to shore-up highway funds. Gas taxes have been the primary user fee, but the current tax has remained unchanged since 1993 (federal) and 1991 (state). Since its inception, the Federal Interstate System and Texas State Highway System have been primarily funded with motor fuel taxes (the gas tax – 18.4 cents federal, 20 cents state).
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