Central Texas toll road plan amounts to double taxation

Please, if you live in the Central Texas area, check out this plan to turn existing roads into toll roads under a proposed plan unlike any in the country.

Here's an excerpt from the site (http://www.StopDoubleTax.com):

"TxDOT will use more than 4.5 Billion dollars of your past and future Tax Dollars to finance Toll Roads, that you and your children can't drive on. Unless you pay again. That is a Double Tax.

TxDOT also Seizes Tens of Million of dollars worth of Austin area Tax Financed Roads/Projects (that have already been paid for) and converts them into Toll Roads. That is another Double Tax. Four (4) examples:

Mopac bridge at Wm Cannon
Ed Bluestein from I-35 to Springdale
Texas 45 SE from I-35 to 183
71 from I35 to Riverside

When they are done building the toll roads, they plan to turn over the roads you have paid for to unnamed Corporations who will then operate them for a profit at your expense."

Comments on this plan can be emailed but the deadline is this Friday, June 25. I'm interested in what others think of this plan!

Here are some other links that discuss the plan:

http://news8austin.com/content/your_news/default.asp?ArID=110011
http://www.kvue.com/news/tuma/stories/051004kvueToll-eh.1abe0fa11.html
http://bicycleaustin.info/articles/rb-campo-stackeddeck.html
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2004/05/11/StateLocal/Cap-Metro.Hearing.Discusses.Toll.Roads-680427.shtml
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2004/04/12/daily4.html?f=et51
http://www.texastransit.org/archives/000776.html
http://www.circlecranch.com/pdf_files/CAMPO%20Position.pdf

Well, I'm in the process of moving to Austin from Houston, where we have toll roads. However, our toll roads were all built "from scratch" so they offered an alternative route to downtown and around the perimeter of the city. They were expensive, as all new highway construction is, but they paid for themselves in tolls in just a few years.

But the idea of converting an existing road to a toll road? Not only is it unfair, but it doesn't really alleviate the problem. Unless they're planning on widening these proposed roads so that they will accomodate more traffic, they aren't helping anyting. The people that can afford to pay the tolls will use the toll roads which will have less traffic, and the people that can't or won't will use alternative routes that will get MORE CONGESTED.

Honestly, we love our toll roads in Houston. They're used by the people that have long commutes from the 'burbs. By building new roads, they took some of the traffic off of the "old roads" so everyone benefits. The one that goes around the perimeter of the city is great for getting to the airports and for getting from one side of town to the other side of town without going through downtown. But this idea for Austin just sounds crazy. If they have that much of a traffic problem, they need to pour some serious concrete and have a long term plan, not a short term band-aid.

Thanks for the link Longhorn!

Sonia