Toll Road Blowback


I understand that the Governor of Indiana is in a tough re-election race, in part because he leased a toll road to a foreign corporation.

And in Texas, a documentary film, Truth Be Tolled, has been produced in opposition to the Trans-Texas Corridor:

Government has figured out a way to make money on public infrastructure. The plan is to convert existing Texas roadways into tollways and hand them over to foreign interests without a public vote. Many citizens are crying highway robbery.


15 responses to “Toll Road Blowback”

  1. This is @#(*%&.

    People just don’t want to pay for transportation period. America had it right back in the day, it’s a service – PERIOD. It’s not a friggin natural monoploy or any of that crap, it is a service, which should be provided by the market and market demand, not as some arbritrarily decided Government Process/Service/Mishandling/Department.

    I guess it all boils down to, the poor think they are owed transportation and too many people support them in their cause and complaint. Meanwhile all the people working and with effort being put into society get screwed.

    …excuse the rant, this really aggravates me.

  2. …I digress on the emminent domain issue. Whent he state comes to take land owned by individuals they should band together and shoot all trespassers.

    …it’s legal in Texas & Florida! :o

  3. Adron –

    To a large extent, roads are a natural monopoly.

    In a purely privatized context, someone owning a road that went in a straight line from Point A to Point B would have a natural advantage over anyone else wishing to construct a competing road. The competing road would have to be longer (raising construction and maintenance costs), while access to that road would have to be priced below the cost of the 1st road (to make up for consumers wishing to have the shortest route.)

    No matter how efficiently or cleverly the people with the 2nd road operated, they could not eliminate the advantage of the person with the first road.

    Further, without the power of eminent domain, private road operators would seldom be able to economically obtain direct routes of travel, as the last remaining property owner in the way of something would be able to hold out for very large amounts of property, or simply hold up the entire project altogether.

    We can have competing media companies and phone providers in many cases (although there are problems with this), because there is not the fundamental impossibility of providing an identical service. If someone really wants to compete with Comcast (given other hurdles), it costs them no more to string and maintain wire than it costs Comcast, and the route to your home will likely be the same, stringing along the same utility poles, etc. But, once a road is constructed along the optimal route, no other roads can ever hope to compete.

    – Bob R.

  4. I digress on the emminent domain issue. Whent he state comes to take land owned by individuals they should band together and shoot all trespassers.

    Are you really advocating for shooting government officials who are within their constitutional rights to take land so long as there is just compensation? Even the founders recognized that for the common good the government would sometimes have to take property, they just wanted to ensure that the government would never unfairly compensate the property owners.

    – Bob R.

  5. While I think the argument for/against privitized, long-distance, point-to-point highways has more complexity and deserves debate, I fail to see how any of those debatable points apply to local transportation. Local transportation has unmistakably monopolistic properties… There’s no way five different entities can build a road to my driveway. I’m willing to concede that it may be lack of imagination on my part, but I can’t figure out how to get around this issue, nor have I seen anyone advocating for the privitization of all roadways address it.

  6. they should band together and shoot all trespassers.

    OK, I know it’s not in our official rules, but I think we should generally stop ourselves short of advocating violience here, please.

  7. Why, really, are people upset? At the thought of paying tolls? At a foreign corporation managing it? That the profits will go out of the US? Veiled political intrigue?

    Maybe, as an alternative, this is a time to raise fuel taxes. As the fuel prices are falling people wouldn’t notice a tax increase so much. If fuel prices go up again (during the next major political crisis in the Middle East, etc.) it will just increase the incentive to get off petroleum.

  8. Excuse me… I didn’t mean to advocate killing or violence or anything.

    But I did mean to advocate someone do everything within their “LEGAL” right to protect thier land. In many parts of the country (Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Mississippi, Florida, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and others) it is assumed and often times taken for granted that someone isn’t coming to take your land, your house, and your family away from where they have grown up/made their lives to build a damned interstate/railroad/roadway etc. In the states mentioned it is assumed that if someone (not selectively saying the Government) comes to deprive you of these things per the Bill Of Rights/Constitution a person, or persons, has the right to defend their land with deadly – aka shoot the bastards – force.

    Just because the Government puts themselves above individuals (a prime reason the country was founded with the laws it has), and places themselves above the property rights of individuals (another prime reason the country was founded) doesn’t give it the right to take by force land from landowners.

    It is disgusting, more than my prospective suggestion of violence, that the Government deems itself so worthy to deprive individuals (which it is supposed to protect) of land.

    …and the Government is not the “value” dictator, the market and ultimately the individual is. No entity (including the Government) should be aloud to remove one from their rightfully purchased land without mutual consent of both parties.

    Emminent domain has been, continues to be, is perpetually, and seems to be a losing battle for individuals, land owners, individual freedom, and all associated morally bound obligations of society at large.

    …so please, take my theoretical suggestion of violence with a grain of salt, but remember that with each Emminnet Domain grab the Feds/State/City/County aggravates and atogonizes the most capable and violent group of people in the world, those with abolished and disregarded rights.

    …they’re the ones who won the citizenry of the US its ability to create a Bill of Rights and Constitution. I scares me and aggravates me when the common good crap is used as a money/land/value grab against and individual.

    …but I digress. My apologies for insinuating violence. I do not suggest its actual use except to defend ones life, land, or liberty.

    …back to the note of roadways though. I’m VERY pro-privatization as I’d like the removal of petty, illogical highway regulation and law. I’d really like to see some bidding/competitive pricing on roadways and some real options (such as a “fast lane” so we can catch up to European drivers). As long as the Government controls 100% and monopolizes the issuance and building, maintenance and such of roadways I will not have that. America will stay retarded in growth and continue at the slowed mixed market rate that it has for the last 20-50 years, with more slow downs on the horizen.

    As for privatization of the roadways, if done “properly” would reduce congestion, make people pay fair prices for actual use (instead of the theoretical “freeways” which just means people in upper brackets pay a HUGE amount to subsidize those that don’t), and of course the biggest benifit for all is the actual lowering of roadway costs, quicker construction, and most likely better quality of roadways that actually have a REAL maintenance initiative instead of being “maintained” every time a politician thought, “geee Wally, it’d be nice if this road have less potholes.”

  9. “…and the Government is not the “value” dictator, the market and ultimately the individual is.”

    This is a deeply anti-democratic position. The “market”- an institution established collectively in our laws and public policies (by government itself) is shaped by those who can afford to participate in it. What your advocating is a dictatorship of those who can afford to participate in the market transactions… the more wealth you have the more power you have. That is not a just basis for a democratic society.

    Patrick Henry

  10. Private toll roads only succeed if they make a profit – this increases the per-unit cost of roadways to the end-users. If our goal is to price users off the system, tolls make sense. But no rational argument can be made that tolls roads are good finance mechanisms.

    If we do seek congestion pricing to reduce congestion, we should charge a sliding scale, i.e. minimum-wage workers pay 5 cents a mile, and Bill Gates pays $100,000 a mile. Each will share a proportional equity hit to use the public facility.

  11. If our goal is to price users off the system, tolls make sense.

    The idea is to price trips that are of low-value to the user off the system.

    Private toll roads only succeed if they make a profit … But no rational argument can be made that tolls roads are good finance mechanisms.

    I think you are mixing up two different issues. One is privatization, which I agree will ultimately increase the cost of providing roads. The other is tolls in general that are used to add capacity to the transportation system.

    If we do seek congestion pricing to reduce congestion, we should charge a sliding scale, i.e. minimum-wage workers pay 5 cents a mile, and Bill Gates pays $100,000 a mile. Each will share a proportional equity hit to use the public facility.

    There is another way to make the toll more equitable. That is to use the toll to pay for alternatives for people who choose not to pay it. So the minimum wage worker who chooses not to pay the toll gets substanially improved public transit paid for by the Bill Gates’ of the world who choosed to remain in their private vehicles and benefit from the reduced congestion created by the transit users’ decision to use transit rather than the roadway.

    Maybe we should stop calling them tolls and call it an incentive fund to persuade people to use alternatives for trips that can be served by alternatives, so that the road remains uncongested for trips that can’t.

  12. Toll Roads and tolling as a means to finance new transportation infrastructure can be very regressive to low income and people of need.

    Tolling is like a Sales Tax in a new wrapper and we in the State of Oregon have voted against the use a sales tax.

    It is time to implement a new gas tax to fund identified STIP and other approved transportation projects just like what the State of Washington did.

    This gas tax increase would have to go through the legislative process and get the wheat separated from the chaff and I am OK with that.

    We must have any project prove its benefits and reflect why its priority manidates its funding.

    To do nothing is wrong because it truly is condition of, pay now less or pay more later.

    People who use all other modes of transportation like bike and PED will not pay a dime of this gas tax. People who use Light Rail will pay very little of this gas tax.

    The real issue is how this allocation of new revenue coming from a gas tax would get spent.

    My fear is that greedy people, special interests and social engineers will kill any gas tax increase that is desperately need as vehicle to provide investments into our road and highway infrastructure.

  13. Toll Roads and tolling as a means to finance new transportation infrastructure can be very regressive to low income and people of need.

    It can be regressive, but I don’t think it needs to be. It depends on how it is spent.

    It is time to implement a new gas tax

    A gas tax is different from a sales tax? The gas tax is incredibly regressive. The older and lower mileage your car, the more you pay.

    Moreover the gas tax is not really tied to the actual users of new infrastructure. Why should someone who lives in rural Oregon, whose roads are uncongested, pay for the new infrastructure required by people who choose to commute alone in their car during rush hour instead of taking the bus or car-pooling?

    My fear is that greedy people, special interests and social engineers will kill any gas tax increase

    The last gas tax was turned down by the voters despite being tied to a list of specific road projects. Even though the Newberg-Dundee bypass was on the list, the majority of voters in Yamhill County voted no.

    Right now the gas tax doesn’t even cover the cost of maintaining the roads that exist, muchless paying for all the new ones required to provide everyone with an uncongested commute.

  14. Couldn’t the second entity construct a direct point A-point B road right next/parallel to the first one? This seems to be what the railroads did in places like Tigard (if you look, there are two distinct lines side-by-side for miles).

    Also, another problem that the second entity has is that there is often not enough demand to justify two identical pieces of infrastructure. This goes for roads and cable lines.

  15. Jason wrote:

    Couldn’t the second entity construct a direct point A-point B road right next/parallel to the first one? This seems to be what the railroads did in places like Tigard (if you look, there are two distinct lines side-by-side for miles).

    Well, yes and no…

    Originally (we’re talking 1870s-1910s here), there were no less than FOUR separate railroads that more-or-less ran from Portland to Eugene. The Oregon & California, financed by the Californian Southern Pacific Railroad, received a land grant to construct a line from Portland to Eugene, which is now the Union Pacific’s mainline.

    Another railroad, also financed by SP, ran a railroad west from Portland to Hillsboro and Forest Grove, then south to McMinnville and Corvallis. Ultimately it hit a point west of Eugene that was reached by Eugene’s streetcar system. Over time, parts of this railroad were abandoned (i.e. Portland-Beaverton, Gaston-McMinnville, Corvallis-Eugene); the remaining portions are part of the Portland & Western Railroad.

    The Oregonian Railway was financed by a group of farmers who were unhappy with the O&C’s rates, and developed a narrow-gauge railroad from Portland to Lake Oswego, then through Tualatin to Newberg and Dundee. There, one route continued southwesterly to Dayton, Whiteson (bypassing Lafayette and McMinnville; this event is what caused Yamhill County’s courthouse to be relocated from Lafayette to McMinnville), to Broadmead; where one line went west to Sheridan and another went south to Perrydale and Dallas, before turning into the coast range. Back to Dundee, a second mainline travelled southeasterly across the Willamette River (via a ferry) to Woodburn, Mt. Angel, Silverton, Stayton, Lebanon, and ultimately to Springfield. This line fell into disrepair, and ultimately the SP purchased it and used it to connect its other routes together. Notably, the Dundee-Woodburn stretch was abandoned early on, as was the Dayton-Whiteson stretch (and the current line, through Lafayette to St. Joseph was built). The Southern Pacific abandoned the Santiam River bridge in the 1960s, and the trackage south of Lebanon to Springfield in the 1980s.

    Finally, the Oregon Electric Railroad was built as an interurban line, financed by James J. Hill and the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads (by way of the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railroad). It also built a line from Garden Home to Forest Grove, and later acquired the United Railways from Willbridge to Vernonia by way of North Plains and Banks.

    What you see in Tigard is not for “miles and miles”, but roughly from Tiedeman Avenue to Bonita Road. North of Tiedeman, the two railroads used to cross each other, but in the 1930s the line from that point to Garden Home, Multnomah Village and Portland was abandoned. In fact, the OE line through Tigard will be removed soon as part of the Commuter Rail project.

    But each of the four railroads had certain advantages and disadvantages. The OE in its day offered a better route from Tigard to Portland; the OE and SP were about the same from Beaverton/Hillsboro to Portland; but the SP had a clear benefit from Sherwood (and Yamhill County), Tualatin, and Oswego to Portland.

    SP’s electric lines didn’t reach Salem, but from Portland the steam mainline did. The OE served downtown Salem and Albany, but at a slower speed, and offered no connection to points south (whereas the SP had friendly connections to Seattle). The two roads’ depots in Portland were about a block or two apart.

    The OE was forbidden from using Union Station due to a dispute between the stations’ owners, and had to resort to a makeshift station in a freight house on 10th Avenue (which today is now a townhouse development). SP had direct access to Union Station. Both railroads crossed each other, however, at the south end of downtown (at what is now the concert lawn at Waterfront Park).

    However, what is clear that the SP mainline “won” out, when it was maintained as the through-route for both passenger and freight trains. The other two SP controlled routes became branchlines and were abandoned in parts. The OE branchline survived as a quiet branchline to, ultimately, the Burlington Northern Railroad. It did offer shippers an alternative to the SP, but suffered from slower service, and no connection to the south (which was, and still is, important to lumber shippers).

    The highways aren’t necessarily an exception; there are plenty of examples where two or more roads parallel each other; or were built to “compliment” each other. Surely, Highways 99W and 99E are a perfect example; Highways 30 (now I-84) and SR 14 (formerly US 830) are another. But generally speaking, one route will ultimately have a better route than the other – and in the democratic and political climate we are in, the road that is simply used more will receive more funding than the other. That’s why Highway 99E was largely replaced with I-5 from Woodburn south to Eugene, whereas Highway 99W is sitting some 15 miles to the west.

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