A journalist known to us recommends a thoughtful report in today's Dallas Morning News about the looming future for privatization and toll roads in funding highway transportation in Texas.
Some argue that toll roads are the only smart play in a state where the Legislature has refused to raise the tax on gasoline, which pays for roads. In Texas and beyond, officials have turned to private companies like Cintra, which on Feb. 27 won a 50-year contract to operate State Highway 121 in Collin and Denton counties as a toll road. The companies build the roads, and motorists pay them back a trip at a time – for decades.A growing number of lawmakers are mobilizing against Texas' toll road policy. But barring a legislative roadblock, tolls are coming to plenty of other North Texas roads, and they will be central to the mammoth Trans-Texas Corridor project. Privatization of roads is happening across the nation and, indeed, around the world.
Proponents, who include Texas' governor and Transportation Commission chairman, say it's the only way new roads will be there for motorists who want them. Critics say the deals to build toll roads are too generous – handing over valuable highways in exchange for quick cash – an easy way out for politicians unwilling to raise taxes. Critics also say that motorists will be stuck paying higher-than-necessary tolls.
I'd like to believe that private sector know-how and relative efficiency is a good portent, but experience also teaches us to be wary of sweetheart deals and the short-term thinking of revenue-hungry politicians who have proved time and again that they'll mortage the future for the next election.
Related:
• Trans-Texas Corridor (pro-TTC)
• CorridorWatch.org (anti-TTC)