How much has fuel taxes been raised in Texas in the last 20 years? How many more cars are on the roads over the same period? How much do people complain about congestion on the roads in Austin? If you have a choice, how much will you pay for a shorter time in your gas guzzler? just questions
________________________________ From: gi...@att.net [mailto:gi...@att.net] Sent: Mon 9/24/2007 12:31 PM To: Minton, Mark; TexasCavers@texascavers.com Subject: [SUSPECT SPAM] Re: [Texascavers] RE: Say NO to TOLL roads in Texas -------------- Original message ---------------------- From: "Minton, Mark" <mmin...@nmhu.edu> > David Locklear said: > >If we ever do really really run out of oil, all of these super highways are > >going to look kind of funny. > > We may indeed run out of oil, but we will not run out of fuel. ... We > will migrate > to biofuels or hydrogen or electric cars, but we will not stop driving in the > foreseeable future. Historically, highways were financed with fuel taxes collected specifically for that purpose. It seems to me that it should stay that way--this is a selective tax on those who use the roads the most--just raise those taxes to meet the demand, like damned near anything else in capitalism. But at the same time, the builders (the State of Texas in this case) can be a whole lot more frugal in their designs. I am totally grossed out by the wasteful design of the 130 interchange ramps and such--they are too pretty and extravegant and overly built. They can be designed to be both artful and utilitarian--and therefore a whole lot cheaper. That is only one example of why the highway fund is running out of money and why they are using that as an excuse to build undignified toll roads. Building and stocking toll plazas and the circuitous access roads they require is money down the drain. We already know how to build simple limited-access highways; let's not complicate it more than neces sary. Having said that, and without prejudice to the unforseeable future, I can see that the use of biofuels (especially those of the home-brew variety) and hydrogen and electric cars will increasingly rob the fund of income now provided by fuel taxes. Tolls may be the next best method of getting the majority of users to pay for the roads. But, the paying of tolls needs to be painless, preferably with high speed toll lanes, no toll plazes with human toll collectors to waste money on forever, no need to lift even the smallest hand to sign up for the service (your license plate is your toll pass), and some sort of automatic debit/payment options that require no action on the user's part except verification and oversight. In other words, I don't want to be bothered by it. It's bad enough to hate toll roads without having to be reminded of them with obnoxous toll plazas and resultant slow-downs and traffic jams every few miles. --Ediger --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
