Quote:
Originally Posted by dobieowner
The speaker on the topic of tolls on the road surprised us the most. He was indicating that the existing I 540 tolls have already lost 177 million dollars that tax payers will have to pay for the shortfall. And if they are already losing this kind of money why would they even consider adding more tolls. Plus he felt this was double taxation. Also questioned the legality of placing tolls on the roads without it being put to a vote.
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Sigh... Nothing like people like that speaker deciding to gripe about things they don't have a clue on. It plays especially wall in areas like Long Island-South Annex where everybody just moved in. Let's recap:
1) 540 south of I-40 had been on the books for years (with the 147 extension) but there were no funds to pay for it. It was decades out on the funding list.
2) North Raleigh, which began being heavily developed a couple of decades before southern/western Wake, got 540 (long funded, long waited for) out to Knightdale. This was Not Acceptable to the folks in southern and western Wake, and especially to folks wanting to build houses out there.
3) NCDOT offered a compromise: let us build southern 540 as a toll road and we can start ASAP. Or, wait 20 years and it'll be free.
4) The General Assembly agreed to pay for the delta between toll revenues and the debt service on the road to incentivize its creation this way. This was seen as a way to pay for new NC roads amidst "shrinking" road revenues.
5) A majority (perhaps nearly all, IIRC) of southern/western Wake mayors agreed to the tolling plan.
6) "Double taxation" is a crock. The state funds going towards the gap are coming from NC general revenues and gas tax. It's not as though southern/western Wake's gas tax dollars alone are paying for the road -- it's revenue from around the state. The difference is, this was a way to get a road built fast, and there's toll dollars that make that happen.
BTW, I have one immediate family member and one extended family member paying the tolls each day, one for a short segment of 540, the other for its full length. Still better than not having the road there.