dallas area toll roads (Plano, Frisco: house, buy, living)

[VegasMan_72]

Originally Posted by bigdaddycool1111

I know a lot of people that work around 635 and bought houses in Frisco/McKinney area thinking they were getting a good deal and cheap pricing. After accounting for gas and toll roads (which many of them didn't even think about until too late), it turns out that their affordable houses weren't so affordable after all.

Does it ever occur to you that "those people" factor it into their cost of living? It may not be your choice and I have no right to tell you what factors should go into your household budget. And as a courtesy I expect the same treatment from you.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

You forgot the obvious and least expensive choice - reforming highway finance and raising the gas tax. This tollway or nothing crap is a manufactured crisis created by 20+ years of legislators turning a blind eye to the eroding purchasing power of the gas tax. Increasing the gas tax and pegging it to inflation will cost taxpayers considerably less than selling out infrastructure for a profit and kicking the current funding problem down the road 50-100 years. The problem is people are stupid. They hear the word tax and they run around like their frickin heads are on fire, but if you charge them 2-3 times more and call it a fee they're ok with it. Ignorance is bliss.

So what do you say about states that have higher gas taxes and worse roads like Georgia?

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by synchronicity

Or you could just impose sufficient taxes to support overall infrastructure...

I know, I know, this is Texas. Taxes bad, user fees good.

Basically every reasonable economic metric places Texas at or very near the top of the economic ladder amongst its large state peers so it's a real reach to bash what the state has been doing.

[HockDad]

Originally Posted by VegasMan_72

You can't have it both ways. A 10c increase in fuel tax will pay for all the roads in Texas and then some. 18.4c per gallon has been the Federal rate since 1993. We have cars that are a lot more fuel efficient now than 2 decades ago. It is not fair for someone who drives a Range Rover to pay the same tax as someone who drives a Prius or a Leaf to use the same roads. In this anti tax climate, all the states are struggling to come up with alternative ways to pay for infrastructure. Texas is pretty progressive when it comes to finding alternate delivery methods and I applaud them for it.

Why is not fair for someone driving a range rover, my car of choice, to pay the same tax as someone who drives a prius or leaf? Are you saying that the Range Rover causes more damage because it is heavier?

[VegasMan_72]

Originally Posted by HockDad

Why is not fair for someone driving a range rover, my car of choice, to pay the same tax as someone who drives a prius or leaf? Are you saying that the Range Rover causes more damage because it is heavier?

No, its the other way around. Damage to the road is about the same for passenger vehicles and light trucks up to 6000 lbs. Its MPG that is not fair. Let's assume a fuel tax of $1/gallon. Vehicle A gets 100 MPG and Vehicle B only gets 10 MPG. Why should vehicle A pay $10 to drive a $100 mile stretch (10 times more than vehicle B) to use the same roadway to reap its benefits?

There are lots of other ways to make it fair to everyone on the road. Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) is one such approach. A few States (OR, WA etc) are successfully running pilot VMT programs.

It is too bad that our Nation's infrastructure is in such poor shape. Not too long ago, before Tea Party existed, one of the things that Republicans and Democrats agreed upon was; funding for our highways. Our Highway Trust Fund served as a model to the rest of the World. Germany and UK only wished they had a similar mechanism to fund their highways. ASCE infrastructure report card has given our infrastructure D+ and estimates we need $4 Trillion by 2020 just for maintenance and capacity improvements.

We not only need it for our future generation, but our economy needs it right now. Every $1 invested in infrastructure results in $2.80 of return plus it will create millions of middle class, high income jobs. So let's get behind this initiative and let our voices be heard.

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by whj3773

If you live in Frisco though arent you pretty much screwed if you want to go south? It doesnt seem like you have many options

Preston...that's pretty much it.

I don't like toll roads and I avoid them; I took 635 and 30 out to Rockwall the other day instead of using PGBT because those roads are (for now) still free. I think it's fair that Frisco-ites should have to pay to use the roads that had to be built in order for Frisco to exist, but it bums me out to have to pay tolls if I want to go to Ikea. I usually take Preston up there anyway.

[bluescreen73]

Originally Posted by EDS_

So what do you say about states that have higher gas taxes and worse roads like Georgia?

Honestly it depends on which study you look at. The Reason Foundation's 2013 report on road performance lists Texas at #11 and Georgia at #12.

http://reason.org/files/20thannualhighways-tx.pdf
http://reason.org/files/20thannualhighways-ga.pdf

Look, if you could put the tollways in a black box and ensure they were fully self-sustaining and there was no crossover between the revenue chains I wouldn't have a problem with them, but you can't. Prior to the PPP scheme, tolls were used to pay off bondholders, and once the bonds were paid off the booths came down. You got the road quicker and you paid a marginal price above pay-as-you-go financing. Nowadays, though, tollways are nothing more than a physical representation of a mutual fund that investors hope will generate several times the revenue from the initial investment over the term of the lease.

When it was first proposed, the backers of the DNT said that the initial segment of the road would be paid off in 1984 and at that point, tolls would be lowered to reflect the reduced cost of operation. Well, guess what, that didn't happen. You're still paying full price for a segment of highway that was technically paid off 30 years ago.

Additionally, the lege in TX have been looking for ways to gin up even more revenue for tollway construction. Last year they tried to add a $10 fee to all vehicle registrations that would have been used as seed money for tollways, and they've also explored allowing municipalities to tack on sales and property tax items for, you guessed it, tollway construction. Now, how is that fair?

If you want a truly equitable way to pay for roads, then the solution VegasMan_72 brought up is ideal. You pay for every mile you drive. The only downside is that big brother gets to stick a GPS device in your car to rack up all those miles driven.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

Honestly it depends on which study you look at. The Reason Foundation's 2013 report on road performance lists Texas at #11 and Georgia at #12.

http://reason.org/files/20thannualhighways-tx.pdf
http://reason.org/files/20thannualhighways-ga.pdf

Look, if you could put the tollways in a black box and ensure they were fully self-sustaining and there was no crossover between the revenue chains I wouldn't have a problem with them, but you can't. Prior to the PPP scheme, tolls were used to pay off bondholders, and once the bonds were paid off the booths came down. You got the road quicker and you paid a marginal price above pay-as-you-go financing. Nowadays, though, tollways are nothing more than a physical representation of a mutual fund that investors hope will generate several times the revenue from the initial investment over the term of the lease.

When it was first proposed, the backers of the DNT said that the initial segment of the road would be paid off in 1984 and at that point, tolls would be lowered to reflect the reduced cost of operation. Well, guess what, that didn't happen. You're still paying full price for a segment of highway that was technically paid off 30 years ago.

Additionally, the lege in TX have been looking for ways to gin up even more revenue for tollway construction. Last year they tried to add a $10 fee to all vehicle registrations that would have been used as seed money for tollways, and they've also explored allowing municipalities to tack on sales and property tax items for, you guessed it, tollway construction. Now, how is that fair?

If you want a truly equitable way to pay for roads, then the solution VegasMan_72 brought up is ideal. You pay for every mile you drive. The only downside is that big brother gets to stick a GPS device in your car to rack up all those miles driven.

A big problem with gas taxes is that they are very regressive. Lower income folks spend an outsized portion of their income buying gasoline relative to other cadres. I'm fairly conservative politically and fiscally, that said I really dislike regressive taxes.


And if Texas has the #11 road system in the country how is that possible with a low gas tax? Further, how is it possible the Georgia's is even a little worse when its gas tax is not quite 35% higher?


I'd try to get over tollways almost never becoming freeways that's just how it is. Once a gov't. authority gets ahold of a financial stream it's rarely going to let go.

[bluescreen73]

Originally Posted by EDS_

A big problem with gas taxes is that they are very regressive. Lower income folks spend an outsized portion of their income buying gasoline relative to other cadres. I'm fairly conservative politically and fiscally, that said I really dislike regressive taxes.


And if Texas has the #11 road system in the country how is that possible with a low gas tax? Further, how is it possible the Georgia's is even a little worse when its gas tax is not quite 35% higher?


I'd try to get over tollways almost never becoming freeways that's just how it is. Once a gov't. authority gets ahold of a financial stream it's rarely going to let go.

If you look at road quality, Georgia ranks high - near the top in many of the pavement category scores. I'm not sure but I think they get dinged for the rate of their gas tax.

On the opposite side of the coin, however, tollways create a pristine network of highways for the haves while forcing the have nots onto a typically more congested, more deteriorated, and less-maintained network of roads. To me that doesn't seem right, either.

[stephwin]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

Preston...that's pretty much it.

I don't like toll roads and I avoid them; I took 635 and 30 out to Rockwall the other day instead of using PGBT because those roads are (for now) still free. I think it's fair that Frisco-ites should have to pay to use the roads that had to be built in order for Frisco to exist, but it bums me out to have to pay tolls if I want to go to Ikea. I usually take Preston up there anyway.

If you are talking about going to Dallas, then it is pretty much DNT or Preston. But if you are going to Plano or Richardson there are many options. I've said this before, but not everyone that lives in Frisco works downtown. I don't. I work in Plano and take Legacy to work. I haven't gotten on any toll road in about a year. I just plan ahead and leave a little earlier if I need to. I can leave home at 7:10, drop my kid off at daycare, and be at my desk by 7:45am. And that's going from Eldorado/Legacy to DNT/Legacy. That's not bad at all.

As for the bolded, Frisco was around a LONG time before DNT came through. And I'm not just talking farmland Frisco either.