SH-130/I-35 Toll Switch-a-roo?! (Dallas, San Antonio: rated, commuters, money)

[Barefoot Daisy]

Originally Posted by &heart

I thought interstates couldn't be tolled..... but if they can, why not toll 18-wheelers that use I35 and make 130 free for them. It wouldn't solve everything but it would definitely help since most 18-wheelers are just passing through. I'm thinking out loud here.

What many people don't realize it that 18-wheelers are tolled .. they pay large licensing fees for each state through which they pass. Check out the licenses and little stickers on the next 18-wheeler you see stopped. You'll see a number of them, and each and every one of them costs a pretty penny.

And smaller commercial vehicles pay extra tax for each mile traveled on each state through which they pass. They do a monthly report based on fuel purchases and miles driven, and yes, they are audited.

Bookkeeping for transportation is no fun, believe me!

[An0nym0us88]

I have never thought they would toll I-35. They sure could quadruple (or more?) in money.

It would be good news for people in Northeast Texas if they want to travel to San Antonio and South Texas, if SH-130 was free.

[Cranfords]

Originally Posted by An0nym0us88

It would be good news for people in Northeast Texas if they want to travel to San Antonio and South Texas, if SH-130 was free.

I drove on it last summer going to San Antonio. If not getting a bill for that is any indication of free-ness, then I'd have to say it is free.

[wxf848]

Originally Posted by Cranfords

I drove on it last summer going to San Antonio. If not getting a bill for that is any indication of free-ness, then I'd have to say it is free.

The all-electronic tolling system has a secondary purpose of revenue enhancement. A common practice is to fail to send the regular bill and the first late notices, and then months or a year later they send a violation notice with hundreds or thousands of dollars in violation fees added. They'll claim the bill was lost in the mail, and you can't prove it wasn't. The law presumes the tolling authority to be correct and deems you to be liable for whatever they claim you owe.

If you don't get a bill, call Texas Tollways and ask about your balance. Hopefully they'll have it on file and will work with you. They sometimes tell you there's no balance due and then mail you a bill for a very large balance due. I recommend against driving on toll roads unless you have a TxTag or pay cash, which is accepted only on some Houston area roads.

[rynetwo]

Originally Posted by wxf848

The all-electronic tolling system has a secondary purpose of revenue enhancement. A common practice is to fail to send the regular bill and the first late notices, and then months or a year later they send a violation notice with hundreds or thousands of dollars in violation fees added. They'll claim the bill was lost in the mail, and you can't prove it wasn't. The law presumes the tolling authority to be correct and deems you to be liable for whatever they claim you owe.

If you don't get a bill, call Texas Tollways and ask about your balance. Hopefully they'll have it on file and will work with you. They sometimes tell you there's no balance due and then mail you a bill for a very large balance due. I recommend against driving on toll roads unless you have a TxTag or pay cash, which is accepted only on some Houston area roads.

Or you do pay the toll and THEN they give you a fee. I had a $2.25 and I paid it. I received a second notice and I went online and and I had a zero balance. I received another notice and it said I owed $2.25 plus $25 penalty and they sent it to collections. Thirty minutes on the phone and know I somehow have a credit!

[Slowpoke_TX]

Originally Posted by Barefoot Daisy

What many people don't realize it that 18-wheelers are tolled .. they pay large licensing fees for each state through which they pass. Check out the licenses and little stickers on the next 18-wheeler you see stopped. You'll see a number of them, and each and every one of them costs a pretty penny.

And smaller commercial vehicles pay extra tax for each mile traveled on each state through which they pass. They do a monthly report based on fuel purchases and miles driven, and yes, they are audited.

Bookkeeping for transportation is no fun, believe me!

Don't try to explain IFTA (or KY / NM / NY / OR weight-distance taxes) to them, it'll blow their minds.

[Dopo]

I thought toll roads were built to pay for the construction of highways "until they are paid for"
I-35 is paid for with tax dollars.... why are people trying to make it a toll road?

Once again trying to screw over tax payers.
If there's lots of traffic in Austin is because of all the 18 wheelers that drive on I-35
those are the ones that should pay to drive on it.

I-130 is a complete failure
Toll roads are a failure and a scam on taxpayers
Now that I-130 is not "profitable" we all are gonna have to pay for it.

[CptnRn]

Switching Texas 130 and IH-35 is a stupid idea that is illegal and won't accomplish anything according to this recent study.

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news...atesman_launch

It looked at eight scenarios of what might happen with the area’s transportation system. That included the much-discussed swapping of I-35 and Texas 130 on the metro area’s eastern edge, making I-35 through Austin a tollway while making Texas 130 free and redubbing it I-35.

Aside from being legally impossible at this point and politically unfeasible at probably any point in the future, the study shows that such a flip-flop wouldn’t even help.

Trips home to northern and southern suburbs on the former I-35, paying tolls, would still take two and three hours. The reason: 86 percent of all trips on I-35 are locally generated, the study says. No one looking to go from Travis Heights to the Highland Mall area, for instance, would travel miles to the east and take the current Texas 130 even if it were free.

“There would appear to be no fix to I-35 congestion that includes (Texas) 130,” wrote Mike Heiligenstein, executive director of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, in a letter to the report’s authors this summer after seeing their findings. “All the exhaustive discussions that have centered on moving trucks to 130 are simply not realistic or attainable.”

[Dopo]

Austin has got to be the biggest city in the US that doesn't have a freeway loop.

[flyntexn]

Originally Posted by Dopo

Austin has got to be the biggest city in the US that doesn't have a freeway loop.

LOOP360 was always intended to be a full fledged expressway loop but the plans were struck down in the 80s by the environmentalists. The planned road system would have rivaled san antonio's 1960s road plans which were nearly entirely built to fruition but not in Austin.