Results tagged “highways”

Last night, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board voted to use funds from the 183-A toll road in Cedar Park to guarantee payments for the conversion of U.S. 290 East between 183 and Manor from an untolled four-lane highway to a tolled twelve-lane highway (three tolled lanes each direction, plus three free frontage roads each direction). The payment guarantee was required because traffic projections were too low to convince investors to pay for the road without it.

Ben Wear has a nice entry on his Statesmen pseudo-blog about the myth that gas taxes fully pay for highway construction, indicating that in the past, the legislature directly contributed to highway construction from the general fund. Didn't we just pass a five billion dollar general obligation bond for TXDOT? Highways don't pay for themselves, even if you only compare gas tax revenues to construction and maintenance costs. Gas taxes generally pay for less than half of the construction and maintenance costs of any new highway. If you take costs associated with congestion, sprawl and global warming into account, highways look like an even bigger waste.