When does it become unethical.

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user9876543121@reddit

We're way past that point. This whole thing is a racket between Texas gov and private enterprise.

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F00MANSHOE@reddit

Guys it is a fast lane for rich people, period. Of course it's overpriced for poors.

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broguequery@reddit

Ah, yes, of course.

The bifurcation of public utilities into rich and poor continues.

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hotredsam2@reddit

This is not a public utility. It’s a private road you pay to use. That’s literally what a toll road is. And clearly these people think it’s worth using since it gets a decent amount of traffic.

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broguequery@reddit

Roads are a public utility. That's my entire point.

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hotredsam2@reddit

I see where you’re coming from especially since it’s got its own exits and entrance off of freeways that are public.

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MechanicalSideburns@reddit

Essentially, yeah. I take the fancy lanes around DC, because I can afford them.

Really, it's a sliding scale that trades money for time. I know that if the $ estimate is like $4.00, then the regular backup ain't too bad. It'll probably save me 5 minutes. But if it's like $20.00, then the regular road is FUCKED, and it'll save me like 45 minutes.

Ok i hate democratic party as it stands right now; and i voted for Trump; but FUCK greg Abbott!! Hes only doing a good job for the ppl who shove cash in his pockets; hes bought out. His loyalties and how he runs the state will always lie with who gives him the highest dollar. Hes a hypocrite, a misogynist, an elitist; hes the most democrat ive ever seen from a republican; the tolls are out of control for one, his admin has consistently shut down all attempts at legalizing weed in spite of 98% of texans voting to legalize it and its legal in all of our neighboring states; and thats my personal issue with him and his administration because theyre ignoring the voters on something that matters a lot to some of us and helps treat certain issues in a natural way and its a fucking plant!!

How dare they tell me i cant smoke a fucking plant when there is no affordable healthcare offered and anyone whos 18 and not already a felon can buy as many guns and ammo as the stores have on the shelves and brutally murder two whole classrooms full of kids? Which btw he completely ignored while the uvalde shooting was going on because he had a campaign to worry about.

And hes implemented nothing, no policies or security measures to prevent this from happening again. For the record im a huge supporter of our second amendment rights but it wouldn't hurt to put some stricter regulations on who can purchase them legally from here on out....

But i fucking need my weed. And that cocksucker abbott and his attorney general or whatever; dickbag dan Patrick ; keeps cock blocking it from us.

We’ve only been here about 9 years and there’s been loads of gentrification… kinda like what Oak Cliff went through when I was still living in DFW. I will still take Cbus weather over the high ass humidity and triple digit summers! My old ass can’t deal with that shit anymore.

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jfpo214@reddit

A lot of truth in what you said. We lived in Long Beach, which I still love, but cost of living and all that. Growing up in Cincinnati made me hate winters more than DFW summers. We just found a great situation here and I always point out “Dallas proper” (where we live) vs. DFW, which is just ugly sun belt sprawl. And one unexpected perk-DFW Airport and the fact you can fly anywhere in the US non-stop at reasonable fares. I can’t remember the last time I had a connecting flight.

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TheStephinator@reddit

You just had to bring up DFW airport! lol!

That's insane!!! I'm in the DFW metroplex so we usually (if not always?) have access roads too. I'm from the East Coast though where there isn't enough room to build access roads for all the highways and such, and I'm pretty sure they've gotten more toll roads since I was last there so I'm going to have to look up Google maps and text my cousins for some highway updates! It never dawned on me that there would be roads that you have to pay for with no free option. The toll roads here are mostly for "convenience" to go faster without the stoplights and higher speed limit too of course. But if you can't/don't want to pay, you can just take the access roads. And to add insult to injury they only take cash?! That's nuts in this day and age....and that's from someone who always has cash. I'm well aware it's not the norm to carry cash anymore. Only accepting cash but not giving people a heads up about that just seems remarkably problematic to me??

I apologize if I came across as insulting, none of what I said was intended to insult. I'm not really sure what part was insulting even after going back and rereading my comment, but I wholeheartedly apologize.

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nickleback_official@reddit

It’s like $15 to take the bridge into manhattan lol DC has the highest tolls in the country. Red states are only just now catching up to what blue states have been doing for decades.

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Hanzrelly@reddit

Not really. Some northeast states are so much worse.

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UmmYeahOk@reddit

J.H. “Jack” Davis, Engineer-Manager for the Texas Turnpike Authority, stated in 1968 that “When revenue bonds for a project are finally paid off, however, the facility reverts to the state as part of its highway system, to be used free.” This was supposed to happen the same way the Texas Turnpike Authority turned over the Dallas–Fort Worth Turnpike to the Highway Department in 1977 to become I-30, which then became toll free. However, the Dallas North Tollway never became toll free and has never been turned over to the Highway Department. The North Texas Tollway Authority’s web site states that “it was no longer a statewide practice to remove tolls from roadways due to a lack of state funding to maintain the roadways”. While it may have been Jack Davis’ unofficial intent, it was not law. The last bond payment was made January 1, 2005.

Public/private partnership is meant to do a few things.

Allow corrupt politicians and business dicks to gorge themselves on public money.

And 2, ultimately make government look bad so they can try to funnel more money to corporations.

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Hawkeye77th@reddit

Cut it down with a cordless bandsaw. Fuck hotwheels right in the ass.

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Poopin_Hard@reddit

If we the people actually wanted to do something about it, what could we do?

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Texas: Eww, no mass transit.

Also Texas: Let me live in Southern Oklahoma or Waco and commute 50 miles each way.

Also also Texas: Why am I paying so much for tolls?

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novacthall@reddit

Maybe a hot take here, but all toll roads are unethical?

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m77je@reddit

Shouldn’t the users pay for the toll roads instead of all taxpayers including the ones who don’t drive

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That's playing a dangerous game.

You are giving up your citizen power for a temporary monetary subsidy. At best.

Sure... they might briefly lower costs... because they can afford to run at a deficit for political purposes for a little while.

In Austin everyone drives 10 under ☠️

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Vaderb2@reddit

Not when you are paying a bridge toll or something in a city with transit options. If you want to drive it is fair to pay for the upkeep of assets

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Terrible_Shelter_345@reddit

I agree for a scenario where there are other main transit options. In Dallas, DART and buses are maybe MAYBE feasible for like 5% of residents.

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novacthall@reddit

See my other comment about distributed costs. When you have defined maintenance and upkeep costs, dividing that among an entire taxable population lowers the cost for everyone who uses the asset and the people who don't use it likely won't notice the pennies they spend toward supporting it. There are thousands of roads you've paid for by way of state taxes that you'll never use, but the cost for all intents and purposes to you is negligible. Tolls also create unpredictable income, so the authority has to inflate the cost at the booth to compensate. Rather than funding the public good, these overages get converted into profits.

Nkognito@reddit

This is why you stop voting for people in their position for far too long.

r/FuckGregAbbott

r/fuckkenpaxton

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thephotoman@reddit

Incumbency is not the problem.

Conservatism is.

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ocultada@reddit

What's the liberal plan to reduce toll lane fees?

Have the state buy the toll roads and raise taxes to compensate?

Do blue states not have toll roads?

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TonalParsnips@reddit

Motherfucker we don't have toll roads in ARIZONA. Y'all are being scammed.

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ocultada@reddit

But you pay an income tax instead.

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TonalParsnips@reddit

Yeah for roads that don't suck, and actual rights. Unlike the hellscape you live in.

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moistmoistMOISTTT@reddit

I've never once encountered a toll road in my state. And my state has a much lower of cost living than Texas.

Your state is just extorting you.

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ocultada@reddit

Does your state have a state income tax?

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The crazier part is that you don’t realize that billionaires have their wealth not because of hard work, but because of wage theft, labor exploitation, and inheritance from similarly evil, Mammonist parents.

For example, Elon Musk is a billionaire because he inherited a slave-operated emerald mine. He didn’t work for it. The slaves did.

Jeff Bezos earns what you do in a year in less than a second. There is no labor he performs that is worth that kind of money. He earns it, once again, through underpaying his workers.

The suburbs don't have to be car-dependent hell.

We choose to make them so. Not because anybody wants to protect single family homes, but rather because it allows some jerks to live in the city and still think of themselves as rural. After all, only a city slicker takes the bus or train anywhere. A country boy drives himself where he wants to go in his pickup truck.

We really need to stop romanticizing rural life and feeding our rural delusions.

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playballer@reddit

I’d venture to bet a majority of suburbanites chose to live there because of schools and maybe cost. Romanticizing rural life is low on the list of reasons

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thephotoman@reddit

Oh, there are plenty of suburbanites who acknowledge who they are. Many of them are even open to transit, if it can be done without them seeing ~~the violence inherent in the system~~ homeless people.

They're not the people I'm talking about at all.

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playballer@reddit

patmorgan235@reddit

But... cars aren't the only transportation option, especially in cities?

In many American cities they are the only practical option. Most of our roads are pretty hostile to pedestrians and cyclists, especially here in Texas. Dallas is exceptional in this aspect, the DART member cities has invested the most in the state in try to create an actually usable public transit system. But if you move just outside of the DART service area you're probably going to have a bad time trying to get around without a car. And the DART system is OK, they have some pretty cool plans to make the system actually good and to crank up the frequencies, they just need to find the funding to get it done.

The public transportation is generally pretty stellar in most American cities,

🤣🤣🤣🤣

What are you smoking because I want some.

North America has some of the worse public transit in the world. We barely fund most of systems if they exist at all.

Public Transit is often seen as a social service for the poor, and not as a legitimate way to get around a city.

For some perspective. The state of Texas spends about $40 billion annually on the state road & high system, and only about $100 million to support public transit systems.

It's some sort of weird ignorant take on the reality from people who've never had to field an important job (aka, a job that is needed to prevent the complete collapse of human life) once in their entire lives. Sure, you can live in a car-free world if the only jobs that exist are fast food and retail jobs, but that notion very quickly falls apart of

Maybe try visiting someplace with actually good public transit, most of Europe is pretty good, east aisa has some stellar systems as well. You'll see all kinds of professionals (lawyers, doctors, etc) using the system as their primary, or only means of transportation.

Even small towns have high levels of service with sub 20 minute frequencies in these countries.

Before you call someone ignorant, maybe try and make sure you've gotten outside of your own bubble and experienced the world a bit.

Sure, you can live in a car-free world if the only jobs that exist are fast food and retail jobs, but that notion very quickly falls apart of you care about things like "eating" or "clean water".

Again you're strawing manning here, Of course cars are a necessary part of cities, but it's not necessary for everyone in a city to own a car.

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thephotoman@reddit

I am not advocating for the abolition of all motor vehicles. I am advocating against the continued prevalance of personal motor vehicles as the only real transportation option for regular everyday people.

As such, talking about garbage trucks and water district vehicles is a non-sequitur: those are not personal motor vehicles. In fact, water district vehicles are publicly owned, as are a lot of garbage trucks.

As another point, multiple other countries provide sufficient transit access to rural communities such that farm hands don't have to drive to work. Density is not the key to transit. Public commitment to transit is the key to transit.

You can't just put major chemical evacuation areas in the middle of cities and suburbs, either.

You have never been in a wide area evacuation. I have. Most of the deaths that were caused by Hurricane Rita in 2005 were caused not by the storm, but by the sheer clusterfuck that was evacuating Greater Houston by car. Even getting from an at-risk area of the city to one that was going to be okay took me three hours the day of the evacuation. That event, more than anything else, turned me against car-centered transportation planning.

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moistmoistMOISTTT@reddit

As such, talking about garbage trucks and water district vehicles is a non-sequitur: those are not personal motor vehicles. In fact, water district vehicles are publicly owned, as are a lot of garbage trucks.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I'm not talking about the vehicles that come pick up your trash or service utilities.

Modern water treatment, modern wastewater treatment, modern landfills, etc. would become drastically more expensive if personal vehicles were no longer available. The labor costs would skyrocket if you had to use public transportation to pick up workers in many of these essential basic services.

You can barely comprehend any consequences from what you propose. You have absolutely no idea how much work it takes and how much land a city requires to provide food, clean water, and handle trash/sewage.

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Nozinger@reddit

You do know there are factories with their own train stops in europe?
Those are out in rural areas and thus theoretically hard to reach wwithout a car so what did people do? They built a train.

Even the fucking tesla factory near berlin has its own train running to get people there. Most of the time those aren't dedicated train lines either they ust stop on the way to another town.

Sure some jobs need cars. That is true and totally fine. However most commuting could theoretically be done without a car and that also goes for a lot of jobs in rural areas.

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moistmoistMOISTTT@reddit

Factories that generate no pollution are the least of your worries. You couldn't have clean, cheap drinking water or food without cars.

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IveKnownItAll@reddit

This right here is what's constantly ignored.

I've spent 12yrs now in jobs that can't be done with mass transit. Wtf am I gonna do, haul 200lbs of tools all over DFW on a train or bus?

I just got home from an emergency call that I got at 915pm.

Nah, sorry guys, it'll be 2+ hours with waiting on change busses and trains, and I might not be able to get home after.

We need better mass transit, we do, but this delusion that everyone can or even wants to live in an urban hellscape like NYC, is ridiculous and just ignores reality

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moistmoistMOISTTT@reddit

Agreed. I'm not saying mass transit is bad--options are good and there are a lot of people and corridors that'd benefit from it. But society itself simply would grind to a halt without cars, and it's not something that could be solved by any amount of public transportation without a solution that costs significantly more than cars.

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Independent-Rain-324@reddit

Oddly enough, it’s all fear driven. Those same lofted truck dudes that won’t ride a bus need a gun to go to the grocery store and are absolutely terrified of anything close to urban.

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Schac20@reddit

It's also racism. White people turned against public transportation once it became integrated.

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thephotoman@reddit

I have started praying not for forgiveness, but to be sent to a punitive hell I do not even believe in as quickly as possible, because any other fate for myself and my own people is fundamentally cruel and unjust to everyone else.

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HarveysBackupAccount@reddit

Not because anybody wants to protect single family homes,

That's absolutely part of it. I lived in Minneapolis for a while and proposals to expand the light rail were shot down explicitly because NIMBY-ers didn't want to make it so easy for "suspicious people" to travel through their neighborhoods.

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I live in Balch Springs ( hold your opinion on the location), and it pisses me off that I have to Uber/Lyft downtown.

If I have to drive about 15 mins to the nearest train stop, I may as well drive myself to my destination.

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I mean that 121/820 expressway is definitely getting built faster than public projects. They are expanding it to 3 or more lanes in the HEB part of the toll road it’s been progressing fast. The only time I’ve seen public projects go fast is what’s happening out at 30/820 going out from white settlement/chapel creek area to Walsh ranch. They are working through that project pretty quickly.

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thephotoman@reddit

There’s a reason that toll roads can get built faster than state highways: we insist on a government too small for our actual needs. When the lege can only consider road bonds for 90 days every two years, state highway projects wind up with insufficient oversight and without the flexibility needed to adjust road building plans.

Openly, our use of toll roads in Texas is a result of a government that is failing. They can no longer do one of their most basic functions: maintaining public infrastructure. And our government is failing not because it must, but because we want it to fail.

But then again, if our government wasn’t failing, the car dependency that creates the need for toll roads would also not be a problem.

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Shanakitty@reddit

the people responsible for most of the traffic (that is, the ultra wealthy)

I'm confused by this statement. The majority of the traffic in the Metroplex is obviously not made up of the ultra-wealthy, since that's only a small percentage of people, and everyone except those in the deepest poverty has some kind of vehicle due to a lack of good public transportation.

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AuntieRupert@reddit

The majority of the traffic in the Metroplex is obviously not made up of the ultra-wealthy

And the majority of traffic in the metroplex doesn't use the toll roads. Tarrant County tolls roads see only about 15% of highway traffic, and I'd bet most of that 15% is from businesses who can write off those expenses and not regular folk. Dallas County was more like 20-ish% last time I looked, but I bet it's mostly business traffic as well.

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thephotoman@reddit

If they’re commuting to work, they are driving at the demands of the ultra-wealthy.

After all, return to office was all about making ultra-wealthy CEOs feel better, not about collaboration or productivity, as productivity peaked before RTO.

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Emrick_Von_Pyre@reddit

Robert Moses taught everyone all about doing this through the early to mid 1900s

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Schrodinger81@reddit

Cars are awesome.

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thephotoman@reddit

No, cars are just expensive death traps that smell bad and make a shitton of noise.

Also, their adoption lowered Boomers’ and Gen-X’er’s IQs by 20 points thanks to the wide use of tetraethyl lead in car fuel before 1980, which gave them all lead poisoning.

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_2_old_4_this_@reddit

Cars are indeed, awesome.

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thephotoman@reddit

Except for the part where you can't because there are too many other drivers on the road, so you're never getting past third gear anyway.

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_2_old_4_this_@reddit

Except for that part where I don't do that during rush hour?

Or drive out to locations better for it?

Cars are awesome, sorry yours suck.

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thephotoman@reddit

You sound like a heroin addict extoling how it makes you feel.

And yes, cars are just as dangerous and likely to kill you as heroin. More people die in car wrecks every day than do in ODs.

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DrunkPimp@reddit

Equating cars to heroin. I knew if I checked your profile you’d be eternally online/on Reddit 🤣

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thephotoman@reddit

You only think the comparison is absurd because you’re suffering from car brain. What have the Madison Avenue ad execs done to you?

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DrunkPimp@reddit

Dude, I drive my fucking car when I need to. 😂 I drive a used Lexus. Cars are objectively amazing. You can take this massive piece of machinery around the country, drive the equivalent of 20 trips around the world/200,000 miles before the car reaches the end of its life. That’s a marvel of engineering! I never said I wanted some car centric suburbia.

I’d happily give it up for a walkable city. I’d love a local butcher, bakery, coffee shop, bookstore and nightlife near me.

That doesn’t detract from the fact that I love my Japanese made Lexus, and how much care Toyota took that generation to make a durable, simple car.

I still hate getting into it in traffic, I hate the fact I need to get into it if I want to do any daily errands on a timely fashion. I’m a heroin addict because I live in a suburb and need transportation to live my daily life? I didn’t design the city nor the roads my guy… I’d happily vote against cars and in favor of civic design that gave us less roads and more walkability.

P.S: why do you care so much about walkable cities when we damn well know you don’t even go outside? 😢

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thephotoman@reddit

A car might be a feat of engineering.

But a million cars going to the same place reveals the reason cars cannot be “objectively amazing” or even cool: they absolutely suck at city scale. And it only gets worse when you add the car dependence that the erroneous belief that cars are “objectively amazing” creates—along with the fact that car dependence forces people to drive, even if they shouldn’t have a license.

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_2_old_4_this_@reddit

suffering from car brain

You can't make this shit up. lol.

"Car brain"

Fucking lol.

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_2_old_4_this_@reddit

You sound like a virtue signaling twat queef saying whatever his overloaded estrogen system tells him to say.

Cars are fucking awesome. Not commuter trash meant for a to b, but FUN cars.

I get it, you're stuck in econobox trash. Those of us who aren't, we love being in our vehicles. Their comfortable, their fun, they're fast, they go off road. We enjoy them.

If I was stuck in a car that was over a decade old, was a bottom tier trim even then, and had no redeeming qualities other than it could possibly get you from A to B, i'd hate cars too.

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Sgt-Tau@reddit

Mass transit doesn't work too well in DFW. Everything is too spread out. Last time I did mass transit here, a 10-15 minute drive took 45 minutes to an hour. Then you have the inconvenience of having a rely on a bus schedule and hope and pray there isn't a problem. The Wife once missed her own going away party at work because the bus she was expecting never came.

There are some parts that work ok. I used to take the train into downtown Dallas. I did enjoy not having to drive in that mess. I have only gotten to use the TRE once to make the trip from Dallas to Fort Worth.

When it works, it usually works well.

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Kyosuke-D@reddit

DFW is too big. I mean our airport alone is larger than manhattan. Mass transit only works in concentrated areas

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SCP-iota@reddit

The reason it's too big is largely because of car-dependent suburban sprawl. Parking lots, wider roads, and car-centric district layouts are a major reason things are so far apart here, and then they have the audacity to use that as a reason to continue to encourage car dependency and make the problem worse. It would be a lot easier to implement mass transit if they would stop forcing separated subdivision districts from business districts and thinking that the solution to increased transportation demand is always "just one more lane, bro."

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JBWentworth_@reddit

Other countries have figured out mass transit

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Kyosuke-D@reddit

In small concentrated cities. We have mass transit in NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc.. DFW is different, it’s suburban over urban. People like and want their space. Which is okay too.

Dallas has buses, the dart rail. It keeps expanding, but infrastructure takes decades. It doesn’t happen overnight. The NYC subway system took decades to build.

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thephotoman@reddit

Not just in small, concentrated cities.

Transit doesn't take you anywhere and it sucks.

Where does it suck? Amsterdam? New York? Toyko?

Or do you just mean in cities that were built to systematically make transit not work well?

Transit is awesome and works better than cars by a wide margin if you actually build your city around it. And by the way, building a city isn't something that is done once when it's founded. It's done all the time through planning and zoning cases, and Dallas is densifying and will only become a better transit city over time.

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Rabidschnautzu@reddit

Where does it suck? Amsterdam? New York? Toyko?

We are clearly talking about most of the US, especially many states with lots of toll roads. Don't be dense, you know better.

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TakeATrainOrBusFFS@reddit

There is no reason we can’t have cities with good transit here.

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Rabidschnautzu@reddit

You are completely ignoring my comment. You can have good transit. You can do that by making transit good. If you have to make driving artificially worse to make that happen then imo you are a fraud.

mkt853@reddit

Don't forget the insane sales tax. Moral of the story is they always get it from you some how.

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Kellosian@reddit

Your average Texan ends up with a higher tax bill than your average Californian... unless you're rich, then it flips.

And shockingly there is a long history of the media stepping over poor people to listen to and amplify rich people's narratives

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fl135790135790@reddit

Not trying to be sarcastic, but how in gods name would the average Texan be paying higher tax overall than the average Californian?

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Kellosian@reddit

For a median household, Texas taxes 12.75% and California taxes 8.97%, and that site cites WalletHub. It's mainly consumption and property taxes being lower in California, and our lack of a state income tax doesn't offset it.

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fl135790135790@reddit

All it states in that aspect is California effective property taxes would be on average 0.71% and Texas 1.58%.

Spawn_SC@reddit

Tell me you’ve never lived in California without telling me you’ve never lived in California 🤣. Ya’ll are delusional.

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mkt853@reddit

I am not surprised by that. The media is owned by rich people. This part of the problem. The same people buying the politicians also own all of the media capable of propagandizing the voters. America has a lot of problems that need fixing, and most of them can be traced back to money.

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SilverbackRotineque@reddit

Being a Texas resident in the military and not paying state income tax while living everywhere but Texas was amazing.

I remember that too! For a minute I thought I had just made that up and it was just hopeful wishing. I originally told myself these new toll roads would be converted to public roads after being “paid off”, but deep down I knew I was lying to myself.

These new toll roads aren’t going anywhere and regular highways will be converted into toll roads. It’s already happened to 360 south of I20. I doubt this is an isolated incident. Mark my words, we’ll see more established highways converted into toll roads in the near future.

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TheNotoriousKAT@reddit

Mark my words . . .

It’s currently happening. THE FUTURE IS NOW!

They’re continuing to work on 635 between 75 and I30. They’re adding these toll lanes, just like they did to I35 and the previous expansion on 635.

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md24@reddit

That’s the end goal for the whole country. Everything is for sale.

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ArboristTreeClimber@reddit

China already owns a lot of US farm land.

Not to mention all the family homes and properties being bought up by foreign investors. Simply to renovate and rent them back to us.

Not sell back…..rent. Indefinitely.

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Person421@reddit

Not true, China owns 1% of all foreign owned land in the US

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ArboristTreeClimber@reddit

I said “a lot” which is still true. China owns 384,000 acres of agricultural land in the US.

Vaderb2@reddit

Afk its actually that the American investment companies are buying toll roads in south america and other emerging markets bc they are less regulated and more profitable.

badlyagingmillenial@reddit

I'm fine with paying the tolls, it's worth it to me. I don't get hit with crazy ones like in this post. It's about $6 per day.

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Pookalookie@reddit

Not taking tolls in Texas doubles and sometimes can triple your time of commute. Pay for tolls or the extra gas to get there 🤔

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slim_callous@reddit

The issue is they spend all this money to build this roads for the wealthy and not spend time and effort that benefits everyone.

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GREG_FABBOTT@reddit

Yep. They don't actually expand the normal highways. They leave the normal highways with the same capacity, then add tolls.

Someday they're going to do the same with 287 in Fort Worth, where it separates from I-35 after Basswood. They will leave the 2 regular lanes as they are now (with terrible 5mph traffic for 5 miles non-stop), and expand the toll northward along the highway. Then charge $20 for single use toll one way.

If we cannot vote them out because of their unjust practices rigging the elections after gaslighting democrats about fraud? Show them what happens when they take our voices from us.

Why do we privatize roadways that should have been built using federal tax dollars and etc? Why do the roadways for these toll roads look so much more well built and maintained? Why do the toll roads get to use PRIME land that should have been a public road, forcing this who want to use a highway to travel much further to use the free highways?

Greenmantle22@reddit

It's not the least bit unethical at any price.

Then, the toll road company gets the profits, forever. They'll often say "Only for X length of time", but there is only one toll road in Texas where it actually worked out that way. (Between Dallas and Ft Worth). "It's temporary" was the promise about Dallas North Tollway, but as you can see, they are still charging tolls.

The government loves it. To the point where there is talk about selling off existing roads for that. I-35, for instance, is being considered. Not just some HOV lanes of it, but the whole thing. Imagine how much it will cost to go from Dallas to San Antonio and back when it's toll roads the whole way.

It's not lately.

Thats the express through mid-cities Hurst, Eluess, Bedford) and at 5pm on Thursdays it's been hitting 20 bucks for 10 years or so (was my route to work from 2015-2019, I just took Trinity from iw0 to 360 amd dealt the lights

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The-Snuff@reddit

Ok. Well my “these” and “lately” are the express lanes on I35 in my 10+ years. Discernible difference between the two - absolutely and my bad for that. Just speaking toll lanes in general 👍

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captain_trainwreck@reddit

Oh, the variable toll ones in DFW are ridiculous. I use 121 now to Plano, the fact that it's fixed rate is so nice.

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boldjoy0050@reddit

Why is 183 between Euless and Fort Worth such a terrible road to drive on? I don't remember a time I haven't run into traffic there.

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captain_trainwreck@reddit

3 lanes of 121 and 4(?) lanes of 183 merge and turn 7 lanes into 3 within 2-3 exits, so unless you're already on the toll express on 183 or take it on 121 right before the merge, you're losing over half the traffic lanes immediately.

Horrible design built to incentivize people to accept a $20 fee to drive 5 miles

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OrnerySnoflake@reddit

And what’s with the toll road (east 183) going down to one lane?!?!

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OrnerySnoflake@reddit

Our population has grown over 20% in the last decade and our infrastructure hasn’t changed much in over 20 years. The biggest change for Ft Worth infrastructure has been I30 from downtown to University. Why the hell haven’t we updated every other major highway in Fort Worth like this?!?!

Well yeah, this is a toll road within a toll road. You don't have to use the express lane, just like you don't have to use the toll roads.

ilikeoregon@reddit

What does ethics have to do with capitalism? The role of government is to balance against capitalism.

Texas gets what it voted for. Try electing some Dems. Texas once had a female Governor.

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Ununhexium420@reddit

What the absolute fuck? I remember this being about 4-6 bucks 3 years ago

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cas24563@reddit

The fact that it exists.

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Wolfryder3@reddit

The price gets this high when they want people to stop using it. The goal of the toll roads is to help traffic flow at a minimum of 50mph. When the toll lanes aren’t necessary to accomplish this, the price goes up, when traffic slows, it becomes cheaper to use when they want to encourage more people to use it in order to relieve congestion.

For out of state people that see this and think that the Texas government is just completely corrupt, tolls are capped at a maximum of $1.06 per mile, what is in this image does not reflect cost per mile, but per trip (and I agree that it is still too high). Also, the deal that was made with the private corporation in charge of these roads, requires them to provide $1.5 billion in new lanes at no cost to taxpayers.

Remember y’all. They were supposed to become free after the tolls paid for the initial cost of the build. And then would be turned on to monetize once maintenance was required.

Wish Trump would pick a fight with this stuff instead of the ~16$ rush hour taxes in NYC :(

I don’t get it???? Just don’t use it? Like literally if you don’t use it then you don’t pay them.

If you don’t use them and they still keep the prices the same then they are priced right to market.

Visually, looks pretty similar to the map of Texas, no? Blue areas are predominantly bigger areas, red areas are rural areas.

Now consider that roughly 75% of the 12.71 million population of Illinois lives in Chicagoland.

Roughly 65% of the 31.3 million population of Texas lives in a big city. Add an additional 10% of the Texan population to big cities and we, too, likely go blue.

But then, another complication--Texas also is 269, 597 square miles. Illinois is 57,915. There is WAY more rural land in Texas and that rural land is way more isolated.

There's way more to it (but I don't have all night), and I'm not saying Texas shouldn't do better. I'm just saying it's way more complicated than this red state/blue state nonsense, and people who talk like you just did mostly seem to be ignoring that--and often it seems like it's just to stroke their own egos. Well, either that or I have to seriously question how deeply they actually think through these topics.

Oh, also, you're saying this shit on a sub for one of the blue areas. You're free to have your own (IMO smug and reductive) thoughts, but also... classy.

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Dalearev@reddit

In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Texas voters favored Republican nominee Donald Trump over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Trump secured approximately 56.1% of the vote, while Harris received about 42.4%, resulting in a margin of roughly 13.7 percentage points in favor of Trump.

This margin was significantly larger than in previous elections; for instance, in 2020, Trump’s margin in Texas was about 5.6 percentage points.

These results indicate that, while Texas has shown increasing competitiveness in past elections, the 2024 results reflect a more decisive preference for the Republican candidate.

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No_Turnip1766@reddit

No, I shared exactly what I was talking about in the first place: that these issues aren't as simple as they seem. And I gave an example comparing two states to illustrate my meaning.

I used to be in an account position for a small company. I would audit transactions some times. One period I started looking at our toll expenses and was surprised to see that I had drivers spending $40-50 on tolls going one way for customers.

That's why I avoid toll roads. Biggest scam ever.

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Prydz22@reddit

That's a great deal! Drivers should be pleased with coerced toll tag practices. (Higher rates if you don't have our tags, you peasants!)

Corporate logic

Can we revolt? This is an un-American taxation. When do we invade their headquarters?

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Responsible-Rip8793@reddit

Always has been

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jenniliz14@reddit

There are no ethics in toll road pricing

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MendonAcres@reddit

I end up down there once every few years. As a visitor, I'm more than pleased to pay this extortion, because it saves so much time.

Living with it would suck.

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MllA87@reddit

The toll roads are a scam and we continue to buy into it.

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animal-1983@reddit

While wondering why your groceries cost so much. Also wonder how much they charge the trucks delivering your groceries. Before you say we don’t have to take the tolls. There are some we must. Some we can’t. Some we need to so your food doesn’t rot. Trucks are typically 2-3 times what you pay some even more.

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whip_lash_2@reddit

On the express lanes I don’t have a problem with it as long as the promised good (smoothly flowing traffic) is being delivered.

DudeImSoRad@reddit

It's a luxury tax.

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Thin_Bad_4152@reddit

Your whole state is unethical

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ra3ra31010@reddit

Never

EpilepticSquidly@reddit

We have someone like this is California. It started off as a toll road for 10 years to pay for it's construction.

Then somehow it got sold to an international investor.

You vote for this when you ask for more lanes and vote against people who will reduce sprawl and car dependency.

You shouldn’t use money to control capacity. You should limit access. Using money makes it hard for poor people to spend less time on the road.

The tolls on some "express" lanes get set by algorithm with the goal of keeping traffic volume within a certain range so the lane doesn't get congested. Traffic must be bad, so more people are considering the express lane, the express lane is probably slowing down because it's over capacity targets, so they raise rates until traffic drops and the lanes start flowing again.

It'll go way down at off-peak hours.

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Ddude147@reddit

I WFH but must RTO in Plano for 1 week every 5 weeks. Dallas North Tollway costs ~ $5 daily. $100+/month if they made us give up the best perk. 83% WFH.

Waze says 17 miles to and fro. That's way out yonder.

Substantial-Ad-8575@reddit

Not the express lanes. Dallas North Tollway been paid off for a bit, until they expanded up to 380. Bush was about paid off, until extended 75 to i30.

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mrglass8@reddit

Never? Just don’t take the toll… The fact that you don’t want to pay it is a sign that it’s working.

Or complain about it, get it changed, and complain about congestion.

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DookieMcDookface@reddit

Ridiculous