The California Experience

"When the state first embraced toll roads, think tanks, politicians and government officials couldn't find enough superlatives to describe them."

Sounds familiar doesn't it? But the public-private toll plan turned into disaster. The once proponents couldn't run away from it fast enough!

"We must never allow the state's obligation to build a first-rate public highway system to be compromised again" —California state Senator Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks)

The motives were the same in California as they now are in Texas, a shortage of transportation funds. Why is it that so many are willing to believe that a tollway will generate 'new' money without also creating equal or greater 'new' costs?

"Facing an acute shortage of transportation funds at the time, legislators said tollways would take the pressure off snarled freeways and accommodate future residential and commercial development ..."

Source:
"Tollway Trial at a Dead End in California," Dan Weikel, Los Angeles Times © 2002 [Published July 7, 2002]