Well, we’d hate to spend our surplus on that
Bredesen is exploring toll roads to pay for TDOT. This is despite TN’s surplus. Let me be the first to say fuck that. Toll roads are inconvenient, delay traffic, require me to keep change/method of payment in my car, and are generally a pain in the ass. Here’s an idea: use the surplus or cut spending.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:24 am
I take the Pennsylvania Turnpike every day to and from work. My total contribution to the turnpike commission is about the value of one new black rifle a year, which is very depressing. People who have to take toll roads are basically paying an extra tax, while their normal tax dollars subsidize the roads everyone else gets to drive on for free. Tolls are total crap, and you are absolutely right you don’t want them coming to your area. If they ever ripped up the tolls here, I’d gladly use my EZ-Pass for target practice.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Cut Spending?
Revolutionary idea. So simple, so obvious, yet no one considers it.
This is the normal warmup for another State Income Tax. Hippies or congresscritters, which are dumber? The great question of our time.
Begin the mantra, for the children we must do this…
The spending is the problem. More taxes are not the solution. I knew I was prescient when I didn’t vote for Bredesen.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:44 am
[…] Say Uncle expresses his opinion on news that Gov. Bredesen is exploring the use of toll roads in eff…: Bredesen is exploring toll roads to pay for TDOT. This is despite TN’s surplus. Let me be the first to say f*ck that. […]
March 29th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Paying tolls doesn’t have to be inconvient anymore, it can be handled by RFID as you zoom past at full speed. However, in most cases it is paying twice, since you’re probably already paying more in gas taxes than your share of the roads should cost. It’s one thing when the toll pays for a bridge with costs much higher than the normal road system, or even for a better-than-normal divided highway, but the last time I drove the Pennsy Turnpike, it was in terrible shape. Most Michigan counties do better maintenance on two-lane country roads, so I don’t know what the heck the Pennsy tolls were paying for.
March 29th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Just wait, After a few years they will find that they can make more money by leasing it out to a foreign corporation…
March 29th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Yup, and they know exactly who went where at what time. All that data gets warehoused, presumably forever, just in case they ever find it useful.
Since they don’t consider that data yours, they’re free to mine it for whatever purposes. In other words, no, the police don’t even need to bother to get a court order to snoop on you.
March 29th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
I heard them mention contracting out the toll roads on radio news this morning. Would that mean turning our roads over to a foreign corporation like they want to do with the NAFTA highway in Texas?
March 29th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
I have EZPass for the toll roads here in Jersey. I don’t even slow down at GSP toll plazas and the Turnpike only has tolls at exits. They are also really nice roads (GSP especially).
Tolls in TN would work for entrance to the state (How Pennsylvania does it on i78). One toll takes care of the out of staters who don’t pay for the maintenance. Intrastate tolls in TN would suck though no matter the distance between payments.
Gas tax: Gas is cheap in New Jersey and they pump it for you too. They learned along time ago that any federal taxes paid here, don’t get spent here.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Gas is significantly cheaper in PA. All those full service people need to get paid somehow.
I’m sure the gas-pumpers local 5322 in NJ keeps those service station attendants in a job over “safety” concerns but it’s odd that in Wyoming, you can purchase fuel from a station after-hours all by yourself if you happen to have a credit card. No service station attendants needed, it’s just like using a coke machine or an ATM.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
NJ gas stations are owner-operator deals (So. Jersey has Wawa, I know), so playing the big scary union card is a non starter. Safety isn’t the reason why they don’t let you pump your own in Jersey. It’s about customer turnover. They claim they can roll out faster than if they let the customers pump. I just like the fact that I don’t have to get out of my car is shitty weather. I just came from a meeting in Stroudsburg today and gas was $2.74 a gallon in PA. It’s $2.15 down the street from my place in Jersey City.
March 30th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Tn DOT has the reputation for being the most corrupt in the nation. I have more than 4000 reasons for believing it.
You also can trust that toll roads will not equate to good roads, nor even improved roads.
To my knowledge Ky is the only state that has ever removed tolls from highways as promised, when the road was paid for. No others have done so. Once passed, it will always remain as another tax.
March 30th, 2007 at 9:09 am
The union referance was a joke. Although there isn’t likely a “gas-pumpers local 5322”, they do have to get an 8-hour training certifice before they are allowed to pump gas. In that class they learn things like the proper fuel container to use and other complex important safety stuff.
The requirement to have attendents pump gas seems to be widely liked in the state, it seems to have popular support. Still, it’s goverment mandaded busy work for 200,000 people.
My guess for why the price isn’t sky high is because the road fuel tax seems to be only 14.5 cents rather than the 31.2 in PA, not because it’s any faster to fuel the cars. I don’t regularly price shop gas in NJ, so you may be right. I just find gas cheaper in PA vs. MD (oddly enough, cheaper at 23.5 cents)
NJ rejects self-service gas
Road fuel taxes
March 30th, 2007 at 9:10 am
And all they give me to pump my own gas is a sign.
March 30th, 2007 at 9:55 am
It’s one thing when the toll pays for a bridge with costs much higher than the normal road system, or even for a better-than-normal divided highway, but the last time I drove the Pennsy Turnpike, it was in terrible shape. Most Michigan counties do better maintenance on two-lane country roads, so I don’t know what the heck the Pennsy tolls were paying for.
My guess is the massive bureaucracy known as the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. They have a very nice, and rather large building, that’s right off the turnpike in Harrisburg. It’s hard to believe the turnpike commission really needs that many people to justify a building that large.
But I apologize on behalf of our state for the potholes. Pennsylvania is legendary for the crappy condition of its highways.
March 30th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Dude, just turn in your small-l libertarian card right now. You’re not allowed to self-identify with anything libertarian any more. A toll road is a use tax, also known as the only kind of taxes that libertarians don’t despise. And you just crapped on that. What little libertarian street cred you had left is now gone.
March 30th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Dude, are they privately owned roads? And, you might have a point if we were talking about getting rid of gas taxes etc.
And I don’t oppose them for being a use tax. I oppose them for being a pain in the ass. And for being a tax in general.
March 30th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
[…] sheds the last of his with this screed: Bredesen is exploring toll roads to pay for TDOT. This is despite TN’s surplus. Let me be the […]
March 30th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
What does private ownership have to do with anything?
March 30th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
that’s the libertarian ideal, isn’t it? and i don’t support that either.
March 31st, 2007 at 7:34 pm
tgirsch: The problem is, we’re paying two or three times. Gas taxes are a use tax – but they divert much of the money to other things than roads. For local roads, I have to pay property taxes, although I still burn gasoline driving on them, because not enough of that gas tax money filters through the state and federal bureaucracies to reach the local level, which is who is responsible for maintaining by far the most miles of road. For turnpikes, I pay once when I buy gas, and again for the tolls – and sometimes I see where I’m getting something more than the usual roads for my money (fast, well-maintained roads with limited traffic through urban areas, or a little closer to where I live, the Mackinac Bridge), but sometimes it’s pretty obvious that most of both “user fees” have been stolen – like a pot-hole-filled rural turnpike.
I’d quite well agree with making all roads built and maintained by state, federal, or private agencies roads toll roads, under three conditions:
1) No more gas tax, we pay only once.
2) Since competitve roads are scarce, some accounting for where the money goes – but as badly as road taxes have often been misused, don’t expect too much.
3) An absolute ban on accessing the RFID toll database for any purpose but toll collection – backed up by two unique legal provisions (which shouldn’t be all that unique). One, any agency that violates your privacy owes you $100,000 plus legal fees. Two, whoever did it committed a felony with a mandatory 1 year sentence – and if the DA doesn’t prosecute, you can, and also charge those legal fees to the violating agency. For example, you won’t receive a speeding ticket on the grounds that you went from one toll receiver to the next too fast, because if it happens you’re rich and some cop is trading his badge number for a prisoner number, not to mention being permanently an ex-cop as a felon.
4) The toll-paying system allows anonymity by those who still don’t trust the database security. That is, you can pay cash for the RFID module for your car, and take it into any gas station to re-charge it, both without giving your name.
March 31st, 2007 at 7:52 pm
And we should add a “data retention” provision. If you are paying your tolls, there’s no reason to hold on to the data of who passed through what toll booth when, beyond say 30 days. If the data is erased, then the data can’t be misused..