Quote:
Originally Posted by Wyldeman30
What I meant by efficiency is that they do not want them congested. If we made 18 wheelers take the toll roads then it would help with the I35 cluster fuck. We needed to do something about that problem long before Perry was ever in office. Can we say Ann Richards. What did she do to help with Texas infrastructure??
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Dude, take a drive up the toll road. regular people done take them either because they want too much $$ every fucking 3-5 miles. if they dont move truckers off of the only real north south conduit, whats the point? the point is it lines peoples pockets in state funds they got .. from us. that snake of a tollroad is the dumbest idea that has ever come to fruition.
quote:
A truck toll break might offer I-35 relief
Ben Wear, Getting There
Updated: 5:47 a.m. Monday, Dec. 21, 2009
Published: 6:55 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009
Toll road advocates never promised Texas 130 would solve the 18-wheeler problem on Interstate 35, not in so many words.
But in justifying the $2 billion or so it took to build the 56-mile bypass of Austin, officials seldom failed to mention the danger and choking exhaust of the big rigs on I-35. Well, this is no scoop, but the trucks, a whole bunch of them, are still among us.
According to 2007 traffic counts of I-35, the most recent available, there were almost 24,000 "multi-axle" vehicles a day on I-35 at U.S. 183, "multi" in this case meaning more than the normal two axles and four wheels on cars, light trucks and modest-sized delivery trucks. That was about 10 percent of the total traffic.
Initial segments of Texas 130 opened in late 2006. The tollway had at most 2,200 multi-axle vehicles in a count this fall. The trucks make up less than 8 percent of Texas 130 traffic, according to Texas Department of Transportation statistics.
More to the point, the numbers indicate that there are at least 10 times as many trucks using I-35 as there are using Texas 130. So I counted earlier this month.
For an hour during the afternoon rush period, I sat on the frontage road just south of where Texas 45 Southeast branches off from the interstate. This vantage point made it possible to count how many vehicles with three or more axles took I-35 north into the maw of Austin's rush hour, and how many headed east for the wide open spaces of Texas 130.
(I recommend this highly to insomniacs.)
My count: 262 trucks took I-35, 21 turned right, a 12.5 -to-1 ratio.
It's easy to understand why. For one thing, a large chunk of trucks entering the Austin area on I-35 carry loads bound for points within the metro area. Texas 130 would be out of the way for them. But even for those 18-wheelers simply passing through, the toll bypass is both 12 miles longer — meaning more diesel cost — and carries a toll of about $26 .
Big rigs, you see, have a toll rate four times that of two-axle vehicles. Every time I write about this, I hear from people suggesting that TxDOT lower or eliminate this truck toll to get more of them off I-35. So I looked into it.
Turns out TxDOT could lower or eliminate the truck toll. The agency's legal agreement with bond investors requires only that it make enough in tolls to cover its debt payments along with a 40 percent cushion called "coverage." The three-tollway system of Texas 130, Texas 45 North and Loop 1, while not a wild financial success, is making much more than that.
I asked Mark Tomlinson , TxDOT's toll division director, if the agency has discussed some sort of truck toll rate cut. Yes, he said, they had, and it's not out of the question. Is it about to happen?
No, Tomlinson said, saying that it's no slam-dunk that a toll cut would lure trucks off I-35. It might be worth finding out.
