Veteran anti toll road activist Terri Hall says the Metropolitan Planning Organization's 'fantasy' toll road plan, first reported on Tuesday by News Radio 1200 WOAI, has already reached a dead end because it is financially unworkable, and possibly illegal.
An MPO advisory board has rubber stamped an $880 million plan to expand Loop 1604 across the city's north side, from Bandera Rd. to I-35, by building managed 'toll lanes' in what is not the grassy center median between the two roadways.
Hall, who as head of the grass roots group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, is credited with helping change the public and the state government attitude toward toll roads, says this is just another example of unelected bureaucrats having no clue about what real working people want or need in highway development.
"Over 97% of Texas commuters use their personal auto to get too and from work," he said. "They want you to ditch your car and get into mass transit, which costs more and is less efficient, because they think the private automobile is evil."
In an unusual bit of candor for a government official, San Antonio City Councilman Ray Lopez, who serves on the MPO Transportation Advisory Committee, admitted that the goal of the 'managed lanes' which would be free for 'government approved' high occupancy vehicles, and would require individuals commuting to work alone in their car to pay a toll, in reality are an effort to "encourage transit and carpooling."
Hall asked where Lopez and other MPO members are getting their facts, because scientific, peer reviewed study after study have concluded that HOV lanes are 'highly inefficient' and a 'waste of taxpayer money.'
"After 40 years of HOV lanes across the country, it has not increased carpooling one iota," she said, challenging Lopez to come up with any statistics that show the opposite.
She speculates that the planned construction of 'managed, high occupancy vehicle' lanes, not just on Loop 1604, but on U.S. 281, Interstate 10 in northwest Bexar County and elsewhere, is simply a ruse to turn them into toll lanes after several years, when motorists realize that nobody is using those lanes.
"They will then sell these lanes to people who can afford to pay $10 to drive one way to work," she said, referring to toll lanes as 'Lexus Lanes' and said anybody who is concerned about the growing 'income divide' should be outraged about this idea.
She says the whole thing amounts to 'triple taxation.'
"They are double taxing you that is never going to pay for itself with just the toll users, and they have to use public tax money to subsidize it, it's going to be a failure from the outset."
PHOTO: GETTY