VinnyVincent

So you guys admit that people are paying outrageous fees to use a road that was paid off so long ago that now it's just about as slow as the free roads. At any rate, I plan on doing this in the evening after people are off work. I'm thinking 7p.m. Should still be enough traffic to have an effect but not so much that they were already barely moving anyways. We would also travel along a strategic section that is laid out best for our cause.(not parts where it is 7+ lanes)

I'm sorry(that you have to visit that area daily)

LOL you must not be from Houston either. I have a girlfriend, who has a daughter and I'd like to not risk them getting raped when they are walking outside to get the mail.

That's BS. How many years were we continuing to pay tolls on BW8 to subsidize the hardy? Doesn't sound like a success to me... 99 is always empty when I see it. 130...lol And you know lots of things are successful but not right. White collar crime comes to mind.

Where exactly am I supposed to live? Inside the 610 loop? Who can afford that?

Please the general public isn't going to read the ballot. The public was misled as to what the ballot meant.

https://www.change.org/p/texans-for-toll-free-highways-heavily-reform-toll-roads-by-legislation-or-litigation-sign-the-petition

You might hate them but the reality is that they have been very effective in pushing the city to make it more bike friendly by adding bike lanes and the like.

I have a little experience in reading financials. I'm not a financial analyst or anything, but I've looked at quite a few back when I was trying to make some money in the stock market. From what I understand it is VERY easy to manipulate a financial statement that is audited. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental-analysis/financial-statement-manipulation.asp But do you know what makes it even easier? When you have the amount of money, power and influence that HCTRA has.

SO I am asking your thought's on the legality of this idea:Set up a meet sort of like critical mass. We all meet up and go for a "group drive/ride" on the entire BW8 loop...only we are all going to take up every single lane and drive as slowly as legally possible.Think it would work? I mean if I got at least a good 30-50 cars what could they really do about a chunk of cars driving really slow?

And don't forget to include in the bill for the mileage tax that no new toll roads are to be built, and existing tolls should only to be to pay off current debt. Seems Totally reasonable to me considering we have no state income tax.

Seems fair to me. 1 cent a mile for me would be about 150-200 a year VS about 3300 in tolls if I were to take BW8 to work each day instead of sitting on 290 and 45. Would be easy to record mileage during state inspections

I also hope you guys realize that you will be sending your money to the developer, a private company this time around. They are getting more brave with this crap and they are going to take it as far as we let them...

One more thing samagon; You say troll roads are successful because people use them...I say people only use them because we keep building them and tolling roads that were paid off multiple times over. It's getting to where there are few roads in the houston area that don't have a toll and certainly there aren't many highways left that don't at least have a "managed lane" (government speak for toll road) This is where the protest comes in. It's not to do something unrealistic, like eliminate all existing toll roads. It's to get these idiots from doing insane crap like selling off the median in every existing road possible, making every single new road tolled, and continuing to toll roads that have been paid for. All of that needs to go away. I don't think that's asking a lot.

Agreed

Also the latest trend is to convert existing roads into tolled roads or add "managed lanes" which screws up everyone else's commute whether you want to admit it or not. THEY are the ones moving into my area, not the other way around.

To expand more on the "you chose to live near a toll road" comment. I moved to Houston almost ten years ago now. Traffic was bad then but it was manageable. It's gotten totally out of hand since then and it seems like virtually nothing has been done to accommodate it, short of constructing toll roads, some in areas that don't even need roads while problem areas are ignored. In other words I didn't choose to live in an area where toll roads were the only reasonable transportation option. The local government has failed to keep up with expanding the roads in spite of what is likely a massive increase in tax dollars from the increase in population. Instead of spending money on roads they've been wasting it on dumb stuff, so now we are stuck with toll roads as an option. That needs to change.

You kind of contradicted yourself there. People continue to use toll roads because toll roads are the only reasonable option for some people. However it is NOT a specific tax. If I get on BW8, I'm paying 1.75 every few miles on a road that was paid for 12 times over. I'm effectively subsidizing roads that i am not even using, so it is the exact scenario that you said "screw that" to, only it is more expensive and less efficient than a real tax subsidy. I also wouldn't say I "choose" to live anywhere. Most people go to areas where they can find a decent job.

https://www.hctra.org/Home There's no .gov in that URL. You know you keep strongly associating HCTRA with the government, but the fact is they operate more like a private, for profit company than a government agency.

I think it should be a 10% tax on fuel that way it would raise along with gas prices and economic strength, plus further encourage the use of more efficient vehicles. I tend to agree with your vehicle weight tax as well. With all that being said, people keep saying we can't build roads like we used to because of inflation...however isn't the amount of fuel we are burning significantly higher than what we used to burn? Plus there is toll revenue which seems to be just vanishing without a trace. Do vehicle registration fees not go toward roads as well? Those have gone up quite a bit too. It costs +/- 80 dollars to register a vehicle now even though it is less paperwork with their new system. Everything keeps going up, up, up...yet somehow the money we are using to build roads out of that tax pool seems to be going down/we are getting a whole lot less for more money.

Going to the HCTRA website to get the "facts" is akin to asking the Russians if they have been spying on us. What do you think the answer is going to be?

The fact is we have paid for BW8 12 times and the toll needs to go away.

BW8 has been paid for 12 times. I'm not interested in reading a bunch pages of numbers put out by the organization in question who is continuing to charge us to use a road that was paid for 12 times. I'm not going to trust anything coming from that organization. It's very, very easy to play with numbers on a financial statement to make them look good and if you look at the way you have to pretty much solve a riddle to figure it all out, you can see that this is exactly what their accountants did. Sure maybe it's part of the government, but you have non-elected officials making a very good living off of that road and they have vested interest in charging you as much as possible. The system is flawed and the first thing that needs to happen is HCTRA needs to go. Here's a list of what should happen taken from the change website:

12 TIMES! We've paid for the Fing road 12 TIMES!!!!!!! ENOUGH!

Here's one of the many reasons HCTRA needs to go away: http://abc13.com/archive/8671067/ Really Mr. Key, like what roads? The hardy toll road? Other roads HCTRA has built? How about we get rid of HCTRA along with the toll on BW since people who ride BW8 are currently not paying for BW 8, but funding their next cash cow toll road business money making opportunity.