As a resident of exurban Dallas, and one who's job takes him all over the metro area on a regular basis, I've developed some hot sports opinions regarding the transportation grid in our fair burg.
I'll sum those opinions up in a single word for you: INADEQUATE.
Roadwork in the Dallas/Ft Worth Metroplex of Love is omnipresent. If we aren't building a High Five, then we're extending a North Dallas Tollway or slogging through expansion of a State Highway 121 or widening an Interstate 35. If I had any brains at all, I'd chuck this consulting thing and buy a motor grader and a back-hoe or two and go into road construction.
It's everywhere.
But I've noticed a huge disparity in the projects that get started and, more importantly, that get completed. Toll roads like the aforementioned North Dallas Tollway, which was completed on schedule and is now a WONDERFUL part of my daily commuting life regardless of where I'm headed (and which probably tacks an extra $20 grand onto the value of my house), get started and completed on schedule. Publicly funded projects like the also-aforementioned I-35 south of Dallas seem to drag on for YEARS, with no end in sight.
State Highway 121 thru Denton and Collin counties is another great example. Publicly funded for years and years, the project to make a real highway out of what was essentially a country road has dragged on and on, making the road virtually impassable since the late 90s and probably irrevocably destroying an aging bedroom community called The Colony. Here lately, though, ownership of the road and the project has transferred to the North Texas Tollway Authority and there is hope that 121 will become a viable alternative route across the northern part of the area before I'm too old to drive it.
What has prompted this post is an opinion piece in the Metro section of today's DMN. In it, Duane Green rails a bit about the concept of double taxation, which has become the rallying cry of the anti-toll road contingent in these parts. Green points out that he's paying taxes to build roads in the form of a $0.20-per-gallon gasoline tax, so why should he have to pay a toll to a private company for the privilege of driving their toll road in addition.
It's a legitimate point.
To be fair, Green also points out that this tax has not increased since 1991. His solution is to raise the tax (he suggests raising it a nickel a gallon) in an effort to make state funds more available to complete the projects underway and to start new ones.
Seems reasonable, right?
I'm not so sure.
Here's the fiscal conservative in me coming out (I used to call it the "fiscal Republican" in me, but GWB has pretty much killed that sentiment, but that's another post for another day), but I just don't have faith that the state government can manage these projects as effectively as a private enterprise.
The NTTA, love 'em or hate 'em (and I LOVE them), gets stuff done. Why? Because there's a profit motive for them to do so, of course. My take: Dude, if you can build the roads, I'm happy as heck to pay my Toll Tag bill every month.
I trust NTTA to manage their people, projects, and cash a lot more than I trust Rick (Gov. Good Hair) Perry and his minions. And who takes over after Perry takes up residence at the Naval Observatory in a few years? Hell, this state almost elected Clayton Williams governor a few years back. Does he, or someone like him, need to be running around with responsibility for my $0.25 a gallon? No effing way!
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I fundamentally think more roads and more internal combustion engines driving more miles are not sustainable solutions to the problem. We ultimately need to break the paradigm, for any of about 2 million reasons. However, electric vehicles aren't getting here quickly enough, and I have a major problem with people who insist light rail and busses are practical in our sprawling Metroplex of Love. They're not now and never will be.
Here's the upshot to me: We have a real need for improved transportation in this area. Roads are it, for the foreseeable future. How do we most expeditiously build those roads? Answer: We don't let the nincompoops in Austin manage it. We let the wonders of free enterprise do it for us.
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