Texas Avoids Tolls On Planned Highway Expansion

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DALLAS -- The Texas Transportation Commission last week approved a non-toll option for a $530 million highway project in San Antonio with the expectation that voters will approve a state constitutional amendment on the November ballot that provides additional funding.

The widening of the eight-mile segment of U.S. 281 was first conceived as a toll-funded effort more than 10 years ago but local officials now say the proposed amendment will provide enough money to the area to avoid the need to impose tolls.

The San Antonio project will remove the traffic lights from the existing roadway and convert it into a six-lane expressway. There will be dedicated lanes for transit and high-occupancy vehicles but no tolls on any of the lanes following the commission's decision to build the project with a mixture of state, local, and federal funds.

The commission voted Sept. 24 to build the project in two phases.

The first leg, which is expected to cost $228 million, will be funded with existing revenue.

The second phase will carry the expanded road into neighboring Comal County. That segment, which is expected to cost $304 million, would be funded with the $200 million to $250 million per year that the San Antonio region expects from the Proposition 7 amendment to be decided by Texas voters in November.

Proposition 7 would provide $2.5 billion per year of general sales tax revenue to the state transportation fund beginning in 2018 and another $400 million a year of motor vehicle sales tax revenues beginning in 2020.

Transportation Commissioner Bruce Bugg said the decision to not fund the highway project with toll revenue was in part a response to complaints from residents that would use the road every day.

"I could not be more pleased that we are helping the local community plan much needed congestion relief on U.S. 281, and doing it without an additional burden to drivers in the area," Bugg said.

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican who represents a San Antonio district, supported the removal of tolls from the funding mix.

Tolls were among the few revenue sources available when the highway project was proposed in 2005 but Texas lawmakers have provided more funding for highways over the past two legislative sessions, Straus said.

"There is broad support for expanding U.S. 281 without tolls, and we'll have the resources to do it if Proposition 7 passes," Straus said. "I hope the Legislature's efforts to prioritize transportation will erase the need for tolls on other projects in Bexar County also."

Even so, he noted, tolling must remain as a tool for state highway planners.

"Our transportation challenges are too significant for tolling to disappear entirely as an option on any project, anywhere in Texas," Straus said.

The decision to not levy tolls on the rebuilt highway is a victory for all Texas taxpayers, said Terri Hall of the advocacy group Texans For Toll-Free Highways.

"We're absolutely thrilled," Hall said. "There's definitely a shift in the climate, away from toll roads, and we're excited about that."

Hall said she has been critical of the toll plan since it first surfaced in 2005. San Antonio is the only large city in Texas without a toll road.

"Tolls are the most expensive way to fund highways," she said. "We're glad we're going to have this money provided by a constitutional amendment, because that will remove road funding from the whims of a two-year budget cycle."

Texas voters last year approved a state constitutional amendment that will deposit a percentage of the state's oil and gas tax revenues into the transportation fund.

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