Last summer on a visit to Austin I jumped on the new toll road to miss Austin traffic on my way there and when I left and expected to get a bill as I have before from other toll roads across the country. Now I find that the toll road has fallen on hard times
http://sfppr.org/2016/08/texas-first-foreign-owned-toll-road-handed-to-creditors/
and the once highly hooplahed highway is now a derelict that was mostly payed for by US. Imagine that.
Another in a long, long list of botched government decisions.
Here in the northeast we have the infamous “Big Dig”, a mile long tunnel in Boston that continues to cost endless billions and accomplished absolutely nothing.
What’s sadly pathetic is that this kind of BS is going on everywhere.
Several things about toll roads in OK irritate me. One is that a major metro area like Tulsa is landlocked by toll roads in every direction. The alternative is winding 2 lanes. A few years ago they were talking about building another one towards Wichita, KS.
The turnpike I take to Tulsa had its bonds paid off a dozen or so years ago. The statutes stated that when the bonds were paid the turnpike has to become a free road. So what did the Turnpike Commission do? They enacted a statute that if bond money was owed on ANY turnpike then none of them could become free roads. They then went on a turnpike building spree in the OK City area.
As for the Austin thing, you can bet a handful of people at the top are not suffering financially because of it…
Does the Texas government count as a government? This reads more like Rick Perry, Inc. making a bundle at the expense of the citizens of Texas. That stuff would never fly in Maryland. Of course, Maryland has the reputation of being unfriendly to business.
Texas throws tax breaks at business to get them to locate operations there. Workmans compensation insurance is optional in Texas. If an employer doesn’t want to buy it, their employees are on their own. Is it any wonder that Texas would create a sweetheart deal like this? Not at all, IMO. It seems to me that Texas is so business friendly that they are citizen unfriendly.
My taxes are a lot higher in Maryland than if I lived in Texas. I don’t mind paying them because I get something for it.
Oh, oh! Get the kids off the street! 
Somehow I sense that another one of those nobody is correct political debates has begun. 
People get the government they deserve. 
I’ll show myself out, thank you. 
CSA
Yeah this can start a never ending discussion. I don’t like toll roads but if the alternative is no roads I’ll put up with them. But I don’t agree with them being in private hands. I for one would be in favor of a toll network for trucks only to get those endless streams of semis off the normal interstates. Just my opinion and of course I only have one vote like “most” other people.
+1
In addition to all of the other issues involved with turning public assets over to private enterprise, how could anyone assume that this type of arrangement would ultimately result in lower costs for the state’s residents, given the multi-million dollar salaries of the CEOs of those private entities? Yes, I know that everyone loves to complain about the salaries of public employees, but the top salaries at state agencies are so much lower than the salaries for upper and middle management personnel in private enterprise that there is really no valid comparison.
The voters must wanted these toll roads, otherwise they’d have voted for somebody who was opposed to toll roads. You get what you vote for I guess.
Most of the country’s toll roads were established 50-60 years ago.
Whether the voters of that era elected “the right person” is an issue that is no longer relevant, IMHO, as many/most of those voters are now deceased.
Run! I’ll go to the saloon and get the Sheriff!
CSA
When you look at the costs (to the driver) for a toll road, they are quite low, Usually only a fraction of the gas costs, for example. Boston to Phila, for example, is about $14, for 350 miles.
I’m all for anything that discourages automobile usage, such as high gas taxes. This encourages high MPG cars and public transportation.
TSM, I disagree with you re the “big dig”. Yes, it cost too much, but the end result is great.
Those could be kind of fighting words at a place called “Car Talk”. Like going into a bar and putting up no drinking signs.
Ha, ha, ha…! 
Run everybody! Get out while you still can!
CSA
Here’s why you weren’t billed: Last time I checked, Texas did not have the ability to bill out of state cars on their toll roads where there aren’t traditional toll plazas. They would need access to other state’s registration databases, which the don’t have.
There might be another explanation, I think.
Several years ago, I must have been distracted, and wound-up in the “E-Z Pass only” lanes of an area of the NJ Turnpike where I had never driven before. Of course, I cursed myself for putting myself in this situation, but ~4 years later, I have still not received a bill for that violation.
According to some news articles, there are occasional screw-ups with billing, with the result that people are billed for driving in an area where they had not driven. Perhaps that screw-up sword can cut in two directions since I was never billed for my violation.
When I first moved to Boston in the 1970s, I totally ignored parking tickets. I sometimes got two per day. And then, years later, when they finally got their computer systems working, I got a bill (via a Denver boot) for about the last twenty of them, no penalty.
Then I realized I had to clean up my act, no more parking tickets (just a few actually).
Fair enough. 
Wonder why. Colorado certainly has access - I found myself on the toll road that circles Denver several years ago in a motor home. You don’t even stop - a toll station just takes a picture of your license plate and then you get a bill in the mail a month or so later… And the bill for a motor home is ridiculous. If I’d known I’d have taken normal roads.
Texas would have to pay for the infrastructure to create reciprocal agreements with other states and make them work. That costs money, and if a state is serious about low taxes, they may have to forego expenditures like this.
I’d have no trouble throwing in my opinion but fundamentally no one cares.
Let’s just go with the always correct, “Mistakes were made.”