Toll Chairman says plans to turn free road into toll road 'won't happen'
Read the original story on the conversion of Hwy 161 from a free road into a toll road here. Time will tell if this controversial pan is truly dead on arrival or just a political power play to temporarily cover for Rick Perry's unpopular toll policies as he faces re-election.
NTTA chairman: Staff idea to toll free road not vetted by board, will be killed
Fri, Oct 15, 2010 | Michael Lindenberger - Reporter, Dallas Morning News
NTTA chairman Victor Vandergriff called me late Thursday to say the executive director of the toll authority had not discussed with the NTTA board any plans to seek permission from the state to toll existing highways, and that the proposal made Thursday by executive director Allen Clemson would be withdrawn.
"There is no support for that. It is not on our legislative agenda and hasn't been brought to the board. It will not happen," Vandergriff said late Thursday night.
Just hours before, Clemson had told members of the Regional Transportation Council that he had been in discussions with TxDOT involving a three-mile stretch of State Highway 161 in Irving.
The segment was built years ago as a four-lane free highway and is not currently tolled, though it connects to toll roads at both its northern and southern ends.
Traffic exiting the six-lane President George Bush Turnpike often stalls as it enters the free portion fo SH 161, Clemson explained. After three miles of the four-lane road, traffic then moves onto NTTA's SH 161 toll road.
Adding tolls to the middle, free segment would allow NTTA to expand and rebuild that segment more quickly than TxDOT has promised to do so. It would enable NTTA to cover the $75 million in construction costs that TxDOT will otherwise have to spend.
But such a move would be controversial, too, and would need legislative approval and an OK by the RTC and TxDOT.
Our story from today, set to be published Friday morning, made clear that agreement from those entities is anything but guaranteed, and it revealed that Gov. Rick Perry is dead-set opposed to creating an exception for NTTA to toll the existing free highway.
But that apparently is moot now. Vandergriff's opposition, shall we say his energetic opposition, effectively kills the idea before it even gets started.
"Allen was looking at this issue from the perspective of making a business case (for tolling the free segment)," Vandergriff said. "And there is a business case to be made. But there is a political element to this too, and the board simply was not aware that this was being brought forward."
Most drivers who currently use the free segment of highway are traveling from one toll road to the next and may not even be aware that they aren't being tolled for those three miles, Vandergriff said. A better, wider highway may even be worth paying the toll for those three miles to those drivers, he said.
But nevertheless, he said NTTA will not move forward with the idea.
"This will not be pursued," he insisted.