Texas Tolls Controlled by Greedy Trolls

      Adela Moreno, the author of the "Driving is not always Priceless" shows her disgust with unnecessarily expensive roads and the fact that lawmakers are considering changing some of the major freeways and interstate highways into toll roads.  I stand by her in saying that this unsettling. The private owners of the toll roads want money, and the government doesn't want to spend money to build new ones so for the time being we are stuck paying tolls or stuck in traffic for hours.

      With the population of Austin growing at an exponential rate, something needs to be done about the roads because the road system is not working right now. Just ask anyone in Austin, traffic is AWFUL. Cities with larger populations than Austin have less traffic because the cities have met the population's needs with roads to travel freely on.  Charging people to drive on highways that have been free for a while will just cause more congestion and traffic on city streets and other freeways and highways that have enough traffic as is. It will not take care of the problem at hand.

      I do believe that toll roads are a good idea in some instances, because they are very open and you can bypass a lot of traffic, but this openness means the roads aren't being utilized to their full potential. If these roads were free more people could drive on the former toll roads and lessen the traffic on other highways.  Most people avoid toll roads, such as Moreno, and are fed up with having to pay for something that we already pay for in our taxes. Now though I agree with Moreno, she doesn't give much of an alternative to the issue other than "I would much rather pay a little more in taxes". I feel like if taxes went up people would be much more outraged than if they had to pay a few cents to drive on a road. 

     The city of Austin needs to accept that it is indeed growing and start building more roads to keep up with the population. Though it may take a years to accomplish and will require a lot of money it is way past time for Austin to get better roads and shut down toll roads turning them into free highways.