Circle C Neighbors

TOLL ROAD NEWS
TxDOT likes to compare Dallas and Houston since they have Toll Roads, let's compare their toll roads with the ones TxDOT proposes for Austin: Dallas has 12.7 Toll Road Miles per Million people. Houston has 16.9 Toll Road Miles per Million. Austin will have more than 110 Toll Road Miles per Million under this Toll plan! Houston & Dallas Toll roads were carefully planned and they complement the existing highways.? The Austin Toll Plan does not complement the existing Highways, they mostly WILL BECOME THE EXISTING HIGHWAYS!

We need a better plan.

TxDOT LIES TO CIRCLE C
All the Tolls in Austin would be electronic toll only. There will be NO toll booths anywhere in Austin. The electronic toll readers are small and are placed on the side of an overpass, far above your car. Those that will use the toll roads will need to buy a card that is attached to windshields of all your families vehicles. It will be connected to draft money out of your financial account. A picture of every car's license plate will be taken and recorded. TxDOT's Bob Daigh was asked at both Kiker Town Halls ''what happens if my relatives or friends are coming into town to visit me and they don't even know they are on a toll road?''. At both meetings he said it wouldn't be a big deal and unless they abused the situation nothing would happen.

I went to a 360 Town Hall this past Wednesday night, the crowd there was furious about 360 Toll Roads ruining the most scenic hwy of central Texas. TxDOT also said they would bottleneck all the current lanes and the toll lanes to use the existing bridge the way it is! At that meeting, the question was the same, but the Answer was very different. Daigh said, ''A picture of the License plate will be taken, we a bill will be sent to that person and they will need to pay that Toll cost as well as an additional service fee for the need to send them a bill''.

Isn't that a nice welcome to Austin for our visitors?

TxDOT seizes and converts more than 100 million dollars worth of Austin Area Tax financed roads. The Wm Cannon Bridge is only one of many roads TxDOT seizes in this plan. Wm Cannon Bridge has already been paid for with our tax dollars. TxDOT takes 8.6 Million tax dollars by making Wm Cannon a toll. It also spends billions of our tax dollars on roads we can't drive on - unless we pay again...That is a double tax.

Tell 23 CAMPO officials NO with a click of a button on the ''Stop Double Tax'' page at http://www.StopDoubleTax.com. Over 1,000 Austinites have said NO within the past 6 days via this website.

If you already have already done so, Tell your neighbors and friends how to say NO by going to www.StopDoubleTax.com.

This Friday is the last day for CAMPO to count any public comments. Speak now or forever hold your piece.

Your Neighbor and Friend,
Sal Costello

Agency keeps proposal secret


State road agency keeps proposals secret
January 2004

AUSTIN ?— The Texas Transportation Commission, the policy-making body of the Texas Department of Transportation, keeps secret the text of items the commissioners will discuss at monthly meetings.

Documents on new transportation policies are only made public after the commission, which recently expanded to five members, votes on the proposal.

The secretive process came to light after a recent toll-road study the commission approved. Reporters who requested documents before the meeting were denied access and the agency said documents were internal agency memoranda based on staff recommendations only.

http://www.texaspress.com/messenger/january04/frontlines0104.htm

www.stopdoubletax.com

CAMPO Executives comments...

This is part of a the letter Karen sent to people who wrote to her office, asking her NOT to vote for the Austin Mobility plan that converted highways into Toll Roads and many other things we still haven't heard or understood....


A FOOTNOTE: The SH 130 eastern alignment eventually triumphed in the federal process, a lesson to all that CAMPO is the beginning of discussions but is far from the final word on transportation planning that requires multiple levels of approvals before a spade of dirt is turned.

I?’m also curious about the incredible revisionist history about TXDOT---the fallback agency responsible for what happens on state roads that are not assigned to an RMA for an extreme makeover. As I expressed at the CAMPO meeting on July 12, it is TXDOT that has mastered ugly and concrete and poor planning with willful dismissal of neighborhood involvement, refusing to build water quality controls into its projects unless the local government picked up the tab, whose idea of landscaping is putting color into concrete and whose idea of an acceptable separation distance between an F-250 pickup truck and Lance Armstrong?’s head is 4 inches.

RMAs were expressly created to put local accountability into local transportation planning, design and construction of state roads. By whose authority? You, the voters. The creation of RMAs was authorized via the passage of a State Constitutional Amendment, an amendment that passed by a wide margin in Travis County. The specific rules governing how RMAs would operate under the Texas Transportation Code was addressed in House Bill 3588, a landmark omnibus transportation and mobility bill which passed during the 78th (2003 Regular) Legislative session. Every member of CAMPO who is also a member of the Texas Legislature voted in favor of House Bill 3588 and its grant of powers to regional mobility authorities.

(reprinted from a longer letter. Write in if you'd like a copy of her full letter, explaining her reason for voting.
Russ Hodes CCR-Feedback@austin.rr.com)