Friday, August 17, 2007
Blue Ribbon Transportation Committee Formed
PURPOSE:
(1) review all reports it receives relating to the transportation framework in this State;
(2) make recommendations on which legislative issues relating to transportation should be addressed in the next legislative session.
Senator Gould, the Chairman of the Transportation Committee, has been assigned to this Blue Ribbon Committee.
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Article on toll roads mulled by transit panel
Dear Editor:
On the front page of The Arizona Republic Valley & State Section, today, your headline states, “More road capacity in this fast-growing state won’t come free, and it might come with a toll attached.†That opening statement completely misses significant aspects of the sad predicament of Maricopa County’s highways, key transportation routes of Arizona.
During the 20-year transportation planning period, 1986 through 2005, Maricopa County’s half-cent sales tax, authorized by Proposition 300, was utterly inadequate for the needs of Maricopa County. Major items on the 20-year plan of the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) were not begun. Other projects, such as I-10, its interchanges and its tunnel between 7th Street and 7th Avenue in downtown Phoenix, were inadequately built for the immediate needs of that period. Then, prior to being given the tax-authorizing Proposition 400 for this 20-year period, County voters were subject to a massive marketing program. Large signs along County streets and highways told voters to vote for Proposition 400. In very large letters, the signs literally said, “FINISH THE HIGHWAYSâ€.
The current County half-cent sales tax is far less adequate for the County needs than was the same tax rate between 1985 and 2005. Not one mile of new highway is in the plan west of Loop 303, according to the ADOT map for the 2006 – 2025 period. That’s in spite of the fact the designated transportation planner, the MAG, has the planning assumption that at least one million new residents will move into that area of Maricopa County!
Unknown to most Maricopa County voters and taxpayers, one third of their sales tax is being diverted away from highway and interchange construction. Proposition 400 has three and a half million residents, today, and up to the forecast six million residents in 2025, paying for the construction and operating losses of a 20-mile streetcar line that will serve a few thousand heavily-subsidized streetcar passengers!
Toll roads would increase the existing cost handicap of this land-locked state. Diesel-fueled tractors, traveling in both directions between California and Arizona on I-8, I-10 and I-40, carry much of the goods purchased by Arizona residents and exported by Arizona companies. Tolls, usually on the basis of the number of axels on a vehicle, would increase the costs of living in Arizona and the prices of Arizona exports. Toll collectors on major highways would have little effect upon the habits of the millions who drive gasoline-burning cars.
The revenue from toll collection stations on completed Interstate highways, if somehow they could be made were legal, would be “chump change†compared to the tens of billions of dollars worth of highway construction and maintenance required by Maricopa County, alone. There is at least one better way to make up for the inadequacies of Propositions 300 and 400 and not further handicap the cost structure of this land-locked state. The Maricopa County and the Arizona legislatures should consider a substantial gasoline (only gasoline) tax in Maricopa County, where exist the greatest problems, and/or in the entire State of Arizona.
Joseph B. Ryan
Sun City West
(623) 584-3300
October 2, 2007
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