From 2001 to 2021, Texas built more toll road miles than nearly all other states combined, according to The Dallas Morning News’ investigation “Toll Trap.” The high concentration of toll roads came about because state leaders disdained higher taxes but needed a way to prepare for unprecedented growth. The examination also found that North Texas has more toll facilities than any other region in the state. In Dallas County, toll roads make up nearly one-third of all major thoroughfares. They account for 22% of all roads in Collin County, 17% in Denton County and 16% in Tarrant County, according to toll highway data from TxDOT.
State Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, who serves portions of North Texas, has been a vocal critic of toll roads. The Dallas Morning News sat down with the senator to discuss some of his concerns about private-public partnerships that supported toll road construction in North Texas.
Can you tell us about one of your priorities regarding toll roads in Texas during the last legislative session?
I worked on a bill to try to require that the tolls come off once the road is paid for. There are some folks who seem to think that these toll companies have the right to continue a toll indefinitely because they built the road. They feel it’s a private road and I don’t agree with that.
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We had more than 20 bills introduced in the last legislative session to address some of the impacts of toll roads on motorists. You authored some of those bills, but those proposals went nowhere. Why do you think these bills failed?
Toll roads have enjoyed rather unique protection by the (local and state) government under the guise of, “This is a good deal for the people because you don’t have to spend taxpayer money for it.” So they have had a lot of protection from those governments, keeping them in place. There are a number of us who believe that we never needed toll roads in the first place and when we did, there is no reason to continue to toll the road after it’s paid off. There are others that make the decision who think toll roads are just fine and there’s no reason not to continue it. And well, we have contracts in place we made with private enterprise years ago that you cannot change. So we essentially gave away that right to private companies.
Also, there’s not enough feedback coming from the consumers with their elected officials expressing their opposition to toll roads. People don’t really understand that legislation is usually thought of by a few people and legislation that gets no opposition is probably going to make it through. But where you have a group of people either in support of something or are opposed to it, they have a tremendous impact. And I know that a lot of people grouse about the toll roads, but very few people are willing to speak up or take action or speak about their encounters or their problems and so on. And so you get legislators who are influenced by the lobbyists for these companies that are making tremendous amounts of profit off of Texas.
You introduced a bill that would have decriminalized the fines in North Texas for unpaid tolls. Toll supporters say such penalties are needed to make sure drivers pay up to support our toll road system, which must pay off a $9 billion debt. How was that bill received?
Like any of the other bills, the bill challenged the government establishments that are behind the toll roads. There are too many people making an awful lot of money in that business to get much action until we get some change in the personnel making the decisions.
Tolling agencies justify penalties on motorists in order to maintain the tolled highways and to pay off billions in debt that support them. What is your take on that?
That’s their problem. If they’re paying interest on those loans, that interest is not anywhere close to what they’re charging people for late fees. I imagine their loans were probably 3% to 4% interest. And you know some of these penalties and fees they have are 100% and 150% interest on consumers. You can’t justify the amount of their fees or fines they have based on their interest rates. It just doesn’t match up.
Why do you think there is so much confusion about tolls?
The problem you have is that each tolling agency does it differently. There is no common policy. And so we have many tolling agencies throughout the state. It’s almost a dozen and they each write their own rules. It’s unfortunate a few years back, the state abdicated its responsibility to build roads and turned to (private) road builders and gave them a sweetheart deal. They could own the roads and charge people whatever they wanted to fill the gaps and TxDOT wasn’t doing its job.
Do you see any legislative shifts moving forward?
There may be a chance for that. We have lawmakers who will be (retiring) who have been staunch defenders of toll roads as being one of the greatest things since sliced bread. Those people have had tremendous influence over decisions.
Some lawmakers have expressed the need to build more toll roads as we continue to grow as a state. Do you see that happening?
I don’t think we need to go in that direction. The state could build the roads just as well as a private enterprise could do it. And tolls are just a form of taxation. If taxes are needed, we need to get a backbone and say we’re not charging tolls. We’re going to tax. The tolls are a tax. There’s no sugarcoating that in any way at all. A toll fee is a tax fee.