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Illinois Toll Authority expands to include railroad-building
Those bureaucrats can’t even run the toll roads without nearly doubling the tolls this year. Now they will be allowed to build railroads? People that can’t find their way out of a paper bag? Get ready Ilinois taxpayers, I feel more fingers slipping into my pocket.
What median strip? There is no center median strip from Randall Rd on Elgin’s west side east all the way to O’Hare. West of Randall Rd, one still exists. For now. But with the increases in Canadian trucks due to NAFTA and Canada’s lack of a real road linking Winnipeg with Toronto, look for that center median to disappear in the next few years.
This appears as another political end run around existing political road blocks. This is Chicago so as always, look for much waste, corruption, cost over-runs, under the table back room deals, substandard work, and so on.
Does anyone else smell boondoggles on a massive scale?
Were there is no existing median, the road gets widened, of course.
Illinois Toll “Authority” cannot even handle its own business
including adequate & clear signage. Nor can it hold fair
hearings as to fines and other disputes.
How in the world can it be expected to build any railroad?
YES!!! Illinois suffers from the yoke of lost productivity, pollution, and highway congestion. This is GREAT NEWS. Now, if only the STAR line could be finished!
Boondoogle follows boondoggle. ISTHA is among the most corrupt agencies in the state. Since it is quasi independent it can get away with more than most agencies. This will be used to create an endless set of high cost studies of high speed rail that are disguised payoffs to campaign contributors.
Isn’t this the same bunch that once said that the Illinois Toll Roads would be payed for, and thus free, by well before the year 2000?
Mr. Anzalone: Tolls would be fine if they were the only funding mechanism for road construction. The biggest philosophical problem I have with them is that their users not only have to pay the toll, but also the gas tax that goes into funding non-toll highways (and income taxes that make up for what the gas tax doesn’t cover). People who commute into Chicago on I-55 and I-57 every day pay the same taxes, but don’t have to pay a toll. Doesn’t seem fair to the rest of us.
As for losses of productivity due to stopping to pay tolls, extra fuel use, etc., in the last few years Illinois has spent lots of toll money to convert the toll plazas to “Open Road Tolling.” Most vehicles carry a transponder and just drive right past the tollbooth without slowing down. If you don’t have a transponder, you have to go through the manual lane and pay double the toll.
BTW, our transponders are interoperable with those of almost every other toll authority in the US, including Kansas and all the toll roads from Chicago to Boston, the tunnels into Manhattan, etc. (They cannot be used to pay for parking lots on the east coast.)
Back to this article: I agree with most of the other Illinoisans who have weighed in here: there will be massive corruption. Something useful may come out of it, however.
“The authority cannot use any money from its road fund for railway construction.”
Why not? Roads are the past, and rails are the future. Tax the fogey mode and build another.
This is awesome! I love the creative out of the box thinking behind this initiative and what a great away to move projects foreward without having to go through the long process of competing for limited federal money which can take a decade before grant agreements on big projects are made. The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (ISTHA) uses no public tax dollars and is funded entirely by user fees generated from tolls, ROW leases to utilities, and leases from retial and resteraunts located in the Oaisis travel centers along the system. I feel this could be the start of a great program.
BOHICA!
Where exactly does Mr. Bolsega think roads come from, the Tooth Fairy? Someone has to pay for them, so why not the actually users. The Tollway Authority has stepped in to complete the building of the completely new interchange between I-294 and I-57 in the south suburbs. They are going to completely rebuild the aging Jane Addams Tollway (I-90) and as part of the project are looking at a full range of new transit options. Or would Messrs. Bolsega and Guse prefer a system of highways that look (and feel) like the pot-holed full stretch of I-80 that runs across Pennsylvania,
Increase in Canadian trucks??? Those should go intermodel to say the least.
I do not belive in tolls.They do not make anything pay for itself.They add to the cost by paying for more workers that dont produce or grow anything.Mainly toll both operators.Every person in Illinois that eats food or buys anything,pays more for it because trucks and employees of any company must pass on the cost of tolls.The stops at toll stations cause the use of extra fuel.Perhaps a toll railroad might be differant because they will have to compete with existing railroads and their own toll roads.
I do not belive in tolls.They do not make anything pay for itself.They add to the cost by paying for more workers that dont produce or grow anything.Mainly toll both operators.Every person in Illinois that eats food or buys anything,pays more for it because trucks and employees of any company must pass on the cost of tolls.The stops at toll stations cause the use of extra fuel.Perhaps a toll railroad might be differant because they will have to compete with existing railroads and their own toll roads.
Also. toll roads DO NOT, nor have they ever paid for themselves. We have anumber of toll roads that were built here in Florida recently, without an environmental impact report, and had to have their debts refinanced because tollcollections did not keep up with the schedule of payments. You can throw in all of the other related costs from gas taxes, license and vehicle registration fees, excise taxes on tires, and roads still don’t pay for themselves as property taxes and income taxes have to make up the shortfall.
Road debt is not being bankrupted by bike paths, train service, buses, and other forms of public transit. Cutting funding for those projects amount to spit in a bucket. If conservatives were serious about balancing the budget, they need to slam the brakes on new highway construction which is eating up the majority of highway funding and the entire transportation budget at the expense of maintaining the current infrastructure. New highway construction is building us into bankruptcy.
I’ll agree with Roger. The railroads were taxed on thier properties to build the Interstate Highway System, which should have been spent on security protection for railroads by law enforcement. Too bad we had no tea party activists around to rally for such a cry then.