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posted by janrinok on Tuesday December 02 2014, @11:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the speeeeeed! dept.

AP reports that Montana lawmakers are drafting bills that would raise the daytime speed limit on Montana interstate highways from 75 to 80 and possibly as high as 85 mph. “I just think our roads are engineered well, and technology is such we can drive those roads safely,” says Art Wittich noting that Utah, Wyoming and Idaho have raised their speed limits above 75, and they haven't had any problems and drivers on German autobahns average about 84 mph. State Senator Scott Sales says he spent seven months working in the Bakken oil patch, driving back and forth to Bozeman regularly. “If I could drive 85 mph on the interstate, it would save an hour,” says Sales. “Eighty-five would be fine with me."

A few years ago Texas opened a 40 mile stretch on part of a toll road called the Pickle Parkway between Austin and San Antonio. The tolled bypass was supposed to help relieve the bottleneck around Austin but the highway was built so far to the east that practically nobody used it. In desperation, the state raised the toll road speed limit to 85 mph, the fastest in the nation. "The idea was that drivers could drop the top, drop the hammer, crank the music and fly right past Austin," says Wade Goodyn. "It's a beautiful, wide-open highway — but it's empty, and the builders are nearly bankrupt."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Tuesday December 02 2014, @02:42PM

    by iwoloschin (3863) on Tuesday December 02 2014, @02:42PM (#121855)

    Really? Extortion? Who's making you use the toll road, you could just take all the surface roads around it instead, but then you're driving slow, waiting at traffic lights, etc.

    Toll roads are not inherently evil, they're actually a really neat concept. However, the use of funds generated by tolls can be mismanaged. Tolls should exist solely to fund maintenance for the road they are on, including everything from snow removal in the winter to building that new bridge because the old one is about to collapse. That way those who use the toll road pay for it, versus "wasting" everyone's gas tax money on maintaining a road that only a "few" people use.

    The only time tolls are inherently evil is when idiots refuse to adopt new technology. Today there is no reason to wait in line at a toll booth, get an EZ-Pass, or utilize optical recognition to capture license plates and mail a bill, all while traffic is moving along at highway speeds. Here in Massachusetts some of the worst backups are caused by poorly designed toll plazas that force traffic to slow down to 5 MPH, regardless of if you're using an EZ-Pass or paying cash.

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 02 2014, @03:07PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday December 02 2014, @03:07PM (#121869) Journal

    I read somewhere in the last 6 months about a proposal to make a toll road with really high tolls so that rich people can enjoy the high-end cars they buy without sitting in traffic with the plebes. I thought about the German banker who was killed by a roadside bomb planted by the Red Army Faction when I was an exchange student in Cologne and thought that might not work out the way the toll-road backers plan.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 03 2014, @01:00AM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday December 03 2014, @01:00AM (#122085) Journal

      Got a link, or are you just blowing off steam?

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 03 2014, @05:57PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday December 03 2014, @05:57PM (#122340) Journal

        RAF killed Alfred Herrhausen [wikipedia.org]

        The RAF really did kill a rich German banker with a road-side bomb. I didn't make it up. If you consider the prospect of a private road only for rich people, I suspect you will see repeats of that incident.

        I submit that you could abstract the issue from a road to anything. Concentrate the rich behind gated communities. Then they become a concentrated target for their victims. Concentrate the rich from a slightly-more-successful segment of society to an absurdly more exploitative privileged stratum, then you sacrifice the deflective quality of the narrative of if-you-only-worked-hard-enough-you-could-be-one-of-us for an elitist, neo-aristocratic one.

        Perhaps you consider yourself one of them. Perhaps you are an aspirant. If you are the latter, I can assure you that no matter what you might come to consider yourself, they will never accept you as such. I live in New York. I rub elbows with those people. I guarantee you they do not see themselves as even part of the same species as you and I. There are so very many extremely intelligent, able people in this world who are not rich. How long do you suppose the idle, incompetent, rich can survive while systemically denying progress to those? I give them 10 years, and that's being very generous.

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        Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 03 2014, @12:58AM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday December 03 2014, @12:58AM (#122084) Journal

    Really? Extortion? Who's making you use the toll road, you could just take all the surface roads around it instead, but then you're driving slow, waiting at traffic lights, etc.

    You sir, are sadly misinformed.

    Many states are converting US Interstate highways [www.ssti.us] (long since paid for by tax dollars) into toll roads. They are using a special exemption [dot.gov] in Title 23 to get around the general prohibition on the imposition of tolls on Federal-aid highways.

    These are roads your parents paid for. Roads your gas tax is supposed to maintain.

    Alternate routes generally don't exist or are simply too long or too slow, and that isn't by accident. It is precisely those locations that are ripe for tolling. Its happening in almost every state.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.