HARRIS COUNTY, Texas – The Harris County Toll Road Authority collected about $760 million in tolls the last fiscal year, yet it is improbable that any Harris County toll road will ever be “paid off,” Channel 2 Investigates has learned.
“Not with system financing, which allows us to borrow money at a favorable rate to build new projects,” said Patti Evans, the authority’s assistant director of communications.
In other words, tolls collected today are not only used to pay down system-wide debt, but to construct more toll roads in the future.
“I think it is important to say — there are no free roads,” Evans said.
But Terri Hall, with the anti-tolling group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, argued that not only are toll roads not free, in some cases, Texans are paying twice.
“It’s a double tax scheme,” Hall said.
A recent Texas Department of Transportation report to study the feasibility of removing Texas toll roads identifies road projects that were already paid for with tax dollars, and then set up as toll roads.
“The way they're doing it today, it is a tax,” Hall said. “It’s no longer a user fee, because they’re using your tax money to build the road and then they're charging you a toll, simply as gravy.”
The Toll Road Authority is adamant that it does not operate in this fashion — that new toll roads are constructed with system-wide toll-road proceeds and bond sales.
But the Toll Road Authority does have a toll road that is already “paid for.”
The Katy Managed Lanes, which can cost drivers $14 end-to-end, round-trip during peak times, do not carry long-term debt.
The lanes were constructed as part of a broader Interstate 10 widening project, a $2.8 billion project that was 91 percent funded with federal and state tax dollars.
But the Toll Road Authority did contribute.
“HCTRA contributed $250 million to further it along faster,” Evans said.
The investment is being recouped, Evans added, through the collection of tolls on the road, and she said the self-supporting Toll Road Authority system put its money back into Harris County infrastructure.
But it appears the state of Texas is slated to gain ownership of the Katy Managed Lanes, as part of the original agreement, and the bulk of the toll money collected from the Katy Managed Lanes could be headed to Austin.
The exact details of the agreement have not yet been finalized.
While the Harris County Toll Road Authority pools income and debt into a single system, the agency does break down exactly how much road makes for the system.