Blah. I can see it now. Here I will be, driving on the *free* existing lanes on I-35, or Loop 820, or 121/183, and, waving at me from their expensive SUVs will be the well-favored who can afford to ride on the toll road, perhaps to be named the North Tarrant Express(probably to be run by a private company, n'est-ce pas?). I will have paid for the toll road expansion in some form or another, since it's a TxDot project (thus, taxed twice), and because I-35, etc won't be on the list of roads that will be kept up, my car will be a-jiggling and shaking as I have to get new shocks weekly.

Moncrief of Ft Worth really ticks me off. Really. He's the Rah-Rah figure that is happy to privatize all the roads and managed, you might remember, to get Cintra TxDot to change the donut around DFW. For business interests.

Mayor Mike Moncrief on Wednesday asked business owners to keep pressuring the state to expand Interstate 35W, which he called the city's front entrance.

How about CITIZENS keep pressuring the state as well? Here's an irony. One of the arguments for TTC was that it was too expensive to take land from along I-35 so there couldn't be additional lanes added. Well, doesn't the above SHOOT DOWN that argument? If TXdot can take the land for toll lanes, then they can also make FREE lanes, it's the same dang land.

Speaking to the Interstate 35W Coalition, a group of Alliance-area businesses that officially formed a year ago, Moncrief also said that future economic growth in Fort Worth depends on better highways and regional freight and passenger rail systems.....

Last week, the Texas Department of Transportation announced that it was ready to take bids from contractors to build toll lanes on I-35W, Loop 820 and Texas 121/183. Existing lanes would remain free. Construction could begin in 2009, said the agency's Fort Worth engineer, Maribel Chavez.

Moncrief wants work to begin in 2008.

I don't want it to be, in this state (or this country) where to get anywhere you have to either have some horrible unkept-up roads or pay for a TOLL.