HOT lanes and I'm out
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Category: Archived Slugging Topics
Forum Name: HOT Lanes Discussion
Forum Description: Post messages regarding High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes here.
URL: http://www.slug-lines.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3820
Printed Date: 24 Apr 2024 at 2:33pm
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Topic: HOT lanes and I'm out
Posted By: Deanwvu
Subject: HOT lanes and I'm out
Date Posted: 05 Aug 2008 at 8:08pm
Seriously.
If all the horror stories are true here, I am moving. Hopefully by then, with a little foresight, I will be able to sell my house here in Woodbridge before its value goes down the tubes any further. No one will want to live south of Springfield when they learn about this HOT crap.
I will sell this place and either move to Arlington (where I can ditch my car altogether and ride my bicycle), or Maryland...
I'll miss my backyard, single-family home, and garage, but I really cannot deal with this HOT crap....
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Replies:
Posted By: ybarra
Date Posted: 07 Aug 2008 at 10:33am
Maybe you should read a few article on HOt lanes. For example:
http://www.reason.org/commentaries/poole_20060700.shtml
or
http://www.reason.org/commentaries/poole_20080125.shtml
or
http://www.reason.org/pb59_hotlanes.pdf
[:)]
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Posted By: toomuchcoffeelady
Date Posted: 07 Aug 2008 at 12:28pm
Hmm, a new poster plugging a political stance, using three articles from the same obscure website.
ain't free speech a wonderful thing, until you don't like the views being stated? - Ceejay2
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Posted By: ybarra
Date Posted: 07 Aug 2008 at 12:51pm
Not political, non partisan...,,,
Reason first published concept of HOT lanes in 1988, and again in 1993.
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Posted By: n/a
Date Posted: 07 Aug 2008 at 2:08pm
Interesting the byline of this website, "Free Minds and Free Markets," is so hypocritical. "Reason.org" for got to add "...highway robbery" to their byline.
Especially since construction and maintanence on the interstate highway system (former President Eisenhower's gift to the American people) has already been paid for by past and future tax appropriations. So now that local DOTs cannot balance their budgets, they are backdoor digging back in the taxpayer's pockets with a highway robbery scheme.
*Consider the millions of tax dollars that are "matched" to contractor costs for HOT lane construction.
*Consider the guarantees of profitability that allow charge backs to VODT in the event HOV ridership exceeds a certain share of total traffic.
*Consider payments to the contractor in the event HOT use falls below a certain level.
*Consider tax dollars that will subsidize contractor profits in the event the HOT lanes are not profitable.
*Consider prohibitions on "competing" roadways that may offer future traffic abatement options.
If anyone does not believe this is a roundabout way to asses a user tax, you're blind! Unless they issue a reduction on the portion of our property and sales taxes that are allocated to transportation, this is simply a double tax rip-off.
HOT lanes are highway robbery! VDOT's Barbara Reese is a pirate!
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Posted By: ybarra
Date Posted: 12 Aug 2008 at 11:53am
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Interesting to characterize the Eisenhower Interstate as a "gift" since it was with your own tax dollars. The maintenance dollars did not flow forever and there were no guarantees that they would. Also, the VDOT original proposal to widen the beltway was heading towards $4b (of your tax dollars) and probably never would have been built (noer any forseeable way to fund the maintainance) The private sector came forward with a less expensive solution and it is a partnership and the private sector will maintain it. The guarantees are far less expensive than VDOT's proposal, even if all your "considers" were taken into account.
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Posted By: toomuchcoffeelady
Date Posted: 12 Aug 2008 at 2:13pm
quote:
Originally posted by ybarra
Interesting to characterize the Eisenhower Interstate as a "gift" since it was with your own tax dollars.
In Soviet Russia, is gift to pay taxes.
ain't free speech a wonderful thing, until you don't like the views being stated? - Ceejay2
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Posted By: n/a
Date Posted: 18 Aug 2008 at 3:57pm
quote:
Originally posted by ybarra
Interesting to characterize the Eisenhower Interstate as a "gift" since it was with your own tax dollars.
At least we only paid to build it once! With HOT, we paid to built the interstate, we'll pay to build the HOTs, and we'll pay to ride in them. Also, with all the contractor guarantees, we'll pay if we carpool too much, we'll pay if someone wants to build a "competing" road, and we'll pay if the contractor fails to make a profit! Compared to HOTs, the Eisenhower Interstate system was a gift!
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Posted By: DC2RV
Date Posted: 19 Aug 2008 at 7:23am
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And in "Yoda-speak": gift it is, taxes to pay.
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Posted By: n/a
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2008 at 4:03pm
quote:
Originally posted by DC2RV
And in "Yoda-speak": gift it is, taxes to pay.
And why shouldn't we foot the bill for our lifestyle? Someone's got to pay to keep the streetlights on. But we should only have to pay once for each public service! HOT lanes will make us pay over, and over, and over again for the same road. All the while, a private firm benefits from government protected fees on public road traffic. HOT lanes are highway robbery!
Besides, the interstates were built in the 50s and 60s, so unless you were working then, our parents paid for the interstates with their taxes. Our taxes should go towards road maintenance and expansion. But NO! VDOT (and many other state DOTs) forgot how to balance their books and now they are willing to sell out our transportation futures for the sake of a short term budget fix. Bad politics! And they have sold it to us as a tax avoidance strategy; their conning us all!
And if you were working then, happy retirement!
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Posted By: n/a
Date Posted: 20 Aug 2008 at 4:06pm
quote:
Originally posted by ybarra
Not political, non partisan...,,,
Reason first published concept of HOT lanes in 1988, and again in 1993.
It was bad politics then, and its bad politics now!
HOT is highway robbery!
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Posted By: colossus911
Date Posted: 30 Sep 2008 at 11:08am
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According to Biden isn't paying taxese patriotic, therefore why are we complaining...
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Posted By: n/a
Date Posted: 07 Oct 2008 at 4:28pm
quote:
Originally posted by colossus911
According to Biden isn't paying taxese patriotic, therefore why are we complaining...
Thanks for weighing in (six weeks late)! I have no problem with paying my share of the expenses that help to keep the street lights on and Police and Fire/Rescue officers at my service. That's what our tax dollars are supposed to do.
HOT lanes are just another tax disguised as a user fee, bailing out VDOT for years of poor fiscal responsibility, funding a foriegn construction companies profits. HOT is a tax for transportation services that we have already paid for, over a generation of taxes and still counting, designated for the interstate highway system that has been mismanaged and underfunded for years. Now the costs are passed on to us and our children.
HOT is highway robbery.
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Posted By: Jerry Senfield
Date Posted: 04 Feb 2009 at 3:36pm
Dean-where would you move to?
You can't escape the government...they'll get you!
*JAWS music*
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