The Texas Legislature is facing pressure to find creative ways to reform the state’s toll road system amid a growing chorus of vocal critics, including some Republican state lawmakers.
From 2001 to 2021, Texas built more toll road miles than nearly all other states combined, according to the Dallas Morning News ongoing investigation, “Toll Trap.” The high concentration of toll roads came about because state leaders disdained higher taxes but needed a way to prepare for unprecedented growth. The News’ investigation, however, has revealed widespread adverse effects on Texas drivers and small business owners.
Critics say the state’s governmental entities, including the Texas Department of Transportation, were rightfully tasked by the Legislature to build roads for a booming Texas population.
But they argue the chosen solution – a toll road building spree – has created large and powerful bureaucracies unlike any other system in the country that lacks sufficient government oversight, in some cases circumvent traditional legal processes and are focused more on profits than safety or treating customers fairly.
”I always worry about real Texans who are out there everyday trying to make ends meet and I know all too many who are living on savings and living on their credit cards,” said state Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound. “And yes, we’ll talk about the high price of tolls that they’re paying.”
This issue is particularly acute in North Texas, which has more private toll roads than any other region of the state and where our investigation found that 1.4 million people live in areas where tollways are within a one-mile radius of their homes and that their free road option.
Critics are calling on Parker and his colleagues to adopt specific reforms:
- Strengthen government oversight to increase transparency and accountability of toll operators.
- Establish better pricing rules that make toll roads more affordable to motorists and also create more stable and predictable pricing.
- Streamline billing practices that help greatly reduce the amount of unpaid tolls that are sometimes questionable and erroneous.
- Place a greater burden on toll operators to prove unpaid tolls are legitimate.
- Create a higher threshold for “criminalizing” unpaid tolls that result in arrest warrants, seized drivers licenses and suspended vehicle registrations. Texas is one of only a handful of states that criminalize toll drivers for unpaid fees.
Such ideas could be folded into a comprehensive toll reform package aimed at making Texas’ tollway system more user-friendly and transparent, according to several lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, as well as public finance professionals and leaders in the most populated corners of the state.”It’s out of control at this point,’’ said state Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth.
The News’ investigation found Texas is one of only a handful of states that criminalize toll drivers for unpaid fees and where courts regularly issue arrest warrants over the debts. On average, Texas seizes thousands of driver’s licenses a year and blocks vehicle registration stickers for unpaid toll fees. A total of 226,847 motorists last year received letters that their registration renewals would be blocked by just two of the state’s largest tollway authorities – the North Texas Tollway Authority in Dallas and the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority in Austin. NTTA also has impounded a handful of cars over the last 10 years.
The investigation also found North Texas was the epicenter for the harshest toll penalties and where justices of the peace courts in North Texas have storage rooms overflowing with files from cases where the defendant has not responded to notices and in a matter of weeks will have their driver’s licenses suspended unless they enter a plea to clear the citations.
NTTA employees who appear in court to negotiate with defendants have been so overwhelmed by the number of citations that key evidence is sometimes left out of court files, The News learned.
Denton and Collin counties issue thousands of arrest warrants each year for drivers who have failed to show up in court over unpaid toll balances, The News found.
The Fines and Fees Justice Center also is urging Texas lawmakers to take a look at the legal underpinnings Texas uses to prosecute toll violators – especially after they overwhelmingly voted to ban the criminalization of a virtually identical practice in 2019 involving the use of red-light cameras.
Similar to those caught on camera when they cross an intersection on a red light, a photo of a vehicle license plate traveling through a toll is the key evidence that is used to prosecute toll violators. But a photo of a vehicle doesn’t legally meet the burden of proof necessary in a criminal case, criminal justice advocates told The News.
An attorney in Dallas who defends drivers who have had their licenses yanked and registrations pulled says the legal system needs to explore what is permitted in the transportation code, and what is prohibited.
“Someone in the Legislature needs to ask this question about whether the statute is written in a manner that allows this,” Dallas attorney Jeff Beltz said. “I don’t think what is being done is lawful.”
State Rep. Ramon Romero, R-Fort Worth, says he receives frequent calls from drivers frustrated with similar issues, including the pricing models of toll roads. Texas has more toll operators than any other state, The News’ investigation found, and each has its own pricing and billing structure. Some of the managed lanes in North Texas will charge a driver up to $24 to drive while other toll roads will be far less expensive.
“So many people are confused by all the pricing models,’’ Romero said. “Why isn’t there a maximum per mile? Why are they allowed to take away my driver’s license? No other credit card company gets to take that away from me.”
Many toll road bills still contain errors, he said.
“I get calls from people about, ‘I wasn’t the one driving. I don’t own that car anymore,’ ” he said. “It seems to take years to fix these errors so it’s very frustrating for people.”
“It’s all over social media,” he said, “and everyone is frustrated. We get calls all the time. I’ve been working on these things for a long time. People I know care about this. I get calls, inbox messages. People ask me, ‘How did this happen? How did we get here? How is it possible that this company can charge $30 to get from Point A to Point B?’”
Unlike other states, which offer discounts to drivers who frequently use tollways or who come from low-income households, most of Texas’ more than two dozen toll operators offer few concessions or price cuts.
Parker, the North Texas legislator, said he wants to kick off discussions that for decades have been off the table.
“We’ve got to talk about what happens when a toll road has been paid off,’’ he said. “How many years does it continue to be something that the people of the state continue to pay at full price versus some kind of discounted rate where the state comes in and provides maintenance and operations?”
A group in Houston has been trying to draw attention to accountability over the funding of toll roads. The group has questioned what is being done with hundreds of millions of surplus toll revenues that are shifted to the general fund of Harris County.
Harris County Toll Road Authority transfers millions in surplus tolls to the county’s general fund each year. A county auditor’s report states that those funds are placed in a special account designated for the study design, construction maintenance, report and operation of roads, streets, highways and other related facilities and cannot be used for the general operations of the county. But no state law oversees their use, critics say.
Harris County commissioners may determine that, said Bill King, an attorney in Houston who is expected to conduct an examination of the toll road’s finances on behalf of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.
That’s a problem, he says, because “the language is so loose that it can be spent on almost anything.”
“If they (county commissioners) want to hire their girlfriend and say she’s working on consulting for a toll road,” he said, “there’s presumably nothing you can do about it.”
HCTRA and the North Texas Tollway Authority in Dallas are among the nation’s wealthiest toll road operators and ranked in the highest tier among 52 public toll roads across the country, with a rating of A or better from Standard & Poor’s, The News investigation found.
HCTRA held more than $600 million in unrestricted investments while NTTA reported more than $1 billion in unrestricted investments, according to the 2023 annual comprehensive financial reports for each of the public toll operators. That’s discretionary money the toll operators could use for different purposes, including to reduce tolls for drivers.
Unlike HCTRA, though, NTTA owes $9 billion to bondholders. Toll operators emphasized to The News that robust collections signal to bondholders that there will be enough money to pay off their loans.
Some of the state’s key transportation leaders have pushed for toll reform for more than a year.
They worry that current annual funding – set aside for expanding the capacity of Texas roadways – won’t be enough to keep up with its growing population.
They also believe an examination of tolls and accompanying reforms will push the state and other lawmakers to come up with more creative strategies to Texas’ mobility needs. Some studies have shown Texas is underfunding transportation by billions a year.
Congestion in certain regions of the state has created few alternatives for people who cannot afford to pay a toll every time they try to get to work, to the doctor’s office or to visit family, The News’ reporting found.
A News’ analysis, for example, found that about 1.4 million people in North Texas live in areas where tollways are within a one-mile radius of their homes and that their free road options – often several miles away from their homes – are among the state’s most congested.
The concentration of toll roads in the region also disproportionately affects residents in predominantly moderate- to low-income neighborhoods where the median household income of about $55,000 is less than the state median of $73,035 a year, according to the 2022 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.
House Transportation Chairman state Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, told The News in summer 2023 he wanted to conduct a comprehensive study that explored many of the issues that were subsequently raised in The News’ investigation.
Canales is expected to continue to push for reform during the upcoming session. A study is needed, in part, to build trust, which he said had been eroded due to a lack of transparency over certain toll projects and a lack of accountability over others overseen by the Texas Department of Transportation.
One recent example was when The News filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General’s Office that forced TxDOT to release documents. The News had requested documents regarding plans to buy back a private toll road in Houston under the Texas Public Information Act. A portion of State Highway 288 originally was built under a public-private partnership.
The News’ reporting also identified another example of a lack of accountability with another private toll contract.
Years after a cataclysmic 130-car pileup on a toll road on Interstate 35W in downtown Fort Worth, The News found the six deaths and dozens of injuries might have been prevented if the toll road’s operator, North Tarrant Express Mobility Partners, had taken better safety precautions. Court filings made public this month also showed NTE had the power to shut down the toll road and prevent the accident but neither it nor TxDOT made the decision during one of the worst storms in Texas history.
Since the crash, not much has changed with the toll road’s operation or how the state manages it. NTE recently refused disclosure of an updated winter maintenance plan of the toll road where the accident occurred, citing “trade secret” as the primary reason for the need to keep the document confidential.
Texans deserve to know how and why such mistakes were made, Romero said. And they need to be assured that these problems have been addressed. Romero sponsored legislation during the last session that now requires private toll road workers receive similar training as those who work for TxDOT.
“Very few people have ever really dug into what the Texas Legislature allowed these (private) toll roads to do,” Romero said. “There’s just too many questions about these (private) contracts.”
North Texas has more private toll roads than any other region of the state and at least two of them have contracts that last until 2061. The length of the agreements – 52 years – have raised concerns that Texas ceded control of its roads to the European conglomerate that built and now operates the highways, including Interstate 35W in Fort Worth and Interstate 635 in Dallas, for generations to come.
Romero in the last legislative session tried to pass legislation that would allow the state to buy back the I-35W toll road. His goal was to return ownership of the highway to TxDOT and allow toll relief to drivers and more free lanes.
“People have been saying, ‘What’s in these contracts?” Romero said. “How can they do this?”
Earlier this year, state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, appeared in front of the Texas Transportation Commission to explain why.
Unlike the contract for the State Highway 288 toll road, the contracts for the North Texas toll roads do not include a similar “buyback” provision, Nichols told commissioners and later explained in an interview with The News following that appearance in Austin.
“There are four or five of these projects in the state that are live that don’t have some of these protections,” Nichols told commissioners, “… but we’re really vulnerable on some of these.”
For the first time in years, the Republican platform for the state of Texas in 2024 denounced toll roads as a means to provide mobility for a fast growing state.
But those hardline positions could become more flexible if lawmakers implemented effective toll reforms. That’s why when state lawmakers launch into a reform of tolls, “everything should be on the table,” Canales said.
“It’s the confusion, the disparity from toll to toll, the various toll collecting entities,” he said, “it’s a web and a hodgepodge of entities and there’s no uniformity.
Even those contracts with private toll companies, he said, could work with the proper framework and safeguards that protect public interests.
That said, Canales is unsure what toll reform will look like.
“That’s a horse of many colors,’’ he said. “What I can tell you, it is not a simple answer.”