Las Vegas mayor wants Nevada to have toll roads
By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Sun
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman says she’s ready to get behind a lobbying effort for legislation that would enable the state to collect tolls on Nevada highways.
At Tuesday’s Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority meeting, Goodman said she would press the issue if it means Nevada could develop critical highway projects faster.
Nevada is the only state among seven in the West that don’t have tolling authority.
Goodman’s declaration came in the wake of a pair of reports to the authority board about projects needed to improve transportation to and from the city. The LVCVA’s contracted transportation lobbyist, Tom Skancke, told the board that a lack of funding is the biggest barrier for completing a list of projects that would improve the flow of tourists to Southern Nevada.
“The Highway Trust Fund is broke and broken,” Skancke told board members.
He said lawmakers have been reluctant to raise fuel taxes to pay for highway infrastructure and that an alternative to raising taxes would be to charge tolls on highways or for the use of special traffic lanes.
Yeah, let’s have tolls and while they’re at it tax the mining companies more too
The public needs to lobby against such measures which are really alternative methods to raise funds. Whatever happened to our gas taxes paying for highway repair and construction?
Probably need to request an accounting of where existing Gas Tax and federal Highway funds are being spent. This is just another inconvenient way to steal more money. 10 years from now the Employee costs to maintain the tolls would exceed the revenue generated.
Install choke points causing congestion to collect tolls to improve traffic flow?
Naw, not buying this
It wouldn’t be so bad if they’d use the money to fix whatever and then shut down
the toll booths, but it seems that once
they get this ok’d, they find other ways
to use our money and of course then never
shut down the tolls….