I’m sorry, but I just can’t get excited about voting for Proposition 1, which provides a meager amount of funding, around $1.7 billion, for new transportation projects. The amount to be spent is so small that it is hardly worth the effort of putting the proposition on the ballot.
This is typical of our state’s approach to governing: It won’t solve the problem. Well, it might be enough to build a flyover or two (cost: around $250,000 each) It is far too late to try to keep up with the state’s failure to get serious about transportation. A smart approach would have been to raise the gasoline tax a decade ago, a solution that would have provided a permanent source of funding for TXDOT. Instead, we choose to dip into the Rainy Day Fund to provide a fix for transportation that will be a drop in the bucket. State officials have known for a long time that it requires $4 billion to $5 billion a year to keep pace with the current level of congestion on Texas highways. Proposition 1 barely gets us to first base. The ideological rigidity of state leaders makes it impossible to address the issue (and others) in any meaningful way.
