DALLAS — Since the Dallas North Tollway was constructed, there has always been a vision and a goal that one day it would have a new name: The Dallas North Freeway.
For drivers who have paid more and more to use the road over the years, a commute free of any tolls sounds so great yet so unattainable. Perhaps because the initial plans for the DNT aimed to have it paid for years ago.
That was the complaint of many drivers in a 1975 WFAA story archived in the SMU Jones Film Library when the cost of using the DNT was raised from 20 to 25 cents.
Those looking for a silver lining mentioned they would now just have to throw one coin, a quarter, into the toll booth basket rather than fish around for multiple nickels and dimes. Others lamented an increase that would cost daily commuters nearly $25 more a year to use the road.
One trip from Prosper to Downtown Dallas costs more than $6 today.
But one driver wondered aloud the same thought that has remained five decades later.
“I thought it was supposed to be paid for by now.”
When the price was raised in 1975, it was done so to keep up with debt repayment after use of the tollway declined due to the opening of DFW International Airport and the traffic it stole from Dallas Love Field.
Still, after the 1975 increase, the estimated payoff date to turn the tollway into a freeway was 2005. Obviously, that did not happen.
Five segments have extended the DNT to US 380 in Prosper and the entire North Texas Tollway Authority system is much larger than it was in 1975. Currently, your tolls are paying off $9.5 billion in debt that made construction of new roads, maintenance of old roads, and other operations associated with the toll system possible.
And with a biennial rate increase of 2.75%, the estimated payoff date is now 2049 and that is only if NTTA does not take on any more projects in one of the fastest growing regions in the country.
So while drivers wait on the day they can drive the Dallas North Freeway, they should probably keep that spare change handy.