# Texas Toll Roads Stay Tolled — Methodology

Evidence cutoff: 2026-09-02.

## Scope

The comparative public-system set includes NTTA, HCTRA, CTRMA, TxDOT's Central Texas Turnpike System, the Grand Parkway System, and the two material Fort Bend County toll authorities where audited records support a bounded treatment.

The transaction and concession set includes North Tarrant Express, LBJ Express, NTE 35W, SH 130 Segments 5–6, and the 2024 SH 288 concession termination and public transition.

This is a material-system comparison. It is not a denominator for all Texas toll revenue.

## Five separate tests

1. Has cumulative project cash recovered the initial construction cost?
2. Is the individual road debt-free?
3. Is the broader system debt-free?
4. Does the public entity retain legal tolling authority?
5. Does a concessionaire retain contractual toll-revenue rights?

A positive answer to the first question does not answer the other four.

## Accounting rules

- Preserve each source's fiscal year and reporting entity.
- Do not combine accrual operating expense with cash principal repayment as one expense line.
- Depreciation is noncash.
- Principal is not an income-statement expense.
- Capital spending may be funded by current revenue, beginning cash, reserves, grants, or new debt.
- Net position is not cash.
- Public transfers and private equity distributions are reported separately.
- Unavailable fields remain unavailable rather than becoming zero.

## Normalized comparison rule

The per-$100 chart includes only CTTS and Grand Parkway because both rows come from the same TxDOT FY2025 report, use the same fiscal year, the same operating-revenue denominator, and the same category schedule.

NTTA is excluded because its gross Trust denominator includes investment and other non-toll revenue. HCTRA is excluded because selected cash uses were funded by several sources. CTRMA and Fort Bend are excluded because the public records do not currently support the same category bridge.

## Open evidence items

- Final Texas Transportation Commission order and project list for the Harris County request under Transportation Code §284.008(d).
- Current ultimate-equity chain for SH 130 Concession Company.
- Complete CTRMA FY2025 audited-to-monthly category bridge.
- Exact page-level FBGPTRA headline extraction.

No open item is replaced with an estimate.