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November 18, 2009
Agency approves January toll hike, annual bumps starting in 2013
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority board today approved a 20-cent toll increase on the 183-A turnpike that will take effect Jan. 1. In addition, it approved a policy that likely will mean tolls on 183-A and any other future agency tollways will have annual inflationary increases.
In January, the toll at 183-A’s Park Street plaza will go from $1.35 to $1.55, meaning that what is now a 4.5-mile-long road will have a total toll of $2. In 2012, when a several-mile extension north of RM 2243 should open, the Park Street toll will decrease to $1.25 and a new toll point north of New Hope Road will begin charging 95 cents. The 11.7-mile road’s overall toll at that point will be $2.70.
Beginning with January 2013, tolls, absent action by the agency board, will increase by a percentage equal to the annual growth in the consumer price index for urban areas. Over the past five years, the cumulative increase in that index was 15.2 percent.
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August 4, 2009
U.S. 290 East tollway plan to be truncated, for now
The U.S. 290 East tollway, at least for the first few years, will be much shorter than previously proposed. And it will be very expensive to drive.
Officials with the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority said today that instead of putting the full 5.6 miles under construction from U.S. 183 to near Manor, the agency instead will build only a first phase of flyover bridges at U.S. 183 and about a mile and a half of toll lanes. Even that stretch will be less elaborate than expected, with two lanes per side in certain sections (rather than three lanes each direction as previously announced) and, to save $24 million on a bridge over two cross streets, a half-mile section where eastbound and westbound lanes will converge and be separated only by a concrete median.
There would still be free frontage roads, two lanes in each direction, but travelers on them would encounter two to five traffic lights that people taking the short toll road would miss.
As for the cost, mobility authority Executive Director Mike Heiligenstein said the initial toll will be 50 cents near Springdale Road and, for those who chose to take the flyovers to and from U.S. 183, another 50 cents. That would mean that people who travel straight through on U.S. 290 will pay about 33 cents a mile.
Those who take a flyover, and thus run up the full $1 toll, would pay about 66 cents a mile.
That second rate would exceed even the 40 cents a mile that people pay to drive the agency’s 183-A tollway in Cedar Park — $1.80 for 4.5 miles.
Both would appear to be well above a 20 cents a mile ceiling that Heiligenstein said the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board required of the agency’s future projects. That ceiling was in 2007 dollars, and the short section of U.S. 290 East tollway likely will not open until 2012. Even applying a 3 percent annual inflation factor, however, the ceiling in 2012 would be less than 24 cents a mile.
The charge on the Texas Department of Transportation’s four Austin-area toll roads generally is about 12 cents a mile, although people who make very short trips may see a higher rate per mile.
Why the shorter tollway? Heiligenstein said today that, first of all, he hopes that construction on the remaining 4.1 miles or so of the tollway would begin in late 2010, just six months after the construction begins on the mile and a half of toll lanes closer to U.S. 183. But he conceded that that timing estimate, which assumes that the agency could buy all the right of way it needs and borrow several hundred million dollars in those few months, might be optimistic.
“I probably will be corrected at some point in the future on that,” Heiligenstein said. “But I want it (the construction) to look like it is seamless. If things fall just right, it will almost appear that it is just one project.”
Heiligenstein said that construction on the flyover portion of the project, which is funded primarily with $90 million from the federal stimulus program, should begin in October. The construction of the toll lanes from U.S. 183 to east of Springdale Road would start in summer 2010, he said. The flyovers and 1.5-mile toll road should open by fall 2012.
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July 30, 2009
Commission approves toll amnesty plan, but details still fuzzy
Toll violators on Texas Department of Transportation turnpikes in Austin and Tyler, if they pay the overdue tolls and sign up for electronic toll tags, will be forgiven up to 90 percent of non-payment fees under an amnesty program approved Thursday by the Texas Transportation Commission.
By offering to forego payment of the lion’s share of $58.4 million owed in late fees, TxDOT hopes to collect much of the $3.2 million in unpaid tolls. But officials Thursday said that there hasn’t been a comparable program on other Texas toll roads, so they couldn’t predict what percentage of scofflaws might be enticed to pay up by the offer.
“What we’ve been able to piece together is if you approach something like 90 percent, you’re liable to get more participation,” said Phil Russell, TxDOT’s assistant executive director of innovative project development.
Details of how the amnesty will work will be released in a few weeks, TxDOT said.
To date, about 140,000 cars have run up more than 2.9 million unpaid tolls, according to TxDOT. The amnesty of 60 to 90 days — TxDOT is officially calling it a “toll recovery” period — will likely begin Sept. 1 or shortly thereafter, TxDOT officials said.
Rental car companies will not be eligible for the amnesty.
And it will not apply to tolls rung up and unpaid on the 183-A toll road, which is run by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, not TxDOT.
TxDOT runs five toll roads, four in Austin and one in Tyler. The first Austin toll roads opened in late October 2006 and began charging tolls in January 2007. But TxDOT, while it has billed for tolls and aggressively pursued collection from non-payers, to date has not taken anyone to court.
That will change after the amnesty period, Russell said.
“We didn’t want to be perceived to be a heavy-handed government coming in,” Russell told commission members before the vote. “We’ve had patience. But we are at the point now where we must move forward. And we will be initiating court proceedings.”
An unpaid toll can generate $25 in fees within four months. If it is referred to court, the possible tab rises to $450 for each toll.
In other action Thursday, the commission:
• Approved a $31 million loan to the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority for the U.S. 290 East tollway. The authority plans to begin a $265 million project later this fall to build four flyover bridges at the U.S. 183/U.S 290 intersection along with six toll lanes and free frontage roads to east of Springdale Road, executive director Mike Heiligenstein said.
The loan will be used to buy right of way and to move utility lines for that project. The rest of the money for the project will come from a $90 million grant under the federal stimulus program, from agency funds and from bonds to be sold next year.
The agency will in the end extend the U.S. 290 tollway to near Manor.
• Authorized spending about $6 million in federal stimulus funds for road resurfacing projects on seven Central Texas roads, including U.S. 183 between MoPac Boulevard and Burnet Road.
• Approved a $457 million list of projects that included $83 million for buy right of way and move utilities for expansion of Interstate 35 from four lanes to six lanes in parts of Bell and McLennan counties.
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June 18, 2009
Toll troubles in Dallas
One day late on this, but a couple of daily stories Wednesday waylayed me. But wanted to put in front of you a Michael A. Linderberger story from the Dallas Morning News that ran online Tuesday. A somewhat different version of it hit newstands in print Wednesday.
But the upshot is toll traffic has slowed considerably up in Dallas, putting the North Texas Tollway Authority in a financial bind as it pays debt service on the massive $3.2 billion it paid TxDOT for the right to build the Texas 121 tollway. You may recall that a private consortium led by Spanish company Cintra was going to build it, and pay the state close to $3 billion in anticipated future profits.
But that changed during the 2007 legislative session when people sympathetic to the NTTA said that the authority, which already operated two existing tollways in the Dallas area, had not been given a proper chance to compete for the work. So, after the fact, the NTTA beat the Cintra bid and got the job. The $3.2 billion, now in TxDOT’s hands, is to be used on transportation projects in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
This all occurred at the tail end of a heady period when TxDOT and Gov. Perry administration officials were touting such toll road deals as the panacea for Texas’ road-funding problems. Private toll road operators would take a proposed toll road, they said, figure out it present value for all those future tolls, and then cut a big check to TxDOT for much of that profit. Then, over time with what TxDOT officials called “patient money,” the toll road operator would make its money as well. Consumers would have the road, TxDOT would have a bounty for more roads, and the toll road operator would make a profit sometime mid-century. Everyone would be happy.
But policymakers soured on that concept in 2007 and its main defender, Texas Transportation Commission chairman Ric Williamson (a Perry appointee) died in December 2007. Right now it’s not clear if private toll road leases are on hiatus, or permanent banishment.
Now, as Lindenberger’s story discusses, the sagging economy has led to sagging usage of Texas 121 (and other toll roads up there) and sagging revenue, and an emerging financial bind. Everyone is not happy.
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May 6, 2009
Texas 45 SE to open Thursday morning
The area’s fifth toll road, Texas 45 Southeast, will open to traffic Thursday between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.
The 7.4 mile tollway, running between Interstate 35 and the southern tip of Texas 130 (which occurs at U.S. 183 near Mustang Ridge), will complete a 56-mile loop around the eastern fringe of the metro area. The long-range hope is that some significant portion of I-35’s heavy traffic, particularly 18-wheelers, will be willing to pay to avoid the congestion.
But with the total cost at $6.40 for a passenger car (including $1 to drive Texas 45 Southeast) and four times that for a multi-axle truck, early predictions for traffic on the new tollway are just a few thousand cars a day. I-35 in downtown Austin, meanwhile, has more than 200,000 cars a day on it.
Texas 45 Southeast, unlike TxDOT’s three other Austin-area tollways, will have no cash facilities. Instead it will have electronic readers to debit toll tags and cameras to record the license plates of vehicles without toll tags so that the car owner can be billed for the tollway trip. The charge for so-called “video tolling” on Texas 45 Southeast will be $1.33.
There will be intermediate exits and entrances at FM 1625 and North Turnersville Road. The west end at I-35 will have three direct connecting bridges, allowing westbound traffic on the tollway to go north or south on I-35 using flyovers and northbound I-35 traffic to take a flyover to eastbound Texas 45 Southeast.
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April 14, 2009
Bill seeks to solve tollway befuddlement
The House Transportation Committee right now is tying itself in knots over HB 1910, a bill by state Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, which seeks to give drivers better information about toll roads.
The bill, at its heart, would require that all Texas toll roads have clear signs telling drivers three things: 1) Toll road ahead, so exit now or prepare to pay; 2) This is what the next toll plaza will cost you; and 3) This toll road does, or does not, allow you to pay with cash.
The point is that a lot of people bumble on to toll roads, get a bill (or in Houston, an actual fine) and then they feel bamboozled and get mad.
The getting-in-knots part occurred when state Rep. Ryan Guillen and an assistant county attorney from Harris County (which operates toll roads down there) tried to figure out why toll tags tend to deactivate when they are removed from one car and put on another one. Guillen couldn’t figure out why a tag can’t just follow a person from car to car. The answer is that basically it’s cleaner for the toll road agency if a tag and a car are always aligned.
At any rate, the TxTag, the electronic toll tag that Central Texas cars would tend to have, pretty much are impossible to remove from a windshield anyway without emerging in tatters.
The problem in Central Texas, according to the lawmakers (and confirmed by experience here) is that the signage is not always clear here about what the next toll plaza is going to cost. Hochberg talked about finding himself on the Loop 1 toll road in North Austin and seeing no sign at all telling him what the toll would be on the plaza near Merrilltown Road.
“There are very few places that tell you ahead of time what your luxurious trip on the toll road is going to cost you,” Hochberg said. Representative, it’s $0.75 if you pay cash, $0.675 if you have a toll tag.
For now, HB 1910 was left pending.
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April 6, 2009
Diverting discussion
The introduction of SJR 9 and SB 216, both by state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, has sparked some “open and frank” discussion in the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee on diversions. Diversions, if you aren’t immersed in this stuff, are the $1.6 billion of transportation money in the state that currently are being spent on non-transportation needs.
The main diversion goes to the Texas Department of Public Safety, about $1.2 billion in the current biennium. That money, if it weren’t being used to pay for DPS troopers, could instead pay for improving the highway system they drive on.
But if you take the gas tax money that pays for DPS and give it instead to TxDOT, then you have to find the money somewhere for the troopers. That somewhere is general state revenue, which of course has the rest of state government coveting it. And the arbitor of how all this green pie is sliced, at least on the east end of the Capitol, is the state Finance Committee, chaired by state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan.
Ogden’s name was much invoked in the transportation committee this morning. Carona said he had been negotiating with Ogden during the session, hoping to end or significantly cut into the diversions. With little success apparently. SB 1, the main budget bill, lowers the DPS diversion by about $300 million (in a biennium, meaning it ends about a quarter of it). But at the same time, another comparable amount that now goes to TxDOT would stop going there.
The net positive affect for TxDOT, Carona said, is a paltry $21 million. Given that, Carona said he had to move forward with his bill and joint resolution (which would amend the state Constitution, with voter approval in November). He put out a press release on the subject, and called a press conference for Wednesday to talk about transportation funding.
“This is a critical problem that we will have to deal with,” Carona says in the press release. “We will reach a point where we cannot pay for new capacity.”
State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, said he had talked to Ogden about similar legislation that he carried in 2007. Ogden’s reaction at the time, according to Wentworth: “I need the money” to balance the state budget.
The issue pits the transportation committee, which wants to build roads and rail, against the finance committee, which probably likes roads just fine but has other pressures to balance. State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Collin County, serves on both committees.
“I have friends who are for it, and friends who are against it,” Shapiro said. “I’m going to vote with my friends.”
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March 26, 2009
Texas 45 Southeast to cost a dollar
The toll for Texas 45 Southeast, Austin’s fifth toll road, should be easy to remember: $1.
The Texas Transportation Commission is expected today to approve toll rates for what will be Central Texas’ fifth tollway when it opens in a few weeks. That dollar rate is for passenger cars and pickups, and amounts to about 13.5 cents a mile for the 7.4-mile-long road.
We’ll update this blog when they make the vote. But short of a power outage at TxDOT’s Greer Building on E. 11th Street, expect it to happen.
That rate applies only to cars with electronic toll tags. If your car doesn’t have a tag, you can still drive the road and be “video-tolled.” The owners of those vehicles will get a bill in the mail, based on a photo of the license plate, and will have to pay $1.33 for the trip.
Vehicles with more than two axles will pay more. A three-axle vehicle with a TxTag, for instance, would pay $2 and a four-axle vehicle would pay $3.
There will be two intermediate points to enter and exit, at North Turnersville Road and RM 1625. The tolltag rate at those two points will be 66 cents, with the video-toll rate again 33 percent higher: 88 cents.
The tollway will have no cash booths, making it “all-electronic” in tollway venacular.
Texas 45 Southeast will run from Interstate 35 (just north of the Travis-Hays county line) to U.S. 183 near Mustang Ridge, connecting seamlessly into the south end of the Texas 130 tollway. When Texas 45 Southeast opens, a driver will be able to leave I-35 north of Georgetown and make a 56-mile loop around the east side of the metro area without encountering a stop light. Or any rush hour traffic.
The toll rate is slightly higher than what TxDOT is charging on Texas 130. A passenger car driving the 49 miles of Texas 130 would wrack up $5.40 in tolls, or about 11 cents a mile.
On the other hand, 183-A in Cedar Park, owned and operated by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, is much more expensive. It costs $1.80 on a toll tag to drive the 4.5 miles of that road, which is an imposing 40 cents a mile. But the authority also build 7.1 miles of “free” frontage roads running north to Leander from the north end of the tollway, and considers that part of what you’re paying for when you get tolled on 183-A.
Even if you drive that whole 11.6 miles, however, you’d still be paying 15.5 cents a mile.
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February 11, 2009
There's a 'Reason' foreign tollway companies are only players in the market
Some years ago I first interviewed Bob Poole, the transportation guru of the Reason Foundation. If you don’t know, Reason (there’s a magazine as well) is of the Libertarian persuasion. As such, the foundation and Poole support tollways and, in addition, long-term toll roads leases between governments and private companies of the sort that have caused so much political havoc around here the past couple of years.
Poole, however, is no blinkers-on partisan. In my various interviews with him, he has always been quick to point out the full range of facts and opinion on an issue. And in his periodic “Surface Transportation Innovations” newsletter, he takes the same approach. You never doubt where he’s coming from, but you have the reassuring feeling that he’s not trying to put one over on you.
I’m on the e-mail distribution list for that newsletter, and I got the February issue today. In it, he has a piece headlined “The ‘Foreign Companies’ Issue, Again.” He begins by discussing why foreign companies like Ferrovial-Cintra (the Spanish company that was the first to get a toll road concession contract in Texas and recently landed another one in Tarrant County) dominate the market. His answer: They’re the only companies that have been in the market for years, so they have the expertise and financial strength to play here.
Anyway, I thought it was worth repeating a list of the top 11 “infrastructure developer/operators” (listed by total invested) that Poole had taken from yet another publication, Public Works Financing. According to Poole, these companies have put $282.5 billion into 357 tollway concession projects.
Ferrovial-Cintra $68.2 billion Macquarie $47.1 billion ACS/Iridium $33.0 billion Vinci-Cofiroute $24.1 billion Hochtief $22.3 billion Sacyr/Itinere $19.8 billion Abertis $19.1 billion Bouygues $13.5 billion OHL $13.1 billion Global Via $12.6 billion Bilfinger Berger $9.7 billion
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January 30, 2009
Texas 45 Southeast to open about three months early
The Texas 45 Southeast tollway, which will complete a 56-mile bypass around the metro area’s east side, will open in April, officials said today. That would be about three months earlier than an estimate made just a couple of months ago.
However, the 7.4-mile road from the southerly end of the Texas 130 tollway to Interstate 35 south of Austin likely will open without one of its three flyover bridges to I-35, the one that would take people northbound on the interstate to eastbound on the tollway. Tim Weight, director of construction for the Department of Transportation’s Austin office, said that final bridge probably will open a month or so later.
Opening in this somewhat incomplete form explains the last-minute improvement in the schedule, Weight said. The earlier prediction of summer was based on having everything done.
At the tollway’s east end, drivers on Texas 130 will move seamlessly to Texas 45 Southeast without having to leave the main highway lanes.
Mark Tomlinson, director of TxDOT’s turnpike division, said toll rates have not been determined yet for the road, which was built entirely with tax dollars rather than the typical mix for toll roads of borrowed money and cash on hand. Officials in the past have said the cost to drivers would be comparable to tolls on TxDOT’s three other Central Texas tollways — currently 11 cents a mile for people with toll tags — and Tomlinson said that’s likely still the case.
That would equate to about an 80-cent toll for those with a toll tag, and about 33 percent more for people without a tag who get a bill in the mail. The road will be “all-electronic,” meaning there will be no way to pay with cash.
It was not immediately clear if drivers will get a couple of months of free driving on the road, as occurred with the other TxDOT tollways.
Weight said there will be three points to enter and exit the road between I-35 and Texas 130: Turnersville Road, Wright Road and FM 1625.
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January 26, 2009
"Diminished access" could be Kay Bailey access key to Farm Bureau
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, on the lookout these days for discernible policy gaps between herself and Gov. Rick Perry, the man who has a job Hutchison seemingly covets, may have found one in the arcane territory of “diminished access.”
You may not know what that is, nor might it affect your vote if you did. But it is very important to the Texas Farm Bureau. And the bureau, which has always supported both Hutchison and Perry on their differing political paths, is a very important constituency in what is shaping up to be a 2010 showdown in the Republican gubernatorial primary.
“Absolutely,” Hutchison said today when asked if she supports giving landowners compensation when land taken for a state project diminishes their access to the Texas highway system. A Perry spokeswoman last week had said the Texas Legislature should not revisit that issue this spring.
When the Legislature made its first visit in 2007, overwhelmingly passing HB 2006 that would have mandated such compensation for landowners, Perry vetoed the bill. He said that change in the law could increase the Texas Department of Transportation’s costs for acquiring highway right of way by millions of dollars.
Farm Bureau officials at the group’s leadership conference, held today at the Omni Hotel in South Austin, made it clear that they still want that protection in the law. The value of a farm or ranch, they said, could be severely decreased if a key county road or farm-to-market road suddenly dead-ends into a tollway and there’s no way to get across or onto the toll road. A landowner in such cases might have to go miles out of the way to get himself to town, or farm equipment to land on the other side of the road.
Saying that the bureau and the governor remain at odds on this issue is not quite the same, however, as saying that the farmers will support Hutchison over Perry in the primary. Gene Hall, the bureau’s director of public relations, said the farm group has a several-tier process of figuring out political endorsements and that a decision is many months away.
And the Farm Bureau, even though it opposed his Trans-Texas Corridor plan of cross-state supertollways, endorsed Perry in 2006 over several candidates who agreed with them on the corridor.
Hutchison, by the way, has spoken out against the corridor plan for years and did so again today. TxDOT earlier this month pronounced the corridor dead, although by the end of the day it mostly appeared that the only thing truly dead was the name itself. Projects underway under its auspices will continue.
Given a shot at a news conference today to crack on Perry for that, Hutchison demurred. She repeated her overall position of opposition to it, and to giving long-term toll road leases to foreign companies, then left the door open for supporting the pieces that are still in the planning stages.
“Going forward we have to look at each new proposal as it comes up,” she said.
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December 17, 2008
Loyalty redefined
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is about to get serious about pursuing serial toll scofflaws on the agency’s 183-A, referring the worst cases for prosecution to Williamson County Precinct No. 2 Justice of the Peace Edna Staudt.
The authority board spent some time today discussing the matter. About 95 percent of the agency’s customers pay either immediately with toll tags (about 86.5 percent of all toll transactions) or in a timely fashion when they get bills. But there are some that, well, know a bargain when they see one.
Ron Fagan, the mobility authority’s director of operations, said there is one particular couple where the husband has wracked up about 800 unpaid tolls and his wife has around 300 on her car.
“They’ve been very loyal customers,” authority lawyer Tom Nielson said, momentarily bringing the board meeting to a stop with the laughter. Board member Lowell Lebermann had a correction.
“Well, they’ve been very loyal users,” he said.
Fagan said that the couple has now come forward to make arrangements for payment, which Fagan said could run into the $2,000 to $3,000 range, depending on how many of the late fees and collection fees the agency enforces. Fagan said that the agency mainly wants to collect it tolls and turn regular violators into regular payers.
“All we want to do is build good roads,” Lebermann said, “and have people pay to use them.”
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December 5, 2008
Trouble in toll land: NTTA lowers revenue estimate
The North Texas Tollway Authority today announced it was lowering its revenue estimate for 2009 by 7 percent, or about $25 million. The release announcing the change cited the poor economy.
And that’s despite gas prices that have plunged 50 percent this fall.
The toll authority operates three roads in the Dallas area, the Dallas North Tollway from downtown well into Collin County, the President George Bush Turnpike that runs east-west through Plano, and Texas 121 in Collin County.
No evidence of a similar phenomenon here in Central Texas where we have four toll roads and a fifth opening in a few months. At least so far.
According to the latest data from the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, its 183-A tollway continues to show increasing revenue. In October, for instance, the 4.5-mile-long road in Cedar Park brought in $1.48 million, the authority says on its Web site, up almost 12 percent from the previous October. In August and September, when gas prices were still brutal, revenue from the road was up 8.5 percent and 10 percent from the same months the year before.
No fresh data on the three TxDOT toll roads is immediately available. Unlike the mobility authority, which posts its toll results in almost real time, TxDOT only puts out a report once a quarter. The last report I looked at, however, showed traffic increasing.
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October 10, 2008
Fitch has "negative outlook" on Austin toll bonds
Fitch Ratings is not bullish on TxDOT’s three Austin toll roads.
The rating agency’s outlook on bonds sold by TxDOT for the roads — Texas 130, Texas 45 North and the Loop 1 extension — is “negative,” according to a release from Fitch earlier this week. The problem is that the traffic on the three roads, while it started fast, shows signs of falling short of longer-term growth projections.
“The Negative Rating Outlook reflects the strong possibility for traffic growth to be significantly less than originally forecasted … ,” the release said.
The roads, or part of them, first opened Oct. 31, 2006, which was actually ahead of schedule. Actual toll collections began in January 2007, so the money started rolling in early. And both Texas 45 North and Loop 1 had good traffic immediately, much higher than projections. Texas 130, meanwhile, mostly still goes through cow country and the 49-mile Austin segment wasn’t completely finished until this spring. It’s performance has only in the last few months reached original projections.
The problem for Fitch is the trend. Growth in traffic even on Loop 1 and Texas 45 North has not been what TxDOT was hoping for.
“The 2005 forecast assumes traffic growth at 89 percent and corresponding revenue growth of 97 percent over the fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2011 time period,” Fitch says. “While the project is starting at a higher base, given current trends it is Fitch’s assessment that this growth appears less likely on the more developed SH45/Loop 1 segments.”
Fitch does go on to say that Texas 130 might benefit next year when the Texas 45 Southeast toll road opens. That 7.1 mile-long tollway will connect the south end of Texas 130 to Interstate 35. Then there’s the coming southerly 40 miles of Texas 130, from Mustang Ridge near Austin down to Interstate 10 at Seguin. And over time, there will be more development along Texas 130 and that will make traffic and revenue increase.
But all three of those things were anticipated when the projections for the three-road project were made in 2002. That forecast showed that the project would continue to be in the red for decades and would need TxDOT to cover most of operations and maintenance costs. And we all know the financial strains that TxDOT is facing.
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September 25, 2008
Perry an "innovator in action," Libertarian group says
Gov. Rick Perry, as most people who follow transportation know, for most of his eight-year administration has been pushing for toll roads and, particularly, toll roads on state highways built and operated by private companies. That policy stance was at least partly to blame for Perry become a plurality governor in the 2006 election, when he garnered three major opponents and won with 39 percent of the vote.
Now it has gotten him an award.
The Reason Foundation, a Libertarian think tank in California, has named Perry an “innovator in action,” along with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters (also a huge advocate of using public-private partnerships to build toll roads) and seven others. Among those seven: the late Ric Williamson, Perry’s long-time friend and, as Texas Transportation Commission chairman, the voice and energy behind the several-year push for paying for roads with tolls.
The foundation, in its announcement, included this piece of Perry prose on the subject:
“A decade ago, if I said there was a way to pay for all the roads Texas needed, if I had talked about a group of people who are eager to compete for the chance to spend their money to build our roads, many probably would have thought I’d lost my mind.
“But the fact of the matter is, many financial institutions are willing to pay for the roads we need but can’t afford, in exchange for the opportunity to recover their investment and make a profit over time. In fact, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters recently estimated that roughly $400 billion in private money is available worldwide for public infrastructure projects. It would be foolish for Texas to ignore such an opportunity.
“I am convinced that private dollars, administered through private-public partnerships, are a part of the answer to our transportation infrastructure challenge. Such innovation can sometimes frighten those accustomed to the old way of doing things, those comfortable with the status quo. But the simple truth is: when it comes to roads, Texas needs more of them. And we need them now. We need leaders willing to think outside the box, to be innovative in their solutions, to take a chance.”
“From crumbling roads to collapsing bridges to gridlocked roads, our nation’s infrastructure is in desperate need of repair and expansion,” said Leonard Gilroy, editor of Innovators in Action and director of government reform at Reason Foundation. “Governor Perry and Secretary Peters have led us down a new path, a path that shows there are better and more sustainable ways to fund, build and operate infrastructure. Their leadership offers hope that after years of falling behind, we can build a 21st century transportation system that protects our mobility and spurs the economy.”
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September 11, 2008
Feds: No tolls on I-80 in Pennsylvania
The Federal Highway Administration rejected an application from the state of Pennsylvania to put tolls on Interstate 80 through the state.
The case had been closely watched by advocates and opponents of toll roads. Pennsylvania hoped to follow the lead of Indiana and the city of Chicago in generating money out of an existing road. But in the case of Indiana and Chicago, the roads that were turned over to private operators (with large upfront payments) were already tollways. Not so in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation proposed to turn the road over to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, which would toll the road and then make annual lease payments to the state. The federal department’s rejection of the application, however, was not a rejection of toll roads or even of putting tolls on existing free roads. The problem in the regulators’ eyes, in fact, may be that Pennsylvania wasn’t going to get a good enough deal.
“Tolling interstates is a viable option for many states to fund highway improvements or to improve performance conditions,” said federal Highway administrator Tom Madison in a press release from the agency. “Because we are legally bound to ensure applications for this program meet all congrfessionally mandated requirements, however, we are regrettably unable to approve this application.”
The problem, according to highway commission, is that the amount of the lease payments must be based on “an objective market valuation,” which is not the case here. The application from Pennsylvania, according to the highway commission, “included no information or data justifying the proposed amount for the annual toll payment …”
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June 25, 2008
Poll: Texas want more roads and rail, but no taxes or tolls
A new poll doesn’t figure to give a lot of comfort to legislators looking for financial answers to our transportation needs.
The poll, conducted by the non-profit, non-partisan Texas Lyceum group, found that six out of 10 Texans say they want more money put into new road and slightly more than that favor plowing public dollars into passenger rail. But ask them about the various mechanisms for finding the money and the poll respondents fell into a “no” mood.
On tolls: 66 percent oppose tolls for new roads and 69 percent oppose them for existing roads. Oddly, 53 percent supported “the state of Texas allowing private business contractors to handle transportation projects and improvements,” which seemingly applies to so-called concession agreements where private companies build and operate toll roads.
But given the vague wording of the question — it doesn’t mention tolls — poll respondents may have believed it applied to using private contractors to build and maintain roads, which has been overwhelmingly the practice of TxDOT and most local governments for decades.
As for raising money by raising the state’s 20-cent-a-gallon gas tax: 72 percent said no, including 60 percent who “strongly” oppose doing so.
So, the message is: Build more, just don’t come to us for the money. Good luck with that one, Legislature.
As for high fuel prices, people were asked if they would “strongly consider” various ways to save gas. Here are the suggested strategies and percentage of folks pondering doing them:
• Buying a hybrid or other fuel-efficient vehicle: 66 percent • Carpooling to work or school: 63 percent • Taking public transportation to work or school: 53 percent • Not taking a vacation this summer: 51 percent • Eventually moving to someplace closer to work or school: 37 percent
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June 23, 2008
Corridor Watch: Elect our transportation leaders
CorridorWatch, a Fayette County-based group that has been active in opposing the Trans-Texas Corridor plan, wants to go beyond the Sunset Advisory Commission’s recommended shakeup of state transportation leadership. The group, led by David and Linda Stall, recommends that TxDOT answer to an elected six-member board led by a chairman appointed by the governor.
CorridorWatch makes it recommendation, along with various other reactions to the Sunset commission staff’s recent report on TxDOT, in written comments submitted as part of the sunset process.
TxDOT, like all state agencies, “sunsets” after 12 years unless the Legislature acts to keep it alive. As part of that process, the Sunset Advisory Commission staff studies each agency and makes recommendations, which are then accepted, rejected or amended by the Sunset board. The Legislature then passes a bill to sustain the agency, incorporating some, all or none of the recommendations. TxDOT’s turn in the 12-year rotation is next year.
The sunset staff early this month had recommended abolishing the five-member commission, all of whom are appointed to six-year terms by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate. The staff said that instead there should be a single transportation commissioner appointed by the governor and subject to Senate confirmation every two years.
CorridorWatch, in its comments, says the current system makes the commission entirely beholden to the governor. To give the public genuine input into state transportation policy, CorridorWatch recommends dividing the state into six geographic districts (their comments even include specific boundary lines) that roughly speaking encompass the Rio Grande Valley, Central Texas, Southeast Texas, North Texas, the Panhandle and West Texas.
The governor would appoint the chairman, with a four-year term and Senate confirmation. The chairman would also run the department, replacing the current executive director position.
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June 18, 2008
Final piece of Texas 130 tollway opens
The final piece of the Texas 130 tollway — a flyover bridge from eastbound Texas 71 to northbound Texas 130 — opened today just after 10 a.m.
This bridge will make easier the key passage from the tollway to the airport nearby, and could allow TxDOT to adjust signal timing on a traffic light on Texas 71 at the tollway. The agency had had to allow significant signal time for people on Texas 71 to make the left turn to the north to get on the tollway. Now, presumably, almost all of those drivers will be taking the flyover.
Construction of the bridge had been slowed by more than a year by the need to bury some overhead electric lines just west of Texas 130. Designers had originally believed the lines could simply be made higher, but had to scramble when the city said it didn’t have the proper equipment to service poles that tall. So TxDOT had to go to Plan B and bury the lines.
In the meantime, the agency built the bridge from both ends, leaving a gap in the middle where the electric lines were. And then, once the lines were safety buried, went on with construction of the bridge and closed the gap.
With the completion of the flyover, Texas 130, at least the 49-mile Austin portion, is done after almost five years of construction. A private consortium, headed by Spanish tollway operator Cintra and including Zachry Construction, a San Antonio company, will build the next 40 miles of Texas 130 from Mustang Ridge to Interstate 10 at Seguin. That project is supposed to begin next year and be done by 2012.
The revenue from that southern portion will go primarily to the Cintra-Zachry group, with TxDOT getting a cut that will increase in percentage if traffic rises over the years.
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June 17, 2008
Toll stash in Metroplex churning out dollars
By this weekend, the Dallas-Fort Worth area will have another $1 million to spend on transportation. This time next month, another $10 million or so will have rolled in.
That’s what happens when you go borrow $3.2 billion, and then don’t spend it for awhile. Of course, all this “free” money will have to paid back, and then some, on the back end.
What happened is that the North Texas Tollway Authority agreed to pay TxDOT $3.2 billion for the privilege of getting to build the Texas 121 tollway in Collin County. It won this right last year in a curious bidding war with a private group headed by Spanish toll road builder Cintra. The idea is that the road is so perfectly located in Dallas’ congested north suburbs that it will belch up generous amounts of toll revenue over the next several decades. That allowed the tollway authority to borrow much of the anticipated profits upfront.
That money, in turn, will be used in the Dallas-Fort Worth area on other transportation projects, including tollways, freeways, managed lanes, traffic signals and bike/pedestrian projects. State law requires that it be spent only from whence it came.
But for now, it’s just sitting in the bank, as it were, and churning out bucks, with the exception of about $120 million already spent on projects that were underway and had gone over budget. To be specific, the money has generated $69.2 million in earnings in a little over six months. That’s more money than the 11-county Austin districts gets in a full year, and that’s back when TxDOT actually had money to pass out to the locals.
As we said above, the tollway authority will of course have to pay interest over the next 30 years or so on the borrowed $3.2 billion, money that will come from tolls. But in the meantime, the stash will generate enough money to build a next freeway interchange (or more) for each year it sits there.
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June 5, 2008
Highland Park floats idea of tolling regular city street
Tolls on Rollingwood Drive? Red Bud Trail? Brodie Lane through Sunset Valley?
If that sounds crazy, well, you should read the Dallas Morning News story on what the island city of Highland Park inside Dallas is contemplating.
Mockingbird Lane, if you don’t know, is a major east-west thoroughfare in Dallas. West of Central Expressway, it cuts through the wealthy burg of Highland Park. Southern Methodist University and Love Field are both on Mockingbird. Highland Park, fed up with so many “outsiders” cutting through and generating most of the street’s 18,000 vehicles a day, is pondering variable tolls (called “congestion pricing”) to stem the tide.
This sort of idea would probably never gain traction within a larger city. For instance, if Hyde Park residents wanted to toll 38th Street from Guadalupe Street to east of Duval Street, it would never fly politically. City Council members represent not just the Hyde Park folks, but also the people west and east of there.
But for a separate municipality surrounded by a larger city, like West Lake Hills, Rollingwood and Sunset Valley, the political calculus would be different. When I lived in Wichita, Kansas, about 15 years ago, a municipality called Eastborough surrounded by Wichita actually put up barricades on a major artery passing through it.
Eastborough caught a lot of grief and, as I recall, the barricades eventually came down. No town is an island, really, and even Highland Park hasn’t yet pulled the trigger on Mockingbird tolls. But all this is worth watching.
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May 22, 2008
A different kind of tollway tussle
They’re fighting over a toll road north of Dallas.
Now, when we say “fighting over,” we don’t mean fighting against it. What Collin County and Denton County are doing, according to a story today in the Dallas Morning News, is fighting FOR the right to have a tollway run through their county.
What we’re talking about is the North Dallas Tollway, which is getting so far north of Dallas that it soon be better dubbed the South Oklahoma City Tollway. Right now, according to Google, after making a jog around Frisco, it ends just south of U.S. 380. The North Texas Tollway Authority, which owns and operates the road, plans to extend it northward.
Three years ago, the Morning News reports, the county commissioners of both Denton and Collin counties passed identical resolutions calling for that northward extension to straddle the county line. Now the Collin County court has rescinded its resolution. They want the tollway to be wholly in their bailiwick, which, given the eastward jog just south of where it ends now, is where it figures to go. It would have to curve back west to get to the county line.
Which Denton elected officials don’t much like. Everybody, you see, wants the economic development (read: property taxes) that will inevitably cluster alongside the road. If you’ve been around Austin awhile, you might remember the fight over where to put the route of the Texas 130 tollway. The fight then, waged mostly by Austin folks, was to move it east, farther away from Austin, not closer. It ended up on that more easterly route.
Yes, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, Metroplex folks are different than the rest of us. Or at least Austinites.
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May 6, 2008
Hegar and Perry rapproachement? Not yet
It didn’t take long after state Sen. Glenn Hegar released an op-ed blast Friday at Rick Perry appointee Deirdre Delisi for the story to surface that the Katy Republican and the governor had mended their differences.
Not so, Hegar said, although he has spoken with Delisi twice since sending out the piece saying if asked today to confirm her appointment to lead the Texas Transportation Commission he would vote no. Delisi, named commission chairwoman Wednesday by Perry, called Hegar Friday, he says now, and they’ve talked again this week.
But his position on her appointment, and what he expects out of the Texas Department of Transportation leadership going forward, has not changed. He noted that the governor just a couple of weeks ago was telling the Texas Transportation Forum, a TxDOT-produced event at the HIlton Hotel here, that the Legislature “doesn’t want to solve anything.”
He told Delisi that “not all 181 members are complete idiots… .That broad brush is getting very old.” To make progress on the transportation funding crunch, Hegar said, “we’ve got to sit down and talk to each other. We’ve got to tone down the rhetoric.”
All this is pretty tall talk coming from a freshman senator, especially one from the governor’s own party. But Hegar hails from Katy, which lies in or near the path of the proposed Interstate 69 section of Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor plan. And his expansive District 18 includes Fayette County, hotbed of rural sentiments against the whole corridor plan of toll roads and rail lines.
And Hegar is on both the Senate Nominations Committee, which will take up Delisi’s appointment in 2009 after she serves for awhile as an interim appointment, and the Texas Sunset Review Commission, which is looking at TxDOT’s operations right now. Hegar may be relatively new to the Capitol — he served in the House from 2003 through 2006 before his election to the Senate less than two years ago — but he’s sitting in two chairs that matter to Delisi and TxDOT right now.
Hegar said his stinging op-ed piece, which ran in the Statesman today, wasn’t part of some grand Senate plan to pressure Perry. It was just something that “has been stewing with me for awhile,” thoughts he had while helping his wife take care of twins born five weeks ago.
Perry, in that talk to the forum, said the Legislature can’t just say no and call that a solution to transportation funding. Hegar said he understands that, and that even the borrowing of billions for roads (favored by legislative leaders) is just a “band-aid” that won’t pay for roads long-term. On the other hand, he said, Perry (and Delisi) need to open their minds about the menu of solutions as well.
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April 29, 2008
Southern segment of Texas 130 opens Wednesday
The final segment of the Austin portion of the Texas 130 tollway, from Texas 71 east of the airport to U.S. 183 at Mustang Ridge, will open around noon Wednesday after a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Driving on the 8.7-mile-long segment will be free for everyone during May and June. Then, as the Texas Department of Transportation did with three earlier segments of Texas 130 as well as with the Loop 1 and Texas 45 North toll roads, it will begin charging cash customers in the third month, July. Drivers with electronic toll tags will drive for half price in July, then starting Aug. 1 everyone will be paying full tolls: $1.50 for cash customers, $1.35 for people with toll tags and $1.80 for people who drive through without a toll tag or paying cash — they will get a bill based on photos taken of their license plates.
With the opening, Austin will now have about 70 miles of tollways open (including 183-A in Cedar Park). A fifth area toll road, Texas 45 Southeast, will open next year and complete an eastern bypass of Austin’s congested Interstate 35 from north of Georgetown to south of Onion Creek.
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April 23, 2008
Grading the toll roads
So, how are the four Austin toll roads performing?
Basically, three are doing better than expected, in varying amounts, and one — Texas 130 — only in February reached conservative revenue projections made in 2002. However, it should be noted that the last 8.7 miles of the road is still not open.
Anyway, based on recent reports by TxDOT and the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, here’s how the tollways are doing. The percentages are based on exact numbers provided by the toll agencies; the revenue numbers shown here are rounded:
183-A: According to the mobility authority’s most recent monthly numbers, and a projection made in 2004, March revenue of $1.4 million is close to 70 percent above the estimated monthly average revenue for 2008 of $850,000.
Loop 1: Monthly revenue has been steadily about 20 percent to 30 percent above that 2002 projection. For the first six months of fiscal 2008, which began Sept. 1, the $5.4 million in total revenue is 21 percent above the projection of $4.5 million.
Texas 45 North: This east-west tollway in Williamson County is the most successful toll road so far, perhaps not surprising given that it connects to the other three as well as to Interstate 35 and U.S. 183. Revenue for September through February was $8.3 million, 117 percent above the projection of $3.8 million.
Texas 130: Not so good, here. The 40.3 miles of the eastern bypass open so far, running between I-35 north of Georgetown and Texas 71 east of the airport, made $7.8 million between September and February. That’s 15 percent below the projected $9.2 million.
However, for February, revenue was almost exactly on the $1.54 million monthly projection. And the last section of the road, from Texas 71 to U.S. 183 at Mustang Ridge, opens next week.
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April 22, 2008
Perry: Legislature 'abdicated responsibility' on transportation
Gov. Rick Perry will be addressing the Texas Transportation Forum at lunch today, a convocation of about a thousand engineers, planners, politicians and others interested and involved in road and rail building.
In a copy of his remarks released this morning (with a caution that Perry frequently deviates from the prepared text), the most notable part is a brief critique by Perry of what transpired in 2007: The Legislature that year fought back at the Perry administration’s zest for toll roads, particularly toll roads under long-term lease to private companies. TxDOT and Perry have been fighting back ever since.
In that section, Perry was scheduled to say: “I want everyone within earshot to understand that we cannot assume this problem will fix itself. And while I am looking forward to addressing this issue when the legislature meets in 2009, the state cannot afford a repeat of 2007. Members of the legislature must understand that ‘no’ is not a solution to this challenge. It is an abdication of responsibility.”
In the prepared test, “solution” and “abdication of responsibility” are underlined.
Here’s the whole text of the speech as written:
Thank you, Ned [Holmes, commissioner of the Texas Transportation Commission] for that kind introduction and for having me here today. I also want to commend Amadeo [Saenz] for your work leading this organization through one of the most challenging times in its history.
TXDOT has certainly been spending some time in the public eye, but this place is about big challenges, not big excuses. And I’m convinced that this team can handle the heat. Road builders are cut from a different cloth. It takes a person of vision to look at a state, analyze the growth trends, understand the infrastructure needs, and offer a plan to move people around that haven’t even been born yet.
That kind of planning can sometimes puzzle those individuals of limited perspective. As you know, my good friend, Ric Williamson, was such a visionary. So that often put him at cross-purposes with those who viewed our state’s infrastructure needs through the lens of the next 2 years, instead of looking at the next 20…or 30…or 40 years. With his passing, we certainly lost a clear, passionate voice, but the challenges that he vigorously fought to overcome have not gone away.
If anything, those challenges have grown larger, and this moment in time finds us at a crossroads. Our population continues to grow by roughly 1,500 people per day. For you Aggies in the audience, that means we could fill Kyle Field up with newcomers every 55 days, or fill it up 66 times in the next ten years.
That’s a whole lot of people with a whole lot of needs, but that’s not the only factor in play. We’re also dealing with a funding crisis brought on by a less-than-reliable federal gas tax system. inflation at the national level for everything from materials to labor, and the fact that the bonds passed in 2003 have been spent. As of right now, TxDOT construction lettings are projected to be half of what they were in 2005.
That is not what I call progress. It’s what I call a problem.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I travel around Texas and the country, one of the things I enjoy the most is bragging about the Texas economy. Texas is leading the nation in job growth and has been voted the top state in the nation to do business. Just yesterday, I read where we are now the leading state in the nation for corporate headquarters, recently surpassing New York.
Companies are moving to Texas in droves, creating thousands of new jobs for our people and investing billions in our economy. If we can’t find a way to move their goods, services and workers around this state, they will leave just as fast.
The simple truth is: When it comes to roads, we need more of them.
Because I’m sure as heck not going to stop inviting companies to relocate their operations to our state. Those jobs mean income for Texas families, tax revenues for local communities, and a continually rising economic tide. And good roads mean a better quality of life for our citizens.
Unfortunately, folks on the various sides of this issue have lost sight of these simple facts. Too often, we have seen the issue of road construction driven by emotion, rather than reason. When this happens, honest debate is stifled, and solutions are sacrificed at the altar of politics.
Just a few short years ago, we made significant progress on the challenge of building our transportation infrastructure. I would argue, in fact, that we changed the ages-old paradigm of how Texas does transportation. We brought local communities to the table through our regional planning authorities. We instituted bonding so local authorities could leverage toll roads and make their tax dollars go even further. We invited the private sector into the conversation for market-driven solutions to the funding challenge. This was progress and it works.
I want everyone within earshot to understand that we cannot assume this problem will fix itself. And while I am looking forward to addressing this issue when the legislature meets in 2009, the state cannot afford a repeat of 2007. Members of the legislature must understand that “no” is not a solution to this challenge. It is an abdication of responsibility.
Instead, we need to innovate. We need to thoughtfully debate. And we need to bring all ideas to the table to tackle the overwhelming need our state faces. And we already have some pretty innovative ideas on the table.
A decade ago, if I would have told you that there was a way to pay for all the roads you wanted, if I had talked about a group of people who are dying to compete for the chance to spend their money to build your roads, you would have told me I’d lost my mind. With all your experience in financing and building roads, you would have thought such a thing too good to be true. But it is true.
There are many, many financial institutions out there ready and willing to invest in Texas roads, willing to pay for the roads we need but can’t afford, in exchange for the opportunity to recover their investment and make a profit over time. In fact, last month, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters publicly estimated that there are roughly $400 billion dollars in private money available worldwide for public infrastructure projects. That’s billion with a “b.”
In Texas, we pursue private money to build our communications infrastructure, we leverage private money to build our rail infrastructure, and we welcome private investment from overseas if it means putting up a plant for Toyota or Samsung. So why in the world shouldn’t we pursue private funds to help us build roads?
I am convinced that private dollars, administered through private-public partnerships, are a significant part of the answer to our transportation infrastructure challenge. I also believe the legislature should break its addiction to gas tax money and insist it be spent on transportation and transportation alone. That will be a great first step, but not the only step.
We Texans are at the wheel of a powerhouse economy that is racing forward at record speeds. As our growth accelerates, our needs do as well. We do not fulfill the public trust if we waste our time arguing over millions when our needs are in the billions. We are stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime and hurting our state in the process.
So we need to innovate. And I’ll step up and say it’s possible we haven’t thought of every single solution to our infrastructure challenges. That door is open for a better idea. I’m intrigued by Senator Ogden’s idea of finding a way to give our Texas pension funds first chance to invest in Texas roads. I think this idea is loaded with promise. As the next session approaches, I look forward to discussing it and other ways to fund our road construction. The Senator’s creativity is a great example of how to approach the issue.
I also believe additional bonding can be part of a greater solution. However, until that greater solution, that long term strategy, becomes more clear, I am not willing to allow this state to just go further into debt. Running up the credit card just pushes back the greater problem for two more years. I say no more band-aids. No more short-term fixes. Texas needs long-term solutions and a long-term strategy and Texas needs it now.
I am fully committed to working with the legislature to find that long-term sustainable solution. Leaders like Lt. Governor Dewhurst and Speaker Craddick have shown they have what it takes to tackle tough problems. We have done so together in the past with tough issues like medical malpractice reform, balancing the budget in times of deficit, and finding solutions to school finance. I am confident that we can work together to solve this great challenge too.
I thank all of you for staying engaged in this difficult process. The work we do together makes a difference and we cannot relent in our quest to solve these challenges. Because, we’re not just talking about dollars and concrete and orange cones. Instead, we are talking about freedom: the freedom to move about, to transport goods or to simply travel freely with one’s family. This freedom is part of our Texas heritage and we cannot lose sight of this high calling as we wrestle with the details.
By advancing toward solutions and, ultimately, solving this challenge, we will make a better tomorrow for the state we all love so much. I encourage you to stay engaged, bring your best ideas to the table and be willing to get a bloody nose every once in a while for a noble idea. Otherwise, we’ll just watch the world pass us by as jobs, citizens and investment hit the open road for more favorable conditions.
That has never been the Texas way and, God willing, never will be.
Thank you for all you do. May God bless you and, through you, may He continue to bless the great state of Texas.
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April 18, 2008
Deal reached on Texas 161 tollway
Maybe it was the ShortCuts blog earlier this afternoon highlighting the dispute. Maybe it was TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott buying a cookie earlier today and getting a bill for the portentous amount of $1.61.
Or maybe it was Texas’ lieutenant governor and several state senators pressing for a solution. Probably that last one.
Anyway, the Dallas Morning News is reporting this afternoon that TxDOT and the North Texas Tollway Authority have reached a deal on the value of the prospective Texas 161 tollway. That will allow the Williams Brothers construction company to begin turning dirt on the key road on Monday, Lippincott says.
As the Morning News Michael LIndenberger reports, the sticking point, believe it or not, was how to divvy up the profits 53 years from now. The NTTA had wanted to own the road “in perpetuity.” TxDOT wanted that to end after 52 years. After Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Metroplex senators intervened in the past 48 hours, the two sides cuts a deal.
After 52 years, TxDOT and the NTTA will split the profits 50-50. That is, unless by then our descendents are all riding around Jetsons-style in personal planes and Texas 161 has gone to weeds.
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Valuation conflagration in Dallas
Ric Williamson may be gone. But as this story in the Dallas Morning News today shows, TxDOT has not forgotten how to play Ric-style hardball.
It’s all about Texas 161, a key north-south road that everyone up there wants to build from the south end of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport down to Interstate 20. It would help commuting in the mid-cities area, but it is also said to be a key road for the 2011 Super Bowl, scheduled to take place at the Cowboys’ new stadium in Arlington.
Here’s the deal: When the Legislature put its thumb on TxDOT in the 2007 session, one of the laws that emerged said that for all possible future toll roads, the locals would get first crack at building and operating the road. But first there would have to be a “valuation” process to determine what the toll road might be worth on the open market.
But to determine a tollway’s value, you have to make some very important assumptions about toll rates and traffic and such. In this case, TxDOT and the North Texas Tollway Authority (which would build the road if its stays in government hands) have been unable to agree on these “business terms.”
The NTTA says $1.2 billion is Texas 161’s worth. TxDOT says that’s several hundred million shy of right. Road construction was about to begin this week when the talks broke down again. They’ll keep talking, this time with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and some very stern Dallas-area state senators looking on.
Why should I care, you ask? Well, what starts in Dallas often finds its way down here. And our political leadership in the Austin area very much wants government to build future toll roads here, not private companies.
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April 11, 2008
Last segment of Texas 130 opening April 30
The Texas 130 tollway, after a couple of decades of dreaming and planning about an Interstate 35 bypass of Austin, and more than four years of construction, will be completed April 30.
The fourth and last segment of the 49-mile road, an 8.7-mile piece from Texas 71 east of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to U.S. 183 at Mustang Ridge south of there, will open the afternoon of April 30 after a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the morning. The first three segments of the road opened in late 2006 and last year.
This segment is opening about four months later than original projections by TxDOT. The overall cost, including right of way, is about $1.5 billion.
For the next nine months or so, drivers who take Texas 130 looking to make an I-35-free run around Austin’s east side will have to use the relatively humble FM 1327 to connect to I-35. TxDOT is building yet another tollway — Texas 45 Southeast — paralleling RM 1327 and it will provide an expressway connection between Texas 130’s south end and I-35. But Texas 45 Southeast won’t be done until early next year.
The cost for a car or pickup (or any two-axle vehicle) to drive the entire 49 miles of Texas 130 will be $6 cash, or $5.40 if you have an electronic toll tag. The cost goes up in multiples for each extra axle on your vehicle, with a five-axle semi-trailer truck paying four times the car rate.
Yet another extension of Texas 130, this one going 40 miles from Mustang Ridge, around Lockhart’s west side and south to Interstate 10 at Seguin, should begin construction in 2009 and be done by 2012. That portion of the road, also to be a tollway, will be built and operated by a private consortium called Cintra-Zachry. TxDOT will get a cut of the revenue from Cintra-Zachry.
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April 1, 2008
D.C. must stand for Double (taxation) Charges
We southerners can justifiably lay claim to a bit of an inferiority complex about those swells on the East and West coasts. Seems like my whole life they’ve always gotten things before us, other than maybe drought and tornados.
But now, according to a report by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, it appears we’ve beaten them to something: toll fever. We were talking about tolling existing roads and having a highway system dominated by toll roads way back in 2003.
But in the report, prepared by the Washington equivalent of our Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, the D.C. area is considering several scenarios to raise money for transportation. Same story as here: not enough money coming from the state gas tax or from the feds (even in Washington!), too many cars already (the Washington area has the second worst traffic in the country, according to a Washington Post story on the report) and a million more people on the way over the next generation.
So, one scenario involves tolling existing lanes all over the greater D.C. area, including at least one city street in the Capital, all bridges over the Potomac River (at about $2.80 a pop) and the scenic Clara Barton Parkway. This is just a proposal, mind you, but that’s how policy often starts. Except in Austin, where the toll plan emerged in full bloom in 2004 and passed 90 days later.
Anyway, good to know we can teach those Northeasterners something.
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March 24, 2008
RMA takes early lead on 2008 chutzpah title
I received my copy of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority’s 2007 annual report this morning, a slick 50-page document complete with sharp photos, profiles of agencies leaders and 23 pages of financial details. All in all, a nice piece of work.
But what caught my eye was the cover photo: a sunrise shot of the 183-A tollway’s northbound lanes near Lakeline Mall. Dominating the photo, burnished in dawn’s golden light, is the electronic toll plaza near the road’s southern end. This tolling point, as many a chagrined Northwest Metroite knows, is the one with no cash booths, the one that has been catching about one in five drivers flat-footed.
The situation has been so bad since the mobility authority started charging tolls last summer that the agency has been scrambling for a solution. The problem is that you can ride on one part of the tollway without an electronic toll tag, that being the part north of Lakeline Boulevard that has cash booths. But to get there, you have to go through a mile-long section where you have to have a toll tag, or end up driving illegally.
Pretty, eh … confident to put your roadway’s biggest problem on the cover of your annual report. But, considering that it’s a shot of metal and concrete, it’s a really pretty picture.
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February 26, 2008
Answers about Texas 45 Southeast
Got this inquiry from an Onion Creek resident about the coming Texas 45 Southeast tollway, which will hit Interstate at FM 1327 in Southeast Travis County. Thought I’d share with you my answers to the woman (whose name I’ve changed to protect her privacy):
Feb 26, 2008, at 7:54 AM, “Ann Henderson” wrote:
Dear Mr Wear:
As residents of Onion Creek Subdivision, we are witnessing all the construction of the access to and from SH130 (?) that is taking place just south of us.
Is there a map somewhere of all this? We can’t visualize how residents of Onion Creek are going to be able to use these flyovers to get to the toll road … we are sincerely hoping that the access to and from will be good — and we won’t be left “high and dry” like at the Ben White intersection.
Thanks! “Ann Henderson”, Onion Creek Resident
“Ann”, At this point, I can’t point you to a map electronically showing the flyovers in detail. But, based on the most recent Mapsco book and having been out on the site, I will tell you a few things:
The 7.4 mile-long road is called Texas 45 Southeast. It connects to Texas 130 at its east end.
It will have three flyovers: a. Westbound 45 to Northbound I-35. b. Westbound 45 to Southbound I-35 c. Northbound I-35 to Eastbound 45.
Conspicuously missing there is a Southbound I-35 to Eastbound 45 flyover. That means that you Onion Creek people going southbound (and all the rest of us, for that matter) will have to exit I-35 before getting to Texas 45 Southeast, get on the frontage road, cross east over I-35 on a regular overpass bridge and then enter the tollway east of I-35. More laborious, obviously, than a direct connecting bridge.
People going west on the 45 Southeast tollway who take the direct connect bridge to NorthboundI-35 will enter I-35 well before the exit to Onion Creek Parkway, as best as I can tell. So, at least on your return trip to Onion Creek, you’ll be able to use the direct connect bridge.
The tollway is scheduled to open in early 2009, completing the eastern bypass around Austin for people who are willing to pay to avoid I-35 through Austin. The cost for the 56 miles of Texas 45 Southeast and Texas 130 will be about $7 cash, or about $6.50 if you have a TxTag. That’s for passenger vehicles and pickups. Trucks with more than two axles will pay more.
Texas 45 Southeast, unlike Texas 130, will be “all-electronic.” That means, no cash booths. But people without toll tags will still be able to drive on it using “video tolling.” In that case, cameras will take pictures of license plates of cars with no TxTags (or Dallas or Houston toll tags) and the registered owner of the vehicle will get a bill for the toll. In that case, the toll rate is about a third higher than the TxTag rate.
Ben
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January 30, 2008
Video tolling approved for 183-A
The board of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority today approved “video tolling” for the 183-A tollway. As I wrote about in this morning’s Statesman, video tolling will make it possible for ALL drivers to use the tollroad without becoming lawbreakers.
Right now, the southern mile-and-a-half or so of 183-A (which runs from RM 620 for 4.5 miles to RM 1431 in Cedar Park) is legal only for people driving cars or trucks with electronic toll tags. All others have to exit and then re-enter the tollway further north, because there is a toll plaza beyond that point where they can pay with cash.
But many people, more than 20 percent in the northbound lanes, have been driving in that section without tags. Each such trip earns them a $5 fine, plus the toll they failed to pay.
Under video tolling, people without tags would be billed for the toll near Lakeline Mall, paying 60 cents plus a $1 handling charge for each bill. There are other possible fees, depending on how they pay, and hefty fines if they fail to pay after getting a bill.
The vote by the seven-member board was unanimous. Video tolling, which is already in place on the three Austin toll roads owned and run by TxDOT, could begin on 183-A as soon as March.
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January 16, 2008
Toll-vs-tax debate has a big day
Congress in 2005 created the — deep breath — National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission to help it understand what to do about the increasing financial starvation of the nation’s transportation system.
Congress in 2005, you’ll remember, was still controlled by Republicans, so the commission was hardly a nest of fuzzy-headed Demotaxers, right? Well, the commission put out its long-awaited study Tuesday. Its solution for the money shortage: raise more money. The board recommended basically a tripling of the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal gas tax over the next five years, and suggested that states consider raising their gas taxes as well.
The results had leaked out early, so it wasn’t surprising that the foes of that approach were loaded and ready to reply. Our Texas governor, Rick Perry, had this to say, in part:
“Raising taxes is seldom the right answer and sending more of Texans’ money to Washington, D.C. only to have it earmarked, redistributed to other states or locked into outmoded bureaucratic programs will do very little if anything to relieve congestion on Texas roads.”
Perry’s e-mailed statement to reporters goes on to say that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters, a Perry ally and (obviously) an appointee of President Bush, “believes that Washington cannot keep doing things the same way and expect different results.”
Well, it’s worth pointing out that what Washington has been doing (as has Austin) is NOT raising the gas tax. The federal gas tax has remained frozen since 1993, and Texas’ 20-cent-a-gallon gas tax hasn’t been increased by the Legislature (and governor) since 1991. So Perry may have meant that continuing to starve the transportation system with inadequate taxes will not produce a better result. Probably not, though.
Actually, what Perry, Peters and their policy cohorts want to do is essentially fund the system with dollars from private companies, which would then be paid off (with interest on the borrowed money and profits for the shareholders) with tolls charged on most new highways. They foresee (with some justification, based on early privatization efforts here in Texas) that private road builders will foot the bill for improvements 100 percent and additionally pay states large up-front concession fees for the right to run those toll roads for decades. Those concession fees would, in effect, take the place of money that could otherwise be raised by higher gas taxes.
Maybe so, although one has to wonder about the reliability and sustainability of such an idiosyncratic revenue source. Presumably there is a long list of projects in Texas that the private sector might be interested in coming in and doing (the late Ric Williamson talked in terms of a couple of dozen), and the concession payments from those could amount to tens of billions of dollars. But when that list runs out, and the concession fees slow down or peter out entirely, then what?
In addition, tolls from government-run toll roads (like the five open or under construction in Austin) will produce profits than can be spent on other roads, and thus serve as gas tax substitutes. This would appear to be a sustainable and ever increasing source of money. But right now attempts in Austin to build some more government-run toll roads have been stymied because TxDOT can’t provide the money it had promised to build them. Because it is, you know, low on tax funds.
At any rate, the commission’s proposal comes as regular unleaded is selling at $3 a gallon and up. Peters’ department helpfully sent out a release later in the day Tuesday with this headline, “What they’re saying: Raising the gas tax is wrong for America.” Not “tripling the gas tax is wrong for America,” but raising it at all.
Among the politicians quoted in that release: Iowa Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (“A special commission came up with an old, cold, bad idea.”), Democratic New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (who liked none of the commission’s ideas), Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (“I think raising the gas tax now is impossible, because people are hurting”) and Florida GOP U.S. Rep. John Mica (dramatically raising the gas tax “does not stand a snowball’s chance in hell of passing Congress”) and, of course, Perry.
Oh well, thank you, commission, for your thoughts. Have a nice life, and be careful out there on the roads.
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December 6, 2007
Perry names Floridian to toll road study team
Gov. Rick Perry today named his three members to the private toll road study committee created in last session’s signature transportation bill, SB 792, and it includes a leading privatization advocate from … Florida?
Actually, Bob Poole, director of transportation studies for the libertarian Reason Foundation, lived in California until not all that long ago. And whether or not you agree with his view of how best to build roads — and I know you’re out there disagreeing — you can’t dispute he knows the subject matter. I’ve interviewed Poole a number of times and he knew more about Austin roads than some members of CAMPO.
Perry also named to the nine-member committee Johnny Johnson, former chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, and Grady Smithey, who served on the Duncanville City Council for 18 years. Johnson was on the commission until about a year ago and voted for all the policies that had the Legislature and much of the public so riled up in the past couple of years. Smithey and the commission, and thus Perry, have been largely sympatico about what to do on toll roads.
Under SB 792, which included a kinda-sorta ban on private toll roads and many other tweaks to toll road policy averse to Perry’s views, Perry, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst each get three appointees to this committee. Its charge in SB 792 includes holding public hearings and then reporting back to Perry, Craddick and Dewhurst by Dec. 1, 2008 on ” the public policy implications of including in a comprehensive development agreement entered into by a toll project entity with a private participant in connection with a toll project a provision that permits the private participant to operate and collect revenue from the toll project. In addition, the committee shall examine the public policy implications of selling an existing and operating toll project to a private entity.”
Craddick and Dewhurst had previously named their committee members, all of them legislators.
From Craddick: Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, vice chairman of the House Transportation Committee and a supporter of Perry’s toll road policy; Rep. Aaron Pena, D-Edinburg, who hasn’t been closely involved with legislative transportation issues up to now; and Rep. Wayne Smith, R-Houston, the House sponsor of SB 792 and its House twin that for awhile this spring was the main vehicle on the issue.
Smith, while his legislation bedeviled the governor, was actually most interested in insuring that the Harris County Toll Road Authority’s interests were protected. The final bill actually allows the toll road authority to ink long-term toll road leases with private companies for roads in and around Houston.
Dewhurst named Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee chairman; Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, who carried SB 792; and Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville.
The senators present the greatest challenge to Perry’s ideas. Nichols, while serving on the transportation commission for many years, was a staunch supporter of Perry’s toll road plans. But by the time he joined this Senate this year, he had developed an independent streak on the issue about eight lanes wide. The moratorium on private toll road contracts that ended up in SB 792, albeit with many exceptions, was his idea.
Carona, meanwhile, kicked off last session by calling for commission chairman Ric Williamson to step down. He softened his tone as the session wore on and become something of a bridge between a restive Senate and TxDOT.
The committee’s work, some of it in public, and its final product could be a great indicator of what sort of session TxDOT, which emerged bloodied but characteristically unbowed from the 2007 melee, will see in 2009.
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December 4, 2007
Clearing some fog on the 183-A tollway
Just read (and approved) some of your comments on a post about the 183-A tollway from Monday. The post (which was followed by a more complete report in the Statesman print edition and online Tuesday) was about the owner of the toll road having the Cedar Park police begin to give tickets to people who have driven the road multiple times without paying.
Two things that more than one person said in reply:
1) This is what happens when you have a private company running a public road.
and
2) How can this private company take police off my Cedar Park streets to chase down toll scofflaws?
OK, just to make this clear:
1) The 183-A tollway was built and is operated by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority. This is NOT a private company. It is a government agency that was formed in 2002 (under the provisions of a 2001 state law) by the Travis County Commissioners Court and the Williamson County Commissioners Court. It is run by a seven-member board of directors, which has three appointees by Travis County commissioners, three by Williamson County commissioners and a chairman appointed by Gov. Rick Perry.
It is NOT a private company, not no how, not no way. They used private contractors to build the road, as TxDOT has been doing for about 90 years now. But those folks left when the road was done. The tolls are set by that board of directors.
What the posters are thinking about is the next 40 miles of Texas 130, which will run from Mustang Ridge to Seguin and be built by a consortium led by a Spanish company called Cintra. That road won’t start construction for a couple of years and should open by 2012.
2) The mobility authority is paying Cedar Park about $17,000 a month, or $204,000 a year, to post one to two cop cars on the road between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The mobility authority also paid $23,000 upfront for equipment. In theory, that could mean that Cedar Park had extra money to go hire three or four more officers.
But it definitely is not a case of a private company, or even a government, using Cedar Park police as a private security company at no charge. The mobility authority is paying for the service.
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Wait, didn't the Legislature . . .
ban this???
I’m referring to TxDOT’s announcement this week that it is going out to two teams of bidders for a “planning partner” on TTC-69. That’s the proposed leg of Gov. Rick Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor from the Rio Grande Valley to Texarkana.
Specifically, TxDOT is talking to two groups about a comprehensive development agreement (CDA) for TTC-69. Those of you paying really, really close attention will remember that a comprehensive development agreement is exactly what TxDOT signed with the Cintra-Zachry partnership a couple of years ago for TTC-35.
In that case, Cintra-Zachry (Cintra is from Spain, Zachry Consruction from San Antonio) was more than just a planning partner though. In its final agreement with TxDOT, Cintra-Zachry proposed building the whole 300-mile Interstate 35 twin from San Antonio to north of Dallas, had $400 million of work guaranteed to it if it wanted it and, unless things change, will build and operate the whole tollway under this comprehensive development agreement.
It was that agreement, precisely, that led to the hullabaloo in the Legislature last year (“You’re selling Texas roads to Spain!”), which led to legislation that was concisely if inaccurately characterized as banning comprehensive development agreements or, alternatively and in man-on-the-street lingo, private toll road contracts. Actually, there were many exceptions, and one of those was the southerly couple hundred miles of TTC-69, from south of Refugio County to the Valley.
But the rest of TTC-69 wasn’t subject to such an exception, or at least it seemed that way. Now, whoever wins this bid (and Cintra and Zachry are back, this time on separate teams) will likely be proposing some sort of private toll road approach for the whole 650 miles. That’s not what the Legislature mandated, right?
Well, yes and no.
If you look at the legislation, SB 792, it says the ban on CDA’s with private companies collecting tolls does NOT apply to a project “in connection with” a long, obscure description that basically means the TTC-69 project. So, even though part of this agreement, a large and signficant part, would apply to the area with no exception from Refugio County north, the whole agreement seems to be excepted from the ban.
It’s worth noting language that TxDOT put in the bid document that the two teams will respond to. It says that “faciliity agreements” growing from the comprehensive development agreement cannot permit the private consortiums to “operate a tolled facility or collect tolls from a tolled facility” unless it is south of Refugio County. So, it seems to foreclose private toll roads outside where the Legislature said they would be OK.
But that language could be easily changed, assuming TxDOT successfully convinces the Legislature in 2009 to back off from its private toll road kinda-sorta ban. When I asked TxDOT about all this, they said this is just a planning document and that they can’t throw away two years of planning time. If the Lege backs away from the moratorium, it’ll be set up to strike long-term facility lease agreements with the winning bidder. If lawmakers don’t back away, well, they’ll know how much money they’re leaving on the table.
Which is a very effective lobbying tool to take to the Legislature. Not that TxDOT would ever lobby, of course.
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December 3, 2007
Flouting tolls on 183-A could get costly
Driving the 183-A tollway without paying could get very expensive starting today, particularly for chronic violators.
Until now, if you zipped through without paying you faced only the foregone toll and a $5 administrative fee, a charge that would show up in the mailbox of the car owner (based on a photo taken of the license plate). But starting today Cedar Park cops (who are under contract with the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority to police the road) will pull over some people who violate at the Park Street toll plaza. That’s the toll point that has both toll booths for cash payers and, out on the main lanes of the road, electronic readers that pick up toll tags and debut the tagholders’ accounts.
If the computer in the police cars tells the officers that the car they’ve pulled over has had four or more violations, you will get a $214 citation. The authority would get $25 of that, with the rest going to Cedar Park and the state of Texas for the normal fees and fines associated with moving violations.
People with three or fewer cumulative violations will get a warning (and a bill in the mail later).
The authority, which has had an 8 percent to 11 percent violation rate at Park Street (and double that at the all-electronic toll point near Lakeline Mall), wants to crack down on more than 1,000 serial violators. Presumably that criminal citation handed out live by a policeman would be more likely to be paid than a nameless, faceless citation that shows up in the mail. A subset of people apparently are ignoring those notices, even though doing so triggers a collection effort that gets progressively more expensive for the violator and could end up with them before a judge.
“We believe that our customers who are paying expect that we not ignore those people who aren’t paying,” says agency spokesman Steve Pustelnyk. “… now that 183-A has been opened for eight months and drivers have become accustomed to the road, we feel it’s time to let people know we are serious about enforcement.”
Pustelnyk said by about 9 a.m. (three hours into the new policy), police had pulled over five violators. In three cases, he said, the driver wasn’t a chronic violator and was sent on down the road without getting a ticket. But one driver, Pustelnyk said, had 197 violations. That person, according to Pustelnyk, had removed a TxTag from the family’s other car and was holding it up while passing under the tag readers. But the tag was damaged, Pustelnyk said, so the readers weren’t debiting the family tag account.
The fifth driver, Pustelnyk said, had 87 violations so far.
“It’s been a fairly productive morning,” Pustelnyk said.
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November 9, 2007
Belt and suspenders
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s move to ban something that is probably already illegal continues to thrive, her office says.
You might remember that Hutchison, R-Texas, jumped in with both feet a few months ago when press reports surfaced about a months old Texas Department of Transportation lobbying document. In the agency report, which had been presented at public meetings and was available on the agency’s Web site, the Transportation Department’s governmental affairs folks had suggested pushing Congress for the right to put tolls on existing interstate highways. It went on to say that perhaps this could be accomplished by using (scarce) state transportation dollars to pay back federal money used to build the interstate in the first place.
Two things: State law no longer allows this kind of “conversion” of free roads to toll roads, at least not without approval from the public in an election. This is about as likely to happen as President Bush signing up for ballet lessons. Secondly, the last federal transportation reauthorization bill outlaws tolling of existing interstate lanes with the exception of a pilot program (up to three projects) involving complete rehabilitation of the road.
But of course, federal law can be changed anytime, and the state Transportation Department had called for such a change. So the senator went to work.
Hutchison and some other Texas lawmakers have been pushing an amendment to a fiscal 2008 federal spending bill that would place a one-year moratorium on converting free interstates to toll interstates. Hutchison says she’d like, in some other future legislation, to make such a ban permanent.
Which it kind of already is. Backed up by state law. But, hey, you can never be too careful.
Her amendment would NOT, however, ban putting tolls on new lanes of an interstate or on new highways.
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November 5, 2007
New wrinkle on Texas 130
The San Antonio Express-News reports that the state’s contract with Cintra-Zachry to build and operate the southern 40 miles of the Texas 130 has a provision to reward the state if it were to lower Interstate 35 speed limits.
See the Associated Press version of the Express-News story here.
The provision is part of the contract’s non-compete language, provisions meant to shield the tollway operator (Cintra-Zachry) from the state adversely affecting its profits with improvements to nearby free roads. This contract, the first (and at this point, only) one of its kind in Texas, exempts improvements to I-35 from that noncompete language. So, in theory, the state could expand I-35 to 16 lanes between Austin and San Antonio without triggering any sort of penalty in its Cintra-Zachry contract.
But improvements to some other state highways in south-central Texas would trigger financial penalties. According to the Express-News, one way the state could mitigate such penalties is by lowering speed limits on I-35.
The Transportation Department says in the Express-News article that it sets speed limits based on studies, not on potential contractual goodies. Maybe so. But if that’s the case, why is this language in the contract?
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October 30, 2007
Paying to start on newest Texas 130 section
The two-month free period on Texas 130’s newest section will end Thursday, at least for those without electronic toll tags.
The tollway’s run from U.S. 290 to Texas 71 east of the airport opened in September and, as the Texas Department of Transportation did with earlier toll roads that opened in the past year, no one had to pay for two months. Cash customers, or people without tags who avail themselves of “video tolling,” will begin paying Thursday.
If you have a toll tag, November will be another free month, with half-price tolls in December. Then, Jan. 1, everyone will be on the permanent toll regime.
The cash toll for this 11.5-mile section is $1.50. The tag rate, eventually, will be 90 percent of that, or $1.35. Video tolls will be 33 percent above the tag rate, or $1.80. Video tolls occur when a car without a tag, rather than paying cash, goes through one of the tag lanes. Cameras catch the license plate number and then a bill (which includes a $1 a month processing charge no matter how many video tolls are on the bill) is mailed to the car owners.
The fourth and last section of Texas 130, at least the 49-mile portion the state has been building from Georgetown to Mustang Ridge, will be from Texas 71 to U.S. 183. The Transportation Department says that 8.7-mile section will open in April.
To see a map of Central Texas turnpikes, go here. And if you want to know what it will cost you on the toll roads, go to the American-Statesman’s toll road calculator. The calculator will be updated this week to include this new stretch of Texas 130.
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October 24, 2007
Terri Hall comments on her TURF lawsuit
I said in a post Tuesday about a San Antonio lawsuit that the plaintiff, a group calling itself Texans United for Reform and Freedom (TURF), wants to change the composition of a transportation planning board to include “well, TURF.”
I was being glib. What I meant was that what the group really wants is more people on the board that, like TURF, oppose plans to impose tolls on several San Antonio roads after expanding them. I had attempted to call TURF founder Terri Hall before posting, but she didn’t call back until several hours later.
Anyway, she clarifed that what the group wants is for the San Antonio Metropolitan Planning Organization board, which makes the decisions on toll roads, to have only elected officials serving on it. Hall and her legal representation believe that the Constitution will back them up on this and have sued to make that happen.
I also had noted that TURF’s press release referred to its own lawsuit as “novel,” a term that lawyers sometimes use dismissively about an opponent’s lawsuit when they consider its legal basis flimsy. I went on to say that a federal judge will decide just how novel the suit is.
Here is Hall’s posted comment on the subject:
“Yes, the case is novel, and no we’re not asking for an equal number of “anti-toll” representatives on the board. Rather, we’re asking that elected representatives (who answer directly to the PEOPLE) be the only voting members on the board. This lawsuit is very steeped in case law, in fact, landmark cases Baker v. Carr (1962) and Romer v. Evans (1996). This could change the way transportation decisions are made in this state. It’s novel in its application to transportation, but certainly not novel as far as Constitutional rights being invoked to put abusive government in check.”
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October 23, 2007
TURF war in San Antonio
San Antonio toll road opponents, already busy in the Austin courts fighting TxDOT’s spending to promote tollways, have opened up a new litigation front in federal court. This time the target is the San Antonio Metropolitan Planning Organization (SAMPO), which is Bexar County’s version of CAMPO.
All metropolitan areas, under federal law, have so-called MPO’s that make decisions about which highways will be built, and which ones will be toll roads. The San Antonio MPO, like its Austin counterpart, has OK’d several toll roads, and that isn’t sitting well with a group calling itself Texans United for Reform & Freedom, or TURF. The group’s founder is Terri Hall, from Comal County, who has been working against tollways from about three years now.
This newest lawsuit, according to a TURF press release, challenges the composition of the SAMPO board, as well as actions by board chairwoman Sheila McNeil, a San Antonio City Council member. Under federal law, the membership of MPO’s are set by the bodies themselves, and thus the nature of them varies widely.
In San Antonio, 11 of the 19 members are elected officials, including four San Antonio council members and a couple of legislators. In Austin, by contrast, 17 of the 19 members of the CAMPO board are elected officials. But TURF’s problem, according to its press release, is not so much the number of elected officials but rather the lack of, well, TURF.
“A faction of governmental officials with the help of unelected board members have shut citizens and voters who oppose toll roads out of equal protection in the political process,” the TURF release says, going on to imply that the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution somehow guarantee that transportation policy boards will have toll opponents on them. I must have missed that part in civics class, though.
The release refers to its action as a “novel lawsuit.” A federal judge will decide just how novel it is.
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October 17, 2007
Toll price is right for Carey
Drew Carey, it turns out, loves toll roads. Private toll roads.
The oh-so-cuddly comedian and new host of “The Price is Right” is a libertarian. As such, the idea of user fees for transportation fits neatly in his world view.
Carey is starring in a video on Reason.TV called “Gridlock, Hell on Wheels.” Reason.TV is produced by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank.
In the eight-and-a-half-minute “report,” Carey interviews a few Los Angeles commuters, including a graphics designer named Josh whose 16-mile commute takes him 90 minutes each way. “We’ve got to find a way to speed up Josh’s commute!” Carey says.
His solution: “Letting private companies pay for toll roads.” He suggests double-decker expressways, and tunnels, or more toll lanes with variable rates alongside free lanes like the California 91 tollway.
“I would love to own a freeway in L.A.,” Carey says.
None of this is likely to endear Carey to a good chunk of Texans: those who oppose Gov. Rick Perry’s push for the state giving private companies long-term leases to build and operate toll roads. The Legislature put a (leaky) two-year moratorium on such deals during the session last spring, and it’s not at all clear what will happen with them in the 2009 session.
Carey took over hosting “The Price is Right” this week, replacing Bob Barker. Barker had held that job for a remarkable 35 years.
It’s worth noting that if the year Barker got that gig, Texas had signed a toll road deal with Cintra-Zachry similar to the one for the southern 40 miles of Texas 130, the agreement would still have another 15 years to go.
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