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November 19, 2009
I-35/Ben White flyover project delayed
Construction of long-awaited flyover bridges at Interstate 35 and Ben White Boulevard, which was supposed to begin about now, instead likely won’t get going until spring.
The problem: the winning bid was too low, according to the company that submitted it. McCarthy Building Companies Inc., shortly after winning the right to build the four flyovers with a $24.4 million bid, informed the Texas Department of Transportation Oct. 28 that it had made a bidding error and wished to withdraw its bid.
“They left $2.7 million on the table,” said Carlos Lopez, TxDOT’s Austin district engineer, meaning the company’s bid was that much below the next lowest bidder.
McCarthy’s error message set in motion a complex internal TxDOT process of evaluating the alleged mistake, one that is still ongoing. But the upshot for the public is that TxDOT almost certainly will have to rebid the project in January, and construction likely won’t start until April, officials said.
That would be about six months after officials had hoped to have it going. When work does begin, it will take about 18 months, officials estimate, to build the four bridges on the south side of the huge highway interchange.
TxDOT had spent about $100 million at I-35 and Ben White early this decade, a project that included construction of four flyovers connecting the two roads (Ben White is also known as Texas 71), new frontage road bridges and a Ben White underpass beneath the interstate.
But four bridges were left only half-built, those that would allow unfettered movement to and from I-35 south of Ben White. That has meant people who live south of there, and want to go either east or west on Ben White, have had to exit I-35 and wade through traffic lights. This has generated considerable frustration, along with innumerable e-mails over the years to TxDOT and to the American-Statesman.
The remedy, paid for with so-called Proposition 14 bonds that will be paid back with future gas taxes, was supposed to break ground in October or November.
McCarthy’s bid came in 10 percent lower than the next lowest bidder (among about a dozen bidders), officials said. McCarthy then told TxDOT that it incorrectly bid how it would handle lane closures during construction.
Mike McWay, president of McCarthy’s Texas division in Dallas, could not be reached for comment.
TxDOT’s evaluation of the nature of that error will determine whether McCarthy is allowed to simply withdraw, or if it will have to forfeit a $100,000 bidding bond as well. Either way, TxDOT officials said, it will not be eligible to bid in a second round.
McCarthy could chose in the end to do the job for the $24.4 million it bid, and if so construction might start as soon as January. But TxDOT officials today said that is the least likely scenario.
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October 7, 2009
TxDOT on hook for $1.2 billion? Not so much
Gov. Rick Perry has always had political luck in terms of his opponents. For instance, Hank Gilbert, who would like to be the Democratic candidate for governor next year.
Gilbert, a long-time opponent of Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor road-and-rail plan, put out a press release today noting that the state has already been paid $1.2 billion by Cintra-Zachry and is now on the hook for that money because the corridor plan has been ditched. Which would be shocking and disturbing were it true. Only it’s not.
Cintra-Zachry has paid TxDOT $25 million, with an “m,” not $1.2 billion, and that was for the right to build and operate (and profit from) a road it is in fact busy building right now: the southern 40 miles of Texas 130.
Gilbert’s $1.2 billion figure comes from 2004, when the Interstate 35 leg of Perry’s corridor plan made a big splash. TxDOT had decided to award a development contract for a tollway twin of I-35 to Cintra-Zachry, a consortium led by Spanish toll road builder Cintra and San Antonio road contractor Zachry Construction Co. That contract involved Cintra-Zachry creating a development plan for the 300-plus mile road, and gave it first refusal rights on segments of the road up to $400 million.
The prediction then was, were Cintra-Zachry to build the whole thing, its concession payments to TxDOT (essentially paying TxDOT for the right to build sections of the road and then collect tolls on them) would amount to $1.2 billion.
That’s fine, except that only one of those sections, just those 40 miles, is going to be built. And the state and Cintra-Zachry signed a separate facilities agreement for that portion of the road, which is now actually just a part of Texas 130 tollway (49 miles built by TxDOT are already open) rather than a Trans-Texas Corridor road. TxDOT announced Tuesday that it would recommend to the Federal Highway Administration that no action be taken on the rest of the I-35 twin, effectively killing it.
In that facilities contract, Cintra-Zachry agreed to pay TxDOT $25 million (much less than in the earlier estimate that was part of that $1.2 billion figure) and then to give TxDOT between 4.7 percent and 9 percent of the revenue initially. It could even go to 50 percent later if the road has enough traffic.
Gilbert says the Cintra-Zachry contract with the state has all sorts of termination clauses and that it will take lawyers months to determinate what TxDOT might owe. That might be true, although Gilbert offered no specifics.
But the $1.2 billion paid by Cintra-Zachry earlier and now due to be paid back by TxDOT? No, that’s just not true.
One rule of politics: If you’re going to blast someone using figures, it’s best not to be off by that many zeros.
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September 24, 2009
Road projects get TxDOT approval
The Texas Transportation Commission today approved two Central Texas highway projects that when they’re done in a couple of years will give commuters relief in Southwest Austin and in Williamson County.
The five-member commission approved a measure to have TxDOT work out a “pass-through” agreement with the City of Austin for two flyovers at the U.S. 290/MoPac Boulevard interchange. The city would spend $16.2 million to build the two bridges — connecting northbound MoPac to eastbound U.S. 290, and westbound U.S. 290 to southbound MoPac — and be reimbursed up to $13 million by TxDOT over the next 10 to 15 years.
Commissioners also decided to contribute $36.6 million to a $57.3 million Williamson County project to extend O’Connor Drive from RM 620 to the Texas 45 North tollway. The TxDOT money would be used to build entrance and exit ramps to Texas 45 North and frontage roads alongside the tollway. The county would contribute $15.7 million to the project, most of that to extend O’Connor as a divided four-lane road.
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Road projects get TxDOT approval
The Texas Transportation Commission today approved two Central Texas highway projects that when they’re done in a couple of years will give commuters relief in Southwest Austin and in Williamson County.
The five-member commission approved a measure to have TxDOT work out a “pass-through” agreement with the City of Austin for two flyovers at the U.S. 290/MoPac Boulevard interchange. The city would spend $16.2 million to build the two bridges — connecting northbound MoPac to eastbound U.S. 290, and westbound U.S. 290 to southbound MoPac — and be reimbursed up to $13 million by TxDOT over the next 10 to 15 years.
Commissioners also decided to contribute $36.6 million to a $57.3 million Williamson County project to extend O’Connor Drive from RM 620 to the Texas 45 North tollway. The TxDOT money would be used to build entrance and exit ramps to Texas 45 North and frontage roads alongside the tollway. The county would contribute $15.7 million to the project, most of that to extend O’Connor as a divided four-lane road.
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August 27, 2009
TxDOT strikes a blow for 'freedom'
The Texas Transportation Commission today gave tentative approval to a regime of fees for new specialty license plates to be designed and sold by a private vendor, including a new series of “freedom” plates.
Freedom in this case won’t be free, or anywhere close to it.
The freedom plates from My Plates, a partnership of Nacogdoches-based Etech Inc. and Pinnacle Technical Resources Inc. from Dallas, will cost $395 for a single year, $695 for five years and $795 for 10 years. That’s in addition to whatever a person pays annually to their county assessor for the vehicle registration fee.
What that will get you — it will be late fall before the commission takes a final vote and My Plates begins selling the plates — is a color plate, with many (state-approved) designs to choose from, and a seven-digit personalized message. Right now personalized plates can use just six numbers and letters.
My Plates spokeswoman Kim Miller Drummond explained that the “freedom” moniker comes from the idea that with the seventh allowable digit, it gives a plate customer greater freedom to come up with something interesting.
There are other choices, and lower fees, for the new specialty plates:
“Custom” plates: a generic white plate that allows you to personalize it with three letters and either two or three numbers. The fee is $85 for one year, $225 for five years, $325 for ten years.
“T-plates:” Each of these has a “T” on the left side, but with a different background color. Which allows a person to use a five-digit personalized plate that might already exist on a Texas car. So there could be a “HORNS” plate now, and then someone could buy a specialty plate that says “T HORNS.” Cost: $95 for one year, $395 for five, $495 for 10 years.
“Luxury” plates: Choice of backgrounds, much like the freedom plates, but only six characters to personalize it. Cost: $195 for one year, $495 for five years, $595 for 10 years.
“Background” plates: Choice of backgrounds, but with a regular, state-issued mixture of numbers and letters on the plate. Cost: $55 for one year, $195 for five years, $295 for 10 years.
The state of Texas will get a minimum of 30 percent and a maximum of 90 percent of the revenue from plate sales, although the higher rates would kick in only in cases where a particularly coveted personalized message is auctioned off for tens of thousands of dollars. Or even more.
The new rules given tentative approval today will allow the state for the first time to auction off potentially popular seven-digit plate messages. A few other states have such auctions and in some cases have pulled in several hundred thousand dollars from a single plate.
Texans will still be able to get normal plates and so-called “charity plates” — existing plates for universities and nonprofits — directly from the state. The $30 annual fee for the charity plates won’t change. But at some point — officials today weren’t sure when — a customer buying a new charity plate would have to go through My Plates to personalize it.
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July 15, 2009
TxDOT says no to signs noting stimulus projects
In New York, according to a July 5 article in the Syracuse Post-Standard, the state will be spending an extra $5,400 to $8,930 on each highway project under the federal stimulus plan to put up large green signs advertising that the money came from Uncle Sam.
Not so in Texas.
“TxDOT is not doing the signs,” agency spokesman Mark Cross said today. “The federal government encouraged state governments to do the signs, but it is not a requirement. We wanted to put that money into the projects themselves.”
The signs, which the federal government suggested should be either 84 square feet or 45.5 square feet would carry this message: “Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
Texas was allocated $2.25 billion in federal stimulus money for highway projects, most of which will be overseen by TxDOT. That includes $155.4 million in Greater Austin, although the largest chunk of that — $90 million — will go to the U.S. 290 East project being done by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority.
Capital Metro and the Capital Area Rural Transportation System will get another $29.2 million under a separate section of the federal stimulus program.
It was suggested to Cross that perhaps the administration of Republican Gov. Rick Perry did not want a state highway network peppered with signs giving credit to a plan concocted and passed almost entirely by Democrats.
He did not take the bait.
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June 9, 2009
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the legislative session?
State Sen. Kirk Watson, wearing casual clothes in what might have been an effort to purge the memory of 140 suit-wearing days of legislative frustration, last night gave the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board a decidedly downbeat summation of what lawmakers did on transportation this session.
Not so much, basically.
“I’ve kind of depressed myself,” Watson joked after the 15 to 20 minutes discourse.
Watson began by talking about his bill, which awaits Gov. Rick Perry’s signature, expanding and changing the Capital Metro board. The bill also clarifies when a passenger rail election would be necessary (not when the transit agency is only going to operate a line paid for by someone else) and requires that the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission conduct a review of Capital Metro. He hastened to point out that unlike a normal sunset review, the agency is not subject to abolition.
Then he referred to what was on everyone’s mind: the TxDOT sunset review that ended with no bill passed, but assurances from Perry and others that, hey, TxDOT won’t go away anyway.
“I think the Legislature proved that may not mean anything anyway,” Watson said of the “sunset” part of the sunset commission’s name.
As for the failed attempt to give counties the ability to call elections to raise fees or the gas tax locally for transportation projects, Watson called it “the best opportunity we’ve had in a long time to create additional revenue for mobility.”
But a bill to create local-option transportation elections died in the House, then was stripped out of the TxDOT sunset bill in a House-Senate conference committee (before the bill died anyway).
“The state of Texas has abdicated its responsibility to provide additional revenue for transportation,” Watson told the CAMPO board. The state’s 20-cents-a-gallon gas tax has not increased in 18 years and the Legislature once again left it untouched despite falling revenue from the tax.
“In my opinion, if that’s the way they want to handle it, then at least they ought to get out of the way” and let locals raise their own taxes, Watson said. The legislation would have allowed such tax or fee increases only with public votes, but opponents argued that simply allowing county commissioners to call such elections amounted to the Legislature voting to increase taxes.
“I guess they think people are smart enough to elect us, but not smart enough to make decisions about transportation,” Watson said.
The Legisalture failed to do what it needed to do to allow $2 billion of borrowing under Proposition 12, which voters passed in 2007. And it left basically untouched the $1.2 billion biennial use of gas tax revenue by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The net effect of all this on TxDOT’s budget for the next two years is still under analysis by the agency.
“It is arguable there is less money now,” Watson said. If you take an optimistic view, he said, TxDOT may not run out of money for expanding the road system until the end of the 2010-11 biennium. But a more honest view, he said, would lead to the conclusion that “we don’t have anymore money now.”
“We’re in a drought” on transportation funding, he concluded. “It’s getting drier.”
A Watson bill to allocate $182 million to a rail relocation fund was eventually included in the state budget. But Watson noted that the funding for rail was contingent on the state having at least as much money for roads in the next biennium as it does in this one. Given the other bad money news, Watson said that the rail funding in the end may not pass that threshold test.
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April 28, 2009
Hutchison: Let states opt out of federal highway program
Put this one in the category of: Interesting, but ain’t likely to happen.
Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison sent out a press release this afternoon touting S. 903, a bill that she, fellow Texas Sen. John Cornyn and a couple of other members of Congress filed today. It would allow individual states to, basically, keep most of the money that comes in from the federal 18.4 cents a gallon gasoline tax.
Hutchison has been pushing for years for Texas to be able to keep more of the $3 billion-plus that leaves the state each year and goes to Washington in motor fuels taxes. Texas is what is known in gas tax circles as a “donor” state, meaning we get less back in federal transportation money than we pay in taxes. Other states — the most egregious example is Alaska — get back much more than they send to Uncle Sam.
Those “donee” states have their own senators and House members, of course, and likely would fight such legislation. And allowing states to opt out would severely compromise the we’re-all-in-this-together rubric of federal taxation. And, finally, Republicans like Hutchison and Cornyn are seriously out of power in Washington and are thus reduced to legislating around the edges — and making political points.
But sometimes changes begin with the quixotic filing of an unpassable bill, which years later becomes in somewhat different form and in different times a passable bill. Maybe S. 903 will be one of those.
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February 25, 2009
And then there was one . . . stimulus project
Austin’s chunk of the stimulus transportation money (for new or expanded roads, at least) apparently will consist of one project: building four flyover bridges to connect U.S. 183 in Northeast Austin to the coming U.S. 290 tollway.
The list released today is tentative for now. The Texas Transportation Commission, after hearing from legislators and the public, is expected to vote on the overall $1.2 billion list on March 5. The list, whittled down from a $2.2 billion list released earlier this week, has just 21 projects on it.
The Central Texas area in the previous list had four projects, including improvements to FM 1460 in Williamson County, replacement of the U.S. 290 bridge in Marble Falls and an Interstate 35 bridge in Buda. Those other three projects did not make the final cut.
The cost of the interchange project will be $145 million, TxDOT says, with $115 million coming from the federal economic stimulus bill and $30 million coming from the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority. TxDOT Austin district engineer Bob Daigh said the interchange construction project could go to bid in August. Construction would follow shortly after that.
The interchange is part of a large project to build the “Manor Expressway,” a tollway running from U.S. 183 to just past Manor on top of where U.S. 290 sits now. The tollway would have three lanes in each direction, with at least three frontage road lanes in each direction as well.
Officials have talked about charging tolls on the interchange flyover bridges, which would be a first for the area. Now that almost 80 percent of the money for the flyovers will come from federal grants, it’s unclear if TxDOT or the mobility authority would still charge drivers to use the flyovers.
This is only about half of the stimulus money. There are two other segments: $500 million for maintenance projects and another $500 million that local officials will be able to decide over the next few months how to spend.
Central Texas will get $31 million of the maintenance money and about $42 million for the locally controlled projects. But Daigh said that potentially the three projects dropped from today’s list could reemerge on the local list.
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February 20, 2009
Houghton, Underwood reappointed to transportation commission
Gov. Rick Perry has reappointed Texas Transportation Commissions Ted Houghton and Fred Underwood to six-year terms that would expire in February 2015. Both appointments are subject to confirmation by the Texas Senate.
Houghton, 57, from El Paso, is self-employed in financial services, executive benefits and estate planning. He has served on the commission since December 2003, joining the board when the Legislature expanded it from three to five members. Along with the late commission Chairman Ric Williamson, Houghton was a strong advocate of long-term toll road leases with private companies, but in recent months has toned down his rhetoric on the issue.
Underwood, who lives in Lubbock, has been on the commission for just two years, filling an unexpired term. He is president and CEO of Trinity Company, a cotton bale storage company.
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February 17, 2009
Central Texas transportation piece of stimulus pie hard to slice
So, how much will Central Texas transportation get from the stimulus bill signed today by President Obama?
Impossible to say at this point, other than the floor is $42 million. Best guess of the ceiling: Somewhere above $150 million.
Hang on for some math, courtesy of TxDOT engineering director John Barton.
Texas overall gets the following in transportation:
$2.25 billion for roads and bridges,
$321 million for urban transit,
$51 million for rural transit, and …
an unspecified amount for rail (both freight and intercity passenger rail) which will be passed out by federal transportation officials.
So, that means the overall amount is somewhere above $2.6 billion.
What else do we know? Well, 3 percent of the $2.25 billion will come right off the top for “enhancements,” which are primarily highway beautification projects.
That’s about $67 million, leaving just under $2.2 billion for roads and bridges. Of that, about $1.5 billion will be awarded at the discretion of the Texas Transportation Commission. TxDOT has been busy compiling and prioritizing a list of project over the past few months as the stimulus worked its way from campaign talking point into a thousand-plus pages of statute.
The commission could vote on the list next week.
“That’s not irrational exuberance,” said TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott. “That’s an acknowlegement of the conditions placed on the stimulus money. The idea is to quickly put shovels on the ground and money in people’s pockets.”
Back to that $2.2 billion.
The remaining 30 percent or so, or about $700 million, will be distributed around the state based on population. That means that the 11-county Austin district of TxDOT will get about $42 million, Barton said, or about 6 percent. About $29 million of that (for Hays, Travis and Williamson counties) will be divvied up by the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board, and the other $13 million (for the other eight counties) will be spent at the discretion of Austin district engineer Bob Daigh.
So where does the $150 million number come from? Well, not from Barton, who didn’t want to fore-guess what the commission might do with the $1.5 billion next week, or with the transit money sometime soon.
But if the Austin district were to get that same 6 percent (which is, by the way, well below the area’s percentage of the Texas population) of the funds at the commission’s discretion, then that would bring the Central Texas take to about $155 million.
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January 15, 2009
Stimulus details out; Roads and rail would get 5 percent
The House Appropriations Committee today released a first draft of the economic stimulus legislation, $825 billion worth. What it allots for roads and rail likely falls short of the dreamiest dreams of road and rail builders.
It includes $30 billion for highways, and $10 billion for transit. Taken together, that $40 billion represents about 5 percent of the bill. There’s another $3.65 billion in there for airports, airport explosive detection devices and Coast Guard bridges. But the $40 million is the part that the transportation community has been waiting to hear about.
It amounts to 5 percent of the overall bill. That puts it behind, well behind, the $275 billion for tax relief, as well as the $54 billion for “clean, efficient American Energy,” the $43 billion for increased unemployment benefits and $87 billion for a temporary increase in the Medicaid matching rate (whatever that is …)
So, what would Central Texas get of the $40 billion? Use the 8 percent solution to find out. Texas is about 8 percent of the country, based on population, yielding $3.2 billion for Texas (roughly 3/4 of that for roads). And then the 11-county Austin district of TxDOT is about 8 percent of the state, which equates to $260 million.
Or about $190 million for roads, and $70 million for transit.
Not chicken feed, but certainly not enough to transform the Austin area into Easy Street. Or Easy Rail. The two rail proposals knocking around, for instance, the Green Line to Elgin and the downtown Austin streetcar/light rail project, together would cost at least $800 million. So $70 would constitute a down payment on that.
And, based on the materials from the Appropriations Committee, nothing might be available for projects such like those that are still in the conceptual stage. The documents say $1 billion of the transit money would be for “new construction,” going on to note that the Federal Transit Administration already has $2.4 billion in “pre-approved projects.”
Then there’s $2 billion “to modernize existing transit systems,” and $6 billion to purchase buses and equipment “needed to increase public transportation and improve intermodal and transit facilities.”
Hard to find the pony for Austin-area rail in that pile of words.
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January 12, 2009
290 fix at Oak Hill should be done in next several weeks
The much-hated squeeze on U.S. 290 at Oak Hill should be loosened up later this month or next, TxDOT area engineer Don Nyland said this morning. Some of the work has already been done.
Westbound U.S. 290 just east of Williamson Creek has bedeviled afternoon commuters for years. The multi-lane expressway rather abruptly chokes down to one lane at that point as it merges with the frontage road, causing traffic to stack up a half-mile or more on the freeway. The unusual arrangement was done originally to allow people to make a U-turn and head back east, and was also thought to be a short-term situation because the freeway was to be extended west through the Y at Oak Hill.
But that freeway extension has remained caught up in politics and red tape ever since. In November, now-former Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty and Nyland announced that some changes would occur at freeway’s end, increasing it from one lane to two lanes. Of course, there will still be a stoplight just ahead, and another one at William Cannon Drive, so commuters will still have a fair share of waiting.
Nyland said asphalt for the added lane has already been laid down in an area that right now is still behind a barrier. The other work involves some machinery that is not available right now (TxDOT is doing all this with its own workers and equipment), Nyland said. The work, when it occurs, will happen only at night and should only take a couple of days, he said.
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January 8, 2009
Deceased corridor plan pretty expensive
The other day, when TxDOT officials were declaring the Trans-Texas Corridor dead (sort of), questions arose about how much money had been dropped on Gov. Rick Perry’s vision of 4,000 miles of tollways, railways and utility lines. TxDOT said it didn’t have those figures available immediately.
Well, actually, the agency did have them, or at least some of them, on its Web site. Thanks to reader Sharon Barta for chasing this down on the site. She said that with the recent redesign of the TxDOT Web site the report was hard to find, but was still there. Here’s the link.
Anyway, the tab through Aug. 31, 2008 was an impressive $131 million, including $30.7 million in the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31. The total includes $59.4 million for the I-35 corridor, $67.9 million for the I-69 corridor, $2.8 million for the proposed Loop 9 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and $1.2 million for expenditures applying to both the I-35 and I-69 corridor projects.
TxDOT, on its Web site, said these are the total for “engineering studies” (most of that for the federally required environmental studies going on on two of the corridors) and do not include “indirect costs.” So it’s not clear if this includes, for instance, any money spent on marketing and other public relations costs. We’ll check.
TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott said Tuesday, and reiterated today, that the overwhelming amount of this money should not be considered wasted because the I-35 and I-69 corridor projects are still alive and probably will be built in some form someday.
On the other side of the ledger, there has been no revenue from the corridor plan so far, at least technically, and won’t be for many years. And the TxDOT spending is far from over because the environmental studies are still in progress.
TxDOT did get a $25 million payment from a consortium, led by Spanish tollroad company Cintra, that will build the southern 40 miles of Texas 130, and will get between 4.65 percent and 18 percent of the revenue in the first years of that 50-year contract. That road is not officially part of the I-35 corridor project, but in reality would be if the 300-mile tollway from San Antonio to the Oklahoma border is ever built out.
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January 6, 2009
Trans-Texas Corridor R.I.P.
The Trans-Texas Corridor, as a name and as a guiding concept of the state’s transportation future, is dead, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz told an audience of more than a thousand this morning at an Austin hotel.
Gov. Rick Perry, who in 2002 had unveiled the corridor plan as an almost $200 billion blueprint for the state’s transportation future, later seconded Saenz, saying that “the days of the Trans-Texas Corridor are over.”
However, Perry, speaking to reporters from Iraq where he had gone on a brief visit to Texas troops there, added that “we really don’t care what name they attach to building infrastructure in the state of Texas. They key is we have to go forward and build it.”
A spokesman for his likely opponent in the 2010 gubernatorial election, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, said that in fact the name isn’t the problem but rather the cross-state tollways associated with it and the rural land that would be needed to build them.
“When citizens pointed out the flaws in his original corridor idea, specifically trampling private property rights, the Perry administration responded with condescension and arrogance,” said Todd Olson, an Austin-based spokesman for Hutchison’s gubernatorial exploratory committee. “It wasn’t about a name.”
Outgoing Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick had created a stir a few months ago by declaring in an election forum that the Trans-Texas Corridor was dead. TxDOT officials at the time said, well, no, not exactly.
Saenz, at the Texas Transportation Forum at the Hilton Hotel, confirmed that the corridor’s death — or at least the death of its name — had in fact not been exaggerated.
“Amadeo told folks at the forum that the Trans-Texas Corridor, as it was originally envisioned, is no more,” spokeswoman Karen Amacker said. “Instead, what we’ve got is a series of smaller projects.”
Those “smaller projects” will apparently include the 300-plus miles of what has been called TTC-35 from San Antonio to the Oklahoma border and the I-69 project from the Rio Grande Valley to Texarkana. But they will not be called the Trans-Texas Corridor.
Nor will they be 1,200 feet wide, as originally envisioned when TxDOT released the “Crossroads of the Americas: The Trans-Texas Corridor” report in 2002 laying out GPerry’s vision of the Trans-Texas Corridor. Back then, it was to be 4,000 miles of toll roads, rail lines and utility lines criss-crossing Texas in bundles. Thus the very wide potential corridors.
TxDOT now says the corridors — it is still using that term, at least — would be no more than 600 feet wide.
Any and all of the roads and other projects in the original Trans-Texas plan are still a possibility going forward. But the reality is that much of the plan remained unneeded until far into the future, if ever. And the Trans-Texas Corridor project all along had generated fierce opposition, including from some Perry allies like the Texas Farm Bureau that objected to large amounts of farm and ranch land that would have to purchased.
Declaring it dead as a concept, at the least, makes it a more elusive political target.
TxDOT lays out its new vision in a 19-page, graphics-heavy document released today with the ponderous title, Innovative Connectivity in Texas: Vision 2009. The short report lays out some of the troubled history of the Trans-Texas Corridor, discusses the more piece-meal approach to be taken now, as well as the role in so-called “corridor advisory committees” in refining and defining which projects the agency would pursue.
The report has been posted. Read it here.
One note: the term “Trans-Texas Corridor” for now survives in one very prominent and important place, the Texas Transportation Code. We asked Amacker if TxDOT would support legislative changes to remove the term from the statutes. She said she’ll run that one up the chain and get back to us.
“We know that a lot of changes are going to have to be made,” she said. The name is in “environmental studies, it’s in legal documents. And it’s going to take a little time to have it cycled out.”
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December 17, 2008
Money shortage for roads just keeps growing
This just in, just before legislators come back to town: Texas transportation needs a whole lot more money.
A group of 12 prominent Texans, commissioned by the Texas Transportation Commission to estimate how much it would take to properly maintain and adequately expand the state’s road system through 2030, said Wednesday it will take $313 billion.
That’s about $14.2 billion a year, for 22 years.
As a point of comparison, the state this year will spend less than $3 billion on road maintenance and new construction. Two years ago, when TxDOT was comparatively flush, the agency spent just over $5 billion.
Michael Walton, a University of Texas engineering professor who chaired the group, said the group’s charge from transportation commission chairwoman Deirdre Delisi did not include looking how to pay for such an enormous increase in spending. But he noted the much higher gas prices in other countries, which typically include taxes several times higher than the 38.4 cents a gallon that Texans pay in the combined state and federal gas tax.
Transportation “has been a great bargain for a long time, but perhaps it’s time we recognize that we have to pay for it,” said Walton.
The timing of the report, at least, was no accident. Walton said that the committee members, who got technical support from TxDOT employees as well as transportation researchers at UT, Texas A&M and UT-San Antonio, were first contacted in May and told they had until mid-December to produce a report. The Legislature, which last session took away some of TxDOT’s powers to raise money through private toll road leases, convenes Jan. 13.
“I would think its enormously important for the Legislature to have that information before making a decision on (TxDOT) sunset” or a number of other transportation funding issues, said state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Williamson County, whose time in the Legislature ends in a few weeks.
The committee members took pains to say that the report was independent of TxDOT. Their report says that it will take $4 billion a year to keep 90 percent of Texas road in good or better condition, $1.6 billion a year to repair structurally deficient and other inadequate bridges, and about $8.6 billion a year to expand urban and rural roads enough to keep traffic congestion essentially level.
The late Ric Williamson, who chaired the transportation commission until his death last December, often quoted the results of another study showing an $86 billion gap between available tax money and what was needed to properly maintain and expand the road system.. Critics said that was inflated number, and a much-quoted 2007 study said it was closer to $50 billion. Based on Wednesday’s numbers, that gap may actually be at least double that $86 billion.
“The good news is that Williamson was wrong,” said Krusee, a Williamson ally. “The bad news is he was low.”
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December 5, 2008
Roadbuilders say they have $64 billion of work ready to go
If the new Congress and President-elect Obama can raise the scratch in January, the various states’ transportation departments say they could spend $64 billion of it real quick. Texas, as the Statesman reported a week ago, says it has $6 billion worth of projects that could break ground by August.
The state agencies compiled the list at the request of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation officials. That trade group’s lobbyists wanted to be able to assure Congress that if it made the money available in the form of an economic stimulus package, it would get spent quickly enough to actually put people to work rightaway and stimulate the economy.
There are 5,148 projects on the list nationwide. In Texas, the list of 853 projects was heavy with maintenance work and bridge repairs, with relatively few big new roads or road expansion projects.
The state with the most money on the list, curiously, is Utah, coming in at $10.8 billion for only 136 projects. That’s almost $80 million per project, indicating that either Utah just happened to have some big stuff ready or that the state misunderstood the immediacy aspect of the request.
Texas’ list was third largest, behind Utah and Florida.
Will the money actually become available? Who knows. Estimates of the stimulus bill have hovered in the $500 billion to $700 billiion range in recent days, but no one in a position to know has said how much of that might go to roads and bridges.
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October 30, 2008
Commission approves Ben White flyover, Texas 195 funding
The Texas Transportation Commission today unanimously approved $1.8 billion of projects statewide, including $203.4 million to build four more flyover bridges at the Ben White Boulevard/I-35 interchange and to expand Texas 195 north of Georgetown.
Both the statewide and local numbers were changes from estimates released earlier this week — the Central Texas amount went down by about $10 million, all of that for the Williamson County job — but the planned work did not change.
The four bridges to come at Ben White and I-35 would complete the huge interchange, allowing direct movement between the two major roads in any direction. Texas 195, the main link between Austin and Fort Hood, will be expanded to have four lanes and a median, with one short stretch of unimproved road south of Florence.
TxDOT officials expect that construction will begin on both projects in a year or so. The money will come from TxDOT borrowing an estimated $2.9 billion in bonds, which would be paid back from future gas tax receipts.
The six-page list of statewide projects includes $56 million for widening I-35 to six lanes in Hill County north of Waco, $180 million for various unspecified projects in Dallas County and, in an item that could affect Central Texas, almost $417 million for unspecified safety-related projects.
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October 20, 2008
Freeway's End: Fixing the U.S. 290 problem
TxDOT and Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty held a press conference this morning to tell us that they have a fix for one-lane squeeze where the U.S. 290 freeway ends just east of Oak Hill.
However, the change — with a little extra pavement and some re-striping the freeway will now have two lanes all the way to where it empties out at Joe Tanner Lane — will not magically make the arduous trip through Oak Hill into smooth sailing. There will still be traffic lights at Joe Tanner and William Cannon Boulevard, and at the Y.
“It’s not a panacea,” said Dwain Rogers, president of the Oak Hill Association of Neighborhoods, who was at the press conference. “Until we get improvements at the Y it’s still going to be congested.”
Don Nyland, the TxDOT area engineer for Oak Hill and beyond, said the work will cost only about $100,000, which he will shift from his maintenance budget. Look for it to begin in one to three months, he said, with work occurring at night so at not to disrupt rush hour traffic. It should take only a week or so once it gets started, Nyland said.
Look for further details in tomorrow’s Statesman.
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August 29, 2008
TxDOT to get a cash infusion
The Texas Transportation Commission, taking its cue from state leaders, today decided to borrow another $1.5 billion that would be paid back by future gas taxes.
That borrowing authority, granted on a unanimous vote of the five-member commission in a specially called meeting this morning, will allow TxDOT to issue more than $4 billion in contracts this year. At least $1.1 billion of that would be for maintenance projects. But the remainder, almost $3 billion, would allow much greater spending to expand the state road system than in the fiscal year now ending, a year when TxDOT had to shelve many road projects.
That 2008 crunch directly affected the Austin area, where local leaders had approved a $1.45 billion plan to build five more toll roads based on a promise of several hundred million dollars from TxDOT. Politicians here, particularly state Sen. Kirk Watson, were incensed when TxDOT reneged on that promise only a few weeks after a tough October 2007 vote on the toll roads.
TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz could not say with certainty today whether the move to issue the $1.5 billion in gas tax bonds will restore all of that funding to Austin.
“It could help Austin,” Saenz said. “We want to make sure we get projects that are ready to go in 2009.”
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority will be building the first of those five projects, an expansion of U.S. 290 from Northeast Austin to Manor that would include toll express lanes and improved frontage roads. However, officials with the authority this week indicated that environmental and engineering work likely will not be ready in time for construction to begin until late 2009. That would be beyond the state’s fiscal 2009 year, which begins Monday.
Saenz indicated that some of the $1.5 billion would be spent on engineering and right of way purchases, readying projects in anticipation of even more borrowing authority to come. TxDOT could borrow an additional $1.4 billion against the gas tax in the 2009-2010 fiscal year. Austin’s projects could see some of that engineering money, or some of the $1.4 billion if TxDOT follows through and takes on that debt as well.
And if the Legislature passes additional legislation next year, the agency could borrow up to $5 billion more that voters approved under the Proposition 12 constitutional amendment in November. Those bonds would be paid back by general state revenue, not gas taxes.
Today’s action comes in response to a letter a week ago signed by Gov. Rick Perry, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the state’s three most powerful elected officials. In that letter, the three backed more borrowing against the gas tax and funding the Proposition 12 bonds.
TxDOT in the past year had resisted borrowing more against the gas tax, arguing that doing so would only starve the agency’s bottom line down the road as gas taxes were used to pay back the borrowed money. But in the letter last week, the three leaders supported ending or curtailing significantly gas tax funds used for state needs other than building transportation projects.
About $1.6 billion in the current two-year state budget went to such “diversions,” the bulk of it to the Department of Public Safety. If the Legislature were to return much of that money to TxDOT, replacing it with general state revenue from other taxes and fees, then TxDOT could presumably handle the additional gas tax borrowing.
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June 26, 2008
TxDOT names developer on another Trans-Texas Corridor piece
The next leg of the Trans-Texas Corridor, this one to be in South and East Texas, now has a developer. Or at least a planner.
The Texas Transportation Commission today unanimously approved hiring a partnership headed by ACS Infrastructure Development Inc., a Spanish company, and San Antonio-based Zachry American Infrastructure, Inc., to craft a plan for Interstate 69. Despite the interstate name, the highway from the Rio Grande Valley (and/or Laredo) to Texarkana, would be a piece of Gov. Rick Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor.
But despite those similarties to TTC-35, the proposed toll twin to Interstate 35, much about this situation is different than TTC-35.
Start with hullabaloo, or lack of it. When the TTC-35 deal with Cintra-Zachry (yes, the same San Antonio company, this time with a different partner from Spain) was announced in 2004, Gov. Rick Perry was on hand for the commission action and a huge press conference afterward. The financial windfall for the state — a $6 billion road and $1.2 billion in payments to TxDOT — was ballyhooed as the front edge of a gusher of money that would transform Texas transportation.
And that day in 2004, you had to listen carefully to understand that all that was truly happening was that Cintra-Zachry was being engaged to do a master plan of how to develop TTC-35. That plan, and at least two more contracts, were still to come. And now, three and a half years later, no dirt has turned on that road (although Cintra-Zachry is buying right of way in the state’s name) and the state has been promised only $25 million upfront. The first segment, just forty miles of a road that had been in the planning stages for a couple of decades, won’t open until 2012 at the earliest.
As for the rest of the proposed 300 miles of toll roads and railroads, nothing else is in active development. Part of the reason for that is that in the interim, rural Texas has staged a rebellion against the Trans-Texas Corridor. Legislators stepped in and passed a moratorium against most of the private toll road deals that were to be the foundation of Perry’s corridor plan.
So today’s action was handled in an exceedingly low-key fashion. Mark Tomlinson, TxDOT’s turnpike director, emphasized over and over in his remarks to the commissioners that they were voting simply to hire Zachry-ACS to create a plan for a maximum payment of $5 million. There was no talk of any upfront payments. Perry wasn’t there. There was one TV camera there, and only a handful of reporters.
Although it’s subject to change under the coming master plan, here’s what Zachry-ACS has in mind:
** Upgrading U.S. 77 to interstate standards (the road has some stoplights in towns now) from Refugio County south to the Valley. The road, with the exception of short loops around Riviera and Driscoll, would NOT be a toll road, a huge distinction between TTC-35 and I-69.
** How could Zachry/ACS afford to upgrade more than 100 miles of highway without tolls on much of it? It would build and operate five other toll roads — three in the Corpus Christi area and two in the Valley — making profits (it hopes) off of those projects.
** Zachry/ACS, after building the U.S. 77 improvements to make it into I-69, would withdraw from that project. TxDOT would operate the road from then on and pay for maintenance.
** Unless the Legislature changes the law, I-69 north of the San Antonio River in San Antonio cannot be a private toll road. So, part of Zachry/ACS’s master planning task will be to map out how those 500 miles or so could be turned into an expressway.
The creation of the master plan is expected to take up to 18 months.
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June 4, 2008
Carona on the Sunset report
State Sen. John Carona, a Dallas Republican who as chairman of the Senate’s Transportation and Homeland Security Committee never pulls his rhetorical punches, sent out a statement Tuesday evening on the “sunset” report about TxDOT. It didn’t arrive until after I had finished my story on the report for today’s paper and had gone home. But it’s worth sharing Carona’s thoughts with you:
“Each of the recommendations is worthy of consideration and I applaud the Sunset Commission in calling for meaningful change in how the Legislature addresses future transportation policy,” Carona said. “In recent weeks, the Transportation Commission has taken encouraging steps in the right direction. Had it done so sooner, such drastic measures might not be seen by some as necessary. In the end, the Legislature will not tolerate the Transportation Commission operating as the fourth branch of state government.”
If you missed the report and the Statesman’s coverage, see the blog post just before this one. The Texas Sunset Advisory Commission staff made a number of recommendations about what the Legislature should do next year to change TxDOT, including replacing the Texas Transportation Commission with a single commissioner.
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June 3, 2008
Sunset review a rebuke to TxDOT
The Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, in a report that can only be called a stinging rebuke of the Texas Department of Transportation, calls for putting the agency through a four-year review cycle (rather than the normal 12 years between sunset reviews). The commission, citing complaints that the agency is “out of control,” also calls for creating a legislative oversight committee — which would amount to putting the agency under conservatorship.
The report was made public at 10 a.m. Read it here. And here’s the self-evaluation done by TxDOT and released last year.
The tone of the Sunset Advisory Commission report is obvious in the executive summary’s opening paragraphs:
“Sunset staff found that this atmosphere of distrust permeated most of TxDOT’s actions and determined that it could not be an effective state transportation agency if trust and confidence were not restored. Significant changes are needed to begin this restoration; tweaking the status quo is simply not enough.
“This report proposes decisive action to address TxDOT’s problems by establishing what is in effect a four-year “legislative conservatorship” to return control over transportation policy to the Legislature, where it belongs.”
As for TxDOT’s reaction, for now (and it appears for the near future) it amounted to an e-mail statement from chief spokesman Chris Lippincott:
“The confidence of the Legislature and the public are very important to us,” the statement read. “We still have work to do, but we are confident that our ongoing efforts to improve the transparency and accessibility of TxDOT are making a positive impact. We look forward to our continued work with the members and staff of the Sunset Commission.”
So, the agency won’t be taking questions on the report, Lippincott was asked later?
“We’ve been requested to let this play out somewhere other than the newspaper, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Lippincott said. He said he would pass on a request for an interview with Deirdre Delisi, chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission.
Austin state Sen. Kirk Watson, a Democrat who is vice-chair of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, said that the recommendations — if put into law — would return control of overall transportation policy to policymakers rather than the agency itself.
“There may be some specific recommendations (in the report) that need to be looked at,” Watson said. “But you can generally state that this report has taken a clear stand for honesty, accountability and common sense as a general rule. TxDOT’s a badly damaged agency, and this report is a first step and an important step in trying to restore its effectiveness and credibility.”
The report recommends abolishing the five-member Texas Transportation Commission and replacing it with a single commissioner appointed by the governor. The single commissioner, who would also replace the agency’s executive director, would be subject to Senate confirmation (or reconfirmation) every two years.
Without naming Gov. Rick Perry, the report criticizes his practice in recent years of not naming replacement commissioners in a timely fashion, thus depriving the Legislature of its chance to exert oversight on agency policy. For instance, the late Ric Williamson (the commission’s chairman, who died in December) and commissioner Hope Andrade continued to serve long after their terms expired in February 2007. Perry named their replacements just a few weeks ago and those new commissioners will serve for about eight months before the Legislature convenes.
Under the sunset recommendation, failure by the governor to reappoint or appoint a new commissioner by Feb. 28 of odd-numbered years would transfer that appointment authority to the lieutenant governor.
In calling for establishment of the legislative oversight committee, the report said it would not cost the state extra money because it could be staffed by abolishing TxDOT’s Government and Public Affairs Research section and transferring those six positions to the new committee.
“The Committee’s purpose,” according to the report, “would be to research, analyze, and report on the operation and needs of the system.” The six-member committee, made up of legislators, would not have direct hiring and firing authority over agency employees or the commissioner.
Among other recommendations in the report: * Have the Legislature directly fund the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M, rather than having the funding come from TxDOT. * Overhaul the agency’s Statewide Transportation Plan and in various other ways make it more clear how and where money is being spent. * Make TxDOT’s Web site easier for the public to use. * Eliminate the requirement that future contract opportunities be advertised in newspapers, perhaps saving close to $1 million a year.
Every state agency has to go through “sunset” every 12 years, and this is the beginning step of a four-step process: staff report, public hearing (in mid-July), vote by the Sunset Commission in September, legislative action in 2009.
What’s your take on what the sunset staff recommended?
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May 14, 2008
Click it or ticket -- maybe
The state starts its seventh annual “Click it or Ticket” campaign Monday, two weeks in which (according to a marketing firm working for the Texas Department of Transportation) “state troopers, police officers and sheriff’s deputies statewide will be stepping up enforcement of the state’s safety belt laws.”
Well, that’s kind of true.
The true part is that TxDOT has given out $1.1 million in grants this year to 102 Texas police agencies, under its Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, to pay overtime for officers during Click it or Ticket. That includes, according to TxDOT spokesman Mark Cross, $60,000 for the City of Austin police department, $8,000 each to Hutto and Pflugerville, and $5,000 to Leander.
Cross did not have any other Austin-area police or sheriff’s agencies on that list, although he said there are grants given for seat belt enforcement in general that could be used during the May 19 to June 1 Click it or Ticket period. Or not.
As for state troopers, well, there’s nothing special that will be happening between May 19 and June 1, according to spokeswoman Tela Mange.
“Everyday is click it or ticket for us,” Mange said. “We’ve had a no-warning policy (on seat belts) since 1999.”
Mange said DPS troopers issued more than 134,000 citations for not wearing a seat belt in 2007, about 370 a day. And she said that the agency puts every available trooper out on the highways during Memorial Day weekend, which likely results in greater seat belt enforcement just from the sheer number of troopers out there.
Is there some sort of statewide directive, or strong suggestion, or plea from TxDOT (or any other statewide figure or agency) to law enforcement telling them to step up enforcement for the next two weeks? Cross wasn’t aware of any.
So, if you’re in one of 102 particular jurisdictions with grants, or maybe other areas with other grants, you might be under added scrutiny for seat belt use for 14 days or so starting Monday.
The Austin Police Department will use that grant to put nine to 10 extra officers on the street, each dedicated to catching seat belt violators, at all times of the day and night during the two weeks, spokeswoman Lisa Cortinas said.
According to TxDOT, 92 percent of us wear our seat belts all the time anyway. The other 8 percent should seriously consider doing it, added enforcement or not.
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May 10, 2008
I-35 won't close this weekend after all
If you were planning to drive south for Mother’s Day or the Texas State University graduation, rejoice, for the TXDOT gods have smiled upon you.
A closure of Interstate 35’s main lanes north of Buda at RM 1327 turned out to be half a closure — and it’s ending early. The detour to the frontage roads is related to construction going on for the Texas 45 Southeast tollway. Originally, the project would have diverted north and south traffic onto the frontage lanes from Friday at 9 p.m. to Monday at 5 a.m.
TXDOT spokesman John Hurt said although the closure project began Friday, the contractors are behind schedule, and were able to get only to the work that closed the southbound lanes Friday night. Given the delay, the northbound lanes, originally scheduled to shutdown about noon today, stayed open. And the southbound closure will end by about 10 p.m. tonight.
Meaning, everything will be back to normal long before Sunday. The closure will reoccur next weekend, Hurt said.
“There was a real risk this could be shut down for Monday morning rush hour traffic, and we didn’t want to run that risk,” Hurt said. He added that the northbound lanes of I-35 were never closed, and everything is expected to be open again by 10 p.m. tonight.
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April 7, 2008
Those who forget history . . .
Amazing what you can stumble onto if you look back a little.
I was going through some musty old Statesman clips for another story when I chanced on to this unexpected knowledge: The Legislature used to subsidize highway building with general fund money. Lots of it.
This is significant because a major TxDOT talking point of the past few years has been about how much gas tax money is being “diverted” by the Legislature for purposes other than highway building. It’s about $1.6 billion in the current two-year state budget cycle. About a billion dollars of that, it should be pointed out, goes to the Texas Department of Public Safety to patrol the highways, so it’s at least a related expenditure.
Anyway, given that I didn’t cover transportation before 2004, I’d assumed that this diversion thing had pretty much gone on forever. Certainly no one at TxDOT has ever attempted to disabuse me or anyone else of that impression.
But in a 1985 Statesman article looking at TxDOT’s overall financial picture, about $298 million of the $1.8 billion budget for that year came from the general fund. In other words, from other tax revenue like the state sales tax and oil and gas severance taxes. I saw references in other articles as well to various amounts of general fund money going to TxDOT. Guess you could say that in those years, the highways were taking money that could have been spent and should have been spent on schoolchildren or universities or social services (or, to be fair, prison inmates).
By the way, $298 million in 1984 would translate to about $630 million in 2008 dollars. Or, for a two-year budget cycle, $1.26 billion. That’s in the neighborhood of what’s going the other direction now.
The clips don’t indicate how long this reverse diversion had been going on. But given that the gas tax had been stuck at 5 cents a gallon for 29 years until the Legislature increased it to 10 cents a gallon in 1984 (and then 15 cents a gallon two years later, and 20 cents a gallon in 1991), one can assume that the roads had been getting some general fund help for quite some time.
Mind you, this doesn’t change the basics of TxDOT’s current point, which is that it would have a whole lot more money to spend on roads if the Legislature would stop taking a bunch of its cash for other stuff. But it’s still good to understand that there was a time when the shoe was on the other foot.
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March 11, 2008
Dewhurst: Go forth and borrow
Go borrow some money and build some things, legislative leaders told TxDOT in a letter this afternoon.
The short letter — signed by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, House Speaker Tom Craddick, Senate Finance chairman Steve Ogden and House Appropriations chairman Warren Chisum — recommends that TxDOT borrow another $1.5 billion against future gas tax revenue to bridge a temporary tight spot financially. The Legislature, the letter promises, will make sure that some of the gas tax money now diverted to other, non-highway-construction needs will be returned to the agency to back the bonds.
No word back on this yet from TxDOT, which has resisted issuing more of such bonds. They’re mulling a response at this moment.
One can assume, at least based on the agency’s past actions and statements, that they won’t be enthusiastic. The agency has said it ceased pursuing many new construction projects as of Feb. 1 because it wouldn’t have the money in the out years to complete paying for them. So, if the agency spent this $1.5 billion this year for, say, the first 1/3 of a series of projects, it would have trouble coming up with the other 2/3.
But the legislative letter to Texas Transportation Commission Chairwoman Hope Andrade says TxDOT should expect more help from the Legislature.
“This action will allow transportation construction to return to reasonable levels in the short-term, but this is just the beginning of the conversation,” the letter says.
TxDOT had announced the construction slowdown/halt in November, citing inflation in construction costs (which has actually slowed) and cutbacks in federal transportation grants. Only in early February, at a hearing called by two Senate committees, did TxDOT reveal that it had actually double-counted $1.1 billion in scheduling construction projects. That mistake, officials said at the time, had a lot to do with the crunch.
The State Auditor is now looking at TxDOT’s finances.
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February 8, 2008
Carona sends Perry a warning shot on key TxDOT nomination
State Sen. John Carona, the Dallas Republican who heads up the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, can be a diplomat when he wants to be.
He apparently didn’t want to be earlier this week.
According to a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Carona took a memorable shot at a possible nominee of Gov. Rick Perry (and at Perry, by extension) to replace late Ric Willamson as chair of the Texas Transportation Commission. He roughed up TxDOT and even Texas Instruments, while he was at.
Carona, the story by reporter Gordon Dickson says, was told that Perry will appoint his former chief of staff Diedre Delisi to replace Williamson. Carona, to put it mildly, is not comfortable with this choice.
“We don’t need political hacks in that position,” he said to a meeting of the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition, the story said. “We need people who understand the business. We need people who understand transportation. We don’t need someone who’s unpopular with the Legislature.”
No need to read between the lines of that one.
Williamson’s term had expired when he died Dec. 30, so an appointment made during the interim would be subject to Senate confirmation when the Legislature gets together in January. Interim Commission chairwoman Hope Andrade’s term has also expired, and the terms of commissioners Ted Houghton and Fred Underwood end in January.
There are at least four committees of lawmakers, many of them in a bad mood, looking at TxDOT during this interim period. With the possibility for appointment confirmations of 80 percent of the commission — though Perry has been known to let many appointees serve far past their term ending dates, like Williamson and Andrade — the 2009 session could be even more turbulent in transportation than the historically noisy festivities in 2007.
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February 6, 2008
Watson puts forth a dark theory
I’d heard this theory bobbing around the local transportation scene. Tuesday, state Sen. Kirk Watson put it out there from the dais of a legislative committee room.
It goes like this: TxDOT promised Austin leaders about $900 million last fall for a five-road tollway plan to get them to approve the $1.45 billion plan. With that promise in hand, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board put those tollways into what is called the Transportation Improvement Plan, or TIP. You can’t build a road unless it’s in that TIP, and you can’t build it as a tollway unless it’s in the plan as a tollway.
Then, just a few weeks later, TxDOT said, oops, we were wrong and now don’t know how much (if any) of that money we’ll be able to give you.
But the tollways are now in the plan. The plan is agnostic about where the money to build the roads comes from. It could, for instance, come from, say, Spain, rather than the state treasury.
“I believe part of what TxDOT did to Austin is to get toll roads into the TIP so you can privatize them,” Watson said, referring to TxDOT management’s fondness for reaching long-term leases with private companies to build and then operate toll road projects. If they ever try to do that, however, Watson, who is chairman of the CAMPO board, said he’d make sure the roads came out of the TIP before they can.
Watson made the comments at a joint hearing of the Senate committees that oversee the state budget and transportation.
A pretty strong allegation, to be sure. TxDOT officials, including executive director Amadeo Saenz and Texas Transportation Commisison members Hope Andrade and Ted Houghton were sitting there when Watson said this. Houghton had just been talking about how there were 87 projects around the state that might be ripe for privatization, including some in Austin.
The TxDOT folks didn’t respond directly to the Machiavillian charge.
“We do indeed want to work with you,” said Andrade, named last week as interim chairman of the commission after Ric Williamson’s death. “We have several (financing) tools that you gave us, and we want to use them.”
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February 4, 2008
Dewhurst has doubts about TxDOT numbers
Count Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst among those skeptical about the Texas Department of Transportation’s claims that the till is nearly empty.
Dewhurst, whose main duty as lite guv is to preside over the 31-member Texas Senate, sent Texas Transportation Commission Chairwoman Hope Andrade a letter late Friday expressing his “concern” over what TxDOT “is portraying as a serious and immediate shortfall in funding for transportation projects.”
Dewhurst, in the letter, referenced TxDOT deputy executive director Steve Simmons saying the agency, based on the current spending plan and the agency’s estimates of incoming money, would have a $3.6 billion shortfall by 2015. How is that a problem, Dewhurst wondered, when the Legislature has given the agency mechanisms allowing it to borrow up to $9 billion additional dollars? He said that available money wasn’t included in the evaluation showing the shortfall.
He’s referring to $5 billion in general fund borrowing authorized by voters in November (although the Legislature would have to act to make that happen, Dewhurst and others have said that is a near certainty), $1.3 billion of additional borrowing capacity in the Texas Mobility Fund and $3 billion in additional authority to borrow against future gas tax revenues. Dewhurst said he and other legislative leaders made it clear last fall in private meetings with the late Ric Williamson, then chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, that the Legislature would do whatever it took to back that borrowing as well.
“I’m at a loss to see why they’re saying (that) now when we’ve given them additional tools they’ve chosen not to take advantage of,” Dewhurst said in an interview late Friday afternoon. “It appears they haven’t used them. Maybe we’re wrong.”
TxDOT officials had little to say today about the Dewhurst letter.
“We anticipate funding issues will be raised at tomorrow’s legislative hearing(s) and we are prepared to address those issues at that time,” spokesman Mark Cross said in an e-mail.
TxDOT announced late last year that it would suspend awarding new construction contracts as of Feb. 1. By no means did that bring everything to a halt, however. Projects that already were under construction, or far enough down the procurement line, will still be finished. And there are other projects, such as the Trans-Texas Corridor tollways paralleling Interstate 35 and in the notional I-69 corridor, that are steaming ahead on their environmental and design work. And in the Dallas area, there is $3.2 billion available that the North Texas Tollway Authority just agreed to pay TxDOT for the right to build and profit from a key tollway. That money remains available.
But other projects — including several in the Austin area — have been put on hold, and legislators are both unhappy and suspicious about it all. So suspicious, in fact, that the Senate Finance and Transportation committees will hold a joint meeting Tuesday morning to grill TxDOT officials about all this.
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January 29, 2008
Andrade gets the gavel
Texas Transportation Commissioner Hope Andrade, at least for now, will replace the late Ric Williamson as chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission. Gov. Rick Perry late Monday named her interim chairwoman of the board, which governs the Texas Department of Transportation.
Perry needed to act this week because the commission’s four remaining members will hold their first meeting on Thursday since Williamson’s Dec. 30 death and someone needs to preside. Andrade, like all the members of the commission, is a Perry appointee. Andrade, a San Antonio businesswoman, joined the commission in December 2003 at the same time as Commissioner Ted Houghton. The two are the most senior remaining members of the commission.
Houghton has been the more active, and more vocal, of the two, often accompanying Williamson to press events and haunting the halls of the Capitol with the chairman during last year’s temptestuous legislative session. Houghton’s tongue got him and the department in hot water last week when he acknowledged at a community meeting in Hempstead that the agency hires lobbyists in Washington. That would seem to violate state law.
Perry is mulling choices to replace Williamson. He could chose to make the new appointee the chairman of the commission, or name that person merely as a member of the commission and elevate one of the existing commissioners to chairman.
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January 25, 2008
TxDOT and the 'lobby'
Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton, at least according to anti-toll activist Terri Hall of Comal County, basically got up in front of hundreds of people in Hempstead on Tuesday and admitted that TxDOT is breaking the law.
What Houghton said at a town hall meeting on the Trans-Texas Corridor proposed tollway TTC-69, according to clips on YouTube, concerned lobbyists in Washington. Here’s what he said:
“We hire lobbyists up there to represent the interests of the State of Texas,” Houghton said, going on to talk about how the state has been successful in what eventually ended up in the last big transportation reauthorization bill, passed by Congress in 2005. The state’s allocations of federal transportation dollars increased somewhat in that law, and there were regulatory changes that TxDOT had sought to streamline the approval process for roads. “That’s why we employ the lobbyists in D.C.”
Now, was the “we” in those sentences TxDOT, or the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations in D.C.? The state office, according to its Web site, has someone named Cady North on its staff who is assigned to the Texas Department of Transportation. A state employee would not fall under the prohibition below, found in the Texas Government Code:
Sec. 556.005. EMPLOYMENT OF LOBBYIST (a) A state agency may not use appropriated money to employ, as a regular full-time or part-time or contract employee, a person who is required by Chapter 305 to register as a lobbyist. Except for an institution of higher education as defined by Section 61.003, Education Code, a state agency may not use any money under its control to employ or contract with an individual who is required by Chapter 305 to register as a lobbyist.
Houghton certainly seemed to be talking about TxDOT. And Hall, who has formed groups to oppose Bexar County toll roads and sue TxDOT over its spending on public relations, cited records of private lobbyists hired by TxDOT.
I asked TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott about Hall’s allegations. He sent this back by e-mail Thursday:
“The January 23, 2008 press release from TURF attempts to interpret documents received through the discovery process for their ongoing litigation against TxDOT,” Lippincott said in the e-mail. “As we have said, it is our responsibility to engage Texans in a meaningful dialogue about transportation. It is not possible to meet our state’s transportation goals without public awareness and public involvement. In light of the ongoing litigation, it is not appropriate to comment to the media on every document the plaintiffs receive through the normal course of discovery.”
I replied that, actually, I was asking not about any documents turned up in discovery for Hall’s lawsuit, but rather Houghton’s statements and the seeming prohibition in the government code against TxDOT hiring lobbyists. Lippincott said Thursday he would get back to me on that. I’ll let you know when he does.
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January 23, 2008
TxDOT on the legislative griddle Feb. 5
Shine your shoes and haul out a clean shirt, TxDOT. The Legislature wants to see you on Feb. 5. All day.
The Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Finance Committee have called what would be a very rare joint meeting at 9 a.m. Feb. 5. The meeting would be in the Finance Committee’s meeting room in the Capital Extension, E1.036.
The subject: “The Texas Department of Transportation’s 2008-09 appropriations.” Translated, that means, we want to pin you down and find if you really and truly are suddenly out of money. TxDOT shook up the Texas transportation world, and quite a few powerful legislators, over the past two months by suddenly cutting money for project engineering and right of way and announcing it will award no new road construction contracts after Feb. 1. Frankly, a lot of lawmakers think TxDOT is playing politics with its books.
After these two committees are through, probably around noon, then the Legislative Study Committee on Private Participation in Toll Projects (called the CDA committee or 792 committee informally) will meet at 1 p.m. in the same room. That committee, which includes three appointees each by Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick, was created by SB 792 and told to look at the private toll road contracts that stirred up the Legislature last year. This is that committee’s first meeting.
Meanwhile, TxDOT is under review by the Sunset Advisory Committee as well.
Better get a couple of clean shirts. And maybe some underwear as well.
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January 9, 2008
Road costs finally leveling off
Amidst all the doom and gloom about money from TxDOT comes this glimmer of sunshine: Highway construction costs are leveling off.
According to the department’s highway cost index (which is specific to Texas), road-building went up just 1.98 percent in fiscal 2007, which ended Aug. 31. That follows three grinding years when the numbers jumped 9.20 percent (fiscal 2004), 19.76 percent (fiscal 2005) and 22.88 percent (fiscal 2006).
The net effect is that TxDOT’s costs (including compounding and fiscal 2007’s gentle rise) have gone up 93 percent in the past 10 years, and 60 percent in the past five years. The national consumer price index went up just 29 percent in that same decade, 15 percent in the past five years.
TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott cautions against breaking out the confetti, however. The damage to the agency’s bottom line, he said, was already done in those three bad years.
“Projects we planned for in years past are costing us far more than the 4 percent annual increase in costs we had typically built in,” Lippincott said in an e-mail to me today. “With dwindling resources and an aging system, we are running out of money.
“Bottom line on costs: Inflation seems to be settling, but it is settling at a high number, and we do not expect it to recede.”
A couple of things worth noting:
I had to ask for this number. Actually, I had to ask for it twice. My first request a couple of months ago fell through the cracks. One might reasonably expect that after all the noise about the big increases, that a leveling off might have been worth mentioning to the public and the press.
What happened to China and India? We’ve been hearing, whenever the sharp inflation was mentioned, that the culprit was all the building going on in Asia’s emerging economies. China and India, we were told, were scarfing up so much steel and concrete that it was driving up everything. Presumably, they haven’t built everything they needed over there.
And I seem to remember that oil prices (and thus gasoline and diesel prices) went up last year. A bunch. Certainly a lot more than 1.98 percent.
Which brings up a key point. TxDOT may have been contributing to its own predicament. These three years of high inflation coincide with the Legislature creating the $6.4 billion Texas Mobility Fund and allowing the agency for the first time to borrow against the gas tax (up to $3 billion) and on the bond market. Austin got four toll roads done during that time at a cost of more than $3 billion.
So a whole lot of concrete was laid down in a short time, jacking up TxDOT’s former $3 billion a year in contracts to $5 billion two years ago and $4 billion last year.
That is leveling off to $3 billion this fiscal year, and the agency is cutting engineering costs. After Feb. 1, TxDOT won’t initiate any new projects. The next effect, because of all the suddenly hungry contractors and engineers, could be to actually drive the highway cost index down, which happened in fiscal 2002 (minus 1.57 percent) and fiscal 2003 (minus 2.13 percent).
Yes, this doesn’t change the underlying problem. But at least it won’t get worse while the Legislature attempts to figure out how to find more money.
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January 7, 2008
More change at TxDOT
Amadeo Saenz, still in what has turned out to be a very turbulent first few months as executive director at the Texas Department of Transportation, today announced some new top staff members.
Saenz, who was engineering director before getting the top job in late September, has in effect split his old job in two, with a director of engineering operations and a director of district operations. The latter job will go to David Casteel, the San Antonio district engineer, leaving that hot potato position at least temporarily vacant as Bexar County battles over toll roads.
Phil Russell, now the agency turnpike director and one of three finalists for the job Saenz landed, will have a somewhat broader portfolio in a new position. The three will begin their new jobs Feb. 1.
Here’s the news release put out by the department this afternoon:
TxDOT Announces New Members of Leadership Team Saenz expands administration to reflect changing role of agency
AUSTIN - The Texas Department of Transportation today announced the final three members of Executive Director Amadeo Saenz’s leadership team. The new Assistant Executive Director for Engineering Operations will be John Barton of Beaumont. The newly formed office of Assistant Executive Director for District Operations will be David Casteel of San Antonio. The newly formed office of Assistant Executive Director for Innovative Project Development will be Phil Russell of Austin.
“John, David and Phil are all outstanding professionals,” said Saenz. “All of them understand the complex and serious transportation challenges our state faces, and I know they share my commitment to meeting them with hard work, dedication and creativity.”
John Barton began working for TxDOT as a summer employee of the Wichita Falls District while he was still in high school. After graduating from Texas A&M University, Barton continued his work for the department. In 2003 Barton received the President’s Award for Planning from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. In December 2003, he was named to his current position as District Engineer for the eight-county Beaumont District. As the new Assistant Executive Director for Engineering Operations, Barton will oversee and coordinate operations for nine divisions and offices. Barton will assist in directing long and short-range planning for the agency including the establishment of overall operating objectives and the technical merits of programs and policies
David Casteel has served as the District Engineer for the 12-county San Antonio District since 2003. He holds bachelors and masters degrees from Texas A&M University and is a graduate of the Governor’s Executive Development Program at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. A TxDOT employee since his first summer job with the department in 1983, Casteel served as District Engineer of the Childress and Corpus Christi Districts before moving to San Antonio. As Assistant Executive Director for District Operations, Casteel will oversee the state’s 25 TxDOT districts.
Phil Russell, a transportation engineer with 25 years state experience including leadership roles in Bryan, Dallas and Austin, has served as the Director of the Texas Turnpike Authority Division since 1998. He oversaw the planning and development of the Central Texas Turnpike Project. The first 44-miles of the project were opened under budget and a year ahead of schedule. Russell has directed efforts to relieve congestion on Interstate 35 in Texas with the development of Trans-Texas Corridor 35. He is also in charge of planning TTC-69, a 600-mile multi-use transportation corridor extending from Northeast Texas to Mexico. Russell started work for TxDOT in 1982 and held numerous positions in TxDOT’s 10-county Bryan District and seven-county Dallas District before moving to the turnpike division in Austin. In addition to being a professional engineer, Russell is also a lawyer. In his new position as Assistant Executive Director for Innovative Project Development, Russell will oversee and coordinate turnpike/tollway projects and statewide transportation planning/programming operations for TxDOT. He will oversee functions related to the development and operation of turnpike projects to include Comprehensive Development Agreements, market evaluations, pass-thru tolls, Trans Texas Corridor activities, long-term transportation planning.
TxDOT Executive Director Amadeo Saenz created the two new positions of Assistant Executive Director for District Operations and Assistant Executive Director for Innovative Project Development to help meet his objectives. “I want to make sure that our TxDOT Districts have all of the resources we can provide them to work with local officials to solve local mobility problems,” Saenz said. “Our innovative programs including toll projects built by TxDOT, local authorities and the private sector also deserve special focus as we work to meet our department’s goals.”
Barton, Casteel and Russell will assume their new roles on February 1, 2008. They join Deputy Executive Director Steve Simmons, Chief Financial Officer James Bass, Assistant Executive Director for Support Operations Ed Serna and Government and Public Affairs Director Coby Chase in Saenz’s administration. Saenz took office in September of 2007.
About the Texas Department of Transportation
The Texas Department of Transportation is responsible for maintaining nearly 80,000 miles of road and for supporting aviation, rail and public transportation across the state. TxDOT and its 15,000 employees strive to empower local leaders to solve local transportation problems, and to use new financial tools, including tolling and public-private partnerships, to reduce congestion and pave the way for future economic growth while enhancing safety, improving air quality and increasing the value of the state’s transportation assets. Find out more at www.txdot.gov.
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December 19, 2007
Wi-Fi? Switzerland? TxDOT boss? Your questions answered
You readers have been in a chatty mood the past couple of weeks, which is good. I wanted to respond to some things you’ve been saying.
1) Native Texan suggested that Texas Comptroller Susan Combs do a top-to-bottom financial review of TxDOT. Not sure if she still has the authority to do such performance reviews. The Legislature, unhappy with Combs’ predecessor, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, when she had the job (through 2006), stripped away much of that authority.
But the good news is that TxDOT is under sunset review, so there is in fact some top-to-bottom scrutiny under way, with a report due in time for the 2009 legislative session. Caveat: TxDOT, of course, can’t be truly sunsetted; we really need someone building roads and such. But the process could produce change, if lawmakers have the stomach for the fight.
2) Native Texan also scoffed at the ability of engineers to manage people and said there’s no way an engineer should be running TxDOT. (Engineer Amadeo Saenz is the executive director.)
Two things about that: As a former petroleum engineer, I resemble that remark. I actually was a supervisor for awhile here at the Statesman and at another paper, and I don’t think I was hopeless at it. On the other hand, no one’s beating down my door to put me in charge here at the Statesman. As for TxDOT, state law actually requires that an engineer be in charge. There was a bill in the Legislature a couple of sessions ago to remove that requirement, but it got nowhere.
3) Steve wanted to know if Capital Metro’s trains would have Wi-Fi. Answer: Yes.
4) Steve B. talked about little ol’ Leander stepping up to the plate to get rail. That implies that Leander did something tangible, such as putting money up or something. Not really. In fact, Capital Metro put money into an effort to study transit-oriented development on the real estate surrounding the coming Leander station. Leander and its citizens did no more or less to get commuter rail than the citizens of South Austin, who aren’t getting rail for now. Which is, they pay Capital Metro’s 1 percent sales tax on purchases made in Leander, just as occurs at a store on Stassney Lane or William Cannon Drive.
5) Gary wondered why Capital Metro is buying its rail cars from a company based in Switzerland. The problem was that the agency needed cars that are sturdy enough to comply with Federal Railroad Administration rules for passenger trains that share a track with freight trains. Which the commuter line will. But the agency also wanted self-propelled diesel trains, and the only self-propelled diesel train cars made in the U.S. (by a company called Colorado Railcar) did not meet those standards in 2004, when the agency was researching where it might buy such cars. So they had to look outside our shores.
6) Jeff said we should look to Dallas Area Rapid Transit as a template for passenger rail, saying that the agency came in under budget when it first built and opened its light rail lines in the early to mid-’90s. It might or might not be true that DART’s red and blue lines came in under budget; I haven’t researched the issue. But I can tell you that DART just a few weeks ago announced that its earlier $988 million estimate for the coming Orange Line to Irving and DFW airport were a mite low. Like, $900 million low.
That’s probably not the best template for Capital Metro to follow.
Keep writing.
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December 17, 2007
Courtesy patrols likely on the chopping block
The courtesy patrol trucks that prowl some Austin highways, fixing flats, jumping batteries and otherwise helping out motorists with disabled vehicles, appear to be on a Texas Department of Transportation recommended list for cuts.
I say “appear to be” because Bob Daigh, the Austin district engineer for TxDOT, wouldn’t confirm a tip that the three courtesy patrol trucks were included in cost-saving recommendations sent to TxDOT’s state office last week. The agency, which has been saying it is in a cash crush, had instructed district engineers to cut their operating costs by about 10 percent.
“It is being evaluated and considered,” Daigh said last week. But the recommendations have already gone to the state; does that then mean that they are in the recommendation? If not, wouldn’t they be off the consideration list?
“I’ve been asked by the administration not to share the contents of the plan,” Daigh said.
But he would say that in his view, the courtesy patrols are not funded even in their current incarnation to be effective. He has three workers on his “highway emergency response operator” team. He says he would really need 40 to do the job of quickly getting cars moving again to lessen the traffic congestion that results from stalls.
But three makes some difference, right? Yes, Daigh said.
“They are providing day in and day out a valuable service, ” Daigh said. “It’s all a matter of competing needs.”
So, if the “HERO” team was to be discontinued, would there be layoffs? No, he said. In that eventuality, workers would be redistributed to other continuing positions at the Austin district, Daigh said.
The state office should make a decision on Daigh’s recommendation in a few weeks.
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December 13, 2007
TxDOT, strapped or not, might get a loan
Sprinkled in among another round of Texas Department of Transportation officials arguing that their financial crisis is real came this nugget: Why not use an extra $300 million coming to TxDOT to go borrow about $2.1 billion?
That $2.1 billion is the remaining authorized borrowing for TxDOT under Proposition 14, a constitutional amendment voters approved in 2003. That amendment allows the agency to borrow up to $3 billion and pay it back with gas taxes. But agency officials, after using up about $900 million, decided that their future gas tax revenue prospects were too uncertain (then, later, certifiably terrible) and chose not to borrow the money.
But the Legislature last spring set aside a one-time $300 million in general revenue for the agency. State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, and chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, suggested in a Nov. 16 letter to Texas Transportation Commission chairman Ric Williamson that the agency use that money to borrow a bunch more.
Williamson revealed the letter’s existence during today’s commission meeting.
The catch is that you can’t borrow $2.1 billion when all you’ve got is $300 million in year one. Bond investors would want to know you’ll keep having the money in future years. In this case, that means that in future years the agency would have to use gas taxes to make the debt payment — which is exactly what they’ve already chosen NOT to do — or the Legislature would have to make the $300 million an ongoing deal.
Actually, voters kind of already did half the work. They approved Proposition 12 in November, which would allow TxDOT to borrow up to $5 billion and pay it back from the general fund rather than the gas taxes and motor vehicle fee that feed the TxDOT kitty. But to make that voter decision a reality, the Legislature will have to pass “enabling legislation” in 2009 and appropriate the money.
In the interim, TxDOT could choose to roll the dice, borrow the money based on assurances from people such as Carona, and hope that they haven’t put another call on gas taxes.
Speaking of the interim and calls, a speaker at the commission meeting (a consulting engineer lamenting the sudden loss of business because of a TxDOT decision to stop handing out new construction contracts in the new year) had an intriguing suggestion. Why not have a special session just to do that enabling legislation and free up that $5 billion now?
“Actually, that’s a pretty good idea about Proposition 12,” Williamson said. “I don’t know that the governor would necessarily be opposed to it.”
We’ll see. But even the $2.1 billion, in the meantime, would make a difference. Not enough difference though, according to Williamson, although he said in a reply letter to Carona that he has instructed TxDOT staff to develop a plan to “put the $300 million to its highest and best use.”
The agency will award no contracts for new or expanded highways starting Feb. 1 because, officials say, they will have reached the $3.1 billion in new spending (counting road maintenance contracts) that the agency can afford this fiscal year. That’s $1.1 billion short of what they had intended to spend. Then, they said, fiscal 2009 (starting Sept. 1) will be even tighter.
The $2.1 billion might not get everything back up and going. But it would be a start.
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December 3, 2007
TxDOT makes Craddick's (loooong) list
If you think of the legislative process as a lengthy petroleum pipeline, then what House Speaker Tom Craddick proposed for TxDOT last week amounts to the crude entering the front end of the pipe. And what comes out of the other end could be Mazola, or olive oil. Or never emerge at all.
Nonetheless, it is worth noting (as the San Antonio Express-News first reported) that scrutiny of TxDOT was among the several hundred issues Craddick told his committees to study before the Legislature returns in 2009. These so-called “interim charges” from the speaker (the light guv will have his set of charges for the Senate boys and girls as well) quite often lead to legislation, which sometimes passes both the Senate and House, though many times in much-changed form, which might get a signature from the governor and become law. Though not always.
You get the picture.
Craddick had the following charges concerning TxDOT:
To the State Affairs Committee: Look at how state agencies advertise their services “to discern if taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately … (and) that these dollars are not spent to coerce, but rather benefit, the public through honest educative efforts.”
TxDOT has been accused in a lawsuit, filed by a San Antonio-based group called TURF, of spending more than $7 million on a program called Keep Texas Moving that, the opponents charge, is thinly veiled advocacy for toll roads.
To the Appropriations Committee: Look at TxDOT’s “current financial condition … including but not limited to cash in bank, encumbered funds, use of bond capacity and projected needs,” including diversion of money from the state highway funds to other state needs. TxDOT has been saying, in light of new restrictions from the Legislature on private toll road contracts, that it will run out of money for new construction starting next year.
To the Transportation Committee: Look for ways to find money for the Rail Relocation Fund, which was created by voters in 2005 but not funded last session; look at allowing buses to use highway shoulders so they can bypass gridlock (legislation to do this failed in the 2007 session); review the Driver Responsibility Program to see why the collection rate hasn’t been better.
We’ll let you know when and if any of this gets further down the pipeline.
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November 15, 2007
TxDOT: Buddy, can you spare a dime?
No, really, we’re running out of money, Texas Department of Transportation officials said today. And to address it, and prove the point, deputy assistant director Steve Simmons outlined five recommended steps to reduce costs.
Reduce the agency’s fiscal 2008 consulting engineering budget by 57 percent, or about $250 million. “I suspect the engineering community will react negatively” to this, Simmons told the Texas Transportation Commission at its monthly meeting. Which might have the effect of the engineers, who have some stroke at the Capitol, deciding to pressure the Legislature to give TxDOT more money. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world from TxDOT’s point of view.
Cutting the budget for right-of-way purchases from $500 million to $275 million. If you have no money to build future projects, why buy land for them, Simmons said.
Requiring approval at the Austin state headquarters of all purchases by the department’s regional districts, “from dump trucks to asphalt to paper clips,” Simmon said. Paper clips???
Reduce the agency’s research budget by 50 percent. This could affect the Texas Transportation Institute. Which is at Texas A&M. The Senate Finance Committee chairman is an Aggie.
Institute a hiring freeze, with exceptions to be granted only with the personal approval of executive director Amadeo Saenz. Saenz was not at the commission meeting today, because of knee surgery. But he may also be resting up for the coming onslaught of paper clip requests.
Simmons’ presentation followed one by James Bass, the agency’s chief financial officer. Bass continued with a recurrent theme by agency officials in recent months, arguing that despite a flood of cash in recent years from a bump in federal transportation money, more than $9 billion borrowed through two new debt funds and a $3.3 billion check soon to come from the North Texas Tollway Authority, the agency is barely meeting its daily and monthly cashflow needs.
Basically, Bass said, all but a smidgen of the $9 billion has been committed to projects either underway or soon to start. The $3.3 billion can be used only for projects in the NTTA’s Dallas-Fort Worth bailiwick and virtually all of the agency’s normal cash flow from gas taxes and fees is being used up on current needs. And Uncle Sam, who has already taken back $666 million in promised funds, is eying another $1 billion over the next year or two.
The bottomline, as the agency first said a couple of months ago, is that there will be no new money for adding lanes and new highways starting next year. There have even been months in the last year or so, Bass said, when the agency would have gone in the red if it didn’t have the authority (under a 2003 constitutional amendment) to do short-term borrowing to plug cash-flow holes.
Yes, there’s a lot of money in the agency’s control most months, but virtually of it he said is already committed.
Now, there’s one big “if” to this penniless scenario: Proposition 12. Voters last week approved the proposition, which would allow the state to borrow up to $5 billion for transportation and pay it back with general state funds rather than gas taxes. That would be “new money” from TxDOT’s point of view and would improve the financial picture, at least for a couple of years.
The catch is that the Legislature would have to follow that constitutional amendment with so-called “enabling legislation,” and budgetary action. In other words, they’d actually have to borrow that money and give it to TxDOT. Given the bad odor the agency was in last legislative session, and the continuing political pressure to keep a stern eye of the agency, that is not exactly money in hand yet.
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October 16, 2007
AG says no on releasing bridge inspection reports
Bridge inspection reports can legally remain secret, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office has decided.
The American-Statesman last month had requested access to inspection files for six Central Texas bridges that had been declared “structurally deficient.” The Texas Department of Transportation, in reply late last month, had declined to release the information, citing a federal law that allows them to withhold such information from discovery in court cases. The idea is that having that information remain out of public hands, and out of the courtroom, will promote candid evaluations by inspectors of the condition of public facilities.
The Transportation Department, having said no, as a matter of law kicked our request up to Abbott’s office for review. In a letter dated Oct. 12 that arrived today at the Statesman, Abbott’s office agreed that that federal law allows the inspections to remain confidential.
Those six bridges were on a list of structurally deficient bridges released by the agency in August after the collapse of the Interstate 35 bridge in Minnesota. The list had a “sufficiency rating” for each bridge, a number based on those raw inspections, and in some cases the ratings on a 1 to 100 scale were below 35. One, a bridge on RM 1431, was just over 5. We wanted to look at the inspection data to see how long the bridges had been in poor condition, and what exactly might be wrong with them.
No can do, though. The state Transportation Department, in the wake of the Minnesota tragedy, said that Texas bridges are safe, that the term “structurally deficient” is perhaps overly alarming (some folks around the country now want to change it to something less ominous) and that they repair or close bridges that we shouldn’t be using.
We’ll just have to trust them.
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October 12, 2007
A bridge information request too far
Congratulations, you have successfully navigated to ShortCuts without a map. There will be a toll of $1.35, however.
Nah.
There will be an expectation, however, namely that you feel free to talk back. Rebuttals, praise, questions, road reports, story suggestions. Hit me with them all. As always, given that this blog is American-Statesman real estate and we have legal and ethical responsibilities, ShortCuts reserves the right to edit or excise what you send. The underlying bias, however, will be toward publication.
Just keep it clean, keep it civil, keep it within the facts to the greatest degree possible. Nobody benefits from misinformation or mudslinging.
While I got you …
(Warning: this first ShortCut will be kind of long.)
In the wake of the Aug. 1 Minnesota bridge collapse, the Texas Department of Transportation’s first impulse was to say it could not release lists of which bridges might be structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, two designations that are divined from raw inspection reports of any bridges more than 20 feet long. However, the American-Statesman on Day One nonetheless was able to tell you about some of the deficient bridges in Central Texas. On Aug. 17, after official prodding from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, our friends at TxDOT released a complete list of Texas’ 2,024 structurally deficient bridges, including their “sufficiency rating.”
That’s another mathematical blending of the raw data, this one on a 1 to 100 scale, with 100 being the best and 1 being “uh-oh.”
On Sept. 20, the American-Statesman asked the Transportation Department if we could look at inspection files on a sampling of those structurally deficient bridges, including one on FM 1431 west of Lohmans Road that has a sufficiency rating of, gulp, 5.3. We should note that repairs are underway on that bridge, according to the list released Aug. 17.
The answer from the Transportation Department came back Sept. 25: no. The four-page letter rejecting our information request and referring it to the Texas attorney general’s office for review depended legally on a provision of federal law exempting from disclosure information that wouldn’t be “subject to discovery or admitted into evidence in a Federal or state court proceeding.” The purpose of this law, the letter says, is to “facilitate candor in administrative evaluations of highway safety hazards.”
Journalistic candor is apparently not seen as quite so valuable in this law. It’s worth noting that, at least based on the letter from the transportation department, the agency asserts that the law allows it to withhold the bridge inspections. But from what we can tell, the letter doesn’t argue that the law REQUIRES the agency to withhold the inspections.
We’ll see what the attorney general says.
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