Link to article here.
Private toll lanes, free highways merge first in Tarrant project
Friday, January 30, 2009
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Private toll roads are coming to North Texas, and coming fast.
In the first of three deals to be announced over the next two months, the Texas Transportation Commission voted 5-0 Thursday to hire a Spanish toll-road company to rebuild Tarrant County's busiest traffic corridor, adding two new toll lanes in each direction.
The 13-mile project will replace the two free lanes in each direction on Interstate 820 and on State Highway 183 in northeast Tarrant County. Four new toll lanes will run parallel, and drivers used to tolls of about 14 cents a mile will initially pay rates as high as 75 cents a mile.
Construction should begin late next year and be complete by 2015, said a beaming roster of officials from Tarrant County and the Texas Department of Transportation. Final details of the contract will be negotiated over the next 60 days, and lining up lenders for the project could take until the end of this year.
"This is a historic day for mobility in North Texas, and a historic day for the citizens," said TxDOT Commissioner Bill Meadows, a former Fort Worth City Council member. Nearly a dozen mayors, council members and others from the county traveled to Austin to hear the announcement Thursday morning.
For Dallas drivers, Thursday's announcement is a sign of things to come.
Next month, the TxDOT leaders are expected to pick a firm to rebuild the LBJ Freeway. Like the North Tarrant Express, the LBJ project will add no new free lanes, but will add tolled lanes. The six new toll lanes will be half-buried underneath the existing LBJ lanes in what some have called the most ambitious road-engineering project in America, now that Boston's Big Dig is complete.
The LBJ project is expected to begin construction next year and take five years – a significant challenge for the 280,000 drivers who currently use the lanes each day and the hundreds of businesses located along its frontage roads.
TxDOT officials said Wednesday that mitigation efforts with local business along LBJ have been under way for more than a year, though most lanes of traffic will remain open during peak hours throughout the construction period. Phil Russell, assistant executive director at TxDOT, said any contract awarded will include steep fines should the construction crews be forced to close main lanes.
Another project under bid by private toll companies is the DFW Connector in Grapevine, which will involve rebuilding and expanding State Highway 114 and State Highway 121, including interchanges across seven different highways. The 14-mile project will add free lanes and tolled lanes owned by the state along Highway 114.
North Texas drivers are increasingly familiar with toll roads, but they've never driven on lanes like these.
The new concepts that will be at the center of all three of these projects are what are called "managed lanes." Toll rates for these lanes will change 24 hours a day, depending on how much demand for them there is. That demand will be measured by the amount of traffic on the free lanes.
For drivers, that means the more backed-up the traffic on free lanes, the more it will cost to get a quick ride into town on the tolled lanes. Buses will use the tolled lanes free, and motorcyclists and carpoolers will get a discount.
The idea is that by raising the tolls on the toll lanes when traffic is bad, it will keep the traffic down to a manageable level, which in this case is defined as traffic moving at 50 miles per hour or more.
It's a rarely used concept, though drivers in Orange County pay a $1 a mile during rush hour into Los Angeles, and appear happy to do so.
For now, Cintra estimates that the peak-hour rates on the North Tarrant Express will be about $6.50 each way for the 13-mile trip, or about 50 cents per mile. It says tolls during nonpeak periods could be as low as nine cents a mile. By comparison, rates on NTTA roads, which do not change according to traffic levels, are about 14 cents a mile.
The Regional Transportation Council has adopted a policy that sets the maximum rate for the managed-lane tolls at 75 cents per hour for now, but even that cap is a soft cap. If the toll lanes prove so popular that they are getting overcrowded even at 75 cents a mile, the rates can be increased.
Jose Lopez, Cintra's president of American operations, said the managed-lane idea is a new one for his company, and he applauded North Texas leaders for adopting what he called a "modern concept."
It's catching on, however. Toll roads in Virginia headed into Washington, D.C., will use managed-lane toll policies, and so will Houston's rebuilt Katy Freeway, which opened late last year and is expected to begin using fluctuating rates within a few months.
The smiles all around the briefing room in Austin Thursday were in marked contrast with the consternation associated with Cintra's first attempt to build a toll road in North Texas.
Two years ago, the commission awarded the company the rights to Highway 121, only to see an enraged Legislature step in and pave the way for NTTA to successfully bid on the project. This time, however, NTTA has its hands full and did not seek to compete for the road. It will, however, be paid a fee to collect the tolls for Cintra.
"We're very pleased to see the level of support from local officials," Lopez said Thursday.
The team Cintra pulled together to bid on the project includes nearly a dozen firms, including two others who have agreed to put money in as equity investors. One of those is the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund, though neither Lopez nor fund officials would say how much money they are investing.
______________________________________________________
Link to article here.
Monday, Feb 9, 2009
Posted on Fri, Jan. 30, 2009
I-35W advocates express backing, hope for North Tarrant Express
By GORDON DICKSON
AUSTIN — Beginning in 2015, drivers could pay as much as $6.50 each way to use four toll lanes that a private developer proposes to open on 13 miles of Loop 820 and Airport Freeway in Northeast Tarrant County.Yet on adjacent Interstate 35W, which many Fort Worth officials would argue is just as gridlocked and deserving of new lanes, there would likely be no improvements until 2018 or later, according to the $2 billion private contract with Spanish firm Cintra that the Texas Transportation Commission approved Thursday.
It’s a problem that advocates of highway improvements in Tarrant County can’t escape.
Faced with the alternative — no new construction at all in the county — proponents of I -35W expansion stood in unison Thursday to support the so-called North Tarrant Express project. Their argument, in part, is that the state’s unprecedented swim into the waters of highway privatization, using a combination of public and private dollars, will be good for the entire western subregion of Dallas-Fort Worth.
"We’re pushing forward with this, and we support North Tarrant Express," Fort Worth Councilman Jungus Jordan said, as he thanked state officials for their time invested in the project. "And now, we want to know what you’re going to do with I-35W."
Their support is something of a leap of faith that Cintra will not only build the variably priced toll lanes within six years, but will also follow through with plans to rebuild I-35W and add lanes during the second decade of the 20-year plan.
Huge project
Overall, the North Tarrant Express project is a $5 billion effort that will likely be built in phases through 2030. It involves rebuilding aging free lanes on Loop 820, Texas 121/183, widely known as Airport Freeway, and eventually I-35W.
The plan also calls for adding capacity by building toll lanes, mostly in the highway medians.
While free lanes will still be available, trends indicate that they will become far more congested as North Texas continues to grow.
Eventually, toll lanes would be built on I-35W, too.
In the end, Cintra’s promise to take over North Tarrant Express and immediately build the estimated $2 billion first phase was too good to turn down, supporters said.
"We’re getting a $2 billion project for a $600 million investment," Transportation Commission Chairwoman Deirdre Delisi said.
Cintra’s proposal was made public shortly after commissioners unanimously took action Thursday, ending a two-year competition that originally involved four bidders. During that time, North Texas officials who wanted a glimpse of the bids had to sign confidentiality agreements.
A competing plan by another Spanish company, OHL Infrastructure, was disqualified because a required security — a type of bond or deposit — wasn’t properly posted, officials said.
But in any case, Transportation Department officials said, Cintra would have beaten OHL head to head. Cintra’s proposal included construction of 169 lane miles, compared with OHL’s offer to build 64 lane miles.
Details of the deal
In addition to $570 million in gas-tax revenue from the Transportation Department, Cintra proposes to contribute $300 million in equity and $1.1 billion in debt, including federal and bank loans and private activity bonds.
Cintra’s offer was conditionally approved Thursday, pending approval from the Federal Highway Administration and the attorney general’s office. A review is expected to take about 60 days.
The tolls will vary, from $1.20 to $6.50 each way, Cintra U.S. President Jose Lopez said. The tolls will rise and fall through the day, with the goal of keeping toll-lane traffic moving at a minimum 50 mph.
Cintra’s proposal charges less than the 75 cents a mile allowed under a managed-lanes plan approved two years ago by the Regional Transportation Council, the Metroplex’s official planning body, Lopez said.
Cintra would build the first phase of North Tarrant Express and publish a master plan for the rest of the 20-year project. New free lanes would be built at state expense when certain congestion levels are reached, no later than 2030, according to the agreement.
I-35W complications
Although anyone who drives on I-35W knows it’s a no-brainer candidate for a makeover, construction is likely still years away, said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments.
Eventually, Morris said, planners hope that the I-35W main lanes can be rebuilt from downtown Fort Worth to Alliance Airport. However, a federally required environmental study isn’t complete, he said.
Even so, members of the Regional Transportation Council will begin searching for public funds to divert to the I-35W project, especially now that private dollars are being injected into the North Tarrant Express project.
Also, the North Texas Tollway Authority is working on a plan to build parts of Southwest Parkway, a proposed toll road in southwest Fort Worth, entirely with debt issued by the Plano-based North Texas Tollway Authority. Such a move, if it is deemed feasible, would free up tens of millions of gas-tax dollars for I-35W.
And, the North Tarrant Express project will have some benefit to I-35W traffic, Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley noted. Direct connections will be built from I-35W to the North Tarrant Express toll lanes, which will likely free up space on I-35W’s main lanes.
By including I-35W in the North Tarrant Express master plan, Whitley said, there’s a better chance that it will become more of a regional priority as planners realize the potential for toll revenue from I-35W, Whitley said.