Senate questions value of public-private toll roads

Link to article here.

Senate subcommittee questions value of public-private partnerships
Landline Magazine
July 31, 2008

Though public-private partnerships have been discussed at both the state and federal level for quite some time, there are still some areas of the controversial plans that have yet to be fully explored.

The Senate Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources and Infrastructure examined some of those areas, including taxes and financing, at a hearing Thursday, July 24.

Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, started off the hearing by saying he has mixed feelings about public-private partnerships.

Bingaman said that, although he’s not necessarily opposed to the idea of private investment in U.S. highways, he’s also not convinced that it is the silver bullet that many of its proponents make it out to be.

 
“There’s no denying the seriousness of our surface transportation funding challenges, but the question is whether our federal response should be to encourage states to essentially sell off vital components of the Interstate Highway System,” Bingaman said.

“I am personally open to the role of the private sector, but I have real concerns about this rush into public-private partnerships and its adequacy to replace or supplement a strong and vital federal infrastructure program. Before we move away from our long-term state and federal highway partnership, we must better understand the consequences of doing so.”

Bingaman went on to say that he was concerned about the practice of selling longer and longer leases in order to take advantage of subsidies in the tax codes.

JayEtta Hecker, director of physical infrastructure issues for the Government Accountability Office, testified that, in addition to Bingaman’s concerns, there are other pitfalls of public-private partnerships to be on the lookout for. Not the least of which is the very real possibility of increased tolls for those who use the roads.

“There are, however, potential cost tradeoffs. It is a concern that there are views that this is somehow free money,” Hecker said. “The reality is that these techniques are going to result in higher tolls to the users because of the way they’ve been managed relative to a publicly owned toll road.”

Hecker went on to say that the way these deals are typically done in the U.S. is vastly different from the way they are done overseas – something the GAO would like to see change.

“In the deals that we looked at domestically, where this process is just beginning, a lot of the focus is on the contract terms. ... it was just kind of a big numbers game and getting the terms right,” Hecker said.

“This contrasts very significantly with the experiences in the rest of the world. They have much more rigorous up-front analyses, varying multiple-staged reviews of public interest, multiple dimensions, they have public-sector comparisons – how it compares to what the public sector could do – and those are very distinct, very well developed and present an opportunity for a lesson learned in the U.S., and that was one of our main recommendations.”

Bingaman came back to Hecker’s criticism of the bidding process later in the hearing when he mentioned testimony from another witness at the hearing – David Enright of the New Jersey-based financial consulting firm Northwest Financial.

Enright testified that if state and local officials in the U.S. had done the kind of analysis that officials in Europe do, there probably wouldn’t have been approval for as many road and bridge lease deals in this country.

“Do you have any views on that?” Bingaman asked Hecker.

Hecker said she didn’t think such reviews would have necessarily meant that U.S. officials wouldn’t have gone along with the transactions, but she did qualify her statement.

“I think that the public management of much infrastructure has not been very efficient and there are opportunities to gain benefits and efficiencies,” Hecker testified.

“I don’t think the full costs were very transparent. I don’t think they were detailed. I don’t think potential impact of transfers from the interstate commerce that would fund this, and transferring that to lower stake roads, was really evaluated.”

The GAO’s Hecker also said that she thought that there were a host of issues that weren’t fully evaluated. She said she would “have to agree that the cost of borrowing for these was more expensive ...”

“It’s more expensive for the private sector to borrow or to use equity than it is for the public sector to use municipal debt,” Hecker testified. “But it’s whether you get enough benefits in exchange. There are no deals in Europe or anywhere where they monetize the assets the same way we’ve seen here. We never saw that anywhere.”

Bingaman asked her to explain that statement further.

She explained that the focus of both the mayor and the governor in many of the other deals now is to say to the advisors, “Get me a deal that maximizes the cash that I can take out of this asset.” Hecker added that the bid process used in the U.S. has fallen short.

“They (state and local officials in the U.S.) take pride that their whole bidding was a piece of paper with a single number on it – their whole focus. In Australia, in Europe and other places, the bid (process) is competition for the lowest tolls,” she testified.

Bingaman asked Hecker to confirm that what she was saying was that the competition in other countries is about who can keep the tolls the lowest, rather than who can give the government the biggest up-front payment.

“Right,” Hecker testified.

Later on, Bingaman asked the New Jersey financial consultant, Enright, a question that cut right to the heart of the debate over public-private partnerships. Specifically, Bingaman wanted to know which would ultimately cost the public more money – a publicly run highway or a privately run highway?

“Mr. Enright, maybe I’m reading too much into your testimony, but my impression is that your conclusion that the public sector can finance road infrastructure more cheaply than the private sector can and therefore these so-called public-private partnerships end up costing people more in the long run than if the government just went ahead and maintained the roads,” Bingaman said.

“You’re correct,” Enright said. “The public sector is in a position to deliver a much lower cost of capital and therefore keep the user charges as low as possible.

“The private sector (has the incentive) to make a profit, that’s their job. We did separate analyses for both Chicago and Indiana – very extensive – and concluded in both cases that the public sector could have done just as well and held on to the asset and charged lower tolls and made the same amount of money. The problem in infrastructure in (this) country is not capital, the problem is the willingness to charge people for the infrastructure that they want to use.”

In the end, Bingaman promised to schedule more hearings to further examine who really benefits from public-private partnerships.

– By Terry Scruton, staff writer

Toll road traffic down due to high gas prices


Link to article here. Once again, the price of gas is causing driving to go down, including on toll roads. There isn't enough money in the family budget to pay for tolls on top of high gas prices. We've been sounding these warning bells for years, when will politicians and the pro-tollers listen? They're foolishly putting generations into risky leveraged debt in order to build what they believe will be cash cow toll roads only to have them all fail due to high gas prices. We don't need another mortgage crisis for the taxpayers to bail out in keeping with the "too big to fail" mantra of government.It's time to rethink this toll proliferation.

Toll roads feeling the fuel-price pinch
Landline Magazine
August 1, 2008
Traffic is decreasing on some toll roads around the nation and officials say it’s because of high fuel prices.

It’s happening in Texas, where dozens of toll roads and tolled metro loops are being designed and built to handle a steep increase in population and traffic.

The North Texas Tollway Authority, which operates the 30-mile President George Bush Turnpike in the North Dallas area, saw traffic decrease by 1.4 percent in May and 2.3 percent in June compared to those same months in 2007.

“Historically, we have seen slight decreases in traffic when fuel prices spike and that traffic adjusts as prices decline,” NTTA spokeswoman Sherita Coffelt told Land Line.

Traffic on the Dallas North Tollway has increased, but by just 0.1 percent during the same timeframe. That’s much lower than the 3 percent growth seen from January to June of this year.

“Fuel prices may be one factor in the change,” Coffelt said.

It’s also happening in Maine where officials with the Maine Turnpike Authority publish a monthly vehicle count. The latest count shows the number of Maine Turnpike users decreased from 5.66 million to 5.34 million – 5.7 percent – in June 2008 compared to June 2007 traffic. Click here to view the chart.

“We believe it’s probably the increase in the cost of fuel,” spokesman Bruce Pelletier told Land Line. “Commercial vehicle traffic is down also, and that’s an indication that the economy is weakening or slower as well.”

Pelletier said traffic on weekdays remains steady, but weekend traffic that includes tourists is down.

He said overall traffic counts on the turnpike are down 1.8 percent year-to-date for 2008.

– By David Tanner, staff writer
 

Electronic tolling nightmares: $200 in fines!

Link to article here. We've heard from many North Texas motorists who have been fined when they didn't even take the toll road (a relative or friend used their cars). For those who did take the road, there is no way to pay without an electronic toll tag, so those just passing through or making spontaneous trips and who have to wait to be billed get taken to collections for the crime of not having their current address on file with TxDOT. Can you say bureaucratic nightmare and guilty until proven innocent? This is also government coercion to buy into their TxTag system, or else!

Motorists fuming over past-due toll road bills
By GORDON DICKSON
Star Telegram
July 31, 2008


 Woman gets toll road bill for $101.90 Related story
HURST — More North Texans are coming forward with complaints that a collection agency hired by the Texas Department of Transportation is unfairly demanding large past-due payments for driving on the Texas 121 toll road in Denton and Collin counties.

"This is highway robbery," said Brian Wilson of Hurst, who two weeks ago received a bill for $76.60 for a $1.60 toll he incurred on a boating trip to Lake Texoma in June 2007. "This is bureaucracy at its worst. I’ll never use that road again."

Texas 121 is the region’s first all-electronic toll road. Toll payments can be made either by an automatic account such as a TollTag or by standard mail. For those paying by mail, the common practice is to wait until the Transportation Department’s Texas Tollways office sends a bill and then send a payment.

But that system doesn’t work when the bill gets mailed to the wrong address.

On Monday, the Star-Telegram published a story about Norma Bartholomew of Fort Worth, who had been contacted by a collection agency for a past-due toll that the Transportation Department had sent to an address where she hasn’t lived since 2004.

She had traveled on the road in February 2007, but never received the original bill for $1.90 in tolls, and a few weeks ago was shocked to learn that the state now wanted $109.90, including $100 in fees.

A Transportation Department official said it was a rare incident. The woman’s account was eventually cleared after she lodged complaints with the Texas Tollways office and state elected leaders.

But since then, four other readers have contacted the Star-Telegram to complain that the Transportation Department sent bills to their old addresses and — in all but one case — turned them over to a collection agency, too.

In each case, the readers felt the Transportation Department ought to know their correct address. All said they had submitted address changes to the department after moving, and are currently receiving auto registration renewal notices in the mail.

Wilson’s case

Wilson and his wife, Sharilyn, traveled on Texas 121 in June 2007, using their pickup to tow the family boat to Lake Texoma.

A few weeks after the vacation, they received — and promptly paid — a bill for $3.40 in tolls, charged to the account of their boat trailer.

But at the time they didn’t realize that the camera system on the road had captured not only an image of the license number on their trailer, but also on their pickup. While the bill for the boat trailer toll was sent to their current address, the toll for the pickup — another $1.60 — was sent to Brian Wilson’s old address. Wilson said he never saw the original pickup bill.

Two weeks ago, Wilson opened his mail and found a collection letter demanding $76.60 for that unpaid toll.

Wilson called the Texas Tollways customer service line, but the call taker was unsympathetic, he said.

The call taker did, however, offer to cut the bill almost in half to $39, if Wilson would agree to open a TxTag account so that his tolls could be collected automatically.

Wilson reluctantly agreed, even though opening the TxTag account cost him an additional $20, so he paid the $59 to avoid letting the whole affair smudge his credit rating.

But now he wants his money back. "I felt like my arm was put behind my back and twisted," he said during an interview at his home, where the unused TxTag remains in its envelope on his kitchen counter.

Others

In addition to Wilson, the Star-Telegram also spoke to or exchanged e-mails with:

Richard LaChance of Fort Worth, who received a collection notice for nearly $700. He agreed to open a TxTag account in exchange for cutting the late fees in half. But he later called again to complain about the original toll bills, which were mailed to an address he hadn’t used in nearly five years, and persuaded Texas Tollways to rescind the charges. "The whole time I was wondering how many other people were treated this way," he wrote.

Steven Maas of Fort Worth, who was billed for $125 in fees. Maas has since signed up for a TollTag, another form of automatic toll collection operated by the North Texas Tollway Authority, to prevent the problem in future transactions. But Texas Tollways considers the TollTag a competitor to its TxTag and won’t waive his fees.

When Maas complained to Texas Tollways, a call taker confirmed that his original toll bills had been returned to the Austin office, stamped "Return to sender." But apparently no one investigated whether his address had changed.

"Yet they still invoked . . . the fees. That’s just ludicrous and completely preying on people."

Joseph Rivera, a former Fort Worth resident now living in Plano, who was told he owes $12 for a 90-cent toll accrued on Texas 121 on Christmas Day 2007. The bill was originally sent to his old Fort Worth address, where he hasn’t lived in nearly three years. "When I talked to them they were very standoffish," he said.

Don’t let it linger

Transportation Department officials say they’ll work with people on a case-by-case basis, and remove fees deemed improper. But spokesman Christopher Lippincott urged motorists who have used the Texas 121 toll road to avoid problems now by updating their vehicle registration information, rather than waiting for a collection agency to find them.

"There is no substitute for Texas drivers ensuring that their registration information is correct and up-to-date," he said.

What you can do

Since April 4, tolls collected electronically on Texas 121 in Denton and Collin counties are billed through the North Texas Tollway Authority, not the Transportation Department. However, there is still the potential for bills being sent to an old address, because the tollway authority gets its vehicle registration data from the Transportation Department.

Steps to take to avoid getting slapped with late fees:

Visit your county tax office and make sure your vehicle registration information is current. Check all three address fields in the database: the vehicle owner’s address, the renewal recipient address and the vehicle location address.

Call the Transportation Department’s vehicle titles and registration division regional office. In the Fort Worth area, call 817-649-5938.

If you suspect you owe a toll but haven’t received a bill, call the Texas Tollways customer service line toll-free at 888-468-9824 and ask for your vehicle information.

If you believe you’ve been erroneously charged late fees and the call-taker won’t budge, ask to speak with a supervisor. If that doesn’t work, consider complaining to a state senator or representative.

Car owners are responsible for tolls, even if the toll is accrued by someone else. However, if you get a bill for tolls on a car that was sold or stolen, you may download a toll violation defense form at www.gotxtag.com/violation.

Consider signing up for a TollTag, a windshield-mounted transponder that makes it possible to pay tolls automatically. TollTag accounts are usually backed by a credit card. The North Texas Tollway Authority administers the accounts and may be reached at www.ntta.org or toll-free at 877-991-0033.

The Transportation Department offers a TxTag, which is similar to a TollTag. For information visit www.txdot.gov or call toll-free 888-468-9824. TollTags and TxTags work on tolls roads in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and Houston.

FHWA pushes for more public-private toll roads

Link to article here. Try to follow this logic...driving is down due to high gas prices, therefore road maintenance costs will also drop, and so will congestion & gridlock, yet the FHWA and the Bush Administration call for more risky leveraged debt to prop up an unsustainable toll road scheme that requires motorists to ante up a minimum of 20 times more money than gas taxes? What's broken is our government run by politicians and bureaucrats who continue to indebt generations for today's private profiteering. Yet again, we see a government agency lobbying on the taxpayers' dime.

FHWA director: U.S. transportation system broken
Tom Greenwood / The Detroit News
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
SOUTHFIELD -- James Ray, Acting Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, called on Congress to engage in serious dialogue on maintaining and improving the interstate highway system.

"Without a doubt, our federal approach to transportation is broken," said Ray, who spoke at a press conference at the Eaton Corp. Tuesday morning.

"And no amount of tweaking, adjusting or adding new layers on top will make things better."

Ray said it was paramount that new forms of revenue be considered to supplement the current gas tax, which he described as "unpredictable and unsustainable."

According to the agency, gas tax revenues have declined as American motorists have dramatically cut back on driving due to a sagging economy coupled with record high gasoline prices and increased vehicle fuel efficiency. Ray noted that increased production of hybrid vehicles was a double edged sword in that they diminished the country's reliance on oil, but at the same time reduced tax revenue at the gas pump.

Ray said the Bush administration was in favor of a "more progressive direct user fee" similar to a system that is currently being tested in Oregon. Under that pilot program, cars were equipped with on board mileage counting equipment that was read by pumps equipped with mileage reader devices.

When refueling, the mile counters communicated with the mileage readers at the pumps, which then automatically deducted the standard gas tax and substituted a user fee, instead.

Ray said the Bush administration was offering a number of ways to overhaul the U.S. transportation system, including:

• Streamlining the federal review process for new transportation projects, which takes 13 years to design and build new highway and transit projects.

• Consider more direct pricing options like tolls based on miles driven instead of a flat gas tax paid at the pump.

• Develop a Metropolitan Innovation Fund that would reward cities for creative solutions to transportation problems.

• Cut red tape by reducing over 100 federal transportation programs down to eight comprehensive programs that would focus on transportation problems and solutions.

• Allow states and cities to have a greater say in addressing their most needed transit and highway priorities.

• Encourage greater participation by private companies in public roadways by allowing them to lease federal highways and maintain them through tolls.

• Offer economic incentives to motorists not to drive during peak travel periods.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, drivers traveled nearly 10 billion fewer miles in May 2008 than at the same time period in 2007. Additionally, for the first five months of 2008, U.S. motorists drove nearly 30 billion fewer miles than in 2007, which will result in a nearly $4 billion shortfall in gas revenues for 2009.

Ray said the Bush administration was not in favor of raising the federal gas tax, which currently stands at 18.4 cents per gallon.

"We're not looking at raising the federal gas tax," Ray said.

"The fact is that it's dying ... and relying on a gas tax will not work. We need something which is more agile and responsive than the current gas tax."

Driving down again, even during peak summer season

Link to article here. Driving continues to go down as gas prices stay high. What other evidence do bond investors need to realize these toll roads are a BAD investment and will likely default given the dramatic drop in driving as people tighten their belts? There just won't be enough money to ante up for a toll, too.

Summer driving season started with a flat tire
By Pat Driscoll
Express-News
July 28, 2008
The "slip" in how much Americans are driving, or the "blip" as another expert called it last week, has extended into another record monthly drop as motorists continued adjusting to high gasoline prices.

miles.driven.0708.jpg
"Slip" and "blip" in U.S driving, as shown in latest federal Traffic Volume Trends report.
Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May compared to last year, according to the latest data from the Federal Highway Administration.

The 3.7 percent "slip" is the largest for any May, which kicks off the summer travel season, officials said. And it's the third largest drop for any month in 66 years of gathering such data.

The "blip" has now stretched to seven months, and includes the three largest monthly declines ever seen. March tops the drops with 4.3 percent, followed by December at 3.9 percent.

Driving on Texas roads dropped four months in a row from a year ago, including 2.3 percent in May and a revised 3.8 percent in March.

High gas prices = less time in traffic = toll roads not viable

Link to article here.

High gas prices easing rush-hour traffic
By Pat Driscoll
San Antonio Express-News
July 29, 2008
Americans cutting back on driving to soften the blow of high gas prices has loosened gridlock in San Antonio, Houston and some other major U.S. cities.

congestion.0708.jpg
(Urban Congestion Report)
Crunch-time on San Antonio roads tracked by TransGuide shrank by more than an hour a day from last year.
Rush-hour travel times dropped 2.6 percent from March to May compared to a year ago in 23 cities with traffic monitoring systems such as TransGuide, according to a recent Federal Highway Administration report.

The California cities of Riverside-San Bernardino and Sacramento led the way with drops of 7.6 percent and 6.6 percent respectively. Just two cities had increases.

San Antonio motorists spent 4.7 percent less time stuck in traffic, saving a little more than a minute a day, despite twice as many construction zones than a year ago. Houston drivers shaved 1 percent off commute times.

Traffic experts, including those who size up the profits and risks of toll roads, consider work commutes to be a mainstay of urban traffic. People will cut out some vacations, entertainment and even errands to save on gas but will make sure they get to work to keep the paychecks coming.

Nevertheless, as these numbers indicate, commuters are now finding other ways to get to work, such as switching to transit or sharing rides with other motorists.

Rush-hour traffic in the two dozen cities looked at was down 1.4 percent, said Texas Transportation Institute researcher Shawn Turner, who compiles the report for the Federal Highway Administration. Weekday traffic around the clock dipped up to 3 percent while weekend travel dropped up to 5 percent.

All travel on U.S. roads declined 2.4 percent from January through May, a federal report released yesterday says.

In a seeming contradiction, 6.2 percent more cars squeezed onto San Antonio's highways during peak hours while travel times shortened. One reason could be that as jamming eases the roads can handle more traffic, Turner said. Of six hours a day that's tracked, just under two hours were congested, down from just over three last year.

Or the figures could be off, Turner said.

"There's a number of reasons that could be," he said.

• URBAN CONGESTION REPORT

Yesterday's report on all U.S. travel:

• Summer driving season started with a flat tire

Other related reports:

• High gas prices no problem, toll-road officials say
• Rising fuel prices too much for transit
• High gas prices met by record drop in travel
• Drop in driving, and nagging questions
• Record oil prices just a start

Legislature investigates TxDOT's propaganda campaign


Link to article here. TURF testified before the House State Affairs Committee regarding TxDOT's illegal propaganda and lobbying campaign, Keep Texas Moving. The legislators were shocked at how far over the line TxDOT has crossed, and will likely seek changes in the law that TxDOT claims allows them to advertise toll roads and restrain any attempts by a state agency to advocate or lobby. The legislators asked specifically for what legal ramifications there would be both criminally and civilly for TxDOT's violations. Though TURF's case against TxDOT was dismissed in trial court before the case was ever heard (the court upheld TxDOT's plea of sovereign immunity) and before our evidence was presented, it's now pending appeal.

Legislators want state to tell, not sell
By Peggy Fikac
San Antonio Express-News
July 19, 2008

AUSTIN — Government spending on advertising is being put under a microscope by state lawmakers who say they want to ensure public funds are used to inform — not unduly influence — Texans.

The effort was sparked by concerns over a divisive toll road campaign by the Texas Department of Transportation, which was in a familiar spotlight at Friday’s House State Affairs Committee hearing on the issue.

“We get all of the advantages of the toll roads, and yet there are a lot of people that see a lot of disadvantages,” said Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Canton, State Affairs member. “It seems like there was almost an effort to go beyond what the legislative intent was. ..... We have an agency here that kind of has their agenda that is different from ..... legislative intent. I guess that’s what our concerns are.”


Coby Chase, director of TxDOT’s government and public affairs division, responded, “We have most certainly, certainly heard that.” He said that the agency is “reassessing everything.”

Some $4.5 million has been spent on the Keep Texas Moving campaign, but there are no additional big advertising pushes in the works under its banner, according to TxDOT. The campaign originally was proposed at $7 million to $9 million. Chase called it a response to concerns that people didn’t understand toll roads.

The ad campaign had a ripple effect by prompting Rep. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, State Affairs vice chairman, to call for the committee to study advertising practices across state government.

State agencies’ public awareness campaigns often give useful information, but “some state agencies may have overstepped their bounds by actually advertising their programs in an effort to lobby the public to support their agenda or utilize a particular service,” Paxton said.

The committee gave an initial look Friday to everything from health officials touting the benefits of breast feeding to promotion of state agricultural products to the Texas Lottery Commission’s advertising.

It’s unclear just how much state agencies spend on promotions, since state records don’t precisely track them.

But an examination of state records last year by the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle found the tally for advertising, publications and promotional items could easily reach $100 million or more in state and federal funds just for fiscal year 2008.

The tourism section of Perry’s office, for example, has a $40 million advertising budget; the Lottery Commission spends $31 million; TxDOT budgeted $18.4 million for advertising, aside from the Keep Texas Moving program; and the secretary of state’s office had an estimated $4 million budget for such efforts.

Some efforts draw more attention than others, such as those of the Lottery Commission. Flynn said many people are offended at ads they see as urging people to gamble for children’s futures, since lottery money flows to public education.

Anthony Sadberry, Lottery Commission executive director, said the agency is sensitive to such concerns. He said it has a mandate to promote the lottery but to not unduly influence people to play. Asked how the agency achieves that, Sadberry said dryly, “Well, it’s a challenge,” prompting laughter.

It was TxDOT, however, that drew much of the attention, a spot to which the agency is accustomed. Last week, it faced criticism from the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, which looks at whether agencies are in need of major changes or should be continued. Sunset staff has recommended major changes.

Its Keep Texas Moving campaign on toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor transportation network struck a particular nerve with lawmakers, who’ve heard an outcry over the corridor’s possible route from landowners and have sought to rein in state partnerships with private companies on toll roads. Both ideas have been pushed by Gov. Rick Perry as an answer to traffic congestion and tax revenues that are short of meeting road needs.

Chase said that before launching the Keep Texas Moving campaign, “We were rightly subject to criticism — maybe we overreacted and overdid it ..... that nobody understood any dynamic of the toll road program.” He said that gap in information ranged from how land was acquired to the mechanics of entrances and exits: “We decided to answer all of those on the Keep Texas moving Web site and then also drive people to the public involvement process.”

But critics such as Terri Hall of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom said the agency crossed the line. TURF filed a lawsuit, recently dismissed in state court, contending the campaign violated a prohibition on state officers or employees using their authority for political purposes. TURF plans to appeal the dismissal.

State Dept gives U.S. oil to Russia

Link to article here. Record high gas prices hurting your family? Don't worry, the U.S. government isn't concerned. In fact, it's giving away U.S. oil in order squeeze U.S. consumers even more. What are we paying these people for? To protect the public interest and solve our energy crisis? No, to reduce the standard of living in this country to Third World status courtesy of the sell-outs in the U.S. government. Just like the Chinese are drilling for oil off the Florida coast, now the Russians will have access to our oil, too. But God forbid Americans get access to it. President "Executive Order" Bush, just continues to push controversial policies that he couldn't get through Congress through the Un-Constitutional use of Executive Orders.

Oil? Ah, let Russia have it
State Department gives away 125,000 square miles of Alaskan ocean floor
July 29, 2008
© 2008 WorldNetDaily


Even if Congress follows President Bush's lead in opening off-shore oil exploration, there exist over 125,000 square miles of sea bottom that won't be explored, because the State Department – amid controversy and against the will of Alaskans – has surrendered the land to Russia.

Eight islands and their surrounding sea floors were ceded to the former Soviet Union as part of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Maritime Boundary Treaty in 1991, a treaty signed by the U.S. Senate and President George Bush but never ratified by the Soviets. Nonetheless, an executive agreement enforcing the terms of the treaty until ratification has been in place through three presidencies, meaning the State Department officially recognizes the islands as Russian territory.

Alaskan legislators, who were given no input or authority on the island giveaway, have long protested the treaty, declaring it null and void without Russian ratification.

And since last week's U.S. Geological Survey estimating that 90 billion barrels of oil lie undiscovered and technically recoverable above the Arctic Circle, those 125,000 square miles of seabed have taken on newly appreciated value. Five of the islands lie north of the Arctic Circle, and the other three sit at the western end of Alaska's Aleutian island chain.

Carl Olson, a retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and chairman of State Department Watch, a nonpartisan foreign policy watchdog group, explained to WND the significance of the State Department's stance: "The area off the coast of an island that a nation may use is called the exclusive economic zone. The group in charge of defining that is the State Department. So (the president and Congress) can say the off-shore areas are opened up, but still not recognize these quarter of a million square miles available for American oil exploration."

Alaska state Rep. John B. Coghill told WND earlier, "The issues involve not only state sovereignty over vital territories but also significant national defense concerns and substantial economic losses over fisheries and petroleum."

The Alaskan legislature and a sympathetic California legislature have both passed resolutions asking Congress to allow Alaska at the bargaining table with Russia to resolve the islands' ownership. After almost 20 years of official protests, the U.S. State Department has yet to acknowledge Alaska's arguments.

"It's totally anti-public, anti-Congress, anti-state actions – but unfortunately the State Department thinks it has the power to adopt this boundary line with the Russians without anybody's consent outside themselves, " Olson told WND. "The State Department is basically chopping off a piece of Alaska and giving it to a foreign government without Alaska having any say in it."

The lands in dispute include the islands of Herald, Bennett, Henrietta, Jeanette, Copper Island, Sea Lion Rock, Sea Otter Rock, and Wrangel, which is the largest of the eight, roughly the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, including the Aleutian Islands, which presumably would include Copper Island, Sea Otter Rock and Sea Lion Rock. In 1881, U.S. Captain Calvin L. Hooper landed on Wrangel Island and claimed it for the U.S. Also in 1881, the U.S. Navy claimed the islands of Bennett, Jeannette, and Henrietta. The British held Herald Island, but they gave up that claim, permitting the U.S. to take it.

American citizens had occupied Wrangel Island from approximately 1881 to 1924, when Russian soldiers landed and forcibly removed the American occupants from its shores. The Russians then reportedly used the island as a concentration camp.



Many Alaskan legislators believe the islands were part of their state, even after the Wrangel invasion, though the U.S. State Department officially disagrees. Without a ratified treaty designating them as Russian, those same legislators and Carl Olson believe the islands still are American territory and can be reverted to the U.S. easily.

The only thing binding the islands to Russia is "in the form of an executive agreement," Olson told WND, "which means it can be changed with the stroke of a pen by the president, because it has no force of law."

"We have been steadily maintaining the pressure," said Olson. "It's just a matter of finding sympathetic people in Washington and the other states to go for it. There's plenty of organizations who have endorsed our efforts, so we keep up the drumbeat."

Coghill has also sought the support of other states, claiming that the federal State Department has overstepped its authority in giving away a state's land. "If they can do this to Alaska," he warns, "they can do this to any state."

U.S. State Department officials did not return WND telephone calls to discuss the matter, but a State Department webpage devoted to the island controversy denies that islands were ever claimed by the United States and explains that though the treaty between the U.S. and Russian Federation was never fully ratified, "In a separate exchange of diplomatic notes, the two countries agreed to apply the agreement provisionally."

The webpage concludes, "The U.S. has no intention of reopening discussion of the 1990 Maritime Boundary Treaty."

Bush calls for tolling existing FREEways, privatizing infrastructure

Link to article here. At least now it's abundantly clear to the average citizen that the Bush Administration is behind this privatization of our public infrastructure and toll road proliferation. He even called for tolls on existing freeways in a DOUBLE TAX nightmare for motorists. So much for lower taxes from so-called conservatives! They even advocate DOUBLE TAXING us for freeways already built and paid for!

Bush Calls for New Highway Tolls, More Private Funding of Roads
By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
Wall Street Journal
July 30, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration unveiled a plan to impose new tolls on freeways and encourage more private investment to finance road and mass-transit projects, a move aimed at stirring debate as lawmakers prepare for a major overhaul of transportation policy.

The White House says more tolls and public-private partnerships can solve perhaps the biggest problem confronting the nation's aging infrastructure: There are limited funds available to upgrade transportation networks and too many federal funds are doled out inefficiently through earmarks and pet projects that do little to improve mobility or reduce congestion.

The search for alternative funding sources is ramping up because Americans are driving less and shifting to more fuel-efficient vehicles. That means they will be paying less in gasoline and diesel-fuel taxes, which traditionally have been the biggest source of federal funding for highway and mass-transit construction.

Many states are moving to increase existing tolls. Pennsylvania, for example, is hoping to win federal permission for new tolls on a standing interstate. Meanwhile, several states are turning to business consortiums to finance, build and operate new highways, bridges and tunnels, although a political backlash has slowed the push in recent years.

The administration's proposal comes as Congress gears up to start work later this year on a six-year transportation spending bill that could cost well more than $400 billion. The last multiyear bill, which expires in September 2009, carried a $286 billion tab.

Earlier this year, a bipartisan commission concluded the nation is spending only about 40% of what is needed to reduce congestion, improve safety and spur economic growth. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters served on the commission but dissented from the majority view that gas taxes should more than double in coming years to support a big increase in transportation spending.

Ms. Peters says gas-tax rates should hold steady -- at 18.4 cents a gallon for regular gasoline and 24.4 cents a gallon for diesel, where they have stood for more than a decade -- and private money and toll revenue can address any needed increases in funding. She declined Tuesday to say how much more the U.S. needs to increase its overall spending on transportation infrastructure. Instead, she suggested ways to make transportation spending less wasteful.

"Our federal approach to transportation is broken," she said. "And no amount of tweaking, adjusting or adding new layers on top will make things better."

Many Democrats objected to the administration's plan, saying it could have gone further in identifying ways to raise investment and spur projects that could unclog major choke points. Perhaps the most common complaint centered on the shift in reliance from gas taxes to private-sector dollars.

"It's basically an opportunity for people who have wanted to systematically reduce the federal participation in infrastructure," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D., Ore.), who is spearheading a transportation debate in the House. "It's going to fall with a thud."

The two major presidential candidates haven't released detailed plans on transportation funding, even as the issue is sure to be one of next year's biggest legislative battles. Republican Sen. John McCain has stressed the need to eliminate earmarks and pet projects. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama supports the creation of a $60 billion national infrastructure bank that would fund projects of regional and national significance. The two have also sparred over Mr. McCain's proposal to give consumers a gas-tax holiday this summer.

How local government is fighting the TTC

Together with Stewards of the Range and the American Land Foundation, TURF has been working to take back our out of control government through forming a special kind of planning commission found in a state statute under Local Government Code section 391. These commissions are one of the few, if not the only, avenues for citizens to actually stop the Trans Texas Corridor and other unwanted projects through their communities. One of the first commissions was formed in 2007 in Central Texas in Bell County. This excellent article featured in the Ft. Worth Weekly tells their story and shows how the other 8 commissions already formed can do the same. For more information on how to form a commission, contact Stewards of the Range at www.stewards.us.

Link to article here.

   Rocks for the Goliath Road

    Small-town leaders in Central Texas think they’ve found cracks in the Trans-Texas Corridor’s armor.

   By PETER GORMAN

  July 9, 2008
BARTLETT — Sitting in Lois and Jerry’s Restaurant, surrounded by a blue-jean and overalls lunch crowd, Mae Smith and Ralph Snyder don’t look like giant-killers. In fact, the small-town mayor (5’ 2”) and the salvage shop owner (6’ 6”) look more like a Mutt and Jeff comedy team.

   But along with mayors, business leaders, and farmers in Bell County, north of Austin, and their counterparts in several other parts of the state, Smith and Snyder are taking on a Texas Goliath — the Trans-Texas Corridor, the monster transportation project being pushed by Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Department of Transportation.

Two years ago, the I-35 section of the project, planned to parallel the existing interstate, was seen as a done deal, and TxDOT was busy signing contracts with the Spanish-U.S. consortium called Cintra-Zachry to build a section of the corridor and operate it as a private toll road. Now, however, much of the political support for it has drained away in the face of widespread grass-roots opposition. Even the project’s backers say the small-towners’ group may have a chance of causing major holdups — and perhaps even fatal delays.
   Smith, Snyder, and a growing group of leaders in other small towns and rural areas in the TTC’s path have found what they believe to be a chink in the giant’s armor, and they are exploiting it for all they’re worth — backed by national property-rights groups that have fought government land seizures in other states with some success.

   In the last two years, Smith, the 64-year-old firebrand mayor of Holland, and the leaders of three other Bell County towns, with a combined population of less than 6,000, had grown increasingly worried about the threat that the TTC project posed for their communities. Frustrated by their inability to get state transportation officials to pay attention to their fears, the mayors found a provision in state law that allows for the creation of local planning commissions — and then requires TxDOT and other state agencies to coordinate projects with those commissions.

   So they created a planning commission and began asking for consultations and records on TTC. And what they found in the process astounded them.

   Smith said that TxDOT claims in official documents that it has studied the Corridor’s expected effects on communities it will run through — but that it has done no such studies. In the draft version of its environmental impact study, she said, the agency wrote a summary — the only part many busy lawmakers are likely to read — that varied wildly from the information in the body of the report.

    The local officials charge that the transportation agency report broadly misstated its own consultant’s findings regarding jobs that the TTC would create and failed to mention heavy losses in personal income and in the tax base the project would cause. They say TxDOT has also ignored requirements in state and federal law that it consider effects on air quality and the environment, look into other alternatives — or even to state why the TTC, with its grand vision of toll roads, train and pipeline rights of way, and commercial areas controlled by private corporations, is needed at all. And, perhaps most importantly for one of the state’s richest farming areas, they charge that TxDOT has failed to consider the major impact the project would have on their federally protected farmland.

    As a result, the planning commission is pressing for TxDOT to redraw its environmental impact statement and to stop any further work on the TTC until proper studies have been done and requirements met — or expect to be sued.

    TxDOT officials have said only that they have contacted the Federal Highway Administration to find out if the Central Texas group, which now includes a fifth town, in Milam County, has the power to compel it to respond. TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippencott wrote in an e-mail that, “We are awaiting further guidance from [the federal agency] on whether and how to revisit the already-completed portion of this process.” Gov. Rick Perry, who has been the power behind the push for the TTC, declined to comment.

    Perhaps worse news, from TxDOT’s point of view, is that, since the Central Texas group formed, four more local planning commissions have been formed in East Texas, two more are being organized on the other side of the state, and the Sierra Club is getting into the action, pointing out problems with the environmental assessment on another major portion of the TTC and asking that that work be delayed as well, until a new impact study is done.

    The small-town group’s formal request to the state agency cites so many sins in the Corridor planning process, Smith said, that the detailed document “can almost indict people for the way TxDOT has purposely ignored state and federal law.”

    Chapter 391 of the Texas Local Government Code is the not-so-secret weapon of the Central Texas officials who are fighting the Corridor. The code “says that TxDOT and other state agencies have to coordinate project planning with local planning commissions,” Smith explained, “so we formed one” – specifically, the Eastern Central Texas Sub-Regional Planning Commission, of which she is president.

    The commission was created in August 2007, by which time TxDOT had already released its draft environmental impact statement on the part of the Corridor project that affects Bell and Milam counties, known as TTC-35. In the draft statement, Smith said, the agency “claimed to have studied the highway’s environmental impact and the impact it would have on the communities it ran through, but that wasn’t true.” So the group asked for a meeting with TxDOT to talk about it.

    At that first meeting, in October, Smith said, TxDOT officials admitted they hadn’t studied the environmental impact the planned 1,200-foot wide corridor would have on the area covered by the four towns — Holland, Bartlett, Rogers, and Little River-Academy (Buckholts has joined since then). That area is part of the Blackland Prairie, covered by the federal Farmland Protection Act.

    A second meeting revealed that the environment wasn’t the only thing TxDOT hadn’t studied. The local commission concluded that in fact, TxDOT hadn’t studied much of anything with regard to Bell County “They had no idea how to answer questions about [the TTC] dividing our cities in half and the effect that might have on school districts, on the agriculture business this area depends on, or the effect that highway would have on our emergency services,” Smith said.

  TxDOT officials, she said, promised they would do that work when they began the second phase of the project — that is, after they decided exactly where to put the superhighway. In the meantime, however, the agency was already buying land and making deals with contractors. “That’s not OK with us,” she said. “That’s not the law. You can’t begin to study the impact you’ll have after you’ve made your plans; you have to make your plans around the impact you are going to have.”

   The planning commissioners also found that the state highway agency’s draft environmental study didn’t even agree with itself — the summary wasn’t supported by the text of the report.

   And so Smith’s group sent out a formal request on May 20 to Edward Pensock Jr., the engineer who is director of corridor systems of the TxDOT’s turnpike division, asking the agency for a supplemental report on the project’s environmental impact.

   The Central Texas commission backed up its request with a 28-page list of “deficiencies” in the current environmental assessment. Perhaps as important as the request itself is the commission’s insistence on when it should be done.

  “We want the supplemental environmental impact study done by TxDOT prior to any further work or planning on the highway,” Smith said.

    TxDOT wasn’t happy with the request and sent it on to the Federal Highway Administration, asking whether it indeed has to do a supplemental report. The federal agency’s answer is expected by the end of the month. And if the ruling favors the local commission, the entire TTC could be held up until that new report is complete.

  A TxDOT official who asked not to be named said the state agency has satisfied its obligations by holding hearings and meeting with the commission — and that it isn’t required to actually address the commission’s request for a new study.

    Not so says Snyder, the only non-elected member of the commission. “We’re a political entity, and as far as this request is concerned, there are things that TxDOT ignored under federal law,” he said. “And they’ve got no choice but to abide by those federal laws.”

   Snyder predicted that the feds will pressure TxDOT to do the additional study before further work is done on the TTC plans. But if that doesn’t happen, he said, he’s confident that the commission can force the state agency’s hand through the court system. “We’ve got the law on our side,” he said. “TxDOT has to do this thing right, or there will be no TTC.”

    The Central Texas group has environmental, economic, and legal issues to pick with TxDOT. One of their key points, for instance, is TxDOT’s claim that when the new superhighway is complete it will add 434,000 permanent new jobs and $135 billion in additional personal income in the state.

   But in fact, the report done for the state agency on the TTC’s economic impact doesn’t make that prediction on new job creation, and suggests that the project would decrease personal income across the state by $90 million a year because of land to be taken by the project. On the TTC-35 section alone, the Perryman Group consultants predicted governments will lose $94 million in taxable property.

  More than 4,000 acres would be lost just in Smith’s planning region, which includes an area roughly 30 miles by 30 miles. Additionally, the Perryman Group’s report, which was all but ignored by TxDOT in its draft environmental statement, predicted hundreds of millions of dollars would be lost from the agricultural sector.

  In its request for a new impact report, the small-town group wrote that TxDOT’s draft environmental statement “should have revealed the [Perryman] study … and then analyzed those facts to determine the economic impact” on the region.

  “In plain language, they had a study done, and then when the figures didn’t match what they wanted, they just made up some figures and put them in the summary they passed out,” Smith charged. “Just made them up.”

  In addition to the financial losses to individuals and governments in the area, the TTC would force area governments to build their own overpasses and underpasses for all except state highway crossings — and some crossings could carry tolls. “None of those issues were even considered” in TxDOT’s draft environmental statement, said Smith.

  Beyond that, the planning commission charges, are all the federal laws and even state needs that are being ignored by the TTC planning process, including the Environmental Protection Act.

  But there is one overriding concern that the Central Texas commission members share, and it is more basic than tax losses or expensive overpasses. It is the land itself, the rich black clay that defines their region’s culture and economy. And in saving the land, they believe they’ve got the federal government — and, oddly enough, some of the federal government’s most implacable opponents — on their side.

  Just a few miles east of I-35, near Salado, lies the heart of the Blackland Prairie. The gently rolling hills reach to the horizon, the fields alternating with stands of Osage orange, hackberry, cedar elm, oak, and pecan orchards. Corn ready for harvest stands next to the dark brown of the milo tops and the rich green of cotton. Recently harvested wheat fields expose the rich black clay from which the prairie gets its name.

  Holland’s downtown, a block of old brick buildings dating back more than 100 years, is a throwback in time. The only lunch spot in town is closed for vacation. At noon a siren shrieks, calling the hour.

  So when Mae Smith drives up in her dusty dark green Dakota pickup, we head over to Bartlett, to meet reinforcements and find lunch. She wears jeans and a red blouse, and her blonde hair is cropped short.

    “Most of the people living here have been living here for generations,” she explains as she drives. “And they like this life. They may work in Temple or Austin, but they still live here. Just like their daddies and their daddies.”

   Stepping out of the truck 20 minutes later on Bartlett’s main drag, we’re met by the huge figure of Snyder. He has the same searing blue eyes as Smith.

   “Let me tell you something about the Blackland Prairie,” Snyder says. “In 1850 this was the most heavily populated area in the United States west of the Mississippi. That’s because of the soil here. Now the blackland, a fine clay, runs from Mexico up to Canada.” In some parts of the country, the swath of soil is 250 miles wide, but here it’s just 30 miles across. “And if you take any of it away, well, it’s gone forever, and these towns depend on the ag business.”

   At one point in the lunch, he makes a dash to his truck and comes back with an ear of corn. “Take a look at that,” he says, peeling back the husk to show off a large ear with golden kernels. “The black clay here expands with the winter rains and then gives off the water during the summer months. We’re in the middle of a drought, and this was grown without irrigation. Farmers will be averaging 130 bushels of corn around here per acre without irrigation. This soil is a national treasure. To pave it over is a crime.”

   Farmland is lost every day in this country to urban sprawl and road development, but this fertile region has federal law on its side — the Farmland Protection Act — as well as state protections. Although most of the Blackland Prairie in Texas is being farmed, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department has identified the remaining 5,000 acres of the formation as deserving “high priority protection” — and has already recommended that TxDOT not put another huge highway through the area, but stick to the I-35 corridor to build any additional freeway capacity.

   The Farmland Protection Act has already been used in freeway fights. According to the lawyer for a national property rights group, the Federal Highway Administration cited that law in rejecting plans for a new highway in Indiana, in favor of an alternative that had less impact on farmland.

   The property rights group in question is called Stewards of the Range. And one of its founders is neck-deep in the TTC controversy.

   Snyder was the linchpin in getting the Bell County planning commission off the ground. In the spring of 2007 he attended a meeting called by Margaret and Dan Byfield in the town of Jonah, about the TTC. “There had been a lot of misinformation put out by TxDOT on the Corridor, and the Byfields were meeting with the folks ... to give them the real story,” he said.

   The Byfields, who joined us for lunch, are controversial figures. Margaret, 41, helped found the nonprofit Stewards of the Range in 1992, when the federal government moved to take away her family’s right to run their herds on 1,100 square miles of federal land next to their Nevada ranch. Dan Byfield, 54, is the president and founder of another land rights group, the American Land Foundation. When they met, the two were already involved with their respective organizations in the long-running private property rights called the Sagebrush Rebellion, which has pitted Western U.S. farmers and ranchers against environmental groups fighting for causes like the protection of wetlands and endangered species habitat.

    The couple moved to Central Texas about five years ago — only to find that the behemoth TTC was being aimed within a mile of their property. It was the attorney for Stewards of the Range who drew up the Bell County group’s demand letter to TxDOT, asking for a new environmental impact study.

   “We’ve often fought with environmental groups,” Dan said, “but in this case we seem to have come full circle and are fighting [alongside] them.”

   It was from Dan Byfield that Snyder heard about the local government code provision that allows for creation of the sub-regional planning commissions. Similar federal provisions had been used by the Stewards of the Range to force the federal government to deal with counties in the West.

   “I told him we ought to try it up in Bell County,” Snyder recalled, “because those people were already looking for a way to stop the TTC from destroying the Blackland Prairie.”

   His first step was to approach each of the four mayors with his idea. “And then I got on the agenda for the city councils for each of the four cities and explained to them how a commission worked and that we wanted to form one. And as there was zero opposition to it, we did.” The school boards of the four cities joined as well.

   “It wasn’t hard, because I knew everyone. Heck, I probably know everyone in Bell County,” said Snyder, 64, who owns three farms besides his salvage business.

    From the viewpoint of Snyder, Smith, and the Byfields, the whole TTC is a land grab disguised as a transportation issue. Snyder pointed to a study done in the 1990s by the Federal Highway Administration and TxDOT. “That study says that you can expand I-35 in the existing right of way to build enough road to take care of our transportation needs until 2025,” he said. “But that study has been thrown away for the TTC. So it’s not about transportation.

   “But the TTC is planned at 1,200 feet wide so that there will be room to lease land to McDonalds and gas stations and motels along the highway, and they’re going to lease the rights to use the pipelines and rail lines they’re planning. That’s when you get to see it for what it is: the use of eminent domain to grab hundreds of thousands of acres in rural Texas to make money.”

    While none of Snyder’s property would be affected directly by any of the proposed routes of the TTC, he’s passionate on the issue. “A lot of people here have been here for as many as six generations. They’re not all very sophisticated, and they’re the ones who are going to be taken advantage of,” he said. “They’ve got no idea what their land is worth, they don’t trust lawyers, and they’re ripe. … You cut these towns up and you’ll kill them; they’ll never be the same again.”>

   A fellow in overalls at the next table leaned over to say, “I agree with you. I hope you stop it.”

   Then Sammy Cortez, a huge young man whose arms are covered in tattoos, stopped by. “I can’t see it,” he said of the TTC. “People have been living on and working this land forever. They’re not going to give it up. I don’t even know why we need a new road.”

   “That’s what most people are beginning to ask,” Dan Byfield said.

   Another few miles away, through more lush farmlands, is the town of Little River-Academy. The drive comes with Smith’s travelogue of memory — here’s where the old road was, that pecan orchard is new, her uncle used to live over there.

   At Gunsmoke Motors, wrecker service owner Ronnie White was inflating a stack of tractor-tire inner tubes. His family and friends were planning to celebrate the Fourth with a five-mile float down the Little River. A Navy veteran who took part in the Cuban missile crisis action and served in Vietnam, White has been mayor of this town, population 1,645, for 27 years. Now he’s also a member of the planning commission.

   Light-hearted in talking about his holiday plans, he grew serious when the topic turned to the TTC. “The politicians and the people behind the corridor plan, they talk about how it will help the economy. I know I’ve had a few run-ins with the mayor of Temple — that’s the largest city in Bell County, with a population of close to 60,000. He’s all for it. He thinks the TTC is going to bring more money, help his city’s economy. But down here, out here in rural Texas, we don’t think that way.

   “Our lifestyle is our wealth. Our land is our wealth,” he said. “People have been here for generations, and we’re happy with the way things are. If you start telling us you’re going to take our land and put up new shops and we’re going to start making a few more dollars and all we have to do is give up the way we live, well, that’s not something people around here are going to go for. >

   “When they were taking land for I-35, they took a much wider piece than they needed,” White said. “And we asked why they needed to take that much. The answer was that they’d need it in the future. Now they’re saying the same thing when they’re talking about taking 1,200 feet of land. Well, I say, ‘You already took all that land for I-35, so now use it.’ ”

 Pensock, the TxDOT official, sounded supportive when he talked about the Central Texas group. “These folks that form regional subcommittees are very concerned folks,” he said, “and we definitely want to hear what they want to say and know what their thoughts are. We’ve already met with Mayor Smith and some of the other folks from the Holland area several times and spent a lot of time trying to give them information and answer their questions.”

   He’s not quite so definite about what his agency needs to do in response. Does TxDOT have to meet the commission’s demand for a new study? “Well, they have a voice and a right to be heard,” he answered. “But Texas is a big state, and there are a lot of voices to be heard.”

   Pensock doesn’t think that simply widening I-35 without taking more land is a real option. “People look at those broad medians and those gently sloping embankments and picture that we can just lay down another 12-foot lane. That’s not really the case. For one, our highway engineering specifications are quite rigorous. And then there’s the matter of why we put those medians there in the first place. They’re there to help prevent head-on collisions. Our first guiding principle is how to best keep traffic flowing while minimizing accidents.

    “So say you take away those medians and turn them into lanes. Well, we think that will increase the risk of horrible accidents. And those gentle embankments? If you cut them at a steeper angle to add lanes, or get rid of them altogether and put up a retaining wall, you’ll get your lanes but at what price? How many more accidents will you have and how much more severe will they be?”

   For now, TXDOT is waiting on word from the Federal Highway Administration before moving on the commission’s request for a supplemental study.

   Fred Kelly Grant, president of Stewards of the Range, who wrote the commission’s request to TxDOT, said he’s thought from the first that the TTC issue would end up in court.

   And Margaret Byfield said that, if that happens, the 5,000-plus-member Stewards group is ready to fund the fight. “Our membership opposes the corridor. And we’re nationwide, so we have the financial backing, and we’ve already got the attorneys. So we are ready to go to court.”

   Smith said the commission has talked to officials of the Environmental Protection Agency and has a meeting scheduled with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture charged with protecting farmland.

   “We’re tired of fooling around,” she said. “We want the supplemental studies done. And we’re coming at them from state law, from the EPA, the NRCS … from all sorts of directions.”

   While the Central Texas group is lining up its arguments and allies, it also appears to have exported its revolutionary sentiment to other parts of the state. The several newly formed planning commissions in East Texas and around El Paso are considering asking for TxDOT to re-do the environmental studies on TTC’s impact in their areas as well.

   The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club has also asked TxDOT and the Federal Highway Administration to withdraw and redo the impact study on I-69, the leg of TTC planned between Laredo and Texarkana. The environmental group backed up its request with an 84-page document pointing out errors or omissions in TxDOT’s original report on that road.

   Smith said she expects to see an attempt in the Texas Legislature next year to eliminate the part of the local government code that allows for the formation of local planning groups like hers. Grant, the Stewards of the Range attorney, said that even if that happens, legislators won’t be able to strip already-existing commissions of their powers.

   “The public hearings that TxDOT holds are just that,” said Smith. “The people come in and speak what’s on their mind, but then TxDOT goes on its merry way. But with the commission we’ve formed, with four mayors and four school board officials, well, we’re all elected officials — TxDOT is compelled by Texas law to speak with us.

  “We may not be able to stop a toll road,” she said. “But we set ourselves a goal when we formed: to get I-35 finished and expanded before anyone jumps into a toll road. And we believe that if that’s done, then people will see that a toll road isn’t needed at all.”

Permitting single occupant vehicles to pay toll for HOV lanes actually discourages carpooling

Link to article here. Houston's I-10/Katy Freeway expansion (paid for with gas taxes) will allow single occupant vehicles to use the new HOV lanes if they pay a toll (now called HOT lanes). So much for encouraging carpooling...they're also increasing the number of occupants needed to qualify for the HOV lane! Wouldn't want to dip into those toll revenues...

HOT Lanes Discourage Carpooling
High Occupancy Toll lanes in some, but not all, states actively discourage carpooling.
The Newspaper.com
July 14, 2008

95 Express Lanes application"High occupancy" use of so-called High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes is actively discouraged in some states to ensure the greatest number of drivers pay for the use of roads. As the US Department of Transportation continues to pressure states to turn existing High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes into toll lanes, HOT advocates assure carpoolers that tolling will not affect them. Practices adopted by the most recently opened HOT projects suggest this claim may be misleading.

In the 1990s, congressional mandates forced states to adopt HOV lanes as an environmental improvement measure. These lanes promised to encourage ride sharing, thereby reducing the number of vehicles on the road. Supporters argued that this reduction would both lessen congestion in free travel lanes and improve overall air quality. For example, if a group of friends wanted to take the freeway to attend a distant event during rush hour, they could choose to take one vehicle instead of three in return for the benefit of a speedier journey in the special carpool lane.

 
Such impromptu carpooling efforts are denied free access to the high occupancy lanes in the country's newest federally funded project. The South Florida 95 Express HOT lanes require anyone wishing to take advantage of high occupancy status to pre-register, obtain a set of decals and pay for a SunPass toll transponder. Once approved and the driver's transponder is activated, those carpool journeys deemed acceptable to the Florida Department of Transportation will be free. Those wishing to register must provide extensive personal details to the state-operated toll road and meet a detailed set of criteria (view application form, 150k PDF).
Participants must live within a three-mile radius
Participants must work within a one-mile radius
Participants must have a start and end their work day within 30 minutes of one another
"If any member of the carpool does not meet the criteria, the carpool registration request will be rejected unless additional information is provided that would constitute a 3+ commuter carpool," South Florida Commuter Services explains on its website.

The only exception to the detailed distance criteria is that accepted participants are allowed to meet at an approved Park-and-Ride lot. The system offers very little flexibility. If one member of the carpool drops out, a new co-worker cannot join without first submitting his personal details and having his application processed. Decals also expire every six months, requiring constant renewal.

Although Florida imposes these restrictions, Colorado does not. Colorado's state-owned Interstate 25 Express Lane project is designed to allow impromptu carpoolers and motorcyclists to continue with the same free and easy use of HOV lanes. To avoid a registration bureaucracy, the state created two separate lanes for entering the HOT facility -- one for toll payers and one for carpoolers. Strategically placed police enforcement zones on the side of the lanes maximize opportunities for the ticketing of solo drivers who might venture into the untolled carpool lane. Once motorists pass the toll collection zones, they are allowed to use any lane.

Upcoming projects have not been forthcoming about whether a Florida or Colorado model of operation will be put in place. For example, Virginia's Interstate 495 Capital Beltway HOT lane project, which is run by the Australian company Transurban, has kept carpool requirements quiet while the project is still under construction.

"Detailed plans and processes for obtaining any required transponder will be communicated to all users of the HOT lanes prior to the lanes opening," the project website explains. "Fluor-Transurban and VDOT will conduct extensive community education efforts to ensure motorists understand how to use HOT lanes."

According to Virginia's contract with Transurban, taxpayers would have to make payments to Transurban if the HOT lanes actually ended up encouraging carpooling (details).

The story is similar for hybrid vehicles. Although the owners of these politically favored automobiles do not need to go through as much hassle to obtain free use of certain HOT lanes, their free ride could be short-lived. In Colorado and Florida, hybrid owners must buy a toll transponder and send in an application containing the hybrid's license plate and, in Colorado, the vehicle identification number. Owners will then receive a decal to place on their car and driving will be toll free from that point forward on participating roads.

There are strict caps on the favoritism. Colorado, for example, will only allow 2000 hybrids to take advantage of HOT lanes and will only consider allowing more if it does not impact toll revenues significantly.

"The EXpressToll transponder account may be utilized to implement tolling upon hybrid vehicles in the event degradation of travel speed occurs in HOV and express lanes," Colorado's Department of Transportation explains on its website. "Your EXpressToll transponder account will not be charged without advance notice and you will first be given the opportunity to cancel your account and return your transponder."

Hybrids will not have free use of the Virginia HOT lanes.

Driving continues 7 month slide, worst since 1980


Link to article here. It's obvious Americans have reached the ceiling for the price of gasoline. Apparently, $4 a gallon is the impetus to cutting back on driving for the first time since the oil embargo. Tollers still contend you'll pay tolls no matter the cost to the family budget since people still have to make the daily commute. But what they're foolishly counting on is that demographics will stay constant and that people will merely cut back on leisure travel and still pony-up a toll to get to work.

Trends are already showing families are making dramatic lifestyle changes to adjust to the rising fuel prices, like moving closer to work or moving to avoid the costly expense of paying tolls. Tollers are placing high stakes bets on status quo and mortgaging our children's future to tune of hundreds of billions in leveraged debt, exploiting risky financial schemes that brought us the mortgage and banking collapse we're in now. We cannot tolerate more fiscal malfeasance. Demand an end to toll proliferation and risky leveraged debt schemes that will leave taxpayers holding the bag while private profiteers laugh all the way to the bank.

U.S. Motorists May Drive Less for 1st Time Since 1980 (Update2)
By Angela Greiling Keane

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. motorists, paying record prices for gasoline, drove less for a seventh consecutive month in May, pointing toward the first annual drop in road travel since 1980.

``$4 per gallon may have been the trigger point we've been looking for,'' said Kenneth McGill, managing director for travel and tourism at consulting firm Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. ``It's interesting to see Americans finally reacting to the price of gasoline by rationing consumption.''

Vehicle-miles traveled on all U.S. roads fell 3.7 percent in May from a year earlier, the Federal Highway Administration said in a report today. The seven-month slide is the longest streak since 1979, agency spokesman Doug Hecox said.

Americans cut back as the average U.S. retail gasoline price reached a then-record of $3.98 a gallon on May 31. Rising fuel prices and a weak economy also marked the drop in driving in 1980, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and U.S. Embassy personnel in Iran were taken hostage.

May's travel decline pushed this year's total down 2.4 percent, according to the Washington-based highway agency, which has been reporting the data since 1942.

Driving decreased in all five regions for which the agency tallies results, led by a 4.5 percent drop in the north-central U.S., which includes Chicago. May's 254.7 billion miles driven were the lowest for the month since 2003.

Slowing Economy

The report adds to evidence of a slowing U.S. economy already beset by the worst housing market since the Great Depression. Gasoline at U.S. pumps averaged as high as $4.11 this month before slipping to $3.96 yesterday, according to motoring group AAA. Spending more on fuel leaves consumers with less for other goods and services.

``It's not only not a good summer, but probably not a good fall and there's a big question mark in 2009 also about the state of domestic travel and domestic spending,'' said Dennis Forst, a hotel and casino analyst with KeyBanc Capital Markets in El Segundo, California.

That drain on household budgets is helping damp U.S. auto demand, which Deutsche Bank AG said July 23 may shrink to 14 million vehicles this year, the fewest since 1993. First-half sales fell 10 percent, with light trucks down 18 percent.

Highway Freight

Highway freight traffic is down, too, because of the drop in auto sales and homebuilding and consumer spending that grew only a third as fast in the first quarter as a year earlier. YRC Worldwide Inc., the biggest U.S. trucking company, said second- quarter tonnage on its regional unit plunged 16 percent.

The traffic counts are compiled using cables across roadways to estimate the number of miles driven. The highway agency tracks all motorized vehicles and doesn't differentiate between commercial and passenger traffic.

``We're seeing a sustained dropoff over a prolonged period, and a significant dropoff that we expect will continue,'' Transportation Secretary Mary Peters told reporters today on a conference call.

She will outline the George W. Bush administration's proposed changes in highway funding, including greater use of private capital, in a speech tomorrow at Georgia Institute of Technology in Smyrna, Georgia. Peters has said federal gasoline taxes become less useful in paying for transportation projects as Americans drive less. Bush's term ends in January.

May's traffic decline confirms predictions from groups including AAA that Americans would drive less during the U.S. Memorial Day holiday, the traditional start of the summer vacation season.

``People were not traveling far from home,'' said Adam Weissenberg, tourism, hospitality and leisure leader at New York-based consulting firm Deloitte & Touche. ``More people were going to local beaches, local state parks, etc.''

David Ellis, a researcher at Texas A&M University's Texas Transportation Institute in College Station, said high fuel prices are more likely to curb travel when vacationers are on the road than at times of the year with fewer leisure trips.

``We're tending to cut out the leisure driving first,'' Ellis said.

Toll lanes create, not solve, congestion

Link to article here.

New Virginia Toll Lanes Designed to Create Congestion
Illegal political donations helped give Australian company full control over Virginia transportation until the year 2087.
The Newspaper.com
July 8, 2008

BeltwayIllegal political contributions helped an Australian firm land a lucrative toll road deal that grants the company unprecedented power over Northern Virginia's transportation future. Last week, Transurban wrote and asked state lawmakers to return checks that the Melbourne-based toll road operator had written in violation of federal campaign laws (details). But the deal these contributions helped bring about has already been finalized.

In June, the US Department of Transportation created a first-of-its-kind $1.6 billion financing package that consisted of tax-free bonds, loans and state taxpayer grants to support the project that will add a pair of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes to the Interstate 495 Capital Beltway just outside of Washington, DC. To this amount, Transurban only added $349 million of its own capital -- less than the cost of interest -- toward the construction of the toll lanes (details).


In return for that small investment, Transurban received from Virginia officials the right to demand payment from state taxpayers any time that improvements are made to a number of free roads near the Beltway. In effect, the contract between the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and Transurban is designed to ensure the area remains sufficiently congested so that motorists will have an incentive to pay to use the toll lanes.

For example, VDOT can make no changes, expansion or improvements to the free lanes on the Beltway until the year 2087 unless the agency first consults Transurban. VDOT agreed that if any such changes were made to the general purpose lanes without Transurban's explicit approval, they would at least be made in such a way as to guarantee the company maintained a high level of profit.

"If the department [VDOT] determines that additional traffic lanes on the Capital Beltway Corridor are in the state's best interests, the department shall consult with the concessionaire [Transurban] as to an appropriate strategy to implement such additional traffic lanes," the contract states. "At the department's sole discretion, [it shall] permit the construction of additional lanes as part of the project with a view to minimizing any detrimental impact on the project or its ability to generate revenues..."

In the past, most toll road deals included "non-compete" clauses that strictly prohibited transportation departments from making improvements to nearby, competing roads. They did so because free-flowing traffic on alternative routes would hit the toll road's bottom line. Simply put: why take a toll road, when there's a free alternative?

Explicit non-compete provisions have become politically controversial, and as a result companies have recently embraced a more subtle approach that accomplishes the same goal. For example, the contract for the State Highway 130 toll road in Austin, Texas included a provision giving the Texas Department of Transportation a financial incentive to lower the speed limit on the nearby Interstate 35 freeway. As first reported by TheNewspaper last year that, this provision was designed to create congestion and inconvenience for the motorists who choose the free alternative route (details).

For the Beltway project, improvements such as adding additional free lanes to the highway are absolutely permitted -- for a price. The contract considers any improvement to the Beltway to be a "Department Project Enhancement" which means that Virginia taxpayers must pay Transurban for the right to improve the free portion of the highway. Given VDOT's stated lack of funding, adding an extra monetary premium to the cost of any improvements effectively gives the foreign company the ability to prevent such projects from happening.

The effect is not limited to the Beltway. The contract specifies that payments called "compensation events" must be made in the event that the state decides to improve the connections between the Beltway's general purpose lanes and the Dulles Toll Road or any "improvements to I-66 outside the Capital Beltway Corridor" made over the course of the next eighty years.

An "independent engineer" determines how much compensation Transurban will receive by calculating an expected traffic impact. This means that the more the public is likely to use a free alternative, the more Transurban is paid. In Sydney, Australia, for example, the Lane Cove Tunnel toll project contained a provision requiring the state government to narrow the lanes of a nearby free road to generate congestion that would drive motorists into the tunnel. After the state decided to postpone the narrowing until after an election, the toll road concession was paid A$25 million (US $24 million) for that compensation event.

Transurban's control goes beyond lane improvements. Although the stated purpose of the "high occupancy" part of the toll lane project is to encourage motorists to carpool, the contract contains a provision directly designed to discourage any increase in the number of motorists sharing rides.

"The department agrees to pay the concessionaire, subject to Section 20.18, amounts equal to 70% of the average toll applicable to vehicles paying tolls for the number of High Occupancy Vehicles exceeding a threshold of 24% of the total flow of all permitted vehicles that are then using such toll section going in the same direction for the first 30 consecutive minutes during any day, and any additional 15 consecutive minute periods in such day, during which average traffic for a toll section going in the same direction exceeds a rate of 3,200 vehicles per hour based on two lanes," the contract states.

This means if carpooling becomes popular on the Beltway, taxpayers could end up making multi-million dollar annual payments to Transurban.

Finally, the contract insists that if any homes happen to lie in the way of the the construction of the new lanes, Transurban will pay no more than the current market value to purchase the land in question. If the owner refuses to move, VDOT will condemn the property and confiscate it for the use of the private, for-profit company through eminent domain. The Beltway project, however, was designed to be built within existing VDOT right-of-way to ensure the exercise of this power would not be needed.

Transurban shares on the Australian Stock Exchange jumped 15 cents to A$4.60 today after the company announced quarterly earnings results. On Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, the company reported a 7.8 percent increase in revenue over the same quarter last year, despite a 6.9 percent drop in the number of motorists using the toll road. It credited the positive performance to an 11 percent toll hike in January and the cancellation of the discount previously given to transponder users.

Relevant excerpts from the Transurban contract are available in a 260k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: PDF File Comprehensive Agreement Relating to Route 495 HOT Lanes - Excerpts (Virginia Department of Transportation and Capital Beltway Express, 12/19/2007)

GAO warns of problems with public private partnerships

Link to article here. The proof keeps coming that PPPs cost taxpayers more and aren't worth the cost to future generations to get up-front cash for today's fixes.

GAO Questions Wisdom of Public Private Partnerships
Government Accountability Office testimony warns of need to better assess the true cost of privately operated toll roads.

GAO report coverThe Government Accountability Office last week questioned the wisdom of using public-private partnerships to build and maintain toll roads. GAO's Director of Physical Infrastructure issues, Jay Etta Z. Hecker, summarized the congressional watchdog agency's work in testimony before a US Senate Finance subcommittee hearing on Thursday that focused on the cost to the public of privately operated toll road leasing arrangements.

Broadly speaking, these arrangements allow private companies to lease existing roads in return for the ability to collect toll revenue for a fixed term that can last up to 99 years. In some cases, these companies will offer local politicians billions of dollars in up-front cash payments for leasing rights. The private company would then be responsible for maintaining the road. In other cases, the private company would build and own entirely new roads, delivering significant new highway capacity to the public in return for significant profit potential.


While acknowledging potential public benefits of private participation in these deals, Hecker said that GAO's extensive study of this funding approach identified a number of fundamental problems.

"There is no 'free' money in public-private partnerships," GAO's report stated. "They are potentially more costly to the public and it is likely that tolls on a privately operated highway will increase to a greater extent than they would on a publicly operated toll road. There is also the risk of tolls being set that exceed the costs of the facility, including a reasonable rate of return, should a private concessionaire gain market power because of the lack of viable travel alternatives."

In 2006, two key highways in Illinois and Indiana were handed to Cintra-Macquarie, a consortium of Spanish and Australian toll road operators. The Chicago Skyway was leased for 99 years in return for a $1.8 billion payment and the Indiana Toll Road for 75 years for $3.8 billion. State officials found the ability to spend these windfalls on current needs, but GAO questioned whether future generations may regret this decision.

"Using a highway public-private partnership to extract value from an existing facility also raises issues about the use of those proceeds and whether future users might potentially pay higher tolls to support current benefits," the report stated. "In some instances, up-front payments have been used for immediate needs, and it remains to be seen whether these uses provide long-term benefits to future generations who will potentially be paying progressively higher toll rates to the private sector throughout the length of a concession agreement."

GAO found that a significant portion of the up-front payment derives from the tax-exempt status of the bonds issued and depreciation deductions that, in effect, shift millions from the federal treasury to the state's coffers. GAO calculated that the annual taxation cost of $1.2 billion in tax-exempt bonds issued for Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, South Carolina's Southern Connector and Nevada's Las Vegas Monorail was as much as $35 million a year. South Carolina and Virginia also lose up to $3 million a year in state tax revenue.

Beyond the accounting illusion created by the up-front payment, GAO identified a distinct lack of willingness of state governments to perform honest cost-benefit analysis of projects before agreeing to undertake them. For example, no "public interest" study was done before state and local politicians signed off on the Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll Road deals. GAO reported that Oregon's experience shows that this could be a mistake. That state's department of transportation hired a consultant to assess the added cost involved in a proposed public-private partnership model to build a new highway. The analysis found the costs "were not justifiable given the limited value of risk transfer in the project."

GAO suggested the US Department of Transportation might be to blame for the rush to embrace tolling regardless of the cost to the public.

"Despite the need for careful analysis, the approach at the federal level has not been fully balanced, as DOT has done much to promote the benefits, but comparatively little to either assist states and localities weigh potential costs and trade-offs, nor to assess how potentially important national interests might be protected in highway public-private partnerships," GAO concluded.

A full copy of the report is available in a 205k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: PDF File Highway Public-Private Partnerships (Government Accountability Office, 7/24/2008)

Mortgage bailout may cause eminent domain abuse

Link to article here. Since the Trans Texas Corridor will be the largest eminent domain land grab in TX if not U.S. history, this move by Congress could be very dangerous. Texans need eminent domain protection against private profit in the name of economic development. Governor Rick Perry vetoed the last bill, HB 2006, it's time to override this out of touch Governor who's acting as the arm of private, special interests.

ON CAPITOL HILL
Congress' bailout opens doors to eminent domain seizures
Warning issued about 'bonanza' of potential property confiscations
July 26, 2008

By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
The congressional plan to bail out the U.S. housing and mortgage industries, which could be approved by Congress and signed by the president as early as this weekend, actually endangers Americans' housing, according to the director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

"Of all the unintended consequences of the housing bill that passed the House – of which there will likely be many – one of the most ironic and far-reaching may be this: that whatever security marginal homeowners have from foreclosures, their homes will be far less safe from being taken by a bureaucrat through eminent domain," John Berlau wrote on the organization's website.

According to the Wall Street Journal the White House says the bill needs to be enacted soon so its new authorities will start taking effect.

The sweeping package, the report said, "is the government's most aggressive response to rising foreclosures and fragile credit markets. It creates a new regulator for ailing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and establishes a $300 billion program to expand the Federal Housing Administration's ability to guarantee mortgages."

However, some of the details included in the hundreds of pages of the bill are likely to surprise – and concern – Americans. For example, there's a requirement for a new fingerprint registry for those who are associated with the mortgage industry, raising privacy concerns for many.

There's also a provision many are interpreting as allowing the federal government to obtain information about online spending, money transfers and purchases, including ordinary eBay purchases.

Now comes the concern that the new proposal's affirmation of the Kelo decision by the U.S. Supreme Court actually could make the situation worse for homeowners.

That still-bitterly opposed Supreme Court opinion in Kelo v. New London decided in 2005 that the U.S. Constitution allows the taking of private property for private economic development, a decision decried by WND columnist Ellis Washington as "a blatant violation of citizen property rights, also an obvious misinterpretation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which mandates, 'nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.'"

Berlau explains his worries about the wake of the Kelo verdict, and the new provisions in the housing bailout plan.

"Some states have passed laws protecting property owners by barring eminent domain solely for economic development purposes. But for the many states that still allow this practice, the federal government is often the source of funds for the projects that result in the use of eminent domain. Efforts to bar federal funds to be used on projects that make use of this type of eminent domain have stalled in this and the last Congress," he said.

"To their credit, the drafters of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which passed the Senate on July 11, at least recognized this danger of throwing billions in construction grants to state and local governments. So they put in a clause stating, 'No funds under this title may be used in conjunction with property taken by eminent domain, unless eminent domain is employed for a public use.' The clause then adds that 'public use shall not be construed to include economic development that primarily benefits any private entity," he said.

"But this language has vanished from the House bill," he said.

Replacing it is language that "would give governments substantially more leeway to take land."

That provision changes the Senate's prohibition on funds "used in conjunction with property taken by eminent domain" with the looser ban of using funds for a "project that seeks to use the power of eminent domain."

"This new language in the House bill would give property-grabbing bureaucrats an easy way around the supposed prohibition on using eminent domain," Berlau said. "All they would have to do is take property for any reason that Kelo allows, and then come up with another project for the specific use of that property. If land were grabbed for general economic development, as Kelo permits, and then a new project were created for a city to sell this land to developers, this would likely not be a violation of the House bill. After all, the new project isn’t 'seeking' to use eminent domain, it is merely using land that had already been confiscated."

He warned of the potential for the bill to "stimulate a bonanza of state and local property confiscation of the type green-lighted in the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision Kelo v. New London."

"This new language means … there will be virtually nothing stopping states and localities from using the federal housing grants to help themselves to confiscate housing," he said.

Senators can be reached through the Capitol Hill switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Trans Texas Corridor topic of Freedom 21 conference

What do Joseph Farrah, Phyllis Schlafly, and Duncan Hunter all have in common? A concern about the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and moving toward a North American Union (NAU) and all that comes with it, like the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC). And it’s not just conservatives, but those across the political spectrum...Republicans and Democrats and everyone in between. This past week in Dallas, Farrah, Schlafly, and Hunter all addressed the attendees of the Freedom 21 Conference, the patriot’s answer to the United Nations’ Agenda 21 for global governance. This year’s topic addressed the NAU and TTC.

TURF Founder Terri Hall meets Presidential candidate Congressman Duncan HunterTURF Founder Terri Hall meets Presidential candidate Congressman Duncan Hunter

There’s no better place to discuss the formation of the NAU than Texas. We’re ground zero for the global push for the free flow of people and goods through Mexico via the TTC. The best resource for someone wishing to “connect all the dots,” examine the evidence, and get beyond the accusation of “conspiracy theory” should read Dr. Jerry Corsi’s just released New York Times bestseller, The Late Great USA, The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada.

Presidential candidate Congressman Duncan Hunter gave a surprisingly substantive speech (not the usual soundbite fluff we get from the top tier), which noted the military threat from China, not just its economic one. He railed against our failed trade agreements and other policies like the Value Added Tax (VAT) and China’s manipulation of currency that have contributed to the dollar’s race to the bottom making way for a North American currency like the Amero to emerge.

TURF Founder Terri Hall greeting Eagle Forum Founder Phyllis SchlaflyTURF Founder Terri Hall greeting Eagle Forum Founder Phyllis Schlafly


Ms. Schlafly’s address connected the dots and named names of how we’ve arrived at this threat to our sovereignty and charged the crowd with how to defeat it! To the naysayers: government documents and Corsi’s book document it, and 13 state legislatures have now passed resolutions against the SPP, NAU, and NAFTA superhighways.

The fact that Corsi’s book has shot to the top with NO publicity in the mainstream media and the fact that World Net Daily didn’t even print enough books in the first printing for it to sell enough copies to become a New York Times bestseller speaks to the grassroots hunger to get this issue front and center before the American people before its too late.

TURF Founder Terri Hall with Joseph Farrah, Founder of World Net Daily
TURF Founder Terri Hall with Joseph Farrah, Founder of World Net Daily

Mr. Farrah shared that this couldn’t have happened without the new media, like World Net Daily. He also noted how members of BOTH parties began a more fervent push to renew the Fairness Doctrine AFTER they suffered a MAJOR grassroots defeat on the immigration bill. It’s certainly no coincidence! They don’t want talk radio to sound the battle cry or to hear from YOU; they simply want to ram their agenda through without accountability and laugh all the way to the bank!

Many of the speakers at the Freedom 21 conference not only educated attendees about the NAU and TTC, they equipped them with the tools they’ll need to keep the grassroots drum beat going to defeat EVERY SINGLE SHRED of NAU initiatives from free trade agreements, eroding private property rights, outsourcing jobs, importing labor, and open borders, to the push to sell off our public infrastructure through privatized toll roads using Public Private Partnerships (PPPs).

Mark my words, using the tools they gave the grassroots, the phones of the elites (not just in government but those who will profit from this scheme) are going to start ringing throwing these guys into abject panic!

There’s no sugar coating it nor denying it; our sovereignty WILL BE erased, incrementally, like the European Union, or through the next national crisis if the people living in the last beacon of freedom, the United States of America, don’t rise up to defeat it!

What started as a fight against toll roads has led to our stumbling across a HUGE can of worms none of us could fathom at the outset. But millions of ordinary Americans are also beginning to connect the dots and the uprising has already begun through the defeat of the immigration bill.

There are many battles yet on the horizon, but suffice it to say…it all leads back to Texas and our gigantic job ahead of us, to defeat the Trans Texas Corridor and stop the free flow of people and goods across our border.

Chair of tolling authority comes unhinged at toll opponents

Repeating their only song, the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority Chairman Bill Thornton, appointed by Rick Perry to promote toll roads at any cost, continues it's mantra that toll opponents, specifically TURF is to blame for the 281 project costs going up. Their plan is unraveling, and they have to resort to lies to try and fool the public into supporting their billion dollar house of cards.

In fact, the very same day Thornton made these comments, the RMA Board called a special meeting to discuss (and they'll take action at their next meeting) a $95 million loan that will cost the taxpayers $700 million in interest! The RMA can't get the financing together for the 281 toll road, so they're having to grasp at very risky, very expensive loan deals to hold together their sinking ship. Even board member Bob Thompson, their latest convert, expressed deep reservations about going into debt for 7 times the amount of the actual loan, so did Jim Reed. Calling it usury is no exaggeration! Who's causing the costs of this project to escalate out of control? Certainly not the citizens!
Last week after the Sunset Commission and legislators slammed TxDOT (watch it here) for NOT following the legislative intent of a law they passed to prohibit FREEway to tollway conversions like they're doing on 281, and AFTER they witnessed TxDOT lie under oath in full color on this video, it's no wonder the tollers are getting desperate.

No lawsuit was filed until December of 2005, two years AFTER TxDOT had the gas taxes to expand 281 and add overpasses and frontage roads. When Cintra-Zachry got involved, the project cost escalated rapidly.

The toll road size got bigger and more expensive when TxDOT tried to skirt around a law, HB 2702, prohibiting freeway to tollway conversions that mandated they build as many non-toll lanes as are there today. The plan to downgrade those non-toll freeway lanes to frontage lanes bringing the lane count from 10 (in the original gas tax plan) to up to 20 lanes (in the toll plan) and has caused the Legislature to slam TxDOT for NOT following the legislative intent of their law to prohibit freeway to tollway conversions. Watch the explosive video here.

Bottom line, TxDOT and politicians are responsible for delaying the fix to 281 and for the cost escalation when THEY decided, without a public vote, to fleece the taxpayers and generate revenue by converting 281 from a FREEway into a toll road in 2003. Let's compare: the freeway plan = $100 million, 10 lanes wide (including frontage roads) and 18 months to build, the toll road = $1.3 billion, up to 20 lanes wide (with frontage roads) and 3.8 years to build. Do the math, the toll road is a taxpayer rip-off, and the RMA and TxDOT are engaging in overt lies, half truths, and diversionary tactics to distract from the public fleecing they're promoting, despite overwhelming public opposition.

Let's get the facts straight...

281 timeline

1999

MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization, local board that allocates gas taxes to projects) votes to fund overpasses/interchanges at Evans Rd., Stone Oak Pkwy, and Borgfeld to be "let" in 2002. (Official action put these 281 projects in the MPO's 2000-2003 Transportation Improvement Program, or TIP)

2001

TxDOT public hearings promising freeway plan (including overpasses, 2 new lanes, and frontage roads) to be "let" in 2003.

MPO votes to fund all freeway improvements (lane expansion, frontage roads, overpasses) for the 2.5 miles north of 1604 and for Borgfeld overpass, places funds in 2002-2004 MPO TIP (upwards of $60 million, total pricetag to county line is $100 million, so majority of improvements could have been made in 2003).

2003

Legislature passes HB 3588 opening door to tolling, public private partnerships (PPPs that place infrastructure in the hands of foreign companies), payments to losing bidders, including converting existing freeways into toll roads.

Bexar County Commissioners vote to petition the State to open a Regional Mobility Authority (tolling entity).
Transportation Commission passes Minute Order December 18 mandating all new lanes and new roads be studied for tolling. If they can make it toll viable (including using public subsidies), everything will now become a toll road.

MPO votes to continue to fund 281 improvements with gas taxes in the 2004-2006 TIP.

2004

In July, MPO votes to convert 281 freeway improvements (already funded with gas taxes) into toll road.

2005

Cintra-Zachry plunks down an unsolicited bid to buy-up the rights to toll both 281 and 1604 offering quick cash to TxDOT in exchange for collecting tolls for 50+ years.

MPO votes to fund 281 improvements (now a toll project) with gas taxes in the 2006-2008 TIP.

Legislature passes bill, HB 2702, to prevent the conversion of freeways into toll roads. TxDOT and the RMA change plain meaning of words and defy the legislative intent by continuing to convert 281 into a toll road leaving frontage roads, not freeway lanes, as the non-toll.

In December, People for Efficient Transportation and AGUA file federal lawsuit to stop the 281 toll project.

2006

In January, Federal Highway Administration agrees TxDOT didn't follow federal law and pulls environmental clearance for 281 toll road. Toll opponents continue to fight to get gas tax plan installed in its place (at the MPO and TX Legislature).

In San Antonio Current article in August, TxDOT confirms there's now $100 million in gas taxes for 281 (the exact pricetag for ALL the FREEway improvements from 1604 to Bexar County line).

In December, MPO votes to apply gas taxes for 281 to the toll project in its 2006-2008 TIP.

2007

Legislature puts the brakes on PPPs with SB 792 moratorium, Cintra-Zachry deal pulled, Alamo RMA takes 281 toll project.

Cost for 281 & 1604 toll projects jumps from a combined $1.4 billion to $2.2 billion per San Antonio Business Journal (the cost of the 281 project by itself had never been listed as greater than $400 million up until then). There was no explanation for this new figure in the article. Not even with factoring in the construction index (which is higher than the consumer price index used for inflation) can such figures be justified.

In December, MPO votes to approve toll rates and to subsidize the 281 toll project with $325 million in public funds (not backed by tolls, that could be used to keep it a freeway) of the $475 million needed to construct the toll road (that is now 4 times more expensive than the freeway in construction costs alone).

2008

In February,  Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF) and AGUA file federal lawsuit to stop the 281 toll project. Plaintiffs announce no opposition to freeway plan, only seek to stop the toll road. Grassroots continue to work to keep 281 a freeway.

In June, Alamo RMA discloses scant financial details in public hearing and reveals the $475 million toll road will cost $864 million in interest bringing the pricetag to $1.3 billion for a project cost that started at $100 million in gas taxes (could be done in today's dollars for $170 million).

On July 22, AFTER its public hearing disclosing the financial structure of the deal, Alamo RMA does a bait and switch, changes the type and structure of the loans/bonds and seeks a different type of loan for part of the project. For a loan amount of $95 million, the cost to the taxpayers with interest will be $700 million in order to scrape funds together in a desperate attempt to finance a project the public can no longer afford.This is nothing short of usury and fiscal malfeasance!

Then, Bill Thornton blames citizens for cost escalation, not their own funding schemes with lending terms so bad it's equivalent to a sub prime mortgage loan headed for a taxpayer bailout. Neither lawsuit had anything to do with TxDOT's failure to install the FREEway improvements funded with gas taxes since 2002. The cost escalated when TxDOT/RMA turned it into a toll road.

Even factoring in inflation and higher construction costs, the FREEway plan is now $170 million (which the $325 million the MPO has allocated to the toll road would more than cover) versus the toll road cost of $1.3 billion. TxDOT delayed the project in 2003 when they went on a toll road rampage, not concerned citizens. The RMA and TxDOT will charge the taxpayers 10 times more to make 281 a toll road.

Transurban, toll road firm, made illegal campaign contributions to U.S. politicians

Link to article here.

ELECTION LAW
Toll Road Firm Made Illegal Contributions
Transurban Gave $172,000 To 90 Campaigns in 3 Years


By Anita Kumar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 3, 2008; Page B05

RICHMOND, July 2 -- A company involved in building the express toll lanes on the Capital Beltway violated federal election law when it contributed $172,000 to 90 campaigns in Virginia over the past three years, company officials said Wednesday.
This Story

ELECTION LAW: Toll Road Firm Made Illegal Contributions

Transurban (USA) Inc. Contributions From 2005 to 2008

"We made an honest mistake," said Michael Kulper, Transurban executive vice president. "We are genuinely concerned and upset about it."

The company sent letters Wednesday to every candidate and political action committee it has contributed to in Virginia, asking for the money to be returned. Many did not know about the problem when they were contacted late Wednesday.


Recipients were Democrats and Republicans, including Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), dozens of state senators and delegates, the three candidates for governor next year and Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D), who is running for Congress.

"I was not aware of it," Del. Phillip A. Hamilton (R-Newport News) said. Hamilton said that a member of his staff monitors his campaign contributions and that he does not track them himself. But he added that if the company asks for its $1,500 contribution back, he will send it.

Charlie Kelly, director of Kaine's political action committee, Moving Virginia Forward, said any out-of-compliance contributions will be returned immediately. Kaine and Moving Virginia Forward received $9,500. "It was our belief that Transurban USA's contributions were made in compliance with state and federal law at the time they were made. We received contributions from a U.S. company through U.S. representatives. As such, we had no reason to question the contributions," Kelly said. "We were disappointed to learn of this issue . . . but we appreciate Transurban's admission that no one receiving these contributions could have been aware of their noncompliance."

Transurban has invested $500 million in two projects in Virginia: helping build and maintain high-occupancy toll lanes on the Beltway and maintaining the Richmond-area Pocahontas Parkway toll road. It expects to finalize a third project to create toll lanes on interstates 95 and 395 between the 14th Street bridge and Stafford County. Transurban is working with a second company, Fluor Enterprises, on the Beltway, 95 and 395 projects.

The projects were negotiated through the Virginia Department of Transportation and Commonwealth Transportation Board. But the company has lobbied legislators on a number of bills in recent years.

Company officials were in Richmond on Wednesday to apologize to Secretary of Transportation Pierce R. Homer. "We've taken the matter under review and consideration," Homer said after the meeting.

The General Assembly will return to Richmond on Wednesday to continue a special session on transportation. Many legislators, primarily House Republicans, want to encourage more public-private partnerships, such as the Beltway project, in which companies pay for projects on roads and bridges in return for the right to collect tolls.

"We certainly hope this doesn't negatively impact on the process," said G. Paul Nardo, chief of staff to House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford).

Howell's political action committee, Dominion Leadership Trust, received $12,500, the most of any group or individual, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Nardo said Howell will cooperate with the company and return the money.

Transurban officials are asking those who received donations to return them. Kulper said the money will be donated to the Court Appointed Special Advocates program, which provides help to abused and neglected children in court. Company officials said they discovered the violations in February and began an internal review. In recent weeks, they contacted the Federal Election Commission, which is looking into the problem and could fine the company.

Transurban, major toll road player, riddled with debt, seeking handouts

Link to article here.

Toll road operator shifts into reverse
By Scott Rochfort
Sydney Morning Herald
June 20, 2008

TOLL road operator Transurban has become the first of an expected long line-up of major infrastructure companies to go to the sharemarket for a handout, after it yesterday announced plans to raise around $1 billion in capital in an effort to reduce the level of debt on its balance sheet.

In a stark reversal to Transurban's deliberate strategy of gearing-up its balance sheet under former chief executive Kim Edwards in late 2006, the group's new CEO Chris Lynch said the model of using debt to fund distributions was "not sustainable in this market".

Advocating a "new investment proposition to the market", Mr Lynch said the increased cost and difficulty in raising debt meant the company needed to return to a "more basic business philosophy".

"This is more a fair dinkum business that we're talking about here. What we've got are great assets and we've got strong cash flows that will grow coming off [the equity raising]," Mr Lynch said.

Transurban, operator of Sydney's M2 motorway and Eastern Distributor and Melbourne's CityLink, maintained its guidance of a 58c payout this financial year.

But in a rude shock to Transurban unit holders reliant on the distributions paid by the company, it said distributions would fall to 22c next financial year.

But Mr Lynch stressed the capital raising and new distribution policy would put Transurban on a sounder footing to allow it to fund new initiatives, such as Vancouver's Port Mann Highway project for which it is shortlisted.

"We'll have a lower yield than we would have if we targeted the aggressive debt-based distribution," he said.

"But we'll also have a much better growth story because we'll have an underlying business that can do some things other than figure out how it's going to feed this big distribution."

Transurban said a placement of 120 million shares managed by UBS would be fully underwritten by the Canadian Pension Plan, with which it has partnered several toll-road projects.

A further 75 per cent of the group's planned $239 million (29c per security) second half distribution reinvestment plan has been underwritten by UBS, and up to $100 million of stock will be offered to retail shareholders via a share purchase plan. The purchase plan will be capped at $5000 per unit holder and at a 2.5 per cent discount. In all, the raising will represent about 16 per cent of Transurban's current market value.

Transurban shares remained in a trading halt yesterday but the move was enough to trigger a sell-off in other toll road operators, such as ConnectEast, the owner of Melbourne's yet-to-open EastLink. Its shares plunged to a new low.

Macquarie Infrastructure fell 24c to $2.68, while the ports operator Asciano plunged to a new low of $3.32 on concerns it could be forced to raise capital to ease its crippling debts.

It is less than two years since Transurban started loading more debt on to its balance sheet.

At the group's annual meeting in 2006, Mr Edwards argued the re-gearing of Transurban's balance sheet would not raise its cost of debt.

High gas prices = death of the suburbs as economics forces change

Link to article here.

It's obvious to everyone but road builders and politicians that $4 a gallon for gas is the breaking point for Americans. There is no more money in the family budget for transportation, and it's causing major lifestyle changes and the emptying of one's savings account just to fill the gas tank today.

There just aren't enough motorists with the discretionary income to make toll roads financially viable any longer. The massive amounts of leveraged debt to erect these toll projects is a house of cards the size of the mortgage crisis or BIGGER. We all know who bailed that out, we, the taxpayers, did. Time to head this crisis off at the pass and defeat this push for toll roads NOW!

America's love affair fades as the car becomes burden of suburbia
By Paul Harris
The Observer (UK)
Sunday, July 6, 2008

The nation of road movies, freeway freedom and dreams of endless horizons is waking up to the reality of soaring fuel prices. Paul Harris in Riverside, California, reports that people are leaving their gas guzzlers in the garageIt is known as the Inland Empire: a vast stretch of land tucked in the high desert valleys east of Los Angeles. Once home to fruit trees and Indians, it is now a concrete sprawl of jammed freeways, endless suburbs and shopping malls.

But here, in the heartland of the four-wheel drive, a revolution is under way. What was once unthinkable is becoming a shocking reality: America's all-consuming love affair with the car is fading.

Surging petrol prices have worked where environmental arguments have failed. Many Americans have long been told to cut back on car use. Now, facing $4-a-gallon fuel, they have no choice.

Take Adam Garcia, a security guard who works near the railway station in Riverside. Like many Inland Empire residents, he commutes a huge distance: 100 miles a day. He used to think nothing of it. But now, faced with petrol costs that have tripled, he is taking action. He has even altered the engine of his car to boost its mileage. 'I have to. Everyone does. I can't afford to drive as much as I did,' he said.

Recent figures showed the steepest monthly drop in miles driven by Americans since 1942. At the same time car sales are collapsing, led by huge SUVs.

General Motors, once the very image of American industrial might, is in deep trouble. Cities are now investing in mass transit, hoping to tempt people back into town centres from far-flung commuter belts where they are now stranded by high petrol prices.

Jonathan Baty used to be a pioneer. The lighting designer has cycled to work every day since 1993. It's a nine-mile round trip through the heartland of a car-based culture once famously termed 'Autopia'. But now Baty has company on his daily rides as others choose two wheels rather than four to navigate southern California's streets. 'We have seen a whole emergence of a bike culture in this area. There is a crescendo of interest,' said Baty, who does volunteer work for a cycling group, Bicycle Commuter Coalition of the Inland Empire.

In Riverside, bus travel is up 12 per cent on a year ago, rising to 40 per cent on commuter routes. Use of the town's railway link is up eight per cent. A local car pooling system is up 40 per cent. It is the same in the rest of the US. In South Florida a light rail system has reported a 28 per cent jump in passengers. In Philadelphia one has shown an 11 per cent rise. Even nationwide scooter sales have shot up. At the same time car sales are hitting 15-year record lows. Last week major American car-makers reported a devastating 18 per cent drop in car sales.

The numbers point to a more fundamental shift. In America car sales carry a symbolic value that transcends the wheeler-dealering of the showroom. This is a nation of fabled road trips and Route 66. 'There is an American dream of mobility and freedom and wealth. The car is part of all that,' said Professor Michael Dear, an urban studies expert at the University of Southern California.

In the 1950s the confident nation that helped win the Second World War was expressed in classic car designs of huge fins and open tops. By the 1990s it had become the Hummer, a huge bulking car born from the military. Now there is to be another shift. For, hidden within the car sales figures, is a more complex story than a simple fall. Sales of big cars are plummeting while smaller vehicles, especially fuel-efficient hybrids, are replacing them.

GM has now closed SUV production at four plants. Its Hummer brand is up for sale, or might even be closed. GM is ploughing huge resources into its 2010 launch of the Chevy Volt, a hybrid car that may get up to 150 miles a gallon. It needs to. GM's share price recently hit a 54-year low, prompting one top investment bank to warn that the firm could go bankrupt.

The Volt, and cars like it, could become symbols of a new more conservation-minded car age. As Americans enjoyed the 4 July holiday weekend, increasing numbers of them were staying at home rather than hitting the road. Newspapers were full of tips for 'stay-cations', not weekend breaks away. Customs once scorned, such as car pooling and cutting out trips to the mall, are now commonplace. The fact is, the vast majority of Americans cannot give up their cars altogether. Too many cities lack any reliable public transport.

Adam Garcia is one of those caught. He does two jobs and his daily road trip by car is a necessity. 'We don't have much of a choice. I have to drive,' he said. Sacrifices come elsewhere, in giving up trips to the cinema and to see friends.

But America's changing relationship with the car is just part of the story of how the most powerful nation is changing in the face of the oil price rise. America has been built on an oil-based economy, from its office workers in the suburbs to its farmers in the fields.

Since the 1950s and the building of the pioneering car-orientated suburb of Levittown in Long Island, the American city has been designed for the convenience of the car as much as its human inhabitants. People live miles away from jobs, shops or entertainment. If you take away cars, the entire suburban way of life collapses. To some, that development is long overdue.

'Suburbia has been unsustainable since its creation,' said Chris Fauchere, a Denver-based film-maker who is producing a new documentary on the issue called The Great Squeeze. 'It was created around cheap oil. People thought it would flow easily from the earth forever.'

Fauchere's film, due out later this year, aims to tackle the profound changes caused by a world where oil is becoming scarcer. He does not think that it is going to be easy for America to make the adjustment. 'It is going to be tough. It is like a chain reaction through the economy. But if you look at history, it is only crisis that starts change,' he said.

The suburbs are already being hit. As cars become more expensive, the justification for suburbs seems to disappear. Some commentators have even suggested that suburbs - once the archetype of an ideal American life - will become the new slums.

In the face of expensive fuel and crashing property prices, the one-time embodiment of a certain American dream will become crime-ridden, dotted by empty lots and home to the poor and unemployed. That is already happening as crime and gang violence has risen in many suburban areas and tens of thousands of homes have been reposessed because of the mortgage crisis.

In effect, suburbs will become the new inner cities, even as once-abandoned American downtowns are undergoing a remarkable renaissance. Even malls, the ultimate symbol of American life since the war, are undergoing a crisis as consumers start to stay away.

But there are even deeper changes going on. The car, the freeway system and cheap air travel made America smaller. Everywhere was easily accessible. That, too, is ending. Higher fuel prices have dealt a terrible blow to America's airlines. They are slashing flights, raising costs and abandoning routes. Some small cities are now losing their air connections.

In effect, America is becoming larger again. That will lead to a more localised economy. To many environmentalists that is a blessing, not a curse. They point out that cheap fuel for industrial transport has meant the average packaged salad has travelled 1,500 miles before it gets to a supermarket shelf.

'Distance is now an enemy,' said Professor Bill McKibben, author of the 1989 climate-change classic The End of Nature. 'There's no question that the days of thoughtless driving are done.'

The worst hit parts of the US are not yet the suburbs or the freeways of southern California, but the small towns that dot the Great Plains, Appalachia and the rural Deep South. Even more than the Inland Empire, people in these isolated and poor areas are reliant on cheap petrol and much less able to afford the new prices at the pump. Stories abound of agricultural workers unable to afford to get to the fields and of rural businesses going bust.

Even farmers are not immune. They might not need a car to get to their fields but their fertilisers use oil-based products whose prices have gone through the roof. A handful have started using horses again for some tasks, saving petrol on farm vehicles.

The American dream of the last half century is thus changing. The car and its culture is now under a pressure unimaginable even a few years ago. 'The frontier of endless mobility that we've known our entire lives is closing,' said McKibben.

America's excess has had many imitators. Recently a delegation of Chinese government officials and architects visited an Arizona suburb near Phoenix. Approving notes were taken as they surveyed the luxurious car-driven suburban lifestyle on display. This was just one of the many delegations that regularly come from the Far East or South America.

Even as America is sobering up from its excess of cheap oil, other parts of the world are seeking to join the party. They, too, want homes far from dirty city centres, huge open roads and fast cars. It is still a beguiling vision of freedom, mobility and bountiful riches.

McKibben spent last week on a visit to Beijing. He was worried about what he saw. Even as America's obsession with the car lifestyle is ending, others are embracing it. 'The Chinese have spent the Bush years starting to build their own version of America. A key question for the planet is whether they still have time to build a version of Europe instead - global warming will probably hinge on the answer to that question,' he said.

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