Road funding proposal to go before voters in 2014

Link to article here.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has lost his mind if he thinks his committee will come up with a 'conservative' approach to transportation funding. This same Senator, Tommy Williams, insisted they raid emergency funds to pay for a core function of government - roads - when the legislature had an $8 billion surplus going into the session!

State road funding method goes to voters in 2014
By Howard Roden
The Villager - Your Houston News
Wednesday, September 25, 2013

It wasn’t state lawmakers’ first method at infusing more money into the Texas transportation system, but by the end of a third special session, they had settled on the “politically acceptable” choice, state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, said.

In August, both sides of the 83rd Legislature passed House Joint Resolution 1, a constitutional amendment that diverts a portion of the state’s oil and natural gas severance tax to roads and transportation infrastructure.

West VA Senator upset with new toll increase

Watch the interview here.

Senator reacts to possible toll increase
By Tim Carrico, Weekend Anchor
September 22, 2013
The State Journal

CHARLESTON, WV - The price of tolls could go up, again. Earlier this month, the Governor's Highway Safety Commission proposed a new plan to lock toll booths on West Virginia's Interstates for the next 30 years.

State Journal Decision Maker host Bray Cary sat down with Southern West Virginia 6th District Senator Bill Cole, who represents Mercer, Mingo, McDowell and Wayne counties.

Senator Cole says it is unfair to bring more taxes on the people of southern West Virginia, when they're financially unstable.

"If you're not one of the in-state people traveling the interstate, that's great news," said Senator Cole. "But if you're one of the 25-percent, the most impoverished part of our state, is going to get a $250-million tax imposed on them."

Under proposed plans, motorists in southern West Virginia would have to pay $4.38 at each toll.

West Virginia needs to generate more than one-billion dollars to fulfill its plans to expand the state's infrastructure and maintain current roads.

Toll and fee increases would account for about $100-million of that billion.

Cintra secures financing for extension of North Tarrant Express

Link to article here.

Ferrovial-led consortium to extend the North Tarrant Express in Texas
Construction & Maintenance News
September 2013

Ferrovial, through a consortium led by subsidiary Cintra Infraestructuras, has achieved financial close for the concession to extend the North Tarrant Express in Texas (US). Investment is estimated at 1.35 billion dollars (around 1.01 billion euro). NTE Mobility Partners Segments 3 LLC, the consortium led by Cintra, also includes Meridiam Infrastructure, Dallas Police and Fire Pension System and APG.

The project will be financed with a combination of public and private funds: 531 million dollars from a federal TIFIA loan (Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act); 127 million dollars from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT); 274 million dollars in Private Activity Bonds (PABs), maturing in 25 and 30 years (which were 2.5 and 4 times oversubscribed respectively); and 430 million dollars in equity.

This operation again highlights Cintra's capacity to issue debt in the capital markets. Enrique Díaz-Rato, CEO of Cintra: "We are very pleased to have successfully attained financial close for this project. We have achieved an efficient capital structure despite the complex economic situation at present. We are looking forward to commencing a project that will bring growth and employment to the region, as well as great benefits to citizens".

The operation also evidences investor appetite for managed lanes projects. Managed lanes are currently the most advanced, safest and most reliable form of tolling. This totally electronic barrier-free system does not require vehicles to stop, and tolls are set dynamically on the basis of demand.

The construction of segment 3A, measuring 6.5 miles (10.5 kilometres), is part of the project to rebuild and expand one of the most important corridors in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, the fifth-largest metropolitan area in the United States and one of the fastest-growing conurbations in the country.

The Cintra-led consortium will upgrade the existing lanes, which will be toll-free, and build two additional managed lanes each way which will use electronic tolling; the consortium will also handle operation and maintenance of the entire roadway, which includes a second section, 3B, measuring 3.6 miles (5.8 kilometres) built by TxDOT. The 43-year concession will start from the date the highway opens to traffic, which is scheduled for mid-2018.

Govt agencies to track motorists funnel data to insurance companies

Link to article here.

Federal Agencies Trade Motorist Data to Insurance Companies
Department of Homeland Security agrees to track motorists using a database built by the insurance industry.
The Newspaper.com
August 24, 2013

Federal agencies are giving away data on the movements of innocent motorists in return for software and equipment provided by the insurance industry. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Tuesday released documents revealing in greater detail how federal agencies are using the data collected by automated license plate recognition systems (ALPR or ANPR in Europe). These devices are use cameras and computer algorithms to create an history of where people drive, and when. As first reported in Forbes, the new EPIC documents show the data generated by the cameras are being handed over to private insurance firms.

EPIC and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been hitting government agencies with freedom of information requests regarding the use of license plate readers. Until now, the public has been kept in the dark about how their driving history is being used, or lead to believe the cameras would only be used to find specific, targeted vehicles on a "hot list" of stolen cars. Instead, the systems are building a history of the movements of people who have done nothing wrong.

"Our worst fears about license plate recognition technology appear to be unfolding," wrote Kade Crockford, Director of the Technology for Liberty Project of the ACLU of Massachusetts. "The government is creating large pools of our location information and sharing it widely among law enforcement agencies nationwide, absent any mention of connections to investigations or criminal activity."

The documents show the Drug Enforcement Agency and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) signed a memorandum of understanding authorizing the sharing of license plate reader data. This means tracking information on motorists who drive through border checkpoints -- many of which are located on travel routes far from the actual border -- are shared with DEA agents. The information will be further spread to "intelligence, operations and fusion centers" as well as state and local law enforcement, as desired. The data is stored for two years, unless transferred to another system with a longer data retention policy.

In November 2005, Customs and Border Protection also entered into an agreement with the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), which is an organization of nearly every insurance firm in the country. The stated purpose is to prevent the export of stolen motor vehicles. The border agency agreed to "make available to NICB electronic LPR information on vehicles leaving or entering the United States." In return, NICB agreed to create a database containing all of the license plate information.

"NICB agrees to procure the equipment, software and programming resources necessary to develop the capability to utilize, refine and organize the information provided by CBP," the memorandum stated.

With CBP approval, the data entry, database and other operational work could be outsourced to third-party firms.

Truckers take issue with Reason Foundation for wanting to toll interstates

Link to article here.

Reason Foundation profits off of pushing tolls on the American public and we're glad to see OOIDA challenging their biased reports that suggest tolling all interstates.

OOIDA takes issue with 'toll the interstates' study
By David Tanner,
Land Line Magazine
9/17/2013

OOIDA takes serious issue with a Reason Foundation study that suggests all interstate highways should become toll roads in the future. The average toll for a truck, as suggested by the D.C.-based think tank, would be 14 cents a mile.



“Once again, we’ve got the ivory tower academics who do not understand how truckers and motorists use and already pay for our highway system coming up with a scheme for tolling in which everything works like clockwork,” OOIDA Director of Government Affairs Ryan Bowley said.



Government can track movements using toll tags

Link to article with video here.

Can Authorities Use Your E-Z Pass to Track Your Movements?
by Kashmir Hill
Forbes
September 16, 2013

After spotting a police car with two huge boxes on its trunk - that turned out to be license-plate-reading cameras - a man in New Jersey became obsessed with the loss of privacy for vehicles on American roads. (He's not the only one.) The man, who goes by the Internet handle "Puking Monkey," did an analysis of the many ways his car could be tracked and stumbled upon something rather interesting: his E-ZPass, which he obtained for the purpose of paying tolls, was being used to track his car in unexpected places, far away from any toll booths.

Puking Monkey is an electronics tinkerer, so he hacked his RFID-enabled E-ZPass to set off a light and a "moo cow" every time it was being read. Then he drove around New York. His tag got milked multiple times on the short drive from Times Square to Madison Square Garden in mid-town Manhattan and also on his way out of New York through Lincoln Tunnel, again in a place with no toll plaza.

At Defcon, where he presented his findings, Puking Monkey said he found the reading of the E-ZPass outside of where he thought it would be read when he put it in his car "intrusive and unsettling," quoting from Sen. Chuck Schumer's remarks about retailers tracking people who come into their stores using their cell phones.

This isn't a part of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, the millions-dollar project emulating London's Ring of Steel with extreme surveillance. It's part of Midtown in Motion, an initiative to feed information from lots of sensors into New York's traffic management center. A spokesperson for the New York Department of Transportation, Scott Gastel, says the E-Z Pass readers are on highways across the city, and on streets in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and have been in use for years. The city uses the data from the readers to provide real-time traffic information, as for this tool. The DoT was not forthcoming about what exactly was read from the passes or how long geolocation information from the passes was kept. Notably, the fact that E-ZPasses will be used as a tracking device outside of toll payment, is not disclosed anywhere that I could see in the terms and conditions.

When I talked to the E-ZPass Inter-agency Group - the umbrella association that oversees the use of the pay-toll-paying tags in 15 different states - it said New York is the only state that is employing this inventive re-use of the tags. (That statement will be tested: Puking Monkey lent his hacked pass to a friend going on a road trip to see if it went off unexpectedly in any other states.)

TransCore, a company that makes the RFID readers that New York is using to pick up on E-ZPasses, was more forthcoming. A 2013 case study from the company notes that the $50 million project to improve traffic congestion in New York also involved the installation of a network of traffic microwave sensors, and has been successful enough that the city plans to expand it another 270 blocks.

"The tag ID is scrambled to make it anonymous. The scrambled ID is held in dynamic memory for several minutes to compare with other sightings from other readers strategically placed for the purpose of measuring travel times which are then averaged to develop an understanding of traffic conditions," says TransCore spokesperson Barbara Catlin by email. "Travel times are used to estimate average speeds for general traveler information and performance metrics. Tag sightings (reads) age off the system after several minutes or after they are paired and are not stored because they are of no value. Hence the system cannot identify the tag user and does not keep any record of the tag sightings."

In other words, reading of the E-ZPasses won't be very useful for uniquely tracking you or your speed, but it's a reminder once again that if you accept some kind of tracking device, it may be used in ways you wouldn't expect.

As for blocking that tracking, if you're not excited about it, Puking Monkey recommends that you "bag the tag, and only bring it out when you want to pay a toll." Most tags come with a "Faraday cage" type bag through which it can't be read.

"If NYDOT can put up readers," says Puking Monkey, "Other agencies could as well."

Legal tab for FBI probe of NTTA board member costing taxpayers over $148,000

Link to article here.

The corruption at the NTTA has got to be cleaned up. Let's hope the FBI does just that by the time this investigation is over….

Legal bill for North Texas Tollway Authority board member in FBI probe: $148,790 and counting
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER
Transportation Writer
June 16, 2013

The federal investigation into possible conflicts of interest among current and former board members of the North Texas Tollway Authority is getting costly for the authority.

Already, legal bills to pay for a private attorney for one of its board members, David Denison, have reached $148,790, the authority has disclosed.

The investigation continues, as does the NTTA’s full cooperation, officials there confirmed Friday.

Denison asked the board in December to cover his legal expenses tied to the investigation.

Denison has said he has done nothing wrong and is cooperating fully. The request to cover his bills is in keeping with state law and board policy. The vote in December carried a caveat, however: If it is shown later that the investigation is tied to conduct by Denison that violates the law or board policies, he will have to reimburse the NTTA.

Denison, a former Lewisville mayor, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. No charges have been filed against anyone in connection with the investigation. The FBI has never said what it is looking for, or even confirmed the investigation.

When the investigation began in October, the NTTA did not announce it to the public. Instead, it disclosed the investigation to investors through an official statement tied to a round of bond sales. It confirmed the investigation when asked about it by The Dallas Morning News.

Since then, the authority has declined to comment on the investigation or reveal whom the FBI has approached. Some board members and other officials have said they have been approached, but details about the conversations have not been made public.

The silence was so deep, in fact, it was not clear whether the investigation had continued beyond October.

But, on June 8, in a 317-page official statement to investors related to a new round of $409.6 million in bond sales, the NTTA said for the first time that the investigation has continued.

“In October 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed several officials of the authority regarding any knowledge the officials may have concerning the conduct of certain current and former board members, including possible conflicts of interests pertaining to authority business,” the statement reads.

“The authority has no reason to believe that it is the target of the investigation or that the investigation will [damage the NTTA’s ability to make its debt payments]. The investigation is ongoing and the authority is cooperating fully with the FBI. There can be no assurance that the investigation will be limited to the matters described above or that the authority will not become a target at a later date.”

The bond disclosure statement, required as part of the process, would ordinarily already be posted to the NTTA’s website, but that hasn’t yet happened.

The News discovered the document on a third-party site aimed at bond investors and confirmed its contents with the NTTA.

Spokeswoman Susan Slupecki said the NTTA is simply running behind schedule and will soon upload the document to its site.

She said the NTTA would not comment further, however, because the FBI has instructed officials not to comment about the investigation.

In a statement Friday, she said: “The NTTA has cooperated fully with the FBI. Consistent with that cooperation it will not comment on the FBI investigation beyond what it has disclosed in its official statements.”

Since Denison asked the board to cover his legal bills in December, Slupecki said, NTTA chairman Kenneth Barr has also asked the authority to cover his legal bills. That request, however, is pending.

Barr, who has not been questioned by the FBI, has only had $400 in legal bills associated with the matter, she said.

“In his role as the new chairman of the board, Chairman Barr consulted with legal counsel to be prepared should he be contacted by the FBI. Chairman Barr has not been contacted by FBI.”

VA Supreme Court Judge's conflict of interest on toll case raises ire

Watch the news story here.

A Virginia Supreme Court Judge voted for the bill that's subjecting the Downtown and Midtown tunnels to tolls when he was a legislator in a total conflict of interest yet he has not recused himself from the case. Other judges have ties to law firms or other interests connected with the private firm wanting to impose tolls on Virginians. The swamp is so murky it's almost as if the whole case has to be scrubbed by an outside court - will this end up before the U.S. Supreme Court? How many of those justices could also be compromised by the special interests involved in tolling?

Justice's interest in tolls case questioned
By Andy Fox
September 2013
Wavy.com

RICHMOND, Va. (WAVY) - "A judge shall respect and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” – Canons of Judicial Conduct for the State of Virginia

There are seven State Supreme Court Justices who will decide if tolls will come to two tunnels in Hampton Roads. And some believe one of those justices may have a conflict of interest in the case.

Oil boom a bust for Texas rural roads

Link to article here.

A New Boom for Oil, but a Bust for State's Rural Roads
by Aman Batheja
Texas Tribune
September 13, 2013

COTULLA — At a convention center in this city 70 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, Dimmit County Judge Francisco Ponce said this week what many of the 200 people in the room were thinking.

Texas Department of Transportation officials explained why the agency needed to move forward with plans to convert some well-used paved roads around South Texas to gravel. For Ponce, the explanation exposed a long-standing problem in the agency’s perspective.

"TxDOT’s priorities are not in the rural counties," he told the agency’s leadership, drawing cheers. "I don’t know how they can sit here and say it’s safer to gravel a road than it is to fix a road."

Amid financing challenges, TxDOT announced seven weeks ago that it planned to convert 83 miles of farm-to-market road in the heart of the oil-drilling boom to gravel, most of that in the Eagle Ford Shale. Following a public outcry, the agency issued a 60-day moratorium on converting any roads. That has turned the end of October into a grim deadline for county officials hoping to find a way off the so-called gravel list. And as they consider options that include taking over the maintenance of the roads or soliciting donations from the energy sector, the officials say they are being punished for their region’s boom.

This week’s meeting was the highest-profile part of a recent effort by TxDOT officials to better explain their reasoning behind the plan. While the South Texas drilling boom has added billions of dollars to the state’s coffers, it has also badly damaged local infrastructure. Around the region, drivers must now navigate around and across yawning potholes, cracked asphalt and splintering shoulders. TxDOT has struggled to maintain its farm-to-market roads, which were not designed to handle the weight of thousands of heavy trucks that now regularly traverse rural communities like Cotulla to access new wells.

TxDOT Deputy Executive Director John Barton explained at the meeting that the agency lacks the funds to continue maintaining some of the roads as asphalt. Repaved roads that would typically last a decade are wearing away in three or four years. And the road conditions and drilling-related traffic are contributing to a spike in accidents.

“We have to maintain these roadways to an acceptable standard,” Barton said. “The difficult part is we have to consider all options of what we can do with the resources that we have.”

Converting the roads to gravel and lowering speed limits to 30 mph will make for a smoother and safer drive, Barton said. But many local residents predicted that the conversions would lead to more accidents, particularly if trucks ignore the reduced speed limits.

Several local officials suggested the plan was insulting given the state’s economic windfall from the Eagle Ford Shale.

“With all the money going into Austin, this is not right,” Atascosa County Judge Diana Bautista said.

While Live Oak County Judge Jim Huff agreed with TxDOT that converting some roads to gravel would be safer for drivers than leaving them in their current condition, he said the optics of the plan was breeding resentment.

“We’re sending money up there and we’re getting nothing back,” Huff said. “That’s what the public perceives.”

State lawmakers gave TxDOT a fraction of the budget it requested this year. The agency’s request included a one-time infusion of $1.6 billion solely to address damage on state roads related to energy sector development.

The Legislature allocated $225 million toward that issue. In an August special session, lawmakers approved a measure to divert some of the oil and gas tax revenue currently earmarked for the Rainy Day Fund toward road construction and maintenance. The plan is expected to raise $1.2 billion annually if Texas voters in 2014 approve amending the state constitution to allow it.

In the meantime, the gravel plan is part of TxDOT’s effort to stretch its dollars and still address congestion issues around the state, including worsening congestion in urban areas. Agency officials said the roads that are converted to gravel would be repaved after the drilling-related traffic subsides.

“This is not a topic we take lightly,” TxDOT Executive Director Phil Wilson said.

La Salle County resident Leslie Kinsel said it was frustrating that state officials were not adjusting their priorities given the regional impact of the Eagle Ford Shale.

“The tables have completely turned,” Kinsel said. “We’re giving to the rest of the state. We’re driving the rest of the state. We need help right now.”

Moody's warns outlook for toll roads negative

Link to article here.

Investors Go Negative On Toll Roads
Motorists can expect to pay more as toll roads hike rates to meet mounting debt payments.
The Newspaper.com
September 12, 2013

Driving on toll roads will continue to be a growing expense for motorists, according to a special report released Tuesday by Moody's Investors Service. The credit ratings agency keeps tabs on 42 American toll roads that collectively hold $80.2 billion in debt. Since toll road traffic remains depressed, motorists using these pay routes will have to pay higher tolls to meet the debt burden. While state and federal transportation officials remain bullish on tolling, Moody's is cautioning potential investors.

"Moody's outlook for the US toll road sector remains negative in 2013," the analysts noted. "Our February 2013 US Toll Roads Outlook report noted that negative credit pressures continue to outweigh the positives."

Collin County won't be the toll collector for the NTTA

Link to article here.

Not only does blocking a person's car registration violate the Constitution and our civil rights to criminalize people for failure to pay a debt, it slows down the time it takes and/or costs all taxpayers more for more employees to process car registrations

Collin County won't cooperate to catch toll road scofflaws
by JOBIN PANICKER
September 11, 2013
WFAA.com

It's supposed to be a tool for the North Texas Tollway Authority to get drivers to pay unpaid tolls and fines.

In June, the Texas legislature granted the agency the power to block vehicle registrations until dues were paid.

But Collin County Tax Assessor Collector Kenneth Maun says that is not his job. He says when people come to the county office to register a vehicle, they shouldn’t be told to go elsewhere to first pay the NTTA.

“I'm not staffed to serve NTTA, nor do I feel they're doing a competent job of collection,” Maun said.

There are currently 79,116 habitual violators who have outstanding tolls. The NTTA describes a "habitual violator" as a driver who has violated at least 100 transactions or tolls without paying. These violators owe roughly $53 million in outstanding tolls.

When the legislature granted toll authorities the power to block vehicle registrations, it required them to let delinquent drivers pay off the fines over three months.

“Here we are 90 days in and we've removed the fees, and what's the next argument? Why aren't you paying?” asked NTTA spokesman Michael Rey.

In that time, roughly 3,500 people have paid up, but that window is closing on Friday.

The NTTA says it's about fairness. It already has five-year agreements with Dallas and Denton counties, and soon with Tarrant, to help process with registration holds. Rey said those agreements let counties collect, through small fees, to help pay for any processing.

Maun says registration holds would require seven more employees to process. And says his current employees don't have time to process these holds without hurting an average service time of three minutes for customers.

“They already have to pay us for a piece of plastic. They're not going to like coming here and being denied that piece of plastic and have to pay a lot more elsewhere,” Maun said.

Of the 79,116 habitual violators 16,831 are from Collin County, representing 21 percent of the outstanding tolls.
“I think any message that says don't pay for what you used is a bad message,” said Rey.

Maun says exercising these holds would only open the door for other agencies to ask the county do the same for them.

Foreign company seeks eminent domain for its high speed rail scheme

Link to article here.

You bet this high speed rail scheme by a foreign company revives the opposition that ensured with the Trans Texas Corridor. Under NO circumstances should a private entity have the power of eminent domain for its own private profit. Texans have Constitutional protection against such and lawmakers had better take note before they try to abuse property rights so a foreign company can profit from high speed rail in Texas.

The Politics of High-Speed Rail in Texas
by Aman Batheja
Texas Tribune
October 9, 2013

The current political calculus is pretty simple: If the Obama administration is in favor of something, Republicans will be against it. In recent years, high-speed rail has been added to that list as Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime rail enthusiast, has touted federal proposals to fund projects around the country in the face of GOP opposition.

Fracking: Road damage in South Texas takes its toll

Link to article here.

While South Texas Sees Dollar Signs, Roads See Damage and Accidents
March 27, 2013 | 8:47 AM
By Terrence Henry
State Impact

You don’t have to go far from Greg Sengelmann’s office in the center of Gonzales to see something’s different about South Texas these days. “That’s the city’s RV park that we put in, to house all the [oilfield] workers out there,” he says, pointing to dozens of motorhomes parked on a grass hill outside the J.B. Wells Arena (also home to youth rodeos and vintage airstream rallies). “You’ll see probably ten other ones throughout the county.”

Sengelmann is the General Manager for the Gonzales County Underground Water Conservation, tasked with managing and protecting the area’s groundwater. As drilling rapidly expands in the Eagle Ford Shale and other parts of Texas thanks to the spread of hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”) and horizontal drilling, it’s changing small towns and communities.

“I think it’s a net positive,” says Sengelmann. “I think people are mainly happy about it. Because it’s bringing in a lot of money and new activity.”

The questions are whether those changes are all for the better, and how long the money and activity will last.

A new economic impact study released Tuesday by the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Institute for Economic Development shows that the fiscal benefits of the boom are huge in the Eagle Ford Region, an oil-rich area about 50 miles wide and 400 miles long. Jobs? 116,000 of them, full-time, in 2012, the report says. Money? $61 billion in economic impact for the region last year, with more than two billion dollars in tax revenues for state and local government that year.

In Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, drilling jobs quadrupled from 2011 to 2012. Locals can also get a cut, with at least $72 million paid out overall to landowners for land leases in 2012, according to the study. Royalties paid out to landowners, which are a cut of the oil and gas drilled, were estimated at the astronomical total of $3 billion.

All of this means more money for local coffers and greater economic prosperity for communities. But the boom is not without downsides, and at the top of the list is truck traffic and accidents.

There were 2,710 fatal and serious injury crashes and 248 traffic fatalities in 2012 in the Eagle Ford region, according to preliminary crash data provided by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Traffic fatalities in the Eagle Ford saw an increase of 40 percent. Fatalities were also up in the Permian Basin drilling region of West Texas. Across the state, traffic fatalities were up ten percent in 2012.

“There’s been a lot more accidents in our county lately,” says Sengelmann. “And the county roads are really becoming beat up.”

Many of the county roads where drilling haulers are were built in the fifties, and not designed for today’s heavy, hulking trucks, which make multiple trips to drilling sites. TxDOT (which says it’s already cash-strapped) says the cost of repairing state and local road infrastructure from drilling damage is $4 billion a year.

According to TxDOT, just one oil or gas well using fracking requires:
    •    1,184 loaded trucks to start production
    •    353 loaded trucks a year to maintain production
    •    997 loaded trucks every five years in order to re-frack the well

Doing the math, the agency says that just to frack a well, it’s like adding the traffic of 8 million normal cars to a road, then 2 million cars after that annually to maintain the well.

In Gonzales County, Sengelmann has observed routine patrols targeting improper or illegal trucking by the Department of Public Safety. “When they come into town, you can’t miss ‘em,” he says, “And they stop these trucks all over the place. They’ll move up and down the Eagle Ford Shale to reign [truckers] in and make sure they’re complying with the rules.”

The Texas state legislature is considering several bills that would help alleviate the problem, as well as efforts to stop diversions from drilling tax revenues. One bill, SB 300, by State Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, would take money from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to help fix roads. “What my bill would do is [provide] one-time funding of approximately 400 million dollars to fix the county roads in those different counties,” Uresti said at a StateImpact Texas panel on fracking in February. “They’re just falling apart.”

State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, has filed a bill, SB 941, that would require drillers to use “protective measures” to prevent road damage.

Neither bill has had a committee hearing yet.

The Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas drilling in the state, maintains that truck traffic doesn’t fall under their jurisdiction.

Some drilling companies, like Pioneer Natural Resources and Petrohawk Corp., have entered into voluntary agreements with DeWitt County to pay road repair fees for each well they drill there.

In the TxDOT presentation on road impacts from drilling, it was noted that it was less costly to proactively address the issues by strengthening and resurfacing roads before they are damaged by drilling than to do so after the damage has already occurred.

A task force on the issue led by TxDOT has also looked into having the industry pay for its share of damage, charging more for Commercial Drivers Licenses (CDL), and amending the tax code to allow counties to get more revenue from new oil and gas wells, increasing fines for overweight and oversized trucks, among other ideas.

Leap backwards: TxDOT downgrading paved roads to gravel prompts new funding

Link to article here.

Leap backwards: TxDOT downgrading paved roads to gravel prompts new funding
By Terri Hall
October 9, 2013
Examiner.com

It’s dog eat dog as the fight over scarce road money gets uglier in Texas. At today’s Senate Select Committee on Transportation Funding, the Senate Transportation Committee Chair Robert Nichols took issue with DeWitt County Judge Daryl Fowler’s comments that urban areas of the state are ‘pillaging’ road funds he believes are largely being provided by rural areas where the oil shale boom has swelled the state’s coffers of oil and gas severance taxes to windfall levels.

Nichols was quick to point out that eighty percent of all transportation dollars come from urban areas of the state and that urban areas, in fact, subsidize the rural areas, not the other way around. Fowler quickly retreated, but it reveals a very deep divide shaping up around the state as tax revenues pour in from rural areas yet fail to solve the perpetual road funding shortage.

Fitch Ratings predicts trouble for toll roads

Link to article here.

Fitch can spin it all it wants, but public private partnerships ALWAYS involve public money for private profits, cost too much to be worth the supposed public benefit, and at the end of the day mean underutilized roads due to high cost.

10/9/2013
Credit Rating Firm Catalogs Toll Road Woes
Throughout the world, toll road projects go bankrupt or face increasing risks according to Fitch Ratings.
The Newspaper.com

Fitch Ratings, sees trouble ahead for toll road projects and public private partnerships in general. In a report issued Monday, the credit rating agency outlined the failures of tolling and related projects in the United States and around the world, though the agency remains optimistic on the viability of this road funding mechanism.

"While one can view public private partnerships as a glass half full or as a glass half empty, it is Fitch's view that the former is the better perspective," the analysts explained. "Public private partnerships can provide public value, but need to be carefully crafted to address all stakeholder concerns. When public private partnerships are viewed to have failed, the issue is often inappropriate transaction design and application."

Book review: Divided Highways - Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life

BOOK REVIEW

Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life
By Tom Lewis
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 2013
PBK, 387 pages, Updated Edition, US$19.95
ISBN: 978-0-8014-7822-2
Reviewed by Terri Hall for Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research
September 17, 2013

"Little else has given common man access to landscape, mobility, and commerce, as interstates,” observes Tom Lewis is his book Divided Highways, Building Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life. Americans have always prized their freedom, and freedom of mobility is no different. It took forty years to build the interstate highway system, not thirteen years as the Federal-Aid Highway Act originally intended when it was signed by President Eisenhower in 1956. But few national programs have transformed the American way of life so positively as the interstate highway system.

Interstates facilitate Americans’ ability “to live where we want and go where we wish.” At the ribbon cutting of one of the last stretches of interstate to open in Los Angeles in 1993, a minister declared the structure that which “links and binds us together.”

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San Antonio board completes hostile takeover of Hill Country

MPO board approves expansion plan
By Vianna Davila
San Antonio Express-News
September 30, 2013

After months of discussion and negotiation, the San Antonio Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization on Monday voted to expand its membership to include five cities and counties, plus two local transportation groups.

The vote now brings the 19-member board to 21. Boerne, New Braunfels, Seguin, and Comal and Guadalupe counties will each get one seat.

VIA Metropolitan Transit technically loses one of its two seats but will retain representation — the Advanced Transportation District, which oversees collection of a quarter-cent transportation sales tax, will now get a board spot. The ATD and the VIA board membership are the same.

The Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, another local transportation organization with the power to toll road projects, will also get a seat for the first time.

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Toll tags & tracking: Coming to a road near you

Link to article here.

Toll tags & tracking: Big government coming to a road near you
By Terri Hall
October 3, 2013
Examiner.com

Whether it’s license plate readers, toll tags, or mobile phones, one thing is certain - you are being tracked. A recent uptick in reports of toll tags being used to track vehicle movements has created a firestorm of controversy over how such information can be used, more importantly, abused, and how such invasions of privacy are justified to travel a public road.

In the age of electronic tolling, most Toll Tags and EZ Passes are embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology that allows toll equipment to detect and record when a car passes through its gantry for billing purposes. Toll agencies promise the information is only used for billing and toll collection, yet there’s rarely any policy in place to protect personal information, how long the information is stored, and to whom the data can be sold to or shared with.

Nix Prop 6: Public drain for private gain

Link to article here.

Public drain for private gain: Prop 6 rural water raid to benefit developers
By Terri Hall
October 12, 2013
Examiner.com

Have you ever had a kid ask for seconds during a meal before he’s even finished what’s on his plate? Well, that’s what the Texas legislature is asking of voters with Proposition 6 on November 5. Lawmakers want Texans to pass this constitutional amendment to approve more funding for water projects.

A similar measure narrowly passed in November 2011 for a $6 billion revolving fund to loan money to local government entities for water infrastructure, outside constitutional debt limitations. Now in 2013, the Texas Legislature is asking voters for permission to raid $2 billion from the state’s emergency fund, known as the Rainy Day Fund, to assist local agencies of government in funding water projects from the state’s water plan.

A&M signs two P3 deals, giving private firms monopolies

Link to article here.

Allowing private developers to takeover public land is a horrific abuse of property rights. Whether the landowners donated their land to the university or had it taken using eminent domain, it was in the name of a 'public use.' Now, these projects will directly benefit private companies with government-sanctioned monopolies. One of the projects, the Discovery Center, is designed to lease out office space to other private firms, not even for university use or any real 'public use' as required by the Texas Constitution.

Rep. John Raney needs to go if he thinks this is a good deal for Texans. A&M can force students into this privately-developed housing and make them pay whatever the company says it needs to achieve the level of profit it wishes. Meanwhile, the cost of a college education shoots through the roof. It's a sad day in Texas when our elected & public officials sell us out and then say it's 'all good' because they can shift the debt off their own books, but make us pay it back with interest PLUS profit to private firms granted monopolies. Note how all details were discussed behind closed doors in executive session, not in public. What are they not telling us and what do they NOT want the public to know?

Texas A&M System regents OK ground leases for private developers
By ALLEN REED | Sunday, September 8, 2013
The Eagle.com

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents have approved ground leases to allow private developers access to university land.

The regents approved two agenda items at a special meeting Saturday morning. Regent Judy Morgan was absent. The items were approved unanimously without comment or discussion by the regents.

Chairman Phil Adams said the regents discussed the items during their closed-door executive session.

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