Let Texans vote on highway user fees

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 01, 2013

By Steve Stagner

Special to the Star-Telegram

Texas has 80,000 miles of state highways and a rapidly growing population, but no long-term funding plan for repairing, replacing and upgrading our highway system.

It's hard to imagine there's a problem when the region is awash in construction equipment and orange barrels. But the current level of construction masks a sober reality. This program has been built on a mountain of debt -- a way of funding that is completely unsustainable. And, unfortunately, the state's credit card is maxed out.

Link to article here.

Toll Agency hits age 10 with stability, big plans
By Ben Wear
American-Statesman Staff
December 28, 2012

There was a time, early in the history of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, when it was by no means clear that the agency would see its 10th birthday this fall.

Neither was it clear that it would have two toll roads open by now, nearly a billion dollars in assets and enough credibility that local elected officials, with little or no constituent blow-back, could vote this year to loan the authority $130 million to add toll lanes to MoPac Boulevard. Under that arrangement, the authority has 25 years to pay back the money, plus $100 million in what amounts to interest.

Those express lanes on MoPac (Loop 1), to run from near Lady Bird Lake to Parmer Lane, should be under construction by summer 2013 and take about two years to open.

Posted Saturday, Oct. 13, 2012

By Dave Lieber

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 A respected Tarrant County justice of the peace is asking whether bill-collection procedures used by the North Texas Tollway Authority violate the state and federal constitutions.

The Watchdog is all ears.

As the NTTA ramps up its efforts to increase its criminal penalties for nonpayers, Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace Russell Casey hopes to put up roadblocks to stop the plan.

Casey says his argument with the NTTA is not about protecting scofflaws but about making sure that Texas drivers are not denied their legal rights.

The Hurst-based JP's main argument: "You don't pay that $15 toll bill, and then it turns into $75? They can issue an arrest warrant. That tosses away a couple of centuries' worth of civil rights."

Posted Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012

By Dave Lieber

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 The North Texas Tollway Authority wants to create an internal toll road court that would force "habitual violators" into a legal hearing with a presiding officer, opening and closing statements, witnesses, testimony and lawyers -- but no jury.

A driver who loses his case and refuses to pay up would be banned from an NTTA-operated toll road forever.

The NTTA is circulating a draft of its proposed bill for the 2013 Legislature. The Watchdog asked NTTA for a copy, but the authority declined. Instead, The Watchdog obtained a draft from another source.

In 1995, California granted a private company the right to construct express toll lanes along the State Route 91 freeway in Orange County, a region inhabited by millions, with some of the heaviest traffic flows in the nation. This was the first modern privatized highway in the United States. The California Private Transportation Company (CPTC), a partnership of three corporations—Level 3 Communications, Granite Construction, Inc., and the French toll operator Cofiroute SA—completed the project with $130 million in mostly privately sourced money. To recoup this expense, and to make a profit, CPTC was given a 35-year concession to operate the toll route. State leaders promised that the private company would provide greater efficiency and savings, and that the public would benefit from clear and safe roads, even during a time of government budget constraints.

Virginia enters into design-build public private partnership with Cintra to build a new stretch of Hwy 460 as a tollway

Bloomberg reported it here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 20, 2012

Governor McDonnell Announces That Commonwealth Signs Comprehensive Agreement and Reaches Financial Close to Build the New Route 460 in Southeast Virginia
Project to greatly improve transportation, create thousands of jobs and have a multi-billion dollar economic impact

RICHMOND - Governor Bob McDonnell announced today that the Commonwealth has reached a commercial and financial close with US 460 Mobility Partners (a partnership of Ferrovial Agroman, S.A. and American Infrastructure) and the Route 460 Funding Corporation of Virginia to finance, design and build a new 55-mile section of U.S. Route 460 in southeastern Virginia. Project development begins immediately for the new $1.4 billion roadway, which has been a top transportation priority locally, regionally and statewide for nearly a decade. The project was developed to address roadway deficiencies, improve safety, accommodate increasing freight shipments and reduce travel delays among many other needs.

Link to story here.

Oregon officials propose per-mile tax for gas sippers

By The Associated Press Published: Jan 2, 2013

See a map of the Trans Texas Corridor & all the NAFTA trade corridors here.

Trans Texas Corridor commences despite opposition
By Terri Hall
January 6, 2013
Examiner.com

When Jerry Corsi talks, people listen. Corsi’s recent column on the revival of the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) gave national attention to what Texans have been warning for a decade -- that despite Texas-sized opposition and claims of its demise by Texas Governor Rick Perry and his Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the Trans Texas Corridor is quietly being built piece by piece. The Texas Transportation Commission just awarded a public private partnership (P3), known in Texas as a Comprehensive Development Agreement (CDA), for a segment of Interstate 35E between Dallas and Denton County at its last meeting.

The award for I-35E followed on the heels of the Commission’s award of a CDA for I-35W to Spain-based Cintra as part of the Master Development Plan for the North Tarrant Express in October. Both projects relate to Perry’s original Trans Texas Corridor vision of building a 4,000-mile network of international trade corridors four football fields wide using P3s, to include toll roads, toll commuter and freight rail, utilities, telecommunication lines, and pipelines of all sorts, developed and operated by private, even foreign, corporations free of competition for a half century.

Link to review here.

Last great interstate a NAFTA highway fraught with controversy
By Terri Hall
Examiner.com
December 18, 2012

With the end of 2012 marking the 20th anniversary of NAFTA, it’s instructive to take a fresh look at the book that chronicles that battle over the last interstate highway -- a NAFTA superhighway -- yet to be built - Interstate 69, The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway by Matt Dellinger.

Dellinger credits David Graham, grandson of a railroad magnate and son of an auto manufacturer in Southern Indiana whose family farm and businesses made them legendary in their small community for decades, with the idea of building an interstate highway connecting Evansville with Indianapolis. That little idea that started over breakfast with some of Graham’s influential friends grew into a NAFTA superhighway concept in short order. Absent federal funding, an interstate through southwest Indiana was a non-starter, but connect that idea to a larger intercontinental highway connecting the busiest trade crossings in Canada with those in Mexico, and now you’ve got six other states and a plethora of economic interests joining Indiana in the quest for not only funding, but also a whole new trade corridor that will transform North America.

Link to article here.

Fourth in a four-part series. See the first article with interactive map here. See the second article on why the state is moving toward tolling here. Read the third article on more cities turning to tolling here.

Tolling Texans: Impact of Trans Texas Corridors lingers
By Aman Batheja
Texas Tribune
December 3, 2012

Nearly 11 years ago, Gov. Rick Perry offered a vision for Texas that was covered in toll roads.

At a news conference in Austin, Perry delivered the first of hundreds of pitches for the Trans-Texas Corridor, a 4,000-mile network of privately operated toll roads, railroad tracks and utility lines that would stretch across the state. The projected timeline for the project: roughly 50 years. The price tag: $175 billion.

With just a year as governor under his belt, Perry proposed the most expensive transportation project in the country. As originally planned, it could have redirected national trade routes, sparked development across rural Texas and provided a big boost to public transit.

“Some might ask, ‘Is this too big?’” Perry said at the time. “I say nothing is too big for Texas when our economic security, our environment and our quality of life are at stake.”

Link to article here.

Third in a four-part series. See the first article with interactive map here. See the second article on why the state is moving toward tolling here.

Tolling Texans: More cities planning toll lanes
By Aman Batheja
Texas Tribune
December 2, 2012

For Texas drivers, the distinction between free roads and toll roads is starting to blur.

Across the state, multiple projects are under way to add toll lanes to free roads, or to build highways with free and toll lanes alongside each other. While toll lanes, sometimes called express lanes, have been used for years in Houston, the state’s largest city, the concept is poised to spread to the next five largest cities in Texas. The trend is part of a larger boom of tolling projects sweeping the state as public officials find themselves with little tax revenue to spend on new roads. In Texas’ fast-growing urban areas, the addition of toll lanes can bridge the gap in financing for major highway projects.

The lanes are also more palatable to the public than full-fledged toll roads, according to Peter Samuel, editor of the Maryland-based Web site TOLLROADSnews.

Link to article here.

Tolling Texans: Toll projects spread as state funds lag
By Aman Batheja
Texas Tribune
November 30, 2012

The first major toll road in Texas, which opened in 1957, was a 30-mile, six-lane stretch of highway between Dallas and Fort Worth. A drive from one end to the other cost 50 cents.

By 1977, tolls had generated enough revenue to recoup the cost of the road’s construction. The tollbooths were dutifully removed. Drivers know the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike today as Interstate 30.

Fast forward 35 years and I-30, while still free, is surrounded by billions of dollars in road projects featuring toll roads or lanes. It is a similar story on a smaller scale in the state’s other urban centers as well as in some communities along the border with Mexico. As public officials across fast-growing Texas look for ways to build more roads amid a lack of public financing, toll revenue or investment from private firms hoping to collect that toll revenue are repeatedly emerging as the antidote.

Washington Post

Seventeen years ago, Virginia passed what was said to be one of most progressive pieces of legislation in the country. The Public-Private Transportation Act would help build road in the tax-averse state by shifting some of the cost and management to the private sector.

The result has been 14 miles of adjusted-toll HOT lanes on Interstate 495 in Northern Virginia, proposed extensions to tunnels in Hampton Roads, superhighway connectors in the Richmond area and a planned $1.4 billion road linking Suffolk to Petersburg.

But just how much oversight is there in such public-private partnerships? Hardly any, argues James J. Regimbal Jr., a transportation analyst in a new report published by the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center.