Sunday, Sept. 16, 2012

Like the Olympics, Texas legislators and Feb. 29, the question of whether to build Texas 45 Southwest seems to return every few years. It's here again, with its familiar cast of frustrated suburbanites, distressed environmentalists and wavering politicians.

Last week was supposed to feature public discussion of a definitive study of the traffic ripples that building the 3.6-mile tollway between FM 1626 and MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) would cause on nearby roads, particularly Brodie Lane. And in October, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization is scheduled to vote on whether to pull Texas 45 Southwest out of the area's long-range transportation plan, which would effectively snuff the road for the foreseeable future.

Mobility planners have their eyes on a seven-mile stretch of Highway 183, between Highway 290 and Highway 71. It’s a corridor that funnels traffic to and from the airport and dubbed the “Bergstrom Expressway.” Several agencies took public input on the development project Tuesday night.

Link to article here.

TxDOT head: 'Tolls are freedom'
By Terri Hall
Examiner.com

Sometimes you have to ask yourself, what Kool-Aid are some people drinking? The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Executive Director Phil Wilson told hundreds of transportation industry enthusiasts during his keynote address at the San Antonio Mobility Coalition (SAMCo) luncheon yesterday, that tolls equal freedom.

“Tolls are tool that the legislature elected by the people voted on...which the MPO comprised of elected officials made the decision to go spend...so there’s a local voice in the process that’s not TxDOT driven,” Wilson argued.

Texas Releases List of State's Most Congested Roads

• by Aman Batheja
• September 7, 2012
• Texas Tribune

A 3.7-mile stretch of Interstate 35W in Fort Worth topped a list of the 100 most congested roadways in Texas.

This is the fourth year the Texas Department of Transportation has released the list, but it’s the first time a strip of highway just north of downtown Fort Worth claimed the top spot. Last year, a portion of Woodall Rodgers Freeway in Dallas claimed the dubious honor. The year before it was a segment of I-45 in Houston.

Amanda Wilson, with the transportation division of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said ongoing construction on and near I-35 is the likely reason for the road’s rise to No. 1 on the list from  No. 8 two years ago. She noted that the Federal Highway Administration recently granted the highway environmental clearance to move forward with an expansion as part of a larger transportation project called the North Tarrant Express.

Link to article here.

Cintra tries to sell San Antonio on SH 130
By Terri Hall
Examiner.com

“There are few things that Governor Perry and President Obama agree on, but both oppose an increase in the motor fuels tax,” began Chris Lippincott, former Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) public information officer and the new public relations point man for Spain-based Cintra, the concession company for the first privatized toll road in Texas -- State Highway 130, segments 5 & 6, from Mustang Ridge to I-10 in Seguin. Lippincott was the guest speaker and chief cheerleader for Cintra’s toll road set to open this fall at yesterday’s luncheon hosted by the oldest transportation group in San Antonio, the San Antonio Transportation Association, established in 1921.

As its new spokesperson, Lippincott is the Texas face to a foreign company that’s been the center of controversy in Texas since the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) development rights were first awarded to Cintra in 2005. SH 130 is the first public private partnership (P3) tied to the Trans Texas Corridor, TTC-35, signed in the midst of a heated legislative session that eventually slapped a moratorium on such contracts in 2007.

New Texas road to have nation's fastest speed limit

Thursday, September 6, 2012 | Updated: Thursday, September 6, 2012 7:28pm

By Carol Christian

Feared by some, fancied by others, a stretch of Texas toll road will open soon with the highest speed limit in the country - 85 mph.

The Texas Transportation Commission recently set the new speed limit for a 41-mile stretch of Texas 130 between the Austin suburb of Mustang Ridge and Interstate 10 at Seguin. Driving at the 85 limit, a motorist could travel the entire distance in less 29 minutes. But that time will be shaved further by the obvious: Many drivers will hit at least 90 on the speedometer, believing troopers will not ticket anyone for exceeding the limit by just a tad.

Link to article here.

Here it is in ink, finally. Vindication that what we've been saying for years is indeed true. TxDOT is manipulating speed limits for profit, slowing down the free alternatives alongside a privately-run tollway for which the Department gets a greater share of the toll revenues if it increases speeds on the tollway. Even worse, a Spanish company, Cintra, chose the slower speed limit for its competing route, not a TxDOT engineering study. Smells a whole lot like collusion and conflicts of interest than serving the public interest. This is what public private partnerships reap upon the freedom of travel of Texans.

Link to article here.

Notice how Rick Perry backpeddles and asks his Transportation Commission to honor the law passed by Texas lawmakers to allow disabled vets to use toll roads for free. Yet he doesn't care about the rest of Texans who can't afford his punitive new taxes in the hands of his unelected commission and the unelected toll authority boards who imposed new toll taxes without our consent.

How much sense does a toll hike make when there are already not enough users of these three toll roads to even pay for the debt service payments? All Texans have bailed out these roads to the tune of $100 million in gas taxes already. Increasing rates will knock even more drivers off of these roads, not attract more traffic. This defies simple economics.

Link to article here.

So the Chicago Mayor and City Council act like all this taxpayer money capitalizing this infrastructure trust isn't going to cost taxpayers anything. The taxpayers will have to pay hefty tolls and user fees to for-profit corporations in order to pay back this money.

If these were such good investments, the private sector would undertake them themselves. By virtue of the government setting up funds of tax-free loans to private companies demonstrates these privatization schemes are nothing more than public money for private profits. The fact they're shrouded in secrecy, being railroaded over public objections, and not allowed to come under proper public scrutiny only serves to verify taxpayers suspicions...

Link to article here.

So requiring vehicle tracking chips in our cars using toll roads isn't invasive enough, now the government in San Antonio wants to insert tracking chips into student IDs and even our children's clothing!

WND EXCLUSIVE

Rebellion erupts over school's student-chipping plan

Parents protest radio monitoring of their children

by Bob Unruh This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | World Net Daily, August 30, 2012

 

A rebellion is developing in Texas against a plan by a school district in San Antonio that would monitor the exact location and activities of all students at all times through RFID chips they are being ordered to wear.

Katie Deolloz, a member of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, told WND today that parents and students from San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District confronted the school board last night, stating their concerns about privacy and other issues “clearly and passionately.”

School district officials did not respond to a WND request for comment, but the developing furor comes only days after a coalition of civil rights and privacy organizations publicly stated their opposition to “spychipping” the students.

A “position paper” from groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Big Brother Watch, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, Constitutional Alliance, Freedom Force International, Friends of Privacy USA, the Identity Project and Privacy Activism said no students should be subjected to the “chipping” program “unless there is sufficient evidence of its safety and effectiveness.”

Global toll road owner Macquarie Atlas Roads has posted another first half loss due to falls in the value of its investments.

Macquarie Atlas Roads made a net loss of $75.2 million in the six months to June 30, an improvement from its $106.4 million loss in the previous corresponding period.

The company has interests in six toll roads in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Macquarie Atlas Roads was formed from the 2010 restructure of Macquarie Infrastructure Group into two separately-listed toll road firms.

The company said like-for-like revenue from its roads rose slightly from the previous period despite lower traffic volumes, due to toll increases.

But its bottom line result was impacted by $33.4 million in falls in the value of its investments, $14.4 million in losses on financial instruments, plus a $12.1 million amortisation on the difference between the book value and fair value of some of its debt.

The company said it would continue to maintain a disciplined approach to capital management.

No interim dividend was declared, but Macquarie Atlas Roads said it anticipates declaring a dividend in the first quarter of 2013.

Link to article here.

Again, Texas taxpayers get hit with unaffordable toll taxes to take Texas toll roads, but visitors from Mexico will get a free pass.

Mexican Drivers May Avoid Tolls on El Paso Toll Road

• by Aman Batheja, Texas Tribune
• August 27, 2012

As El Paso prepares for its first toll lanes, officials in the border city are struggling with a question that, for geographical reasons, has been less of a concern in Dallas, Austin or Houston, where toll roads are prevalent and proliferating: Will Mexican drivers get a free ride?

Link to article here.

Once again, TxDOT is making speed limit decisions based on profit potential, not public safety. Cintra, the company awarded the 50+ year public private partnership contract, the first ever in Texas, will pay out a $100 million pay-off and a higher share of the toll revenues to TxDOT if it raises the speed limit on Cintra's SH 130 to 85 MPH, the highest in the U.S. SH 130 is the first leg of the Trans Texas Corridor TTC-35 project, and even in the bill to repeal the Trans Texas Corridor last year, this provision to allow speeds up to 85 MPH remained in statute so the state could make extra money off manipulating speed limits.

Kinda makes you feel like you need to take a shower, huh? Yep, special interests rule in Texas, profits and cronyism, not public safety, rule the day...

MPO HALL OF SHAME:

-- While you were spending time with your family this summer, the MPO voted to raise your taxes, through tolls, for road improvements already paid for with your tax money

Link to article here.

Texas farmer sows seeds of doubt over Keystone pipeline

SUMNER, TEXAS—The line across Julia Trigg Crawford’s family farm is practically nothing — a rivet in a skyscraper, a pebble on the highway, just four football fields out of the 2,736 kilometres that would constitute the Keystone XL pipeline.

But as the 6-foot former basketball player spreads her arms marking the planned route across her field of coastal grass, she presents a formidable obstacle for pipeline companies.

“The line in the sand for my family is that we don’t believe a foreign company building a pipeline to put money in their pockets can take a Texan’s land,” Crawford said. “If you’re going to take it, you’re going to have to prove you can.”

Talking to her, it’s tempting to forget the million-dollar campaigns, top lobbyists and public outcry and wonder if this farmer, scraping together a few thousand dollars for a lawyer and experts, is someone who can tie a knot in a pipeline that’s a flash point in the U.S. presidential campaign.

Link to article here.

Texas risks losing $31 million in federal transportation funding

Posted Friday, Aug. 17, 2012

By Gordon Dickson, Star-Telegram

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

IRVING - More than $473 million in funds earmarked years ago by Congress for transportation projects remains unspent -- including nearly $31 million in Texas -- and federal officials on Friday declared that states have until the end of the year to spend the money or risk losing it.

"There are a lot of crumbling roads, crumbling bridges, crumbling transit projects. We're ready to put the money to work now," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said during a news conference call. "There is pent up demand to fix infrastructure."

Texas officials, several of whom were attending the Transportation and Infrastructure Summit Friday in Irving, said the move by Washington wouldn't have a major impact on ongoing road work in the region -- although a list of earmarks published Friday by the U.S. Transportation Department included relatively small amounts of money for a handful of major projects in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.