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State governments are transiting away from contributing general funds (taxes) toward a user fee based system. Some may see this as a means to lighten the responsibility for state government. Others, myself included, take the view that burden sharing is required. Some fees can be raised. Some economies achieved. In the end, however, the State must shoulder some of the "burden."
In California, for instance, our 270 state parks return $4.2 billion each year by way of taxes, revenues to the general fund, and economic activity to the local economies. In fact, it is the more rural economies, where high unemployment relative to the state as a whole and low per household incomes are most felt. Local communities rely on their state parks.
TransUrban to dispose of U.S. toll road, profits tank 51%
Transurban mulls disposal of U.S. toll road
FY profit down 51% to A$54.9M, distribution guidance disappoints; shares fall 1.5%
By Ross Kelly
Wall Street Journal
SYDNEY--Transurban Group (TCL.AU) said Tuesday it's mulling the disposal of a U.S. toll road that drove a 51% slide in its annual profit and indicated its robust Australian assets aren't invincible to softer economic conditions at home.
The Pocahontas Parkway in the southern part of Virginia state was constructed in anticipation of...
Read more here (access for subscribers only).
Wider highways safer
When dollar signs are involved, even TxDOT will cram toll lanes inside medians and takeover shoulders putting safety at risk to make a buck. Not only is the Virginia DOT ignoring these facts on its I-95 project, the Central Texas Mobility Authority is also ignoring this TTI study when it will squeeze toll lanes on MoPac in Austin, requiring 9 safety design exceptions to do it.
Texas Study Finds Wider Highways Safer, Virginia Narrows Roads
Texas Transportation Institute concludes wider roads are safer, while Virginia narrows lanes so it can impose tolls on Interstate 95.
The Newspaper.com
August 15, 2012
An forthcoming study by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) found highway widening projects increased safety in the Lone Star State. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) tasked TTI to evaluate a broad range of safety improvements undertaken by the agency, but researchers decided to offer a preview last week of one of TxDOT's most effective programs."The agency's roadway widening initiative has been a tremendous success, both for increasing safety on Texas highways and potentially saving billions of dollars associated with fatal crashes and sustained injuries," TxDOT Executive Director Phil Wilson said in a statement.
A total of 1159 miles of highway shoulders were added to narrow, two-lane highways. A comparison of accident rates three years before the improvements and three years after showed fatalities were reduced by an average of 44 per year, according to TTI. Another TxDOT project spent spent $29 million on 37 widening projects that yielded an average reduction of five fatalities per year.
A similar study by the University of California published in 2008 concluded, "Collision rates diminish with an increase in shoulder width" (view study). Given the results, TxDOT said it would continue widening roads.
Virginia, on the other hand, just signed a $1 billion project to narrow lanes on Interstate 95 between Garrisonville and Edsall road outside Alexandria. Governor Bob McDonnell (R) last week held a groundbreaking ceremony for the conversion of the I-95 high-occupancy vehicle lanes into a toll road owned by the Australian firm Transurban. Three reversible toll lanes will be squeezed into the space that currently provides two reversible lanes that are twelve feet wide with generous ten-foot shoulders on each side. This will be done by narrowing the lanes to eleven feet wide with shoulders narrowed in some areas to just two feet on one side and nine feet on the other.
The project includes provisions for expanded bus service using the lanes. A typical transit bus is 8.5 feet wide, with side-view mirrors extending another foot in each direction, leaving just half-an-inch of space. A 1996 Transportation Research board study recommended traffic lanes used by buses should be no narrower than twelve feet wide.
Corporate secrecy in public projects
Link to article here.
15 August 2012
Lift the veil of corporate secrecy on public projects and save the taxpayer
By Professor Vivek Chaudhri
The Conversation
Monash University
The $1.4 billion cost blowout reported by the NBN Co last week has focused attention once again on the seemingly regular occurrence of large government infrastructure projects being delivered late and over budget.
Whether we look at the much touted Public Private Partnerships (PPP) frameworks championed by state and federal governments of all persuasions, or in the NBN Co. case, a government monopoly engaging with the private sector, the cost to the taxpayer invariably appears to be greater than first estimated.
Why might that be? Is it that we are systematically poor (in one direction) at estimating future costs? Or do political realities and parameters change? That there is a lot of risk and uncertainty in the world around us is certainly true, but why must it always be the case that the taxpayer is left with the “bill”?
High speed rail plan gets resurrected at Irving conference
Link to article here.
This High Speed Rail (HSR) plan is part and parcel of the original Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) concept. While the backers promise no taxpayer money will be involved, TxDOT is already expending untold amounts of money and resources at it through developing a rail plan and various taxpayer-funded studies. Rick Perry also promised the TTC wouldn't use any taxpayer money, and more than $90 million was expended before it's 'official' repeal last year. But it's these HSR plans, along with other multi-modal links to inland ports, and major trade corridors like Interstate 69, where the TTC lives on under a different name.
Buyer beware! Texans didn't like a foreign company, Spain-based Cintra, controlling our infrastructure in these public private partnerships for the TTC, so the prospect of a Japanese company engaging in another public private partnership (PPP) for HSR, is no less controversial. PPPs are NOT private. The word public is in there for a reason, usually for taxpayer subsidies, eminent domain, non-compete clauses, fare or toll collection, and/or access to taxpayer-backed low interest loans. Naturally, as Cintra did, they hire some big local names, former politicians like Gary Fickes and Robert Eckels and they think it'll quell Texas' aversion to foreign-ownership of infrastructure. It's a states rights and state sovereignty issue that special interests and big business just fail to understand.
Private Firm Planning Bullet Trains in Texas by 2020
IRVING – The leaders of Texas Central High-Speed Railway sound very confident for a company expecting to succeed where scores of state planners, elected officials and private interests have failed.
The firm hopes to have bullet trains moving Texans at 205 miles per hour between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston by 2020.
The bit that has raised eyebrows: The company plans to do it without seeking public financing.
“We are not the traditional state-run railroad,” Robert Eckels, the company's president and a former Harris County judge, said at a high-speed rail forum in Irving on Tuesday. “This is designed to be a profitable high-speed rail system that will serve the people of these two great cities and in between and, ultimately, the whole state of Texas.”
Backing the Texas-based company is a group led by Central Japan Railway Company, which handles more than 100 million passengers each year on its bullet trains in Japan.
TX roads getting beat up by trucks in shale boom
Link to article here.
Not only does fracking pose property rights issues due to Rule 37, and health risks due to contaminated water, it also means taxpayers are likely to foot the majority of the bill from the damage being done to our roads by the trucks transporting oil across the state.
What Texas Can Do About Roads Damaged By Drilling
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Trucks with the natural gas industry drive through the countryside earlier this year in Springville, Pennsylvania.
With the good can also come the bad, and that’s certainly been the case with the drilling boom going on in various parts of Texas these days. As drillers use thousands of trucks — hauling millions of gallons of water and other supplies to rigs — roads inevitably suffer. Naturally, people are questioning who is going to be responsible for repairing them.
Phil Wilson, executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), talked to the Texas Tribune about the issue. He says that to drill a well, it takes some 1,200 trucks. And then it takes another 300 trucks each year just to maintain it. The impact of all those trucks is equivalent of 8 million cars annually.
And those roads — built in the fifties and sixties — weren’t constructed for heavy use, Wilson tells the Tribune. “They were built as farm-to-market roads for country trucks and for agriculture,” he says. “They weren’t built for 18-wheelers … so a road was built for 25 years and you get that level of traffic, it can diminish it down to six or seven years.” Damage from drilling trucks in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas alone was recently estimated at $2 billion by TxDOT.
Loop 9, road to DFW inland port, on fastrack ahead of Panama Canal expansion
Link to article here.
Road to inland port on fast track ahead of Panama Canal expansion
The Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) lives on. Texas officials and transportation industry leaders gathered in Irving for the annual Texas Transportation Summit to examine how to move people and goods faster. One of the hot topics was to fast track the Loop 9 project just south of Dallas -- a project that’s part of the original Trans Texas Corridor due to its strategic connection to the International Inland Port of Dallas. The TTC is the Texas leg of the NAFTA superhighways designed to achieve the economic integration of the United States with Canada and Mexico through trade.
Though officials gave lip service to moving people faster, it was clear the real goal of the conference was to get the coming influx of imported goods moving faster in anticipation of the Panama Canal expansion opening in 2014. Loop 9 would connect trade traffic coming up from the Port of Houston on Interstate 45 with the inland port outside Dallas as well as access from I-35E.
One of the advantages of inland ports is the ability to move the task of sorting and processing international cargo through customs inland, as well as create hubs that optimize logistics and distribution of foreign-made goods. Often referred to as an intermodal transfer, an inland port can serve as a distribution center to off-load containers from one mode of transportation to another, ie - from rail to truck. Inland ports also usually reside in markets outside urban areas, reducing labor and property costs.
TX land seized for pipelines with little recourse
Link to article here.
Pipeline Companies Seize Land in Texas at Will
Landowners have little recourse when a pipeline company uses eminent domain authority.
Published on: Wednesday, August 22, 2012
PHOTO BY shannonpatrick17 from Swanton, Nebraska, U.S.A. Pipes for the Keystone PipelineIn Texas, property rights are sacred. It's encoded into our ethos—in this state, your ranch is your kingdom. If you catch strangers inside your fenceline, by golly, you can shoot them. No one can infringe on your land.
Unless it happens to be a pipeline company. Then pipeline operators can do pretty much what they want. Even, it turns out, if that pipeline company is Canadian.
TransCanada is the Canadian multinational behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a plan to ship bitumen—a low grade, asphalt-like petroleum product— from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast, where it would be refined into crude oil. In trying to secure the pipeline's route through Texas, TransCanada had to gain consent from thousands of landowners along the way. Where landowners have refused to sign, TransCanada has gone to court and seized control of their land through eminent domain.
It appears that pipeline companies in Texas can seize whatever land they want and that no one is regulating the process.
Thanks to a loophole in the eminent domain laws, certain types of pipeline companies can take over private land. In theory, this process is supposed to be supervised, but it's not clear that anyone in the state of Texas actually audits a pipeline's eminent domain claim. There is no place where the buck stops—no one whose job it is to make sure a pipeline company's request for land seizure is reasonable.
Tappan Zee Bridge tolls may triple by opening
Link to Transportation Nation article here.
Tolls are rising precipitously in the northeast, and the backlash is swift and sure, as it ought to be....
Tappan Zee Tolls: The Backlash to the Backlash
Tappan Zee Bridge (photo by waywuwei via flickr)
Following last week’s news that tolls on the new Tappan Zee Bridge could nearly triple by the time it opens in five years, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office has mounted a PR campaign trumpeting support for the $5 billion project.
The governor’s team has been sending out near-daily emails listing numerous backers of a new bridge–including an endorsement from former New York Governor George Pataki, who had defeated Andrew Cuomo’s father, Mario, in 1994. Notably absent from the list of supporters: Rockland County executive Scott Vanderhoef and Westchester County executive Rob Astorino, two elected officials who have yet to sign off on the project in order for it to receive federal funding.
The Cuomo plan would set the new bridge’s cash toll at $14, a hefty jump from the current $5 charge. The governor says the increase is needed to pay for the $5.2 billion span, whose “basic source of financing will be the tolls.”
MPO votes to toll 281, 1604 in violation of its own bylaws
Monday, Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF) scored a small victory for open government, since the San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) agenda included more specificity about its proposed action for toll projects on US 281 and Loop 1604 as required by the Texas Open Meetings Act. TURF sent a demand letter threatening to sue the MPO on July 20, for its violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act at the June 25 policy board meeting due an extremely vague agenda that merely read: “Action on additional federal and state funding opportunities.”
But the victory didn’t last long.
When the board took action to amend its short-range (TIP) and long-range plans (MTP) at its August 27 meeting, it not only failed to abide by its own bylaws in so doing, it once again failed to properly notice the public about its proposal to toll US 281 and Loop 1604 in Bexar County. The MPO's bylaws require a two-step process, which includes a 30-day public comment period, and an even greater level of disclosure on its agenda before any action can take place.
Road to inland port on fast track ahead of Panama Canal expansion
The Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) lives on. Texas officials and transportation industry leaders gathered in Irving for the annual Texas Transportation Summit to examine how to move people and goods faster. One of the hot topics was to fast track the Loop 9 project just south of Dallas -- a project that’s part of the original Trans Texas Corridor due to its strategic connection to the International Inland Port of Dallas. The TTC is the Texas leg of the NAFTA superhighways designed to achieve the economic integration of the United States with Canada and Mexico through trade.
Road with & without traffic lights
This is an interesting video of an intersection (a) in Auckland during a power outage with no traffic lights and (b) the next day, after the traffic lights were restored. Note the smooth flow of traffic during a power outage and the resulting spontaneous order, as compared to the traffic backups with the lights working. No doubt that the government knows how to muck up and/or bring traffic to a halt.
This caught my eye because I experience this often going to/from work. I take one surface road from my home to downtown, and things being the way they are in Detroit, when storms knock out traffic lights, it is typically at least one week before they get fixed. In the spontaneous order that results, I blaze through the lights much quicker, and my commuting time is always shortened.
The same day I first watched this video, last week, the traffic lights went out at a major intersection in the 'burbs where a six-lane divided highway crosses another six-lane divided highway (giving us the famous "Michigan Left"). This might seem a bit tricky to maneuver, however, I noted how carefully folks approached the intersection, and how quickly they made decisions to go/not go. Traffic flowed beautifully and I zipped through the intersection during evening rush hour.
The closest we come to anarcho-roads in a government road system are the modern roundabouts. These first appeared in my part of the world less than ten years ago. They keep traffic flowing while a mostly polite self-organization emerges. Still, Michiganders who are not used to them (ullike the east coast folks) complain and whine about their complexity.
See the video on Lew Rockwell.com here.
El Paso's pork: Stadium uses P3 to rip-off taxpayers
NOTE: This is a satirical blog, but highlights some of the anti-taxpayer aspects of this P3 the mainstream media neglects to report. See how this ballpark benefits the well-connected in the downtown El Paso's 'ballpork' graphic here.
Private profit, public risk
Link to article here.
This is yet another shining example of how certain industries, that have the potential to do serious damage to the nation's water supply, have lax enforcement by regulatory agencies and get taxpayer bailouts for their spills/mistakes.
With TransCanada pushing its Keystone tarsands pipeline through Texas over several aquifers, it ought to give Texans pause. Then there's the property rights abuse when these companies have to do is check a box claiming they're a 'public use' pipeline (without ever having to prove it) on a one-page application and walk away with eminent domain authority with no oversight.
Public private partnerships also represent public money for private profits. Taxpayers often secure the private entity's debt, heavily subsidize their profits, and essentially grant a private corporation the power to tax and restrict competition to guarantee their profits.
Private profit, public risk
By J. Mijin Cha
Huffington Post
August 2, 2012
Within two years, the Enbridge tar sands pipeline has managed to release more than 850,000 gallons of oil in two different spills. The first spill in Southwestern Michigan released over 800,000 gallons of oil and cost more than $800 million to clean up. The second spill released 50,000 gallons in Adams County, Wisc., smaller than the first spill but still requiring two homes to evacuate. These spills cause great economic and environmental harm to affected communities, but barely create an inconvenience for Enbridge, which posted quarterly earnings over $300 million in the last quarter.
The Wisconsin pipeline spill is just the latest in a series of environmentally damaging accidents that end up causing significant loss to local communities but barely make any impact on company earnings. BP's profits rose 17 percent to $7.1 billion in the first quarter of 2011, less than six months after the Deep Horizon disaster, even though clean-up efforts continue two years later. Between 1999 and 2010, there were 804 spills from Enbridge pipelines, releasing five million gallons of oil, yet the company continually posts big earnings.
At the same time, Enbridge engages in a pattern of cutting corners on safety measures. A formal investigation into the 2010 leak found that the company was negligent both in proper equipment upkeep and in dealing with the leak once it occurred. The report states, "[T]he rupture and prolonged release were made possible by pervasive organizational failures at Enbridge Incorporated," which included allowing well-documented crack defects to exist in corroded areas until the pipeline failed and inadequate training of personnel, which allowed the rupture to remain undetected for 17 hours.
This pattern shows the fundamental problem with the argument that corporations can police themselves: It is still cheaper to pay for the occasional fine and clean up than pay for the continued maintenance and upkeep of equipment that would prevent spills. Corporations protect their profits while the public shoulders the risk and cost of their actions. Enbridge was fined $3.7 million by pipeline regulators -- the largest fine they had ever given, yet it was equal only to roughly 1 percent of the company's last quarterly earnings. At that level, fines are just a nuisance and not a deterrent for future bad behavior. Without having to internalize the costs imposed on the public by their behavior, corporations have no financial incentive to prevent environmental harms.
But it's not just corporations that are at fault. The Enbridge investigation also found that weak regulations and poor oversight contributed to the problem. Not only were the pipeline regulations inadequate, they were poorly enforced, which directly contributed to the accident. Yet, even though regulations provide strong health and safety protections, they are continually under attack. The Obama administration launched "Advise the Advisor," which asks people to submit what regulations they think should be eliminated. How many environmental and health regulations do you think will be submitted? On top of this, the House GOP introduced HR 4078, which would suspend all regulations until the unemployment rate fell below 6 percent.
The fact is the benefit of regulations far outweigh the costs. A recent OMB study found that between 2001 and 2011, the benefits of federal regulation ranged from $171 to $700 billion, while the costs range between $43.3 billion and $67.3 billion. Moreover, regulations have a benefit that is difficult to quantify. We know how to price the cost of cleaning up oil, but we are still far from being able to value the benefit of water sheds and natural resources that are not tainted with oil.
Strong regulations and proper enforcement can prevent these disasters from happening. The cost of regulatory compliance should be born by the companies engaging in these activities and not by the public. It should be public profit, private risk, not the other way around.
Public private partnership to build new courthouse in Austin
Taxpayer funded lobbying at its finest. The Travis County Commissioners paid for a panel to come up with a way to bypass voters and build a new courthouse using an anti-taxpayer, anti-property rights sweetheart deal known as a public private partnership (P3). P3s involve eminent domain for private gain and public money (in this case $205 million in public subsidies) for private profits in long-term concession deals that amount to government-sanctioned monopolies.
Rosy traffic forecasts used to push I-69
How many times have we heard this before and it never comes to fruition? There can be no doubt that Texas is a growing state. But the traffic boom being predicted for the future Interstate I-69, one of the NAFTA superhighways formerly known as the Trans Texas Corridor, isn't as much about people as it is about moving goods. I-69 is a NAFTA trade route to benefit multi-national companies importing goods from the deep water port in Mexico called Lazaro Cardenas into the interior of the United States and eventually into Canada, not the average Texan.
Also, since I-69 will primarily entail upgrades to US Hwy 59 and since there's no identified funds to complete it, it's likely to be a toll road. What we're seeing on US 281, US 290, parts of Hwy 183, and elsewhere, is TxDOT exploiting divided highways that have stop lights at the crossovers by converting them to toll lanes once it's upgraded to a controlled access highway with overpasses, leaving frontage roads as the only non-toll option. So Texans beware. All this propaganda is designed to persuade the public that this future toll road is necessary to accommodate future growth. In reality, the priority needs to be fixing the congestion that's already here in our urban areas before we sink massive state resources into a trade route for big business.
Houston's I-69 traffic expected to soar to 350,000 by 2035
By Cindy Horswell
Updated 10:35 a.m., Monday, August 6, 2012
If you think the Southwest Freeway is a nightmare at rush hour now, check back in 20 years.
As the transformation of U.S. 59 in Houston to Interstate 69 continues, projections show an increase in traffic of up to 150 percent by 2035. Experts say traffic will increase regardless of whether the so-called NAFTA Superhighway, envisioned two decades ago as a trade route from Mexico through Houston to Canada, is fully built.
Gov. Rick Perry initially proposed a more elaborate Trans-Texas Corridor that would be an entirely new thoroughfare that included room for rail and utilities. But that plan was defeated by farm and ranch groups championing property rights and others opposed to a toll road component.
Now the pared-down plan calls for using existing roads, some of which must be upgraded to divided four-lane highways with access roads. Also, dangerous grade-level streets crossing these highways must be replaced with overpasses.
Grass-roots committees appointed by the Texas Transportation Commission to study how to make the 1,000-mile trek through Texas unanimously endorsed dual use of U.S. 59 for the new interstate as it winds from Texarkana through Houston to Laredo. The committees also included two other highways that branch off U.S. 59 - U.S. 77 for motorists traveling to Brownsville and U.S. 281 for those going to McAllen.
300% freight increase
Houston's segment, which already experiences traffic pileups and is not scheduled for any expansion under the plan, would be hit with the largest increase in traffic volume on Texas' interstate route.
"But that traffic is coming to us no matter what we do. We are going to see a huge increase in freight — more than 300 percent in a little over a decade," said a committee member, Ashby Johnson, the Houston-Galveston Area Council's deputy transportation director. "Some of it is coming from NAFTA and some of it's from the widening of the Panama Canal."
Besides increased trade, the Houston region must grapple with rapid population growth. The area is expected to reach 8.8 million by 2035 - a 51 percent increase.
That same year, traffic is expected to leap 60 percent to 350,000 vehicles daily, including 24,000 trucks, in the stretch of 59 that wraps around downtown Houston.
Outlying stretches of this highway are projected to experience a 150 percent increase, to 225,000 vehicles, near Porter in Montgomery County and 240,000 near Sugar Land in Fort Bend County, according to the report by the grass-roots committee.
No expansion planned
Nonetheless, the report does not call for expansion of that stretch of roadway. It does recommend exploring traffic relief options such as a bypass around the city for those traveling long distances.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, a grass-roots committee member, said developing a plan to deal with the traffic is critical.
"Everyone agreed a bypass needs to be done," he said. "It's something that's been talked about for years, but it all costs money."
He would like to see a bypass on the county's east side that connects to the new interstate south of Wharton and reconnects north of Cleveland. Others, like Sierra Club transportation expert Dick Kallerman, would like to see tracks added to rail lines along this route so it could handle more freight.
"The Legislature has got to start adequately funding transportation. Within a couple of years, we'll only be able to maintain existing roads," Emmett said. "Then if goods can't be moved around adequately, that economic miracle we've seen in Texas will come to a grinding halt."
Perry's spokesman, Josh Havens, said the Legislature will review potential funding for the new interstate in January. He said it's too early to say what the governor will recommend.
The estimated cost of upgrades for the new interstate, excluding the 200 miles in Harris County, is $16.5 billion, the report said.
$626 million allocated
To date, the state has allocated $626 million for small projects along the route, including $40 million to widen the roadway and provide road access control in Liberty County and $13.6 million for a new overpass in Fort Bend County.
"We don't have the funds to do it all at once. The $16 billion price tag represents two years of our entire operating budget and would leave us with nothing else to do maintenance and potholes," said Doise Miers, the transportation department's community liaison. She noted almost two-thirds of the new interstate is in Texas.
Yet committee members believe the new interstate provides a critical link to national infrastructure for trade and transportation, especially since the Houston region contains the state's largest port and manufacturing center.
"I-69 is a big deal for our state," Haven said. "In order for Texas to remain the economic powerhouse it has been over the past decade, we must have an adequate transportation system."
Convenience vs price - most Texans have to forego paying tolls
Link to article here.
It comes down to cost. Government is creating a two-tiered highway system - one for the haves and one for the have-nots. Those that can't pay $12 a day in tolls are left behind, with commute times double that of those who can afford tolls.
Anyone who drives a vehicle pays for highways, yet you're treated like a second class citizen stuck in gridlock and less efficient travel unless you can pay tolls, too. Toll advocates try to say you have a choice whether or not to pay. That's not true -- massive sums of gas taxes subsidize these toll roads, but taxpayers can't use them without paying a DOUBLE TAX toll. Plus, most Texans just don't have thousands more per year to shell out for transportation costs. They have no choice but to sit in traffic as they're kicked off roads their tax money paid for.
08/03/2012 10:12 AM
Battling convenience vs. price on Central Texas’ toll roads
YNN News - Austin
It is a problem that nearly everyone in Austin has an opinion on -- traffic.
As the city continues to enjoy a boon in population, the infrastructure is straining to carry the load.
"This morning I left North Austin from my sister’s and had to come downtown and it has taken over an hour, an hour and a half, you have to plan so much better," driver Amy Smith said.
Some of the newest toll roads across the state offer an alternative. One of the newest toll roads is 183A, which is managed by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority. Thursday, the highway’s speed limit increased to 75 miles an hour.
According to statistics from tollway managers, the toll booth on Park Street main plaza had over 18,500 vehicles pass through in 2007. Five years later, close to 40,000 vehicles used the highway, marking a 110 percent increase.
YNN's Traffic Anchor Joe Taylor says the toll roads could effectively pull traffic away from a congested downtown, but the challenge is getting people to use them.
"It comes down to one thing and that is money. It costs a lot of money in a lot of people's eyes to drive toll roads, but what's money without convince?" Taylor said.
YNN wanted to find out exactly how much time and money you save getting through Austin in the middle of rush hour.
Assignment Editor Develon Douglas took the traditional route down Interstate-35. Senior Producer Jean Schlitzkus took the 130 tollway. Both of them drove from Georgetown to Buda at 4 p.m., traveling the speed limit with a full tank of gas.
Jean covered 57 miles from Georgetown to Buda in 44 minutes. Develon traveled 42 miles in one hour and 42 minutes.
Between tolls and gas, Jean paid $12.44. Develon paid less than half that at $5.24.
A race that was far from close, and proves that congestion can be avoided, but like many things, it comes at a price.
"We have a lot of people that move through Austin, we have a lot of people that get off of work early some people that are just out and about for various reasons,” Taylor said. “That's why if you have the opportunity to use the road less traveled in this case that would be the toll roads would be to do it so you can avoid all the congestion and downtown."
Despite state law, still no free tolls for disabled vets
So how many of us get to pick and choose which laws we follow and which ones we don't? Apparently the road lobby and its minions at TxDOT and the toll authorities think the almighty dollar trumps abiding by the law. Where is the justice?
Despite 2009 law, still no free tolls for disabled veterans in Central Texas
Austin American Statesman
Published: 9:43 p.m. Saturday, July 28, 2012
In the three years since the Texas Legislature passed a bill giving the state's toll road agencies the authority to grant free rides to disabled veterans, the two agencies that manage pay-to-ride roads in Central Texas have yet to implement the toll discount and don't have any immediate plans to do so. Statewide, only toll authorities in the Houston area have adopted the 2009 law.
The inaction has angered veterans groups and legislators. "I was hoping that it would be a simple decision," said former state Rep. Abel Herrero of Corpus Christi, who co-wrote the 2009 bill. "I would have thought that this many years later that all those authorities would see it as an opportunity, a way to say thank you. I'm shocked it hasn't happened."
Some toll officials in the state worry the veteran toll discount would open a Pandora's box of toll discounts for other groups. Others say it could be too expensive, despite the experience of Harris County toll officials.
The area's largest toll road authority — the Texas Department of Transportation, which operates Texas 45 North and Southeast, Loop 1 and Texas 130 — says that granting free tolls for disabled veterans could negatively affect annual revenues by up to 10 percent, based on a 2009 analysis of disabled veteran and Purple Heart plates in Travis and Williamson counties.
That worst case finding was based on each driver with a disabled veteran, Purple Heart or Medal of Honor plate making a round trip five days a week. Department officials said they also took into account Austin's geographic location between military installations in San Antonio and Fort Hood.
That conclusion stands in sharp contrast to the experience of the Harris County Toll Road Authority, which reports that disabled veterans account for just 0.8 percent of toll transactions.
In Travis County, 3,637 drivers have disabled veteran or Purple Heart license plates, or 0.4 percent of the county's 973,609 registered vehicles. In Williamson County, 0.7 percent of drivers have the plates. In heavily veteran Bell County to the north, home to a large Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Temple, disabled veterans account for about 4 percent of drivers.
The timing of the 2009 law seemed propitious: With wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, record numbers of veterans were returning home with combat stress and other war injuries and seeking medical care. The bill's supporters argued that the discounts would have minimal effect on toll revenues while helping veterans defray the cost of driving to medical clinics and hospitals. And the law seemed in sync with the boasts of state leaders that Texas takes better care of its veterans than other states. During the same legislative session, Gov. Rick Perry signed a law exempting disabled veterans from property taxes.
But the measure appears to have crashed against the dollars-and-cents realities of toll road administration.
"The people who operate toll authorities are constantly getting requests to exempt this group and that, and they hate it," said Peter Samuel, a Maryland-based toll expert who publishes an industry newsletter, Toll Road News. "They see it as one more complication to their accounting and enforcement. They are worried if they give it to veterans that it will be used for other groups and soon you have a huge hodgepodge of different prices for different people."
Local toll officials also worry about the precedent of free tolls for certain groups.
"On the surface it seems fairly innocuous," said Mike Heiligstein, executive director of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, which operates 183-A. It is building a U.S. 290 tollway in Northeast Austin and next year will probably break ground on MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) toll lanes. "But I would be concerned about, Where do you draw the line? What we don't want is to start the process of exemptions and not know where it stops."
State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, who sponsored the original bill, said she does not believe the law would lead toll authorities down that slippery slope. Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat who leads the Senate's Veteran Affairs and Military Installations Committee, said the state has traditionally singled out disabled veterans for special privileges and accommodations such as free or reduced-fee hunting licenses and specialty license plates. "As nice as it would be to help teachers, there are not statues of slain teachers at the capital," she said.
Toll authorities also argue their legal agreements with bondholders to borrow money prohibit them from granting discounts. TxDOT told legislators that its covenant does "not provide the flexibility for a toll reduction or exemption program for disabled veterans."
The transportation agency's bondholder agreement prohibits reduced or free tolls except under certain narrow circumstances. Last year TxDOT significantly reduced truck fares in an attempt to lure more trucks away from Interstate 35. Its bondholder agreement allows discounts if they are expected to eventually result in an increase in revenues.
But experts also say toll agencies may renegotiate their agreements with bondholders, especially if they can demonstrate that the reductions won't affect loan payments. Samuel said the authorities typically oppose such discount programs. "Unless the members of the board of a toll authority are very convinced that this is an important thing to do, unless they are very keen to do it, they are likely to resist it," he said.
Veteran toll discounts are rare across the country. The New York State Thruway Authority grants veterans free tolls if they qualify for an adaptive vehicle through the Department of Veterans Affairs, usually given to veterans who have suffered amputations or hand and foot injuries.
In Florida, disabled veterans can receive exemptions if they have permanent upper body impairments that prevent them from reaching out of their car to drop cash into a toll basket. And in Orange County, Calif., drivers with disabled veteran license plates receive free passage except during rush hour, when their tolls are discounted.
Veteran advocates say the law that emerged out of the 2009 legislative session had two major limitations. It does not require toll agencies to adopt a disabled veteran program, it merely permits it.
The 2009 Legislature, operating at the height of the recession, also did not appropriate any funding to toll authorities to replace any revenue lost as a result of adopting the program.
Despite those limitations, Houston area officials embraced the law in 2009, after what one veteran advocate said was a single meeting with toll officials over brisket.
"We felt it was important to give this advantage to our veterans," said Eric Hanson, spokesman for the Harris County Toll Road Authority, which has operated toll roads for more than two decades and is overseen by county commissioners. The Central Texas authorities are led by boards of political appointees.
Over the past three years, the program has cost the authority about $6 million — less than 1 percent of the more than $1 billion in toll revenues it has collected over that period. Officials also say the disabled veteran number may be inflated because some vets who otherwise wouldn't use the road now do because of the free pass.
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority in 2010 said it would implement the program only when the Legislature appropriated money to make up for lost revenue. "It's not a veteran-specific issue," said agency spokesman Steve Pustelnyk, who added that such a program would come with significant administrative costs. "We felt if the Legislature wanted the program they should fund it."
Ray Wilkerson, who was appointed to lead the mobile authority's board by Gov. Rick Perry, said it wasn't an easy decision. "Our board struggled with this when it was first brought up," said Wilkerson, whose father served in World War II. "I've got the greatest respect in the world for veterans. ... We're between a rock and a hard place."
The Travis County Commissioners Court endorsed allowing local disabled veterans to drive toll-free in 2010, but with no direct toll road authority the resolution amounted only to a recommendation.
Disabled Austin veterans such as Sid Hull, 75, who served in Vietnam as part of a 20-year Army career, say they are left frustrated by a law they perceive as toothless and toll road agencies they see as resistant. Hull said he would take the toll road to his appointments at the VA hospital in Temple if local toll agencies would adopt the discounts.
"There are so many things here in Texas that they do for their vets," Hull said. "Yet this one little thing seems to be a thorn in the side of all of us."
FHWA flip-flop at MPO
SAN ANTONIO DRAMA:
-- FHWA come to San Antonio MPO meeting in June and flip on their recommendations
