PRIVATIZING AND TOLLING FREEWAYS IS A COSTLY DEAD END.
Under the guise of traffic congestion relief, the largest taxpayer fleecing in Texas history is now underway.
Elected officials are selling off our assets - our public highways, such as State Highway 121 in Dallas - in a desperate attempt to raise quick cash to build more toll roads.
SH 121 in Dallas is the first freeway in Texas to be sold off. In exchange for a one-time payment, Cintra, a foreign toll road corporation, will charge a toll for the only expressway for miles. Cintra will profit from this monopoly and raise the toll tax rate for 50 years.
Selling our roads today will equal crippling toll rates and more traffic congestion tomorrow. Just ask California.
The first and only other freeway to tollway conversion in the history of the U.S. was California's US 91 deal in the 1990's. A noncompete clause, similar to Cintra's deal for SH 121, kept California from increasing highway capacity on nearby roads. And, after seven years of increased traffic congestion and public unrest, it cost California taxpayers $207.5 million more to buy back US 91. Today, the toll rate on US 91 continues to increase and traffic congestion is worse than ever.
Recently, our legislature has been focused on a two-year moratorium that would temporarily halt private toll road deals like SH 121. The moratorium is now veto proof with over two thirds of both the Texas house and the senate on board. Sadly, the moratorium has been a distraction. The fact is voters were never asked if our freeways should be converted to tollways in the first place.
The real question should be whether we toll freeways or index the gas tax - not whether private companies or our own government should implement a new double tax.
When a freeway is tolled, crucial expressways are not offered as an alternative. In contrast, conventional toll roads in the U.S. are fair, since drivers are offered a freeway as an alternative. With freeway tolls - drivers are forced to drive frontage roads with stoplights and deal with growing traffic congestion if they don't pay the toll. The unfortunate truth is this: there is a financial incentive to NOT address traffic congestion on freeway toll roads since increased traffic congestion provides higher revenues.
The freeway toll cash cow is a severe departure for TxDOT. This should be a major concern of and taxpayer, since TxDOT's focus has always been solving transportation issues - not generating revenue through traffic congestion.
Freeway tolls create monopolies and are the most expensive solution for collecting a tax. According to TxDOT, it costs about 25 cents to collect a cash toll and 11 cents to collect an electronic toll. So, if the toll tax for a short span of road is 50 cents, 50% of the cash paid for that toll goes to collect the toll.
The solution is simple, instead of spending our limited tax dollars (and right of way) intended for free roads on toll roads - index the gas tax to inflation as numerous other states already have. Nearly everything we purchase has an indexed tax - a fair form of taxation.
Assuming your vehicle gets 20 miles per gallon and the increase in indexed gas tax was 10 cents a gallon, you would spend less than .5 cent a mile for an indexed gas tax. Compare that to the 15-cent per mile toll road that would cost 30 times the indexed gas tax per mile. A 20-cent per mile toll would cost 40 times the indexed gas tax, and so on.
Based on the recent Texas Transportation Institute report, indexing the gas tax and placing the incremental revenue in the mobility fund to pay off bonds allows us to build the roads we need now without more toll roads. Void of added bureaucracy and new layers of corruption, indexing the gas tax is the simplest and smartest solution.
Just days ago TxDOT sold a Dallas state highway (SH 121 - intended to be a freeway) to Cintra for 50 years. Most sane people knew selling a public highway to a spanish company was a bad deal, but who would have thought it would be exposed to be an outrageous financial screw up so quickly?
First, you need to know this important tid-bit: TxDOT would not let the North Texas Tollway Authority bid on the tolling of 121 freeway. But it allowed corporations from other countries bid. Cintra won the deal, to toll a Texas Freeway for 50 years, just days ago.
North Texas Tollway Authority estimates it would have given the state $4.2 billion in the freeway for sale deal. Instead TxDOT cut a deal with Cintra for only $700 million. From the Dallas Morning News today:
"The deal to make State Highway 121 a toll road for $2.8 billion in cash was less than half of what the state could have gotten, according to a very rough estimate unveiled Monday by the North Texas Tollway Authority.
In what everyone acknowledged to be an extremely preliminary analysis, the tollway authority said it could have given the Texas Department of Transportation $2.1 billion up front for the rights to the toll road project in Collin and Denton counties. That is the same figure as the winning bidder, Cintra Concesiones Infraestructuras de Transporte SA.
The difference came in how much money the tollway authority said it could pay over the life of the 50-year toll contract: $4.2 billion vs. Cintra's $700 million offer."
We get screwed by billions of dollars and our roads are being stolen for corporate profits. Our elected officials (Perry, Craddick, Williamson, Krusee and others) have sold us out. When will this madness be stopped?
In 1992, a well known toller, Robert W. Poole, Jr., of the Reason Foundation, stated:
"Congestion pricing-charging a price to use highways that is high at peak hours and low at off-peak times-holds great potential for easing traffic congestion and reducing auto emissions in Southern California."
Today, reality sets in with $8.50 "value priced" toll lanes during rush hour on SR 91 in Southern California (see actual photo of SR 91 during rush hour above). Note the untolled lanes are a dangerous congested nightmare, and even those who pay, must slow down and join the congestion to exit off the highway.
Did the toll roads, managed lanes or value pricing ease traffic congestion?
So when Sen. Kirk Watson, Rep. Mike Krusee, TxDOT or other tollers try to toll roads we've already paid for.
In an effort to deceive the public, slick politico's like Watson say we need "managed lanes". Managed lanes are a marketing term to sell us toll lanes on roads we've already paid for - without using the "T" word!
These comments are from California citizens who have to live with what the politicians sold them, a promise that tolls, managed lanes and value pricing would reduce traffic congestion:
"These lanes were built w/taxpayer money. Should have never been toll road. We are being held hostage by OC and Caltrans. Why aren't our Riverside County reps standing up for us?"
"They are making almost a million dollars every week, and still cannot do anything to relieve the congestion on the 91. Even the yellow "cones" along the FasTrak lanes are old and often times missing. Where is all the money going?"
""Congestion-pricing" is French for fleecing consumers. Oct.'s plan is about making money, not reducing congestion."
"When the Orange County Transportation Authority announced they were going to purchase the toll lanes, they said that the prices were going to drop not go up. Once again, the government lies to get what they want."
"The obscene amount of tax dollars that are TAKEN from us everyday should be more than enough to create and maintain any of these new roads."
"I THINK THIS IS CRAZY. IT KEEPS GOING UP AND UP AND I WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO AFFORD THE EXPRESS LANES. MY HUSBAND RECENTLY PASSED AWAY AND MY INCOME IS CUT IN HALF. NOW WITHOUT HIM, I CAN NO LONGER RIDE THE CARPOOL LANES AND MY TRIP TO WORK AND HOME HAS BECOME VERY LONG AND UNBEARABLE ON SOME DAYS."
"They spent a lot of taxpayer's money...they promised reductions in traffic congestion while staying "revenue neutral". About six months later a study showed a drop in traffic of only 0.06 percent, a paltry amount, as compared to an increase in revenue of a whopping 26.0 percent. This kind of double-speak and corruption will continue as long as we, the people, allow it. THROW THE RASCALS OUT!!!"
"Anyone notice all the people who cut into the lanes after the toll plaza. How dangerous is that?"
"Pricing on the 91 Toll Lanes is INSANE! I understand that sometimes it's just as congested as the non-tollroads during rush (hour), but the raise is just too much. I think the price of $8 is too much."
(This comes on the heels of Cintra's proposed purchase this week of the tolling rights of North Texas's Hwy 121 - promoted by John McClelland)
Sen. Ogden, the Senate co-author of Rep. Mike Krusee's toll happy HB 3588, suits up to fight the good fight after he admits he was "duped" by Rep. Mike Krusee and others.
In a significant shift of the battle field, Finance Committee Chair Sen. Steve Ogden says TxDOT has gone too far. Ogden says TxDOT is "...Out of Control" via the Statesman. Here's more:
The powerful senator said the transportation department has "too many tools in their arsenal" to construct highways and the Legislature should take some of them back.
Ogden said he is concerned about the department's plans to allow private contractors, for a large upfront fee, to build roads and charge tolls - perhaps forever. He said the department has as many as 21 projects under consideration.
"Do we really want to be turning over state highways to private contractors?" Ogden said. The irony is that Ogden was the Senate author of the bill that in 2003 expanded the commission's powers to construct roads. "I'm trying to correct the sins of the past," Ogden said.
A new astonishing State Auditor's Office report, raises grave concerns as the highest ranking Auditor in the state is unable to decipher how much the first part of the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) project will actually cost, even though Cintra/TxDOT contract was signed two years ago.
The report focused on the Texas Department of Transportation's first of many sections of the TTC, the TTC-35 Comprehensive Development Agreement with Cintra-Zachry, LP.
Perhaps the most shocking part of the report is the fact that TxDOT could be required to forgo ALL the revenue it's claimed the state would receive.
The revenue TxDOT promised to members of the legislature, the public and the press, has been one of the key selling points TxDOT's has used time and time again.
This new information ads fuel to the fire as the public is finding out about TxDOT's 90 day forceable eminent domain "quick-take" for over 500,000 acres of Texas land. Charges of "misallocations and exclusions" about the work done to date, on the 50 year contract, are included in the report:
"Weaknesses in the Department's accounting for project costs and monitoring of the developer create risks that the public will not know how much the State pays for TTC-35 or whether those costs were appropriate.
Not adequately monitoring developers also exposes the State to future financial liability."
And, 53% of TTC-35 costs to date were incorrectly allocated to other projects. Invoices included hours billed that could not be tied to any progress reports or tasks performed. The report also states:
"The Department omitted indirect costs of $906,774 in fiscal year 2005 and $583,642 in fiscal year 2004."
Also, from the summery:
"There is a lack of reliable information regarding projected toll road construction costs, operating expenses, revenue, and developer income."
In 2005, the State Comptroller came out with an investigative report showing how Regional Mobility Authority's, by privatizing and tolling public highways, created double taxation, by diverting tax dollars intended for free roads, into toll roads. The report also showed RMA board members giving no-bid contracts to themselves and their friends.
Bureaucracy always costs more.
The Texas Transportation Institute report that came out just weeks ago stated that tolls would not be needed if we indexed the gas tax. Tolls per mile would cost drivers about 20 times more than the additional cost of indexing the gas tax.
Two TxDOT commission nominees got road hard and put away wet Wednesday after the Senate Nominations Committee grilled them with questions from tolls to secrecy to CDAs to big-ticket contracts.
A portion of the Statesman article:
"The exchange in the nominations hearing marked the latest signal that many lawmakers are not happy with the transportation mega-agency, amid a continuing series of skirmishes between Senate transportation committee Chairman John Carona, R-Dallas, and Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson.
During the nominations hearing, Ned Holmes of Houston and Fred Underwood of Lubbock at times looked like deer caught in headlights, as senators grilled them about their views on controversies that have been swirling for months around the agency's management and operations.
In the end, assured by the two men that they support more openness and will get answers to lingering questions about tolls and financing, the committee voted unanimously to approve their appointments. Both need to be confirmed by the full Senate.
"I think we've created a monster" in the Texas Department of Transportation, state Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, citing the agency's rush to approve toll roads and private financing packages that stirred continuing controversy.
"I think we're headed in a totally wrong direction," Eltife said. "I'm not so sure we haven't already signed away the farm.""
Strangely, Sen. Kirk Watson, seemed concerned about accountability only, as he asked the two commission nominees questions of tolls. According to Watson, a toll monster is OK, if they appear to be upfront.
On the same day, one of the largest toll road operators in the world, Macquarie Infrastructure Group (MIG), reported gigantic profits of 76%, as it eyes to toll more Texas roads we've already paid for.
Senator John Corona has filed SB 149, which puts an end to non-compete agreements, which would put the brakes on efforts to toll Texas. An important transportation hearing is scheduled at the Texas Capital on March 1, at 8:30am. All citizens are encouraged to attend.
According to the Austin American-Statesman, the chairman of the Texas Senate Transportation Committee, Senator John Corona R-Dallas, has recommended that Ric Williamson be removed as commissioner of the Texas Department of Transportation at the end of his term, which ends on February 1.
Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, said Williamson's "abrasiveness" and single-minded commitment to toll roads and privatization as the solution to traffic congestion "has worn out his welcome in many communities across the state."
"I think it would be in the best interest of the state that he step aside in favor of new leadership on the commission," he said.
Senator Corona echoed the sentiments of many Texans recently, stating that he thought the Trans Texas Corridor is a bad idea and does not support Williamson's policy of trying to turn all new road construction into toll roads. Corona instead supports a gas tax increase with ties to the inflation index.
This is just another example of how Rick Perry's unmandated reign will not be validated, even by those in his own party in the Legislature. And it would seem, it begins by making recommendations to oust his cronies in state offices.
In the infinite wisdom that is the Texas Department of Transportation, the department is set to propose to the US Congress that limits on setting tolls on highways be removed, according to TollRoadsNews.
Under the guise of such a flowerly reporting entitled "Forward Momentum: Recommendations to reduce congestion, enhance safety, expand economic opportunity, improve air quality, and enhance the value of Texas' transportation assets. A report to the 110th Congress, 1st Session" dated January 25 2007", TxDOT proposes that private equity become the primary resource for funding of highways. Note this is not only designated for new highways. The plan calls for "states to be able to buy back interstate segments by reimbursing the federal government its past contributions." Essentially, the state will be able to toll existing highways.
This is one of the bolder statements by the pro-toll road contingent lately. First, tolls were needed to "build roads faster". Now tolls are needed to pay for them in their entirety. The "builds roads faster" fib of course can be countered by the example of Austin's own TX45SE, which is a bypass that will begin north of Georgetown and resume on I-35 south of Austin. The road was originally slated to be opening this month when the contract with Zachary that was signed in 2004. However, the construction has just begun and is now slated to open in 2008. (Oh by the way-- wasn't the TTC supposed to relieve the I-35 corridor of the heavy traffic? So why does Austin need a toll road bypass?)
All the while TxDOT is wanting to toll the heck out of Texas, it is even going so far as to toll people who do not even travel on these roads. Tolling is supposed to be a "usage fee". However, Ms. Granny O'Neill has been getting her bill in the mail for traveling the new Loop 49 in Tyler. Unfortunately, Granny lives in Corpus Christi and doesn't even know where Tyler is. The new video toll collection idea (which uses video capture of license plates, and then either debiting your toll tag account, or mailing you a bill) doesn't seem to be panning out for roads such as TX 121 and Loop 49.
By all appearances the beginning of transponder/video tolling has gone smoothly. At least there is no flurry of public complaints. The dark secret of video tolling is that in the early days at least quite a lot of motorists simply don't get billed because their license plate wasn't properly photographed or the motor registry database lookups didn't work, and who is going to complain about not getting a toll bill?
Of course screwups are almost inevitable and the complaints and bad media will come from Granny O'Neill in Corpus Christi who gets a Tyler toll in the mail though never having been within a hundred miles of the place her whole life, "Never even heard of the darned place, where is it?" but whose license plate happens to have one character different from some Tyler resident.
Give it time for the Granny O'Neill stories to surface.
So as you can see, TxDOT is looking to get its money any way it can, even if it means robbing old ladies blind and sticking them with a $1 surcharge to boot. How long will it be before they steal candy from babies in the name of progress and clean air?
CorridorWatch.org is a non-partisan organization formed to educate and inform, not to participate in politics. CorridorWatch.org is not a political action committee (PAC) and therefore does not support or endorse candidates.
However over our four year existence we have observed and interacted with many of the individuals who are on this November’s ballot. During this time we have developed informed opinions about these candidates.
Our goal in presenting the following Report Card is to let you know how CorridorWatch.org feels these candidates reflect the beliefs and concerns of our members and others who are opposed to the Trans Texas Corridor.
The following candidates have been graded on information available to CorridorWatch.org and reflect our assessment of their position on the Trans Texas Corridor and related issues such as tolling, toll conversion private property rights and eminent domain taking for economic development. The grade also reflects the effectiveness (in our opinion) that the candidate would have in effecting positive change if elected.
U. S. Senator "A" Barbara Ann Radnofsky DEM "B" Kay Bailey Hutchison - Incumbent REP "C" Scott Lanier Jameson LIB
Governor "A" Carole Keeton Strayhorn IND "C" Chris Bell DEM "C" Richard "Kinky" Friedman IND "D" James Werner LIB "F" Rick Perry - Incumbent REP
Lieutenant Governor "B" David Dewhurst - Incumbent REP "B" Maria Luisa Alvarado DEM "C" Judy Baker LIB
Attorney General "A" David Van Os DEM "B" Greg Abbott - Incumbent REP "C" Jon Roland LIB
Comptroller of Public Accounts "B" Susan Combs REP "B" Fred Head DEM "C" Mike Burris LIB
Commissioner General Land Office "C" VaLinda Hathcox DEM "C" Michael A. French LIB "D" Jerry Patterson - Incumbent REP
Commissioner of Agriculture "A" Hank Gilbert DEM "C" Clay Woolam LIB "F" Todd Staples REP
State Senator - District 3 "F" Robert Nichols REP
State Senator - District 25 "C" Kathleen "Kathi" Thomas DEM "C" James R. (Bob) Thompson LIB "F" Jeff Wentworth - Incumbent REP
State Representative - District 13 "A" Lois W. Kolkhorst - Incumbent REP "D" Charles Stigall LIB
State Representative - District 17 "A" Tim Kleinschmidt REP "B" Robby Cook - Incumbent DEM "D" Roderick (Rod) Gibbs LIB
State Representative - District 20 "B" Jim Stauber DEM "D" Dan M. Gattis - Incumbent REP
State Representative - District 20 "B" John Zerwas REP "C" Dorothy Bottos DEM
State Representative - District 52 "B" Karen Felthauser DEM "B" Lillian Simmons LIB "F" Mike Krusee - Incumbent REP
State Representative - District 57 "B" Jim Dunnam - Incumbent DEM "D" Neill Snider LIB
State Representative - District 62 "C" Peter "Pete" Veeck DEM "F" Larry Phillips - Incumbent REP
State Representative - District 90 "B" Lon Burnam - Incumbent DEM "D" Rod Wingo LIB
State Representative - District 117 "A" David McQuade Leibowitz - Incumbent DEM "D" Ted Kenyon REP
Without watering down their populist message, Texas's most populist Democratic Challengers are winning over traditional Republican activists. The Trans Texas Corridor Hearings by TDoT are uniting activists who usually face off against each other. Democratic Candidates Hank Gilbert (TX Agriculture Commissioner), David Van Os, (Attorney General) and Fred Head (Comptroller) all face opponents who received money from Zachry which is the Corporation chosen by TDoT to share with Citras in the $190 billion 50 year tolled Trans Texas Corridor.
