Tapping the brakes on toll roads, Trans-Texas Corridor

The Texas Department of Transportation will no long guarantee private toll road developers that competing free roads won't be built near toll projects. MORE HERE ...

Comments

[Gordon Dickson]

Here's a response from David Stall of CorridorWatch, a south Texas organization that opposes the Trans-Texas Corridor:
Today's action by the Texas Transportation Commission is meaningless arm waving that provides no new commitment, relief, or citizen protection from toll road abuses and the Trans Texas Corridor. It's as binding as flashy political campaign material. The only statement we wholly agree with is Chairman Delisi's that, "Texans deserve a clear, straightforward explanation of what we are doing to solve our transportation challenges . . ." We are waiting for that to happen.

They identified five key issues:

1. State ownership of highways and facilities. We don't know of any credible assertion otherwise. It's a non-issue that provides an opportunity to give an easy answer and distract the public from the 'real' issues.
2. Inclusion of buy back provisions. That's the easy part, what Texas needs is meaningful protection from excessively high (cost prohibitive) back back costs. Failure to contain the buy back costs will make that provision useless.
3. Approval of initial toll rates and toll increase methodology. The devil is in the details. All 'approvals' of the Commission occur at a public meeting. That's quite different than having public involvement. Long before the initial rate is set and the increase methodology is established, a contract is negotiated in secret and the financial structure is put in place that will drive the toll requirements. Texans will have already contracted for the project and that will force the toll rates.
4. Only new lanes to be tolled. Okay, that a shift from 2005. But, it continues to imply what TxDOT has said before (about TTC-35), that they are not intending to expand existing free (competing) highways beyond the current expansion plans. In fact that might be in the CDA. If so, that will leave motorists with fewer options in the future as traffic continues to increase and only toll lanes are available for that increased demand.
5. No non-compete clauses. When non-compete clauses became a hot topic TxDOT switched to compete penalties. This replaces "prohibited" with "financially prohibitive." The effect is the same. If we can't afford to build roads we certainly won't be able to afford building roads that have the added cost of a compete penalty.

They identified two principles:

1. Consider use of existing right-of-way. Considering is about as low on the scale of commitment as possible. Whenever TxDOT is required to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act such consideration is required. However, in the case of TTC-35 that consideration didn't even make the list of possible alternatives. How about committing to use existing right-of-way?
2. Planning effort to preserve property original property tracts. Again the devil is in the details, in this case determining to what extent is practical. Projects like the TTC have financial constraints introduced by a "private partner" and exceptional engineering requirements that will assure that moving the alignment (placement) of the project is likely to never be practical.

CorridorWatch takes no comfort in today's action. However, we are always willing to participate in the process and encourage the Transportation Commission and Texas Legislature to make meaningful improvements in transportation planning and implementation. Our goal is to ensure that Texans can have improved, safe and reliable transportation systems that are developed through a transparent process and managed in a way that is accountable to the citizens and taxpayers.