http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/15/ap/business/mainD8ISHMO00.shtml
This article states that there has largely been no “resistance” to the selling/leasing of our highways to foreign companies. Nothing could be further from the truth! We’re building a statewide coaliton of more than a dozen groups opposed to the Governor’s plans to toll and privatize our public freeways, not to mention the tens of thousands of grassroots Texans this coalition represents. What’s interesting to note is that this article states “few people” know about a foreign company getting the tolls for a U.S. tunnel that connects to Canada and a bridge in Alabama, yet later on the article claims there is no opposition. Perhaps because people aren’t aware of what’s happening under their noses? When they find out, there’s almost universal opposition!
Then, Mr. Poole of yet another conservative think tank on the toll bandwagon thinking monpolies are somehow “free market,” actually admits privatization is good because they have the motivation to raise tolls and “de-politicize” TAXATION! Since when it is OK to de-politicize TAXATION? Tolls are quintessentially political because it involves the government’s power to forcibly take citizens’ money through taxation, and in this case, they’re handing that power to levy taxes to foreign companies! TAXATION should always be tied to TAXPAYERS, not private companies whose primary purpose is to make a profit. This is the ideology that’s pushing our country headlong down the road of unlimited taxation and foreign control of our public infrastructure!
Texas & Indiana citizens took the government to court!
People for Efficient Transportation (PET, legal arm of Texas Toll Party) took the Texas Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration to court to stop the tolling of US 281 (http://satollparty.com/post/?p=49), which did stop it temporarily. Also, Indiana citizens tried to block the sale of the Indiana Toll Road in court (http://www.masson.us/blog/?p=1376). A poll before the sale showed an overwhelming number of Indianans opposed the sale (http://satollparty.com/post/?p=169).
So to say there is no opposition like there was over the port deal, just isn’t true. It seems isolated in certain states at the moment, but there is growing national opposition as well (see Jerome Corsi’s series on World Net Daily here: http://satollparty.com/post/?p=305 as well as a series in the Denver Post here: http://satollparty.com/post/?p=278). If the public truly knew even half of what’s going on, there’d be another political firestorm like the Dubai flap only tenfold!
“Toller” talking points
Much of what was in your article are familiar “talking points” that we’ve heard from the pro-tollers. However, when you start to scrutinize what they claim, their reasons for widespread privatization and tolling breakdown. For instance, the article mentions driving (or usage) of highways went up 94% but that new capacity only rose 6%. Well, that 94% increase in driving also translates into more gas tax revenue. In Texas, our state gas tax revenue has outpaced inflation and population growth by more than three times in the last 20 years! It’s hard for the federal government to have a shred of credibility in saying they’re out of money for roads when last year’s federal highway bill had over 6,000 earmarks including a bridge to nowhere in Alaska (http://satollparty.com/post/?p=170).
In San Antonio, we added more lane miles of freeway between 1990 and 2000, but commute times went up. There is not necessarily a correlation between building more roads and congestion relief. Planning is a key element. A former City Planner for San Antonio blasted TxDOT’s toll plans saying it’s a lack of planning, not lack of funds that led to congestion (http://satollparty.com/post/?p=252). San Antonio ranks number 5 in lane miles per person in the country, and yet the highway lobby would have us believe there is a transportation crisis requiring another $16 billion (that’s $10,000 from every man, woman, and child) in additional taxes in San Antonio alone over the next 20 years to build more roads or else!
We have congestion in isolated areas, but when you look at the national average commute time for the last several decades, it remains around 25 minutes. There’s a host of misleading figures that both the government and the highway lobby put out that make it appear as though the sky is falling. With people now driving less due to the steady rise in transportation costs, the tollers’ arguments become less relevant and more empty every day!
Foreign Companies Buy U.S. Roads, Bridges
Foreign companies are buying up American highways and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers
WASHINGTON, Jul. 15, 2006
By LESLIE MILLER
Associated Press Writer
(AP) Roads and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers are starting to be sold off, and so far foreign-owned companies are doing the buying.On a single day in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years.Few people know that the tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company – which also owns a bridge in Alabama.Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls. “They depoliticize the tolling decision,” Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.Gas taxes and user fees have fueled the expansion of the nation’s highway system. Thousands of miles of roads built since the 1950s changed the landscape, accelerating the growth of suburbia and creating a reliance on motor vehicles to move freight, get to work and take vacations.In 1956, President Eisenhower pushed to create the interstate highway system for a different: to move troops and tanks and evacuate civilians.The Bush administration’s plan to let a foreign company manage U.S. ports met a storm of protest in February. But plans to sell or lease highways to companies outside the United States have not met such resistance.
John Foote, senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said the government can take over a highway in an emergency. But he objects to selling roads to raise cash.
But that is just what Chicago has done.
Last year, the city sold a 99-year lease on the eight-mile Chicago Skyway for $1.83 billion. The buyer was the same consortium that leased the Indiana Toll Road _ Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, Australia, and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte of Madrid, Spain.
Chicago used the money to pay off debt and fund road projects. Skyway tolls rose 50 cents, to $2.50; By 2017, they will reach $5.
The Indiana Toll Road lease is a better deal, Foote thinks, because the proceeds will pay for urgent projects such as road and bridge improvements.
That need is precisely why cities and states have begun to look to foreign investors.
Between 1980 and 2004, people drove 94 percent more highway miles, according to Federal Highway Administration statistics. But the number of new highway lane miles rose by only 6 percent.
Washington is not likely to produce more money to build roads. The federal highway fund – which will have a balance of about $16 billion by the end of 2006 – will run out in 2009 or 2010, according to White House and congressional estimates.
About half the states now let companies build and operate roads. Many changed their laws recently to do so.
So Illinois lawmakers are examining privatizing the Illinois Tollway, New Jersey lawmakers are considering selling 49 percent of the state’s two big toll roads and a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio wants to sell the turnpike.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who championed his state’s toll road deal, now wants investors to build and operate a toll road from Indianapolis to Evansville.
Patrick Bauer, the Indiana House’s Democratic leader, says such deals are taxpayer rip-offs.
Bauer believes Macquarie-Cintra could make $133 billion over the 75-year life of the Indiana Toll Road lease – for which Indiana got $3.8 billion.
“In five, maybe 10 years, all that money is gone, and the tolls keep rising and the money keeps flowing into the foreign coffers,” Bauer said.
Orange County, Calif., got burned by a toll-road lease for a different reason.
The road, part of state Route 91, was built and run for $130 million by California Private Transportation Company, partly owned by France-based Compagnie Financiere et Industrielle des Autoroutes. The toll road opened in 1995.
Seven years later, Orange County was looking at gridlock. But it could not build more roads because of a provision in the lease. So it bought back the lease – for $207.5 million.
To encourage more domestic investment in highways, former Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta made a pitch to Wall Street on May 23.
“The time is now for United States investors _ including our financial, construction and engineering institutions _ to get involved in transportation investments,” said Mineta, who left office July 7.
U.S. companies are getting the message.
San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co., along with Cintra, received approval on June 29 for a 50-year lease to build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for $1.3 billion.
That is part of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s vision to attract more than $80 billion in private funds for roads by 2030. He wants a new tollway from Oklahoma to Mexico and the Gulf Coast, and one from Shreveport, La., and Texarkana to Mexico. Cintra-Zachry reached a $7.2 billion deal last year to develop the project’s first phase.
Not everyone in Texas buys the idea. Harris County officials recently voted against selling three toll roads. Also, independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn opposes Perry’s toll road plan.
“Texas freeways belong to Texans, not foreign companies,” she said.