Link to editorial here. Amen! Finally an elected official who “gets it” with the courage to show some leadership. How refreshing to see someone actually represent the best interests of his constituents and ultimately ALL Texans! He’s absolutely correct in that his constituents will be paying tolls to fund segments of highway they’ll NEVER use. That sums up Rick Perry’s “vision” for transportation, steal from Peter to pay Paul. It’s DOUBLE TAX highway robbery using oppressive taxation against Texans just trying to get to work!

Stop spending tax funds on toll roads
By RICHARD MORRISON
March 7, 2009
Texas stands to receive $2.25 billion in transportation funding from the federal stimulus program. This funding is critical to maintain and upgrade our transportation infrastructure. It is also critical to stimulate the Texas economy. It will create jobs, from the engineers who design these roads to the construction crews who build them.

The Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees the Texas Department of Transportation, has recommended that the East Region, which includes Beaumont, Bryan, Houston and Lufkin, receive $431,516,770 for transportation projects. Of this amount, more than 53 percent, or $231 million, will be spent on the construction of toll roads.

These recommendations ignore the will of ordinary Texans who are opposed to our tax dollars being spent on toll roads and see these schemes as a type of double taxation. They also ignore the federal law that requires these funds to be spent in economically distressed areas. The small number of projects in economically distressed areas added to the stimulus list on Thursday do not satisfy the federal requirements.

Over the last ten years, Fort Bend County has consistently been one of the fastest growing counties in the country. As a county commissioner in Fort Bend, I am on the front lines of mobility issues on a daily basis. Many of my constituents have a deep distrust of government and these actions by the commission only confirm that distrust. After the commission’s recommendations, I have been asked on numerous occasions why tax dollars will be spent on a road that will then be tolled. This is a valid question that Gov. Rick Perry should be required to answer.

Unfortunately, Gov. Perry has taken the position that the preferred method of financing our public roads in Texas is through tolls. And many of our current mobility projects have been designed according to this policy.

Tolling the Grand Parkway is a prime example of the shortsightedness of the commission and our regional planners. Powerful interests with goals other than mobility have been pushing this “outer-loop” for 30 years and ignoring the other long-term mobility needs of the area. As a result, Segment E of the parkway is one of the few “shovel-ready” projects in the Houston-Galveston area.

Now this shortsightedness is finally bearing fruit. If Segment E is funded from the stimulus money and finally constructed, exorbitant tolls from this segment will be used to finance and construct the remaining segments in Liberty, Montgomery, Brazoria, Chambers and Galveston counties. That means the citizens of Fort Bend County and northwest Harris County will be paying for those segments even though they never drive on them.

From a mobility standpoint, many of these remaining segments are useless. Miles and miles of the remaining pieces will cross open prairie where no one lives, will have little or no effect on traffic and are not needed. When our transportation dollars from Washington are desperately needed to get people to and from our population centers, it only seems reasonable that the federal stimulus money should be spent on mobility projects that are actually needed.

A solution to this ridiculous dilemma over how to pay for road building is for Gov. Perry to show some courage and demand that the Legislature index the gasoline tax to inflation. After all, the gasoline tax is one of the fairer taxes: The more you drive, the more you pay.

Of course, if the Legislature decides to pass this tax, it must also ensure that all of the tax revenue raised from gasoline taxes will be spent on roads. That revenue should no longer be raided for other needs of the state.

Gov. Perry should take a leadership role in making sure this happens. It will take courage, but it is the right thing for Texas.

Morrison, a Democrat elected in 2008, is the county commissioner of Precinct 1 in Fort Bend County. Segment C of the Grand Parkway is proposed to be located in his precinct.

Link to article here. Despite the protest by Texans statewide, the un-elected Transportation Commission (appointed by Governor Rick Perry) voted to give 70% of the stimulus money to toll roads (in a massive DOUBLE TAX scheme) when it was intended to bring economic recovery! TURF led the fight to stop it with a press conference Tuesday at the Capitol during its Lobby Day and with a grassroots email campaign to the Commission.

Panel approves stimulus road projects
By KELLEY SHANNON
Associated Press
March 5, 2009, 7:35PM
AUSTIN, Texas — Transportation commissioners approved $1.2 billion in highway work Thursday to be paid for with federal economic stimulus money after adding more projects requested by local officials and benefiting economically distressed areas.

Texas Department of Transportation officials proposed that some projects be added to the $500 million in stimulus money maintenance work approved last week and to the $1.2 billion in major projects that were under consideration Thursday. The extra money needed to complete the added projects would come from local or state funds.

“This is a good thing for the state. We’re going to employ people. We’re going to put people back to work,” said Commissioner William Meadows before the five-member panel’s unanimous vote.

More than $2.6 billion in transportation work will be achieved with the federal money approved Thursday once those dollars are combined with other financing, the agency said.

“Texas is making the most of our economic stimulus funds,” said commission chair Deirdre Delisi. She said the decision is the result of four months of work by the agency and community leaders.

Some state lawmakers had complained this week that economically distressed areas weren’t given a priority in choosing projects, as required in the federal law signed by President Barack Obama in February. The transportation department’s executive director, Amadeo Saenz, said distress was not a factor in deciding which roads and bridge maintenance projects would get stimulus money.

In a letter Wednesday, U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minnesota, chairman of the congressional Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said the government must ensure transportation spending meet all requirements, “including giving priority to economically distressed areas.”

TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott said that requirement was taken into consideration with the group of 29 construction projects approved Thursday, as were other requirements such as a quick time frame for completing the projects and maximizing job creation and economic benefit.

Among the projects approved are ones that would widen part of Interstate 35 in Bell County; construct a new interchange at U.S. Highway 281 and Loop 1604 in San Antonio; make improvements along U.S. 281 and U.S. 59 in the Pharr and Corpus Christi area; and construct an interchange at Interstate 10 and Loop 375 in El Paso.

One of the added road projects is Cuatro Vientos, intended to relieve congestion in Laredo. Lawmakers and local officials from that border city spoke out strongly for including the project.

Waco area officials complained that improvements to Interstate 35 in their city wasn’t included. Waco Mayor Virginia DuPuy said more than 100,000 vehicles per day cross the Brazos River on I-35.

Before the commission meeting, about a dozen activists gathered outside to protest the use of federal stimulus dollars on toll roads.

“It’s at least double taxation, using federal tax money to toll a road — to build it and then toll a road,” said Linda Curtis, director of Independent Texans, an organizing group for toll road protesters.

Link to article here.

States Wear Blinders On The True Costs of Sprawl
By Mary Newsom
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Citiwire.net

Across the U.S., civil engineers are practically giddy–well, they’re as giddy as civil engineers are ever going to be.“For the first time in my career,” says Wayne Klotz, a Texan who is president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, “infrastructure is a hot topic.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, president of the National Governors’ Association, has for a year been trying to spotlight the nation’s serious infrastructure needs–although (don’t tell Klotz) Rendell himself concedes the topic lacks a certain sexiness.

But these days, recession-pummeled Americans are following the federal stimulus package almost as avidly as, in happier times, they obsessed over Anna Nicole Smith or Laci Peterson. They’re arguing whether stimulus money should go to the arts, or to repair and expand infrastructure, such as fixing bridges, boosting transit or finishing urban loop roads.

It’s about time people noticed those public works projects.

Klotz — speaking recently in Raleigh, N.C., at a statewide conference on growth and infrastructure — gave a shiver-inducing rundown of failing bridges, inadequate levees and high-hazard dams. In January the engineering group’s latest report card on the nation’s infrastructure rated it “poor.” Drinking water? D-. Levees? D-. Roads? D-. Transit? D.

“We continue to use the ‘patch-and-pray’ system,” Klotz said. Yet every $1 spent for maintaining infrastructure saves $16 in repair costs when something breaks, he pointed out.

But is the welcome public attention also spotlighting one of the reasons our infrastructure spending is so high–the vast sums required by suburban sprawl? In fast-growing North Carolina, at least, it isn’t.

Amid plenty of talk at that two-day conference about huge needs and inadequate money, about transit funding and open space preservation, one topic went all but unmentioned: Sprawl and its costs.

You’d think more of the leaders in this fast-sprawling state would be paying attention, because huge sums are at stake. For instance:

• The outerbelt highway for Charlotte, the state’s largest city, will have cost at least $1.2 billion in state and federal funds by the time it’s finished, some 30 years after it was begun. Yet uncontrolled development along its route induced congestion almost as soon as each section opened.
• State transportation officials project a $65 billion gap over the next 20 years between transportation revenues and transportation needs.
• Charlotte officials estimate it will cost $7.4 million per mile in state and local money to upgrade old farm-to-market roads now carrying suburbanites to and from home, work and shopping.

While there’s plenty of head-scratching about how to find the money, state policymakers are bafflingly silent about the dollars wasted by spread-out, low-density, metastasizing suburban sprawl–and how much the state needs to reel it in.

Part of the problem is a simplistic yet potent belief that “growth is good,” and any new development is a net revenue gain. That idea is “fool’s gold,” ex-developer Rand Wentworth, president of the national Land Trust Alliance, told the forum. Typical suburban development costs $1.15 in services for every $1 in revenue it brings in, he said.

Another piece of the problem is that in North Carolina, state government types pretend growth is a local issue. They practically stick their fingers in their ears and shout “La, la, la, I can’t hear you!” when state growth policy comes up.

Yet the state has plenty of skin in this game. Consider state road money. The state spent millions in past decades to build so-called “bypass” highways around many of its town and cities. Then local decisions lined those bypasses with big-box stores, fast-food joints and strip shopping centers. Now, because developers have strip-mined the “bypass” highways, the state wants to build expensive “bypass-the-bypass” highways.

In another example, state-maintained roads through cities and towns tend to be major thoroughfares, lined with subdivisions and shopping centers. They carry exponentially more traffic than if the cities had adopted common-sense requirements for connected street grids, and had banned cul-de-sacs and gated subdivisions, which funnel traffic onto those quickly clogged thoroughfares. Then the state must pay for more lanes, wider intersections and other costly “improvements.” Why isn’t the state looking at its expenditures and telling the cities to stop this idiocy?

An intriguing study from Charlotte’s city staff illustrates another of sprawl’s hidden costs, with city taxpayers in this instance footing the bill: Fire station costs are sharply lower in older parts of town where streets connect. The study analyzed eight stations and found the annualized per-household life-cycle cost almost five times greater in disconnected, cul-de-sac-laden suburbia. That’s because fire stations in neighborhoods with traditional street grids can serve more square miles, since they can reach more homes within acceptable response times.

It’s heartening to hear President Obama declare we’re past “building sprawl forever,” that there has to be a smarter way to design communities. Now, we just need more officials at all levels of government to heed his words.

Mary Newsom is an associate editor, op-ed columnist and blogger at The Charlotte Observer. Her e-mail is Mnewsom@CharlotteObserver.com.

Link to article here. In an almost inexplicable heist of stimulus funds, many elected officials and TxDOT alike are salivating over the opportunity to subsidize their toll projects that can’t stand on their own two feet. Not only is it a DOUBLE TAX to use public money to build it and then charge an extra tax to drive on it, it’s horrible public policy.

We shouldn’t be building toll roads during one of the worst economic crises since the 1930s. Folks are clamoring just to keep their jobs and homes much less have the money to pony-up an extra tax to get to work.

Send TxDOT this simple message in time for their March 5 meeting: “NO stimulus money for toll roads!” Email TxDOT here.

$700 million eyed for toll projects
Grand Parkway’s among 21 Texas roadways where money will be spent
By ROSANNA RUIZ Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 27, 2009

The Texas Department of Transportation has set aside more than $700 million in economic stimulus funds for toll road projects across the state, sparking criticism and questions about whether the pay-to-drive roads are an appropriate use of the federal dollars.

The toll roads — including the Grand Parkway in Harris County — are among 21 major projects up for a vote at next week’s meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission in Austin. The commission had planned to vote on the list this week but delayed its consideration a week after at least one state legislator complained the money was being spent without enough input.

The delay has given opponents an opportunity to organize a lobbying effort aimed at persuading state leaders to withhold stimulus money from toll road projects.

“It’s a total rip-off,” said Terri Hall, director of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, a nonprofit opposed to toll roads. “That’s not how the money is supposed to be used.”

TxDOT leaders and transportation planners defend the projects, saying all of them, including the toll roads, are important to their regions and offer tangible economic and mobility benefits.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the discussion about these funds has eclipsed the broader discussion about the state’s transportation needs,” TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott said.

The discussion should be on reducing gridlock now, said Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, whose criticism led the commission to postpone its vote. Toll roads should be built later with state money, not onetime federal stimulus funds, he said.

“The Legislature continues to vote for toll moratoriums,” he said, “and TxDOT keeps ignoring us.”

More fees for drivers

U.S. Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, also questioned the use of stimulus funds on toll roads.

“It concerns me that state officials would prioritize toll projects that will hit already hard-pressed Texas drivers with additional fees,” he said in an e-mailed statement. “I would like to see stimulus dollars fund projects that ease not only congestion, but an over-taxed public as well.”

The economic stimulus bill does not address toll roads, only that proposed projects satisfy requirements to create jobs and promote economic growth, said Jim Berard, a spokesman for the U.S. House Transportation Committee.

In addition to $181 million for the Grand Parkway, TxDOT’s list includes an additional $50 million for four new ramps connecting the Eastex Freeway and Beltway 8.

The other toll road projects slated for stimulus funds are: $36 million for Texas 550 in Cameron County; $42.5 million for a toll road in Smith County; $144.9 million for Fort Worth’s Southwest Parkway; and $250 million for toll lanes along the Dallas-Fort Worth Connector.

Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack, whose precinct includes Segment E of the Grand Parkway, said the segment satisfies the federal stimulus mandate as a “shovel-ready” project. The Harris County Toll Road Authority would add $16.6 million to the project.

Prioritizing projects

The 15-mile project, he said, potentially will alleviate congestion on U.S. 290.

Citizens Transportation Coalition chairwoman Robin Holzer, who opposed the Commissioners Court’s vote on the Grand Parkway segment, said the state should spend stimulus money on projects other than toll roads that typically are used by a small portion of motorists.

“It’s incomprehensible that TxDOT could think that this is the most important project in the Houston District,” she said.

U.S. 290, she offered, could benefit more from the federal funding.

Radack countered that a planned overhaul of U.S. 290 is not at the appropriate stage for the stimulus funds.

The Grand Parkway and the other projects landed on TxDOT’s project list after extensive planning to identify projects that would improve safety, among other criteria, Lippincott said.

The proposed Grand Parkway would span 180 miles, circling around the Houston area, at a projected cost of $4.8 billion. Segment E calls for a 15-mile, four-lane toll road that would connect the Katy Freeway and U.S. 290 at an estimated cost of $330 million, according to the Harris County Toll Road Authority.

A tolled Segment E could finance other portions of the parkway, proponents say.

Link to article here.

Grand Jury Report Released As Toll Hike Planned
Expressway Authority Approves Toll Hike
February 26, 2009
WESH.com

ORLANDO, Fla. — A grand jury report released on Friday accuses the former head of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority of improperly using his power and influence.

Allan Keen is accused of using expressway contractors to raise money for his favorite political candidates, such as former Congressmen Ric Keller and Tom Feeney and present Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty.The report comes out a day after the authority voted to raise tolls 25 cents beginning in April.

The grand jury report criticizes Keen, the former chairman of the expressway authority, of fostering a “culture of corruption” and acting like a “shakedown artist” to get vendors and contractors of the toll agency to help keep his political friends in office.Keen resigned in 2007.

But Keen’s attorney said Friday that it was legal, which is why Keen is not being criminally charged.The report, which has been sealed since October 2007, reveals Keen had expressway authority contractors and vendors raise money for 18 candidates and the “Mobility 2020″ effort to raise the sales tax to pay for roads. The total raised through Keen was more than $468,000.

The expressway authority held a public hearing on the proposal and voted on Thursday to change the fares.The authority’s vote was unanimous. The hike will occur April 5.The last time fares were increased was in 1990.

Officials said fewer drivers on local toll roads forced them to push for the hike.”We have needs on the system that need to get done to be completed on the 408, on the John Land (Apopka Expressway), down on the BeachLine,” Expressway Authority representative Mike Snyder said.

The Expressway Authority argues that if the increase didn’t pass, roadway projects would have been delayed. Also, toll revenue has been down nearly 5 percent each month for the past year.The increase promises guaranteed completion of the Greater Orlando Beltway by 2018, officials said.

Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty serves as board chairman. “Do I like the idea of raising tolls? No. Is it better for the authority to do it and raise jobs rather than have a bond agency come in here and do it for us? Yes,” Crotty said.

Tolls will be adjusted to inflation every five years starting in 2012.Many drivers said the struggling economy has them driving on toll roads less, and since the increase passed, some drivers said they will drive them even less.

“I do go out of my way, actually, to not use the roadways and tolls and stuff,” driver Byron Fain said.

The following toll plazas will not see a rate hike: