Link to story here. Of note, this Hardy toll road extension is significant in that it connects with highway 59 which is slated to become the Trans Texas Corridor 69 privatized and tolled trade corridor. The BIG GOVERNMENT and BIG BUSINESS interests are mapping out their takeover of our FREEway system and turning it into a cash cow toll road system extorting money from motorists just to drive to make their daily bread.

Hardy extension gets the go ahead
Thursday, December 6, 2007
By Lee McGuire / 11 News
The Hardy Toll Road extension should be open within four years.
On Wednesday, the Houston City Council made possible the extension of the Hardy Toll road from where it ends now, at 610 North, to State Highway 59.

The expansion will also affect three nearby freeways.

The new, 3 1⁄2 mile extension of the Hardy Toll Road has everything to do with railroads.

“Virtually the whole right of way is on railroad property,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett.

Meaning, not much except rail lines and some industrial freight businesses stand in the way of downtown Houston and a much quicker trip to the big airport and the Woodlands.

“Anything they can do to make it better they should do,” said motorist John Defoen.

Right now, Defoen totally avoids the interchange at the North Freeway and Loop 610; it’s where the Hardy dumps out now, and at rush hour.

The Hardy extension will replace some north/south rail lines and the tracks themselves will move. On surface roads, crews will build rail overpasses at Lorraine, Quitman and Collingsworth.

Ending the temptation to play chicken with a train.
There are some houses in the way, probably fewer than a dozen, but the maps aren’t finished yet.

In the big picture, the Hardy extension would expand beyond Loop 610, reach beyond I-10 and connect with State Highway 59 in both directions.
That would ease traffic pressure on Loop 610, Highway 59 and the North Freeway, moving 35,000 cars a day on to the Hardy extension.

“It certainly can’t hurt there are enough problems right now with traffic, anything they can do to help would help,” said driver Mike Kurzy.

It’s an extension that’s been in the works for 20 years. Now, drivers have four more years to wait.

The target completion date for the Hardy Toll Road extension is December 2011. It’ll cost about $200 million, and toll road officials aren’t ready to say just what it’ll cost to drive it.

Remember that 69 was promised as an interstate, not a privatized and tolled Trans Texas Trade Corridor to benefit multi-national corporations, not Texans.

“The official memo has gone out.”

Controversial Trans-Texas Corridor Plans Forge Ahead

12/4/2007

KLBJ News Radio 590
Copyright 2007

The official memo has gone out from the state’s transportation department to two private companies to move ahead with plans to build a highly-controversial superhighway which critics say hurt Texas, and cause an erosion in commerce nationwide.

Plans for the Trans-Texas corridor were being formulated 16 years ago, but Governor Rick Perry’s office says it “lacked the billions of dollars in funding needed to construct it”. On Monday, two private companies were asked to submit detailed proposals on developing and financing the project, designed to provide a high-speed ground link between Laredo and Dallas. Under a preferred route, running parallel to I-35 near Austin, the route would bypass San Antonio, Austin, Waco and Dallas.

“It has no federal funding for it, and so it is up to the State of Texas to find funding for this interstate corridor,” says Gaby Garcia, spokesperson for the Texas Department of Transportation. “We have no money set aside for this project. No federal funds are set aside for the interstate.”

TxDOT has asked two firms, Zachry American Infrastructure, of San Antonio; and Cintra, a Spain-based toll-road operator, to front the project. Cintra would do business as ‘Bluebonnet Infrastructure’ on this project. Cintra currently operates an east-west toll-road in Indiana, as the result of a highly-protested takeover in 2005, approved by Indiana’s governor at the time.

In an online fact-versus-myth page dedicated to the corridor, or “TTC/I-69” as the state calls it, Governor Perry says the road will be paid for entirely by private financing. When completed, it will be a totally toll-operated highway.

“[It’s] a revenue-generating opportunity for a private partner to have a monopoly on transportation,” says David Stall, of the group ‘Corridor Watch.org’, based in Fayetteville, Texas. “I mean, there’s no free lunch and there’s no free road. And when you layer-in a profit for a private partner that has a monopoly who is going to dictate the price of the infrastructure, absolutely they’re going to pay for it.”

Although there have been previous newspaper articles and maps illustrating the future main artery of the corridor paralleling I-35 and taking about the same path as the brand-new SH130, east of Austin (currently toll), the U.S. Route 59 was recently asserted as the official route for the planned highway. U.S. 59 connects Laredo with roughly west of Victoria, proceeds northeast to Houston, and roughly due north to Texarkana.

“We’re concerned that this has been a project that has excluded public input,” Stall says.

Some critics have also contested the plan in saying that it would divide some of the area’s massive properties, farms and ranches by upwards of a one-half mile. According to Governor Perry’s online “contention” versus “reality” publication, that statement is untrue. He says access roads and overpasses would be built in select locations to give property owners access to their lands. Other critics claim the highway would be built using eminent domain and the state could easily give far less than fair market value to property owners whose land the highway would consume for construction. The Governor claims that assertion is untrue and that property owners have every right to contest any offer made for their property, in court.

The state contends that the project “is needed to make transportation safer, faster and more reliable and to provide for better hurricane evacuation”.

The entire Trans-Texas Corridor could take up to 50 years to complete.

© 2007 Emmis Austin Radio Broadcasting Company, Lp.: www.590klbj.com

Link to editorial here.

Guess it took a doctoral candidate in planning and problem solving to get the Express-News Editorial Board to print the concerns the citizens have brought forward for nearly 3 years now. Kudos to Mr. Forrest.

Comment: ‘Those people’ victims of poor highway planning
12/08/2007
By Jay Forrest

Jaime Castillo makes a number of good points in his column “McNeil just doesn’t get the toll-related frustration of ‘those people'” (Monday, Metro).I would add that as one of “those people,” the narrow targeting of toll roads on U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 makes me a victim of extremely shortsighted planning and management, leading me to project an aura of incompetence upon the three primary perpetrators:

The Texas Legislature, which has distorted the “fair” funding option by reallocating “surplus” highway funds and refusing to release them back to the highway department as needed and by refusing to consider raising gasoline taxes as an inferior alternative.

The Texas Department of Transportation, which built highways all over San Antonio with no consideration of the fact they eventually would need to be connected, leading to exorbitant later costs that TxDOT later decided it could not afford.

The city of San Antonio and its past mayors and City Council members, who took the easy route by approving plans for high-density development without regard for the impact on traffic (and, more significantly, water) or pursing projects to ensure adequate transportation.

The tolling of the U.S. 281- Loop 1604 intersection provides a good example of why many of “those people” feel discriminated against. The “intersections” of U.S. 281 and Loop 410, Interstate 10 and Loop 410, U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 and more were built by TxDOT with no consideration of the fact they would need to be connected.

I am not aware of any other major highways or major arteries in Texas that were built without direct ramp connections (i.e., avoiding the traffic-jamming use of surface access roads with traffic lights).

For TxDOT to build and endorse such intersections is beyond incompetent. They should have been built properly, with plans for reasonable connection for the cost of the half-mile extended flying ramps that will correct this oversight and contribute significantly to the cost crunch that leads TX DOT to say the U.S. 281-Loop 1604 intersection requires tolls.

The proposed tolls for the ramps at U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 are discriminatory because, if nothing else, the remedial ramps being built between Loop 410 and U.S. 281 and Loop 410 and Interstate 10 are free. The installation of proper ramps at U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 are similar in that they correct mistakes by TxDOT planners.

There is a further issue that TxDOT views these tolls as a revenue generator. So those of us affected are being singled out to pay not only for the tolled lanes but also to build roads we don’t use. Other drivers get to use ramps for free; why should “those people” pay for ramps and roads that are not tolled? This is a highly arbitrary, discriminatory and inappropriate tax.

I would not be against tolling existing roads so long as everyone in the state paid the same rates for the same vehicles — say, 2 cents a mile for all Texas highways instead of free for some and $2.50 or more a day for others.

Unfortunately, the cost of building facilities to toll all roads would be exorbitant and create a whole new bureaucracy. The same is true for Loop 1604 and the ramps for U.S. 281 and Loop 1604.

The $100,000 a mile spent to toll express lanes on Loop 1604 would be better spent on adding lanes. We already have a means of collecting taxes based on highway use; it is called a gasoline tax.

The real, fair and responsible funding answer lies in a higher gasoline tax in combination with the Legislature returning existing funds to TxDOT; finding other, more appropriate sources of funding for the causes currently using our gasoline taxes; and increasing the fees on the large trucks that destroy interstates and lead TxDOT into perpetual maintenance and highway upgrades.

Proponents of toll roads want me to feel tolling is fair. I think not. We are being asked to pay far more than “our fair share.”

There is a reason we feel discriminated against.

Jay Forrest of San Antonio is a doctoral candidate in foresight and a consultant in long-range strategy, problem solving and opportunities.