Category: General

Radio debate: Casteel essentially calls Perry a liar

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In another stunning admission, David Casteel of TxDOT concedes they have the money to fix our freeways (ie – 281), but would rather indebt us for our lifetimes to foreign companies so that they can have more “play money.” He went into the usual bureaucratic gobbly-gook straining for a reason to possibly justify tolling us for what’s already paid for.

His answer: they WANT more of your money thereby leaving all of us with less. Haven’t we heard this sad little song over and over again from government? We can do so much more if we just raise your taxes. Sorry, Mr. Casteel, that tired ol’ song doesn’t come close to being sufficient justification for DOUBLE TAXATION and selling off control of our public infrastructure to foreign companies all so government can make a quick buck! TxDOT and other monopolistic government bureaucracies are like spoiled children who always want more no matter how much you give them. It’s the parent’s job to teach them self-control and mastery over their whims. TxDOT and BIG GOVERNMENT won’t EVER restrain themselves unless we do it for them.

Remember the famous dig on Bush, 41, “it’s the economy, _______!” Well, our government bureaucrats and politicians don’t seem to get it that it’s the principle here that’s sinking their ship with the taxpayers. We really don’t care that they can build endless amounts of highways ad nauseum forever if we’d only pony up a WHOLE NEW TAX ON DRIVING. It’s totally immoral to charge us twice for what we’ve already bought and paid for. It’s highway robbery to charge us a toll when they have the money to fix 281 right now, today. It’s immoral that they have withheld vital safety enhancements to Borgfeld Rd on 281, for instance (people have DIED at that intersection and they’ve had the money to fix it since 2003), simply so they turn our FREEway into a tollway and indebt us to foreign companies for generations!

Casteel and the pro-toll callers would rather shoot the messenger and make personal attacks for simply scrutinizing their plans (which we the taxpayers have to pay for) than to actually stick to the issues. This is how BIG government treats citizens who dare step out of place to redress our government for grievances. The government has the power to forcibly take our money for taxes, and all the credentials we need to demand accountability is the fact that we’re TAXPAYERS!

TxDOT and their cronies are out of control, folks, and the ONLY way to shrink a bureaucracy and save us from punitive taxation and to wrest our public infrastructure from control by foreign companies is to VOTE OUT EVERY LAST TOLLER, starting with Rick Perry, and to demand accountability for how government spends our hard-earned money. If they’re forcibly taking our money (which is what taxation is), we have EVERY RIGHT to demand they use it wisely.

CASTEEL ESSENTIALLY CALLS PERRY A LIAR
Rick Perry himself, who appoints the Transportation Commission, admitted that the figures they’re using to come up with their mythical “funding gap” (in other words their whole justification for saying they need to toll every highway they can get their hands on) are from transportation planners wish lists “if money were no object,” (Austin American Statesman article, August 20, 2006). Casteel basically called his boss a liar on the air when he tried to say I was wrong in calling their “needs” a wish list when his own boss, Rick Perry, is who said it! All I did was repeat it. These guys can’t get any more comical at this point!

Out of one side of their mouths they try to justify this whole new tax as a “user tax,” then admit they’re tolling 281 (in spite of the fact they have the money to pay for it) in order to pay for projects on another highway elsewhere. They also admit the tolls are never coming off the road, so it can’t be a user tax no matter how you look at it since once road A is paid for, they’ll continue to toll it to fund road B or C and so on. Also, they’re using some of our gas taxes to build these tollways since none of them are self-sustaining toll roads (Commissioner Lyle Larson even says so here). So again, all of us are paying for the toll roads, not just the “users,” plus we all pay the increase in our cost of goods since businesses will pass the cost of tolls onto us even if we don’t drive the toll roads.

They contradict themselves all day long and yet try to call our credibility into question asking if I’m an engineer. Isn’t it engineers who brought us the 410/281 mess (known around the state as the most embarrassing mess-up in the department’s history), the 1604/281 debacle and the list could go on? In fact, our band of concerned citizens does have civil engineers, lawyers, transportation planners, economists, and a host of well-informed citizens armed with the truth who know a raw deal when they see one.

But that’s really a side issue since this isn’t about engineering, it’s about government being accountable to the taxpayers who pay the bills. It’s about keeping what belongs to Texans under the control of Texans and not foreign companies. It’s about preserving our way of life and freedom of mobility without dividing us into two classes of people: those who can afford the tolls and those who will be priced off our own FREEways. It’s about putting the voters back in the drivers seat instead of multi-national companies and powerful foreign countries seeking to undermine our nation’s strength by exploiting free trade agreements. That’s what the pro-tollers just don’t get and they never will because their jobs depend on them not seeing it.

____________________________
Here’s my opening statement from the debate on KSLR AM 630 talk radio with Adam McManus today:

The bottom line: the push for tolls is about a whole new tax on driving to accommodate the anticipated influx in cheap foreign goods through the NAFTA Superhighway known as the Trans Texas Corridor in Texas. Plus, toll roads don’t solve congestion; they manipulate it for profit.

Anytime you increase government, increase taxes, and increase the cost of doing of business, it’s a recipe for economic disaster. It’s not a lack of money, but poor planning and misplaced priorities that have created this mess. Our politicians are gambling with these plans and they haven’t properly studied them by any relevant standards.

TxDOT is big business. It takes in more money than Southwest Airlines and Starbucks! If Southwest Airlines can keep people moving and stay in the black year after year TxDOT can, too. The trouble is TxDOT is a government monopoly with NO competition! It’s a bloated bureaucracy that needs to be reined in. Their budget has tripled since 1990 and state gas tax revenues have gone up 178% over the last 20 years at that’s adjusted for population and inflation. They have an amount nearly equal to doubling their current budget available in bonds RIGHT NOW. We can continue to build freeways without tolls. State Rep. Joe Pickett said (July 27, El Paso Times) “we can build 4 free roads for the cost of one toll road.”

It’s time TxDOT gets put on a diet and learns to manage its funds in a more fiscally responsible way that the public can trust. We’re all tightening our belts and driving less due to high gas prices, TxDOT needs to tighten their belt, too.

As an example, on Hwy 281, they plan to toll every single highway lane leaving only frontage roads as the non-toll with stop lights and reduced speed limits. TxDOT’s toll project manager Frank Holzman admitted on camera that what I drive on today will become a toll road. They’re negotiating a contract right now in SECRET to turn it over to a foreign company that would grant a 50 year monopoly and put those free lanes under the control of a private company allowing them to manipulate traffic onto the toll lanes. Mr. Casteel admitted on camera that there’s $100 million in your gas taxes identified for 281. When you look at the ORIGINAL TXDOT plan for 281, the cost is $100 million.

They have the money to fix it right now, but they’ve decided to toll you for your lifetime instead for a highway that’s already built and paid for and even the improvements are already paid for. This isn’t about accelerating projects or not having enough money, this is about tapping the vein of your wallet…you may as well call it a “pain tax” because in order for a toll road to work, the surrounding free lanes have to remain congested (otherwise no one would pay to use a toll lane).

Gas tax equals pennies a day; tolls equal dollars day. Pro-tollers are putting lipstick on a pig…but it’s still a pig and taxpayers and businesses alike know a lousy deal when they see one. The taxpayers will not stand idly by and allow our government and private special interests to hold Texas families’ hostage to pay a toll just to drive to work, school, or shop without our consent! Our government has lost touch with those whom it is paid to serve.

Please go to SA Toll Party.com to see it for yourself. The primary sources for our information are TxDOT’s own documents, state sponsored studies and reports, and national data from transportation think tanks.

We also encourage you to sign our online petition and to join our taxpayer revolt at SA Toll Party.com.

Average commute time getting shorter

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Link to AP article here. Also, link to Pat Driscoll’s Express-News blog article demonstrating SA commute time has only gone up 3 minutes in the last 25 years here.

More bad news for the tollers. This demonstrates once again that the pro-tollers are CREATING A CRISIS that doesn’t really exist accept in isolated cases. Note the longest commute is in New Jersey, a toll road mecca. So much for toll roads “solving” congestion, eh? It also supports the economist we cite who argues there’s no need for congestion tolling(scroll down to Barry Klein’s article) since there is a trend for jobs to follow workers to the suburbs to help alleviate a long commute and to aid in retaining good employees.

Average daily commute is getting shorter
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
Associated Press Writer
August 30, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) — It might be hard for some drivers to believe, but average commuting times are getting shorter for U.S. workers.

The average daily commute to work has shrunk from 25.5 minutes in 2000 to 25.1 minutes last year, according to data released this week by the Census Bureau.

“We all should hold a celebration,” said Alan Pisarski, author of “Commuting in America.” “We’re saving 0.4 minutes!”

That’s 0.4 minutes each way, for a total of 48 seconds a day.

But not everyone’s buying it.

“Even with these numbers, we swear up and down that we are spending more time in our cars,” said John B. Townsend II, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic in Washington.

“We are spending at least an hour a day in our cars in the Washington area,” Townsend said. “We spend more time stuck in traffic and commuting (each year) than we spend on vacation.”

The numbers are surprising because many of the nation’s fastest-growing communities are in the outer suburbs, miles from central cities. The shorter commuting times could be a sign that jobs are following the workers, Pisarski said.

For example, the nation’s longest commute, at 39.6 minutes, is in the Vineland, N.J., metropolitan area, about 40 miles south of Philadelphia.

Vineland, a community of 56,000 people in southern New Jersey, was part of the Philadelphia metropolitan area in 2000. It became its own metropolitan area, along with the cities of Millville and Bridgeton, because fewer workers are commuting into Philadelphia.

The New York area had the second-longest commute, at 34.2 minutes, and the Washington area was third at 33.4 minutes. Commuters in both New York and Washington saw their commutes get slightly longer from 2000 to 2005.

The Los Angeles area, which is notorious for its traffic, came in 16th, at 28.4 minutes. That’s shorter than the commute in Riverside, Calif., which has been siphoning residents from Los Angeles for years.

“Overall, congestion isn’t a problem for everyone,” said Mantill Williams, a spokesman for AAA’s national office. “But there are specific pockets of pain. There are specific areas where it has gotten worse.”

Among the findings from the Census Bureau:

-The share of people driving alone to work increased from 75.7 percent in 2000 to 77 percent last year.

-The share of people carpooling to work dropped from 12.2 percent in 2000 to 10.7 percent last year.

-The share of people using mass transit stayed the same at 4.7 percent.

-The share of people walking to work dropped from 2.9 percent in 2000 to 2.5 percent last year.

-The share of people working at home increased from 3.3 percent in 2000 to 3.6 percent last year.

On The Net:
Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/

Union warns of drug-addicted Mexican truckers, unsafe rigs on corridor routes

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Link to article here.

NAFTA superhighway to mean Mexican drivers, say Teamsters
Union warns of drug-taking truckers, unsafe rigs on planned trade routes
World Net Daily
August 28, 2006

WASHINGTON – The NAFTA superhighway, a north-south interstate trade corridor linking Mexico, Canada and the U.S., would mean U.S. truckers replaced by Mexicans, more unsafe rigs on American roads and more drivers relying on drugs for their long hauls, charges the International Brotherhood of Teamsters – the latest group to weigh in against the Bush administration plan.

The August issue of Teamster magazine features a cover story on the plan for an enlarged I-35 that will reach north from the drug capital border town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 1,600 miles to Canada through San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Duluth, while I-69 originating at the same crossing will shoot north to Michigan and across the Canadian border.

Public proposals for the superhighway calls for each corridor to be 1,200 feet wide with six lanes devoted to cars, four to trucks, with a rail line and utilities in the middle. Most of the goods will come from new Mexican ports being built on the Pacific Coast – ports being run by Chinese state-controlled shipping companies.

“Tens of thousands of unregulated, unsafe Mexican trucks will flow unchecked through out border – a very real threat to the safety of our highways, homeland security and good-paying American jobs,” writes Teamster President Jim Hoffa. “The Bush administration hasn’t given up on its ridiculous quest to open our border to unsafe Mexican trucking companies. In fact, Bush is quietly moving forward with plans to build the massive network of highways from the Mexican border north through Detroit into Canada that would make cross-border trucking effortless.”

So incensed was the union over the plan for the NAFTA superhighway that it sent investigative reporter Charles Bowden to Mexico for its August magazine report on the problems affecting Mexican drivers – problems that could soon come home to Americans with the plans for the new intercontinental highways.

Drivers interviewed for the magazine report say they are exploited by companies that force them to drive 4,500 kilometers alone over the course of five or six nights without sleep. How do they stay awake on such long hauls?

One driver says, “professional secret.” Another laughs, “magic dust.” Others mention “special chemicals.”

“And then they are off, a torrent of words and quips and smiles, and a knowing discussion of that jolt when a line of cocaine locks in,” writes Bowden. “They are all family men who run the highways at least 25 days a month and they are adamant about two things – that nobody can run these long hauls without cocaine and crystal meth, and now and then some marijuana to level out the rush. And the biggest danger on their endless runs comes from addicted Mexican truck drivers, which means all truck drivers.”

Mexican drivers, of course, earn considerably less than their U.S. counterparts – about $1,100 a month. Hoffa says the NAFTA superhighway plan would “allow global conglomerates to capitalize by exploiting cheap labor and non-existent work rules and avoiding potential security enhancements at U.S. ports.”

The drivers interviewed for Teamster magazine say they are completely at the mercy of their employers, the Mexican government and police – who are the first to rob them. All of those interviewed said they have killed people with their trucks on the highways and fled the accident sites.

Hoffa calls NAFTA an “unqualified disaster” up to now – and wonders why the nation continues to pursue the “free trade” agenda. Instead of creating new jobs, he said, it has cost 3 million in manufacturing alone. Instead of creating trade surpluses, America’s trade deficit is the worst ever, he says.

“If there’s a positive side to the disastrous legacy of NAFTA, it’s that it has made it a little harder for the free trade cabal to wrap their lies around subsequent job-killing deals,” says Hoffa. “While the White House and Senate still have a majority who continue to support the free trade agenda, their ranks have shrunk over the years – sometimes due to members of Congress changing their minds and sometimes due to voters changing their member of Congress.”

He adds: “If the Bush administration succeeds (with the NAFTA superhighway), American drivers and their families will be forced to share the roads with unsafe, uninsured trucks and millions of good-paying American jobs will be lost. And just one weapon of mass destruction in an unchecked container will be too many.”

Pat Buchanan: The NAFTA superhighway coming soon

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Link to article here.

The NAFTA superhighway: Coming soon
Commentary By Pat Buchanan
World Net Daily
August 29, 2006

This is a “mind-boggling concept,” exploded Lou Dobbs. It must cause Americans to think our political and academic elites have “gone utterly mad.” What had detonated the mild-mannered CNN anchor?

Robert Pastor, vice chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on North America, had just appeared before a panel of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to call for erasing all U.S. borders and a merger of the United States, Mexico and Canada in a North American union stretching from Prudhoe Bay to Guatemala. Under the Pastor-CFR plan, the illegal alien invasion would be solved by eliminating America’s borders and legalizing the invasion. We would no longer defend the Rio Grande.

“What we need to do,” Pastor instructed, “is forge a new North American Community. … Instead of stopping North Americans on the borders, we ought to provide them with a secure, biometric border pass that would ease transit across the border like an E-Z pass permits our cars to speed through tolls.”

The Pastor-CFR project for “economic integration” of Mexamerica is on the drawing board. North-south highways and railways would be built to weld us together as the American Union was welded together by the Northern Pacific, Union Pacific and Southern Pacific, and Ike’s Interstate Highway System.

Speaking in Madrid in 2002, Mexican President Vicente Fox declared: “Our long-range objective is to establish with the United States … an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union, with the goal of attending to future themes as important as … the freedom of movement of capital, goods, services and persons. The new framework we wish to construct is inspired in the example of the European Union.”

Critical element of the Fox post-NAFTA agenda: absolute freedom of movement for persons between Mexico and the United States – a merger of the nations. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Debrez put it succinctly in April 2005. What Mexico is about is “complete integration” of the two nations.

To appreciate what Fox, Debrez, Pastor and the CFR wish America to merge with, consider a few excerpts from the State Department information sheet on Mexico.

While hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens marched beneath Mexican flags in U.S. cities on May Day to demand amnesty, Mexico’s constitution “prohibits political activities by foreigners, and such actions may result in detentions and deportations.”

“Crime in Mexico continues at high levels, and it is often violent, especially in Mexico City, Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo (and) Acapulco,” State warns U.S. travelers. “Low apprehension rates and conviction rates of criminals contribute to the high crime rate.”

“Women traveling alone are especially vulnerable. … Victims … have been raped, robbed of personal property or abducted and then held while their credit cards are used at various businesses and automatic teller machines. … Kidnapping, including the kidnapping of non-Mexicans, continues at alarming rates.”

When Fox proposed his merger of America and Mexico in a North American Union, Robert Bartley, for 30 years editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, declared him a “visionary” and pledged solidarity: “He (Fox) can rest assured that there is one voice north of the Rio Grande that supports his vision … this newspaper.”

The American people never supported NAFTA, and they are angry over Bush’s failure to secure the border – but a shotgun marriage between our two nations appears prearranged. Central feature: a ten-lane, 400-yard-wide NAFTA superhighway from the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, up to and across the U.S. border, all the way to Canada. Within the median strip dividing the north and south car and truck lanes would be rail lines for both passengers and freight traffic, and oil and gas pipelines.

As author Jerome Corsi describes this Fox-Bush autobahn, container ships from China would unload at Lazaro Cardenas, a port named for the Mexican president who nationalized all U.S. oil companies in 1938. From there, trucks with Mexican drivers would run fast lines into the United States, hauling their cargo to a U.S. customs inspection terminal – in Kansas City, Mo. From there, the trucks would fan out across America or roll on into Canada. Similar superhighways from Mexico through the United States into Canada are planned.

According to Corsi, construction of the Trans-Texas Corridor, the first leg of the NAFTA superhighway, is to begin next year.

The beneficiaries of this NAFTA superhighway project would be the contractors who build it and the importers and outlet stores for the Chinese-manufactured goods that would come flooding in. The losers would be U.S. longshoremen, truckers, manufacturers and taxpayers.

The latter would pay the cost of building the highway in Mexico and the United States, both in dollars and in the lost sovereignty of our once-independent American republic.

Even members of Congress clueless about NAFTA Superhighway…while it's already under construction!

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Link to article here.

How NAFTA superhighway is built under radar screen
Officials say they see no budget ‘earmarks,’ because they don’t know where to look
World Net Daily
August 29, 2006

WASHINGTON – Ask some members of Congress about plans to build a “NAFTA superhighway” connecting Mexico and Canada via the U.S. and you might hear snickers. Some officials will tell you they have seen no “earmarks” for such a plan and question whether it even exists.

But the plan does exist and the NAFTA superhighway is being built – under the radar screen. One need look no further than the $286 billion highway bill signed into law earlier this month by President Bush for some of the “earmarks.” The measure gave the state of Tennessee more than $111 million to help plan and build Interstate 69, called “one of the most significant transportation projects in the region’s history” by the Commercial Appeal.

No one in Tennessee has any doubts about plans for the NAFTA superhighway. It is being built now with federal taxpayer dollars. And the plan calls for I-69 to extend from Michigan to Texas, linking the Canadian and Mexican borders. Those supporting the plan, like Transportation Secretary Mario Cino, say it will bring an unprecedented windfall not only to the regions it traverses but for all Americans, Mexicans and Canadians.

Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner Gerald Nicely said I-69 “could help position the western part of the state as one of the world’s new economic centers of power in the global marketplace.”

The entire I-69 project is expected to cost $8.8 billion in current dollars, with states picking up 10 percent of the tab. So where is the money hidden? It’s not really. But nowhere in any highway bill is the project referred to as the “NAFTA superhighway.” Since the money is doled out to states to spend on their portion of the project, the allocations look like any other highway spending.

Ultimately, the Tennessee portion of the I-69 project is expected to cost $1 billion. It will shadow the present route of U.S. 51, connecting towns like Union City, Troy, Dyersburg, Ripley, Covington and Millington before following what is now I-40/240 through Midtown, according to the Commercial Appeal. The new highway bill focuses on the portion of I-69 through Northwest Tennessee about 80-110 miles north of Memphis. A 20-mile section of that segment – a four-lane stretch of U.S. 51 between Dyersburg and Troy – already is completed. Signs label it as part of the “Future I-69 Corridor.” That leaves a 19-mile section to be built from Troy to the Kentucky line before one-third of the I-69 route through Tennessee is completed.

“The route’s already been laid out, with survey markers planted in fields and cryptic benchmarks painted on the pavement of country roads,” reports the Commercial Appeal. Detailed drawings are expected to be finished next February. Right-of-way acquisition could begin early next year. Crews could start moving earth as early as 2008. So why are some officials still questioning whether the project is real? Last week, in Kansas, Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, seemed like he was short on domestic, backyard intelligence when he was asked in Saline about the NAFTA superhighway project – again, prompted by reports in WND.

“There’s nothing I’m aware of in any authorization bill,” Roberts said with derision. “I don’t know where these things get started. This is one of those blogosphere things that makes you wonder what’s going on.”

When the Duluth News Tribune followed up WND reports about the project by turning to a local congressman for help, Mary Kerr, an aide to Rep.Jim Oberstar, said: “There are no earmarks for a superhighway like that.”

But you can’t hide for long a superhighway, in some places, according to plans, four football fields wide.

Denver Post/RMN series on failed toll roads & private companies exploiting the public trough

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High gas prices and consumer resistance to toll increase nets Denver toll road $10 million loss

Colorado government seeks private investors for ailing toll road

Financially troubled toll road exploring private lease as bail-out

Toll road looks for debt help

Editorial on how to bail out failed toll road; answer – private firm to take on longer debt term

MPO votes to give contract to firm guilty of OVERBILLING TxDOT!

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See the story in Toll Road News here.

This is an outrage! The MPO Board members likely had no idea, but the MPO staff is who recommended this contractor and the MPO staff is an arm of TxDOT. TxDOT and the MPO staff are complicit in recommending and hiring a company known for fraud and corruption at the taxpayers’ expense!

Contact elected MPO Board Members below to ask them to withdraw their approval of using this fraudulent contractor!

Chairman Richard Perez – Councilman-District 4 City of San Antonio 210-207-7281 or district4@sanantonio.gov
Carlos Uresti – State Representative District 118 210-932-2568 or carlos.uresti@house.state.tx.us
Joe Straus – State Representative District 121 210-828-4411 or joe.straus@house.state.tx.us
Tommy Adkisson – Commissioner Bexar County 210-335-2614 or tadkisson@bexar.org
Lyle Larson – Commissioner Bexar County 210-335-2613 or lylelarson@bexar.org
Sergio “Chico” Rodriguez – Commissioner Bexar County 210-335-2611 or chico@bexar.org
Christopher “Chip” Haass – Councilman-District 10 City of San Antonio 210-207-7276 or district10@sanantonio.gov
Art Hall – Councilman District 8 City of San Antonio 210-207-7086 or district8@sanantonio.gov
Elena Guajardo – Councilwoman District 7 City of San Antonio 210-207-7086 or district7@sanantonio.gov
Jack Leonhardt – Mayor 210-655-0022 or mayor@ci.windcrest.tx.us

SHAMELESS: TxDOT involves CINTRA to dangle carrots of lucrative toll contracts to businesses

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Grammatical errors left in for effect.

The Texas Department of Transportation is hosting a open house for all small business September 20-21st at the Omni South Hotel . TxDOT offers a wide array of contracting opportunities for which we need businesses such as yours to fulfill ours needs. We are looking for business to contract in:

1. Engineering
(civil/concrete/drainage//geological/environmental/surveyor services/traffic & transportation)
2. Real Estate Professionals
3. Printing
4. Construction (airport runway/curb & gutter/highway and road/parking lots/sidewalk and driveway/utility & underground
projects/bridge
5. Maintenance (mowing/guardrail repair/lighting/excavation service/demolition/tree trimming/flooring maintenance/glass replacement/carpet cleaning/roofing/pest control)
6. All good/services (office supplies/staffing/personnel firms/HVAC/Plumbing/builders/painting/signs/material suppliers/safety equipment/fencing/janitorial supplies & services/office furniture/office equipment/radio and telecommunication equipment

TxDOT spends annually upwards of 5 billion dollars and consist of 25 districts, 20 divisions and 15,000 employees. These districts, divisions and employees are supported by your business to help sustain our operations in fulfilling our contract needs. Several major reasons we are having this small business briefing is to introduce you to our purchasing department, engineers and all of our areas of contract opportunities. By personally introducing you to these personnel, it is our intention for you to understand everything we contact for and the processes by which we contract. So that you may have a greater opportunity to be awarded business with us.

Also, as a bonus feature we will be introducing the 50 billion dollar toll project with the Cintra-Zachary team. You will meet there representative and they will make a presentation of the 5 billion dollars of sub contracting opportunities that will be available for all types do businesses.

We look forward to you joining us Austin at the Omni South Hotel.

For more information call TxDOT’s, Business Opportunity Programs Office
at 1-866-480-2518

We look forward to doing business with you.

TxDOT will host Small Business Briefings around the state: Houston – July 25-26, Dallas – August 2-3, Lubbock – August 16-17 , El Paso – September 13-14, Austin – September 20-21. For more information and registration call: 1-866-480-2518 or 512-486-5500.

VICTORY AT MPO! Vote to table approval of long-range plan until it addresses board members (and PUBLIC's) concerns!

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Read news article on the vote here.Commissioner Tommy Adkisson gets superhero status after today’s Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) meeting. He with the help of Via’s Melissa Castro Killen and even some comments by Councilwoman Elena Guajardo tilted the vote in our favor to get our first REAL VICTORY at the MPO! Guess what did it, folks? Diligence, perseverance, and unrelenting public pressure…particularly the MASSIVE turnout at recent Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) hearings and the Bandera Rd. public meeting where all ordinary citizens were in 100% opposition to the proposed toll plans.

Here’s the scoop…

Commissioner Adkisson again requested that the Chair, Councilman Richard Perez, move citizens to be heard to the beginning of the meeting. One of our supporters, ardently opposed to the TTC, Jimmy Lamberth of Wilson County, spoke first with very sincere and passionate remarks against the corridor. Thank you, Jimmy, for traveling so far to come testify today.

Then, I gave my lengthy comments (thank you to all who came and donated their time so I could share my entire 20 minute statement uninterrupted) before the rest of the meeting commenced. When Item #8 came was addressed, Commissioner Adkisson really stuck his neck out there (and thensome) and expressed his discomfort with the Trans Texas Corridor even appearing in the San Antonio long-range plan since it’s technically outside their jurisdiction anyway. He said he attended the East Central High School Corridor hearings and heard the oppposition loud and clear and recognized that adopting this plan as is would be a political loser (trying to hint to fellow elected officials on the Board to follow suit; it’s the politicians on the Board, not the appointees who will hang for supporting this).

Perez and acting MPO Executive Director Syd Martinez tried to continually steer the Board back to accepting the plan without modifications trying to make it sound as if including toll lanes and the TTC in the plan didn’t mean an endorsement of it (think again Mr. Perez!). The duo opined about the inconvenience of including public input on projects (THAT WE PAY FOR), and the inconvenience of removing the TTC and toll lanes from the long range plan as Adkisson insisted upon.

Melissa Castro Killen also echoed Adkisson’s sentiments about the total opposition from the publlic on the toll lanes like Bandera Rd. She communicated how powerful the 450 people filling the room for the Bandera Rd public meeting was in and of itself, and again emphasized the universal opposition expressed by the public. She contended with Perez’ contention that including the tolls in the plan wasn’t an endorsement of it, she wisely stated anything in writing will be an endorsement of tolls in the public’s mind regardless of Perez’ opinion, and he knows it. It was just political manuvering to pass the vote before the opposition gained ground.

Commissioner Adkisson then put forth a motion (that did get a second) to remove the TTC and tolls on I-35 from the long range plan, period. I kept waiting for Commissioner Larson to chime in and ask that 281/1604 and Wurzbach in his precinct also be removed (though this TMMP Plan already assumed the current adopted toll roads would alreayd be built, this was $18 billion in ADDITIONAL “unmet needs”). But Perez didn’t take it to a vote. He and side kick Martinez started up again as to how “unrealistic” Adkisson’s request was to the region.

Then, Councilwoman Elena Guajardo, District 7, whose constituents live in the Bandera Rd proposed toll corridor pathway, brought up concerns that if she knew nothing about San Antonio, she would look at this document and not see one word of mention about the feelings and opposition of the populace. It gives the impression that “everything’s hunky dory” and that the public is on board, which is clearly NOT the case. Then Perez and Martinez tag teamed it again trying to complain how inconvenient it would get to go to the public for input on all of these projects (sounds like RMA Chair Bill Thornton). Excuse me, but federal law requires they do get public input on road projects from affected residents, that’s what the public hearing process is all about not to mention we, the TAXPAYERS, pay the bills! This is the attitude of an elected official toward the taxpayers of Bexar County!

Dr. Syd Ordway, who also represents Via, had apparently had enough of the constant stonewalling by Perez and blurted out with a very authoritative tone a motion to TABLE THE VOTE UNTIL THE CONCERNS OF THE BOARD MEMBERS WERE ADDRESSED and then he named them, Adkisson, Castro, Guajardo. Adkisson quickly gave a second and after yet more mumblings by Perez and Martinez about how TxDOT wouldn’t like this sort of delay (this is all being rushed through by an artificially imposed deadline from TxDOT, can you say, tyring to get it done prior to November 7…to that we say, who cares if TxDOT doesn’t like it?! TxDOT and the MPO work for us not the other way around!) he finally took it to a vote.

FOR tabling the TMMP Plan adoption:

Commissioner Tommy Adkisson (hero in chief)
Commissioner Lyle Larson
Commissioner Chico Rodriguez
Councilwoman Elena Guajardo (stepping out to represent her constituents’ interests)
Councilmen Richard Perez (you read that right, Perez, toller in chief on the MPO, could see he was losing the vote and jumped on the right side of the tracks)
Tom Wendorf (City Public Works)
Amy Madison (she, too, jumped on the right side when the outcome was inevitable)
Melissa Castro Killen (warrior princess, we mean that as a compliment!)
Dr. Syd Ordway
AGAINST tabling the TMMP Plan adoption:

Clay Smith (TxDOT)
Jack Leonhardt (Mayor of Windcrest), votes against the PEOPLE EVERY chace he gets, time to check his campaign records, they could explain his unwavering loyalty to the road lobby
Abstentions:

Al Notzon (Bexar County appointee)
Notably absent:

State Rep. Carlos Uresti (though he sent a staffer, but he couldn’t cast a vote)
State Rep. Joe Straus
Councilman Chip Haass
Councilman Art HallThat’s HALF of the elected officials who didn’t attend! These MAJOR decisions are largely being sloughed off onto politcial appointees, with NO ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE VOTERS!

Toll Party asks MPO to reject TxDOT's mythical "funding gap"

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Toll Party MPO Statement
MPO TMMP Plan based on flawed projections
Plan would require more than $10,000 in NEW TAXES for EVERY person in San Antonio

Thousands of San Antonians ask you to vote NOT to approve the Texas Metropolitan Mobility Plan (TMMP) Plan Update in its current form and seriously evaluate the SMP projects in the TIP to reverse the trend of this MPO being at the bottom of the list of MPOs for STP-MM spending for transit, pedestrian, and bicycle facilities. At least 5% of the STP-MM funds should be set aside for transit purposes so that VIA can accommodate the growth in ridership. Since highway use is declining, this is a rational use of resources.

Now about the traffic projections in the TMMP report. The figures used as the basis for all of the region’s future transportation plans, are flawed. The Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) is actually withholding its congestion index for this year to rework their faulty approach since at least three states no longer recognize TTI’s index as valid.

TTI index is flawed because:
• Uses estimates not actual measurements
• Too many assumptions to convert limited traffic counts into annual travel delay for a region
• CA, FL, WA prefer to measure actual travel times and actual delays rather than use TTI estimates
• No correlation with highway supply
• TTI has, itself, abandoned their own approach – no report this year

From what we can tell, the entire TMMP report is based upon these flawed congestion projections. Secondly, the travel time index is problematic in and of itself since we’ll likely NEVER be able to build enough freeway lanes to allow every motorist a free flowing commute at top speeds during peak hours as is the stated goal on page 13 when over million people pack the freeways all at once to go to work. Since that’s the stated baseline comparison for the travel time index, it, too, is unrealistic and far too costly, if not impossible to actually achieve.

In fact, Toll Road News, a pro-toll news site by Peter Samuel, published a piece that says this about traffic forecasts and planners:

“Accurate forecasts do not serve their (planners) purposes because they are more interested in using numbers to promote the project…forecasting results in a make-believe world of misrepresentation that makes it extremely difficult to decide which projects deserve undertaking and which do not.”

It goes on to say forecasts should be reviewed by independent auditors, benchmarked against comparables, SUBJECT TO PUBLIC SCRUTINY, and even suggested forecasters should share financial responsibility for financial failure from poor forecasts, and that professional and even criminal penalties should be enforced against forecasters who consistently or wilfully misforecast.

Houston transportation analyst Barry Klein and economist Yacov Zachavi rightly point out that congestion is more perception than anything else and it is also self-limiting. People find a way to resolve it on their own. Commuters either move closer to the their jobs, get new jobs closer to home, or telecommute one or more days a week or otherwise reduce the number of commute days per week if congestion is perceived as unacceptable. Truth is, San Antonio’s average commute time is under 30 minutes and has been under 30 minutes for years (a trend found throughout the country). See in the article The Myth of the Long Commute by Randal O’Toole of the Thoreau Institute in Oregon that “Rational commuters will sooner or later seek to escape congestion by changing the location of their homes and/or their jobs.”

San Antonio ranks number 5 in lanes miles per person in the country. We DO NOT LACK roads. This report claims we need over 2,000 more lane miles per person in the next 25 years. That’s absurd on its face! We lack proper planning and proper development of arterial streets to minimize the need to get on a freeway in order to get around. We shouldn’t be seeing school busses on freeways! The TMMP update even admits that San Antonians have to rely more on freeway travel than other cities. When comparing with national data, San Antonians, in fact, have to drive 19% more than citizens in other metro cities and thus spend $854 million on transportation than other residents of large cities.

The emphasis of this report is to just keep building more and more freeways (giving only lip service to other modes of transportation), thereby exacerbating the very problem you’re seeking to solve! Also, the City and County have given developers a free pass on impact fees that would require them to foot a portion of the bill for the infrastructure needs their new development brings to our area. We, the taxpayers, cannot continue to absorb the cost of development. This issue absolutely must be addressed in order to truly solve the transportation needs of the region. Just ask a now unseated State Rep. for the Boerne area what caused many voters to turn on her in that region? She would not vote to make developers pay impact fees causing staggering property tax rates in Kendall County.

REASONS FOR CONGESTION
So let’s look at other causes of congestion. The top 3 reasons for congestion in this country aren’t due to lack of road capacity but accidents, ROAD CONSTRUCTION, and weather. The construction time alone for these projects will clog up our highways with unrelieved gridlock all over town for decades. What is absolutely unbelievable is how TxDOT is bragging it has more projects under contract than ever in the history of SA right now, and yet also claims they’re out of money. Apparently the new funding bringing us from $2.6 billion up to $3.8 billion (as stated on Page 4) isn’t enough. It’s clear it’ll NEVER be enough for TxDOT unless it includes toll roads.

Also, they’re jacking up nearly every parallel road in the City all at once leaving no alternate routes in some cases. San Pedro, Broadway, and Blanco Road (all parallel to US 281) are under construction all at once. It’s inexcusable and shows a total lack of consideration for motorists and residents who rely on those arteries to get around.

It only gives more fodder to those of us who believe TxDOT appears to be purposely CAUSING CONGESTION TO PUSH A POLITICAL AGENDA and is more beholden to road builders than the taxpayers who pay the bills. Ft. Worth for instance, spent a year beefing up parallel roads and public transit before a major freeway reconstruction project. Why isn’t TxDOT doing that here? They should have at least completed Wurzbach Pkwy before breaking ground on the 410/281 interchange. It’s been planned and funding programmed for decades…the residents were promised the completion more than 10 years ago. Then to make matters worse, they tear-up Isom Rd that’s parallel to 410 at the same time the interchange at 281 is under construction and causing more delays than ever in that area. Dave Pasley’s editorial last December echoes our concerns and solutions:

There are “deep flaws in the city’s political and development practices.”
“Ten years ago there was excess capacity on 281 & 1604. Today there is gridlock. How is it possible to screw up these two highway corridors so badly in just 10 years? How can a city without enough traffic to warrant an HOV lane suddenly have so much congestion it needs a toll road?”
HIS SOLUTIONS:
1. Complete the Wurzbach Parkway ASAP.
2. Make San Antonio developers provide a network of arterial streets as they do in Phoenix.

NOT ABOUT CONGESTION RELIEF
Just take a good hard look at this actual toll road that is exactly what TxDOT plans to do on Loop 1604 and 281 (except on 281 those free lanes will be frontage roads, not freeway lanes, under the control of Cintra-Zachry). This will not solve congestion as the TMMP seeks to do, nor will it reduce pollution or do anything other than manipulate congestion for profit and suck-up yet more of the household budget for transportation costs.

A study conducted by the Surface Transportation Project published in June of 2005 shows the two biggest costs for every household since 1984 are housing and transportation and account for 52% of the average family’s budget (or $21,213 a year)…the highest level in 20 years! Now compare that with the median income in San Antonio of only about $36,000 a year and compare it with TxDOT’s claim they need $40,000 from the average family in San Antonio in the next 25 years, and you’ll see this will not only cripple the economy, it’ll tax people into bankruptcy. Their plan is unrealistic and totally unsustainable!

Census data and this study show that healthcare and food combined don’t even match the transportation costs of the average family and this data was collected BEFORE the rise in price of gasoline!

Key Findings in the study:
– Households in regions that have invested in public transportation reap financial benefits from having affordable transportation options, even as gasoline prices rise.
– Lower income households are particularly burdened by higher transportation costs since these expenditures claim a higher percentage of their budgets even if they are spending less.
– Regions with public transit are losing less per household from the increase in gas prices than those without due to investments by federal, state, and local governments in more efficient transportation systems, effectively lowering household transportation expenditures and converting transportation dollars that would otherwise leave the region in the form of higher payments for gasoline to dollars that help pay for local transportation services plus other household expenses.

An overwhelming number of news reports and research studies show that increasing the cost of transportation hurts the economy, including recent testimony from former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan. You cannot grow an economy by increasing the cost of transportation. With gas prices hovering near $3 a gallon and well over that in parts of the state, we are seeing actual data (not assumptions, forecasts, or anecdotal water cooler chats), ACTUAL DATA from the Federal Highway Administration that show that driving is going down and congestion is going down, not up as TxDOT continually claims.

Next, concerned citizens are adamant about removing TxDOT’s version of toll lanes (in the hands of foreign companies, without accountability to taxpayers, and using existing rights of way) from the current plans and any reliance on or endorsement of the widely detested Trans Texas Corridor.

Since the TMMP Update is to identify unmet needs, and we’ve demonstrated how the traffic and congestion indexes are flawed, and how the report does not take other prevailing financially constraining factors into account (like rising price of gasoline, growth rate tapering off, increased transit ridership) that will mitigate congestion, now let’s move into how toll roads cost more than non-toll projects thereby calling into question this claim of $18 billion in unmet “needs.”

TOLL ROADS COST MORE, CALLS TXDOT’S NEEDS LIST INTO QUESTION
First of all, in an August 20 article in the Austin American Statesman it said “The state Transportation Department’s budget has tripled since 1990, including an 80 percent jump from the budget Perry inherited from George W. Bush to this year’s $7.7 billion spending plan.” The Comptroller has stated “this biennium, TxDOT has $15.2 BILLION to spend – up from $7 billion before Perry was promoted to Governor. That is a whopping $8.2 billion more – a 117 percent increase. Perry admits in the Statesman article that they’re using dollar figures gleaned by asking local transportation planners what they would build if money were no object in order to arrive at their outrageous $86 billion supposed “funding gap.” Couldn’t we all come up with exorbitant figures if money were no object? This whole funding gap claim is tantamount to propaganda!

Then, let’s look at a local project. The ORIGINAL plan for 281, 10 lanes and $100 million, now as a toll road 16 lanes and upwards of $200 million. RMA Chair Bill Thornton even claimed it would cost even more than $300 million! On another project, the cost of the toll equipment doubled the cost of building the road. Project after project, we’ve found the same thing…we’re being charged close to twice as much or more to build TxDOT’s version of toll roads, not to mention the 25-35% more in bureaucracy and administration costs to collect tolls, even electronically, and then the 12-19% profit for the private companies.

TxDOT’s “needs” are wish lists by the Governor’s own admission and the local mythical “funding gap” figure of $18 billion ought to be outright rejected and open to public scrutiny before adoption. To put it in perspective, that’s like saying they need more than $10,000 from every man, woman, and child in San Antonio in the next 25 years…that’s from every person in San Antonio, not just motorists, and that’s $40,000 from a family of 4! These figures are absolutely ABSURD and give you more than enough reason to reject it on its face.

Clearly, there are a host of ways to relieve congestion without adding 2,000 more lane miles and 73+ miles of toll lanes. The increased reliance on tolls to fund all these supposed needs are based on flawed projections and indexes. Two state sponsored reports, already vetted by TxDOT in 1999 and 2001 show realistic, less invasive, and more affordable ways to relieve congestion on I-35 and to replace the need for the Trans Texas Corridor through accelerating the Ports to Plains Plan through West Texas to aid in the growing need to transport goods through the State without taking the richest farmland in Texas for the TTC.

Page 23 of the TMMP Update admits that the new inland Port of San Antonio at Kelly is a new destination for massive increases in international trade and a conduit for goods for much of the Nation’s commerce, so why aren’t you insisting the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT help pay for this infrastructure and not disproportionately burden the Texas taxpayer? Also, there is no mention of Prop 1 rail bonds as a revenue source for the $1 billion in rail relocation costs nor the mention of a deal to develop and construct the TTC-35 rail project already in the works with Cintra-Zachry announced in March. San Antonio taxpayers should NOT be expected to pay an additional $1 billion for the relocation of PRIVATE rail lines, for the deregulated rail industry who has recently enjoyed an 83% boost in profits! We have a host of alternatives listed on our web site, many with identified funding sources.

NO REAL DATA TO SUPPORT TXDOT’S TMMP UPDATE AS PROPOSED
The most recent traffic counts TxDOT has are from 2004, before the significant rise in gas prices. They’re using outdated data that doesn’t take a MAJOR shift in fuel prices into consideration. The planned population growth is all on the outskirts of the City, with people now more than ever needing to live closer to their jobs due to gas prices, that growth projection is likely never to materialize. TxDOT’s agenda has been clear…all roads lead to toll roads in the hands of foreign companies. It doesn’t seem to matter what the research and prevailing evidence shows, in TxDOT’s world “it’s toll roads, slow roads or no roads.” El Paso MPO has paved the way for you. They recently rescinded their vote to toll and are challenging TxDOT and not succumbing to their threats.

State Rep. Joe Pickett and MPO Chair in El Paso asked the MPO to approve a plan that builds a Southern Relief Route for less than $200 million and without tolls.

“We can build four highways with the money needed to build one toll road,” Pickett said. “If you don’t put toll lanes on the road, the cost goes down.”

Pickett said he will continue to work against toll roads and the establishment of an RMA because he said El Paso can keep building roads without toll roads and the money is there to make it happen.

NOTE: He confirms what we’ve contended all along, toll roads cost more to build and maintain and there is money there to build needed freeways WITHOUT TOLLS.

The Comptroller has also demonstrated TxDOT has $7 billion available in mobility and revenue bonds right now, today, to build needed infrastructure without TOLLS.

There is overwhelming public opposition to TxDOT’s version of tolling in SA as well. When 900 people show up to a public hearing on the massive toll corridor TTC I-35 project, it can hardly be construed as anything less than a breathless display of public outrage and opposition to TxDOT’s plans! When’s the last time 900 people turned out to ANY government or public hearing in San Antonio? This Board would be wise to take a step back and challenge the flawed data in this TMMP Update before signing onto to such a political and economic loser.

TxDOT would have us believe there is a congestion crisis….the REAL crisis is the price of gasoline and San Antonio’s lack of a viable public transit alternative to help its citizens cope with the rising price of gas (Forbes Magazine lists SA as one of the Top 10 cities hardest hit by high gas prices). This City does not need nor can it afford toll roads, especially those based on flawed and inflated data driven by special interests not ACTUAL DATA. More affordable, less invasive solutions are there, including in plans conducted by the State and already vetted by TxDOT before this shift to tolls. The money, too, is there. If you’re tired of the shell game where there’s money to build toll roads but not free roads or a viable transit system, and you’re ready to stand with the people of San Antonio who you represent, vote NO on the TMMP as proposed!