Driscoll’s blog.

Dealing with gas prices
By Pat Driscoll
Express-News
April 25, 2006

With average gas prices nearing $3 a gallon, officials are turning up the heat and taking pause …

President Bush on Tuesday called for a probe to see if any price gouging is going on. He also wants oil companies to use record profits to invest in new energy sources and said more refineries should be built and technologies used to explore for domestic oil.

Regular unleaded now averages $2.92 a gallon nationwide, up 70 cents from a year ago, AAA reports. Prices in San Antonio ranged from $2.62 to $2.91 this morning, according to postings on SanAntonioGasPrices.com.

With the busy summer driving season looming, prices are expected to stay high for months. Meanwhile, two-thirds of Americans say prices are causing financial hardships, a CNN poll shows.

Toll-road critics in San Antonio say the high prices could jeopardize plans for 70 miles of local toll roads. People won’t use tollways if they can’t afford to pay, Terri Hall of San Antonio Toll Party told the Metropolitan Planning Organization on Tuesday.

“I think it does require us to pause at what’s going on,” she said.

Hall punctuated her point by referring to a newspaper story about two New Jersey toll roads losing millions of dollars in toll collections last year because of rising gas prices and a winter storm.

Bexar County Commissioner and MPO board member Tommy Adkisson said he’s concerned, too. He plans to ask the board next month to approve an independent study to find out how escalating gas prices over time could change travel behaviors and impact highway projects worth tens of millions of dollars.

(See this USA Today story about drivers flocking to mass transit.)

“It’s incumbent upon this community to have a serious moment of introspection,” he said. “We don’t want to throw our good money after bad.”

USA Today article here.

Drivers switch to public transit
Updated 4/25/2006 2:23 PM ET
By Barbara Hagenbaugh
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Soaring gas prices appear, once again, to be leading some drivers to park their cars.
Public transit systems across the USA are seeing an increase in ridership. Although it’s difficult to directly link the gains to higher gasoline prices, officials say rising prices at the pump are at least partly responsible.

Nationwide, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.90 Sunday, up 1.6 cents from Saturday and 39.1 cents higher than a month ago, according to AAA. Statewide averages were $3 a gallon or higher in Hawaii, California, Washington, D.C., and New York.

Among mass transit systems:

•Washington, D.C. Thursday was the sixth-busiest day in history on Metrorail, the area’s train system, while Tuesday was the ninth busiest. There were no special events in the area to explain the higher ridership. “We think gas prices had something to do with it,” Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spokeswoman Candace Smith says.

•Salt Lake City. Ridership is up 50% on the 19-mile, light-rail system in Salt Lake City from a year ago. The Utah Transit Authority has added 10 used rail cars it bought from San Jose, Calif., to meet demand. But in some cases, cars are becoming so packed that the doors are dragging on the platforms at stops because of the increased weight, spokesman Justin Jones says.

Riders responding to onboard polling increasingly are saying they are motivated to take public transportation because of higher gas prices, Jones says.

•Tulsa. Tulsa Transit’s March ridership was the highest since August 2003. For the fiscal year, which began in July, trips on the bus system are up 28% from the prior year.

•San Francisco. After taking a “nosedive” in recent years, ridership on Bay Area Rapid Transit is up 4.1% this fiscal year, which began July 1, spokesman Linton Johnson says. He attributes the gain to heavier traffic and higher gas prices.

The increase in ridership, or number of trips, is similar to last year when gasoline prices hit record levels, William Millar, of the American Public Transportation Association, says. The number of trips nationwide was up 5% in August and September compared with the same months in 2004. “It looks like history is repeating itself,” he says. “The spike in gas prices is causing many people to look for ways to beat the high cost, and trying transit is one of the things they are doing.”

Gasoline prices are climbing largely because oil prices have reached record levels, not adjusted for inflation. Oil, which closed at $75.17 a barrel Friday, accounts for about half the cost of gasoline.

Also boosting the cost of gasoline has been the conversion from additive MTBE to ethanol in many gasoline blends. Although ethanol production has been ramping up, there are concerns that there won’t be enough ethanol at the right place and the right time.

There have been reports of East Coast gasoline stations shutting down temporarily in recent days as their suppliers close to make the switch to ethanol.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/columnists/cguerra/stories/MYSA042506.01B.Guerra.4f00660.html

Read the last few paragraphs…he brings in toll roads to his argument.

Carlos Guerra: Politics of privilege alive and well in the latest Austin session
Web Posted: 04/25/2006 12:00 AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News

Close to the front of the Texas Constitution — the nation’s most-amended state charter — is Article 1, Section 3, which clearly states that “all free men have equal rights, and no man, or set of men, is entitled to exclusive separate public emoluments, or privileges.”

But current state leaders’ recent policies reveal that the notion of granting “exclusive separate emoluments or privileges” to the wealthy is alive and well.

Your elected representatives are in Austin again, you may have heard, struggling for the umpteenth time to overhaul the state’s school-funding system. But driving their effort to revamp how Texas funds public schools is not the undeniable need to improve schools, or to better prepare young Texans to compete in the global marketplace, or to compensate teachers enough so that so many don’t leave teaching after their third year on the job.

No, our legislators are meeting solely to lower local property taxes by replacing the money they generate with other tax revenues.

It all began more than a decade ago when Texas’ highest court ruled that it was unconstitutional that some children were getting much better schooling because considerably more money was being spent on them because they lived in districts with very expensive real estate.

On their third try, lawmakers fashioned a plan that forced Texas’ wealthiest districts to share their wealth with average districts, setting off a class war that is still being waged in the Legislature, primarily by Orwellian lawmakers who decry class warfare.

Last year, however, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that local districts’ taxes had become a constitutionally verboten state property tax, and ordered the state to give districts “meaningful discretion” in how they spend local money.

The ruling provided great cover for those seeking to return to the bad-ol’-days when the wealthy could openly enjoy special privileges by giving them a whole new vocabulary to couch their arguments.

Last week, for example, the House Ways and Means Committee produced an amendment to a school-funding bill that would exempt future local property tax increases from the state’s wealth-sharing provisions.

In short, state money to local districts would allow them to lower property taxes from $1.50 per $100 valuations to $1.33, thereby giving them the “meaningful discretion” the court ordered. But subsequent increases of local taxes above $1.33 level would not have to be shared.

This would allow, for example, Texas richest districts to raise an additional $120 per student for every one-cent tax increase, while average districts would only raise $27 more with an equal tax increase.

As of Monday, that exemption had been removed by House members, but don’t be surprised if it makes a Lazarus-like revival and becomes law.

What else can we expect from a crowd intent on building toll roads that will allow those who can pay to whiz along at 80 mph while the rest of us tootle along at 35 mph between traffic lights?

And while visiting Port Aransas recently, I learned that the Texas Department of Transportation is now accepting $50 deposits for special $250 to $1,000 permits that will let holders “buy-pass” waiting lines to TxDOT ferries.

Holders of the pricy passes will get to cut in line and board a special, expedited ferry — that like the public ferries will be funded with tax money. How fair is that?

Link to AP story here.

NOTE: Businesses with fleets on the road…it’s YOU who are paying for toll roads! CONSUMERS: You get that cost passed on to you whether you take toll roads or not! Read on…

Fuel prices, storm blamed for toll revenue dip
N.J. Turnpike Authority reports lower revenue for its two highways
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 04/23/06
BY LARRY HIGGS
STAFF WRITER

Climbing gasoline prices and a winter storm at the start of 2005 caused traffic and revenues on the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike to dip last year, officials of the toll roads say.

“Toll revenues are down $5 million,” said Michael Lapolla, executive director of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which oversees the two highways. “Last year we had a bad snowstorm early in the year and minor traffic-diversion issues with construction at the Driscoll Bridge, and the state opened the (reconstructed) Victory Bridge.”

But the sucker punch was delivered by two devastating hurricanes, Katrina and Rita.

“Since gas prices went up after Hurricane Katrina, it had a definite impact on both roads and continues to have an impact,” Lapolla said. “If people have an alternative to going on toll roads, they’ll take it.”

Parkway toll revenues dipped by $5 million between Dec. 31, 2004, and Dec. 31, 2005, from $208 million to $203 million, according to an authority report. While 601 million passenger vehicles used the parkway in 2004, that number dropped to 496 million in 2005.

Toll revenues are sensitive to weather, and one significant storm can depress earnings by 1 percent because people are not driving, Lapolla said. Although the number of people taking the Parkway to work remains constant, the revenue drop can be attributed to reductions in discretionary driving.

Many of the drivers interviewed at the Parkway service area in Wall said they have no alternative to taking the toll road to work.

“It’s the most direct route,” said Stephen Holld of Spring Lake. “Using a local road is more stop and go.”

James Golden of Little Silver said he uses a toll-free section of Parkway to go to work and makes the return trip home on local roads to avoid the expense.

“When I had a long commute, I had no choice. Now, I get on at (exit) 105, go five miles and get off at 100,” Golden said. “On the way home I take local roads and don’t pay a toll.”

Christine Boyle of Stafford, who also finds herself compelled to drive on the Parkway, said she compensates for rising gasoline prices by shopping around and avoiding higher-priced brands of gas.

“I don’t have a choice. I have to take toll roads,” said Boyle, who commutes to Newark and Bergen County.

Even discretionary drivers, such as Dr. Lloyd Ross of Ridgewood, said the Parkway is the better choice for a direct and faster trip than local highways to his summer house in Barnegat.

“I can come down the Parkway or Route 9,” he said.

With the price of some grades of gas around $3 per gallon, Lapolla said he expects traffic to be off this year. Gasoline prices will be the wild card in revenue growth from tolls.

“What you’ll see this year is revenue will grow a little, but it will not grow as much,” he said.

That wasn’t the case on the Turnpike, where the number of passenger cars was up slightly by 514,007 vehicles from 214,095,494 in 2004. But 304,745 more tractor-trailer trucks and 170,950 more buses used the big highway in 2005.

“Trucks are the main source of revenue on the Turnpike, and truck traffic was up,” Lapolla said.

Other factors also depressed earnings for the authority. They include the cost of voluntary separation agreements that offered veteran toll collectors and other workers half a year’s salary for leaving, and one-time gains from refinancing debt in 2004.

Total revenues dipped from $829,255,596 in 2004 to $812,242,729 in 2005.

Several factors caused that, said Joe Orlando, Turnpike Authority spokesman.

The authority did not have a $31 million fiscal shot in the arm last year, which it got in 2004 from refinancing its debt

“We did a debt restructuring, so we don’t have to pay as much,” Lapolla said. “It’s like refinancing your house. We got a $31 million benefit in ’04, but it was a one-shot deal.”

A severance package of half a year’s salary offered to employees with 15 years of service or more who retired cost the authority $2.9 million, which was charged to the cost of toll collections, Orlando said. In 2005, $81.3 million was budgeted for toll collection, up from $78.3 million in 2004. That figure doesn’t include E-ZPass toll collection costs.

Of the 140 workers who took the severance offer, 60 were toll collectors, and a total of 100 jobs were eliminated, Orlando said. That should bring a $6.8 million annual savings, according to the 2006 Turnpike Authority budget.

Larry Higgs: 732-643-4277 or lhiggs@app.com

Copyright © 2006 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved.

Link to Winston-Salem Journal article.

Sound all too familiar? Look what their road builders are pushing…SAMCo has some students!

The Wrong Road
Winston-Salem Journal
Sunday, April 23, 2006

NC Go, an advocacy group for road builders, says that North Carolina needs more toll roads. It’s wrong.

To no one’s surprise, the group wants the legislature to greatly increase highway spending this year. It proposes a billion-dollar bond issue and more local taxing authority for transportation and toll roads.

Whether North Carolina needs new roads is a matter for debate. The state might be better served by first repairing and upgrading what it has.

And whether the state needs more road money is also debatable. The state gas tax is creeping up steadily as gasoline prices rise. That rise in tax revenue allows the state to cover the rising costs of maintaining roads because of higher petroleum-related costs.

Regardless of how the legislature decides the first two questions – whether more roads and money are necessary – it should reject the expansion of the state’s misguided toll-road efforts.

Federal safety investigators reported Tuesday that toll booths are very dangerous, something the Journal has been saying for years. Toll booths raise many safety issues. First there are the rapid decelerations from 70 mph and the frequent rear-end collisions. Then there are the rapid accelerations. Motorists often switch from lane to lane, creating more problems.

Toll-road proponents point to new technology that allows motorists to drive right through toll booths without stopping, paying electronically. But the dual system of payment just creates more confusion as motorists approach.

There is a way around the problem, one used in the Midwest and on the New Jersey Turnpike. Motorists get a ticket when they enter the highway and then pay when they get off. But this system doesn’t work well in urban areas with a lot of exits and entrances.

North Carolinians who hate taxes should hate tolls even more. It’s double taxation. Toll payers have already paid a gas tax. And a toll is an extremely expensive tax to collect, compared to the gas tax. Part of each dollar paid at a toll booth goes not toward the roads that NC Go says we need, but to toll collectors, their bosses and the toll-road authority bureaucracy.

NC Go has an obvious self interest in calling for new toll roads. North Carolinians should reject this idea and say they want safe roads and transportation taxes that are collected in the most efficient means possible.

See this web site for more info:
www.BigPileofMoney.com.

Perry-Sharp Plan gives no meaningful tax relief and levies NEW tax on business!
The Perry-Sharp Plan proposes a 1/3 reduction in the school portion of property tax, but with no appraisal cap, we’ll back at today’s rate in no time. The most puzzling part of the plan is the totally unnecessary NEW tax on business. The Perry-Sharp Plan levies a 1% tax on business GROSS receipts, not net profit.

That means:

$1 million in gross receipts = $10,000 tax bill (regardless of your NET profit)

So if your company doesn’t turn a profit this year, like some companies have shared with our legislators, you’ll still owe 1% in taxes on your gross receipts!

This NEW tax on business will mean 100,000 new businesses will be subject to this additional tax and it will INCREASE taxes $3 billion when we have an $8.2 billion surplus! House Bill 1 uses a portion of the surplus to buy down property taxes and meets the Jun. 1 deadline without any NEW taxes. Contact your legislator today to ask them to support HB 1!

Contact your legislator here:
Capitol link here.

The VOTE on this disastrous NEW business tax is Monday!

Letter to Editor in Austin-American Statesman

A Capitol toll party
April 20, 2006

Gov. Rick Perry and State Rep. Mike Krusee should place tolls on all doorways to the Capitol. Legislators can then experience the reality of being tolled going to and from work daily, which Austin commuters will soon face.

The legislators could still choose to use the free adjacent windows. The construction and management of the door tolls must be outsourced to another state such as Ohio to diminish local resources.

To extort more tolls, this contract should include secret, non-compete provisions, such as not allowing the improvement of window entries with ladders, not maintaining bushes under the windows and running sprinklers under the windows during rush hour.

After Ohio skims the cream of the toll money, Texas politicians can squander the balance not on the Capitol but on advertisements touting their fiscally responsible work. Next: toilet tolls.

DANIEL J. JASINSKI
Austin
_____________________

You ROCK, Mr. Jasinski! Well put!

Link to Courier-Gazette article here.

NOTE: Property taxes on the table as possible funding source for highways. UNBELIEVEABLE! Enough is NEVER enough for TxDOT’s bloated bureaucracy!

Tollway planning halts for funding discussions
By Liz McGathey
Courier-Gazette
(Created: Thursday, April 20, 2006 7:22 PM CDT)

North Texas Tollway Authority executive director Allan Rutter officially suspended all design and other work on the Eastern Extension of the President George Bush Turnpike project because of a financing issue.

The move resulted from a recent submission by the city of Rowlett and the Texas Department of Transportation of an alternative method for funding the necessary right-of-way acquisition, according to the NTTA.

Rowlett city officials said the focus is not on the delay at this point, because the project is well ahead of schedule. Instead, the city is concentrating on shifting the burden of paying for the road from its taxpayers. (Toll Party note: How is a toll tax shifting the burden AWAY from taxpayers???)

Stakeholders of the Eastern Extension, including the city of Rowlett, North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), continued to discuss and evaluate options for funding the Eastern Extension of the PGBT during the NTTA’s monthly board of directors meeting on Wednesday. Representatives from the city of Garland and the city of Sachse also were in attendance.

“We are committed to continuing this project, but the most important step at this point is to obtain a firm commitment among our partners for sharing in the cost of acquiring the right of way,” Rutter said.

According to the NTTA Web site, the Eastern Extension is a six-lane, 9.9-mile, toll road that will pass through Garland, Sachse and Rowlett, including a one-mile bridge over Lake Ray Hubbard.

The NTTA’s project overview states construction is not scheduled to begin until 2007 and will be completed and opened by 2010. The estimated cost of the extension project is $782 million.

During the stakeholders’ meeting, Mayor Shane Johnson presented the interests of the city of Rowlett to NTTA’s board of directors.

“A solution presented by Rowlett based on TxDOT’s 90/10 statewide funding standard for right-of-way acquisition has the potential to save taxpayers of Rowlett up to 5-1/2 cents on the tax rate for the costs of project right of way,” Johnson said after the meeting. “We are pleased that this solution is now being explored by all parties and encouraged and excited about the potential benefits of the plan to our partner cities and taxpayers throughout the region.”

During the March 21 regular city council meeting, Rowlett also passed a resolution clarifying its position on the use of tollway funding for local infrastructure projects including the Eastern Extension.

The resolution states, “That the City of Rowlett urges that any tolling policy adopted by the Regional Transportation Council (RTC) for the region require that all elements of the design, engineering, right of way acquisition, construction operation, maintenance and perpetual care be completely funded on toll facilities before any ‘excess revenue’ as provided in RTC approval, dated September, 2004.”

The resolution also affirmed a $20 million cap agreement only allowing as much as that figure to go toward funding of the Eastern Extension not as an exact amount to be paid by the city.

“All regional leaders in North Texas from RTC to NTTA to Collin County to Denton to Dallas County including TxDOT acknowledge that transportation funding has been undergoing a significant change over the last 12 months,” said City Manager Craig Owens. “The $20 million cap predated those regional conversations. New options are now available and that’s why we believe its important for us to look that those options; TxDOT agreed, so we’re going to take a couple of weeks now to explore those options as an alternative to the citizens of Rowlett funding it through property tax.”

Futhermore, Johnson said he thinks the idea of toll roads is for them to pay for themselves. (Toll Party note: How do toll roads pay for “themselves”? WE, the taxpayers, pay the tolls, the road doesn’t pay itself!)

“Funding toll roads through property taxes should be the last resort after all other options are exhausted,” he said.

Since the city has been planning for the tollway for 15 to 20 years, the area for it to be built across has been reserved in order to avoid excess right of way acquisition. With less right-of-way acquisition, the savings on the total project amounts to about $30 million.

The city of Rowlett also continues to work with NTTA to ensure that design elements, critical to the future economic impact the Eastern Extension has on Rowlett, are included in the final plans and agreements.

“Even though more than 60 percent of the design is complete, the city has yet to see documentation of many elements in the plan, including the Merrit Road Interchange, U-turns, access points, and sound mitigation that have been on the table and verbally agreed to over the last two years,” Owens said. “I think we are very close on an agreement with NTTA, but the city council cannot approve an Inter Local Agreement (ILA) that does not document the mutually agreed terms.”

Johnson is optimistic about upcoming project stakeholder meetings, he said.

“With the potential 90/10 funding solution for right-of-way acquisition and documented inclusion by NTTA of PGBT design elements critical to Rowlett, there is no reason why an agreement between all interested parties could not be worked out in the coming weeks and the project be completed on schedule if not ahead of schedule,” he said.

The Eastern Extension has long been a significant component in Rowlett’s economic development efforts to transfer more of the tax base from residential property owners to commercial properties and sales tax revenue, a city press release states. (Toll Party note: Businesses, they’re comin’ after you again! Consumers: we ARE businesses, whether we’re employees, business owners, or consumers, WE pay these additional taxes one way or the other.)

Updates on the project will continue to be provided by the city of Rowlett through the monthly City Hall News mailed with the utility bills, the quarterly Lakeside Citizen newsletter mailed to all households, the website at www.rowlett.com, and through media bulletins.

Representatives from NTTA and TxDOT did not return phone calls before press time Thursday.

Copyright © 2006 Star Community Newspapers