Category: General

Ohio fills in gap to proposed nationwide toll network

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To view a map that shows the multi-state network, view the original article here.

E-ZPass expansion connects Midwest and East Coast
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY

September 16, 2009

The USA moves one step closer to a nationwide highway tolling system next month when the Ohio Turnpike joins a network covering the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

The move on Oct. 1 will enable drivers equipped with E-ZPass transponders to travel from Maine to southern Virginia and west beyond Chicago and pay tolls electronically without stopping at toll booths. It’s another sign of the spread of electronic tolling as a convenience for drivers and an increasingly common way to finance roads.

Ohio’s decision to join E-ZPass creates an uninterrupted 14-state toll system, the nation’s largest. “We finally filled the hole in the donut,” says George Distel, executive director of the Ohio Turnpike Commission. “You can travel from Chicago to the East Coast. … We will all be linked with the same technology.”

Ohio is late to the game because E-ZPass is more for customer convenience than congestion relief and because of the state’s $50 million cost, Distel says.

When E-ZPass becomes available on 241 miles of toll road across northern Ohio, the system will be used by 25 tolling agencies and 18.6 million vehicles, according to the E-ZPass Interagency Group.

Gas tax collections — long a chief way to maintain roads and build new ones — have lagged in the recession and because of cars that guzzle less gas. As road construction costs rise and traffic congestion mounts, tolling — especially the electronic version — has emerged in many states as a way to fill the gap.

Twenty states, mostly in the West, currently have no toll roads or bridges.

A nationwide electronic system serving all toll roads, tunnels and bridges could be a reality within 10 years, says Neil Gray, director of government affairs for the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, which represents tolling agencies.

Existing technology makes it possible, but a major obstacle is forging agreements among tolling agencies to make sure toll revenue is distributed properly across state borders, Gray says.

More than 95% of the nation’s tolling agencies are served by E-ZPass or TransCore, which supplies technology for electronic tolling systems in Georgia, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington, says TransCore spokeswoman Barbara Catlin.

Technology exists to provide compatibility between TransCore systems such as TxTag in Texas and SunPass in Florida and E-ZPass, Catlin says. But the systems are unable to process each other’s transactions because there are no agreements yet among tolling agencies.

North Carolina, which broke ground last month on its first modern toll road — the 18.8-mile Triangle Expressway in the Raleigh-Durham area — hasn’t decided whether to use E-ZPass, TransCore or something else, says Reid Simons, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Turnpike Authority. “We are kind of stuck in the middle,” she says.

The Ohio Turnpike, which carries about 150,000 vehicles daily, is adding an incentive to encourage drivers of passenger vehicles to use E-ZPass. Drivers won’t see any rate hikes if they use E-ZPass, Distel says. But rates for drivers who pay cash will jump 40%.

Editorial: Leaving 281 off most congested list wreaks of politics

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Link to editorial here. Link to KTSA initial story on the blunder here.

KTSA reported the TxDOT blunder first. TxDOT’s response to them initially was essentially that it simply didn’t rank. Then, by the time the Express News printed a story on it, they were already acknowledging something was amiss. Now the Editorial Board is chiming in on what seems to be, quite obviously, politics playing a role in allowing 281 north of Loop 1604 to wither on the vine indefinitely. TxDOT and the RMA want to punish the citizens for daring to oppose their toll road agenda. It’s their way or interminable gridlock.

09/14/2009

Answers needed on TxDOT report

At first glance, it seems like a joke.The Texas Department of Transportation compiles a list of the 100 most congested road sections in the state, and what is widely believed to be the most congested road section in Bexar County doesn’t even make the list: U.S. 281 from Loop 1604 to the Comal County line.

Eight roadways in Bexar County did make the list, including multiple segments of Interstate 35 and Interstate 10. The worst-ranked section locally — 10th on the statewide list — is a portion of Interstate 35 from U.S. 90 West on the Southwest Side to U.S. 281 north of downtown.

A TxDOT explanation of the congestion on this stretch of Interstate 35 notes: “A trip that takes 20 minutes in free-flow conditions will take approximately 33 minutes during rush hour.”

While that may be bad, many commuters can attest that the rush-hour congestion on U.S. 281 north of Loop 1604 is much worse. So how is it possible that TxDOT failed to place it on the list?

The TxDOT methodology describes a multistep process of compiling a statewide database of major roadways, review by “transportation staff familiar with the local road network” and the calculation of congestion measures by the Texas Transportation Institute.

Perhaps the initial database was deeply flawed and failed to identify U.S. 281 north of Loop 1604 for congestion problems. Even if this were the case, TxDOT experts who have familiarity with Bexar County roadways should have caught this glaring error as part of their review.

Either way, TxDOT — not the Texas Transportation Institute — flubbed the process. And the result is much worse than a joke.

Highway funds will naturally flow to the worst congested roadways in the state. Assuming the legal and environmental hurdles for construction on U.S. 281 are ever surpassed, it’s not even on the list of priority projects.

Local leaders should be outraged at the TxDOT report. Bexar County residents who suffer through bumper-to-bumper commutes on U.S. 281 deserve to know whether something more than incompetence on the part of the state’s transportation authorities is to blame.

Toll operator sues company for agressive toll road traffic forecasts

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Link to article here.

Aggressive traffic projections are coming home to roost these days, as motorists shun the extra toll taxes to get to work. Now toll operators are turning on the their own industry and suing companies who overpromise and underdeliver traffic for toll roads. The blood is in the water…here come the sharks!

Leighton starts lawsuit against ConnectEast
BY MARTIN COLLINS: John Durie | September 09, 2009

Article from:  The Australian

EVER since global credit markets shut 12 months ago, the infrastructure debate has centred on how to attract funding, and now Leighton has provided one more cause for concern.

Its contract dispute with ConnectEast highlights the fact that while developers and operators want the government to take on more risk in the aftermath of the GFC, the private sector operators are masters at minimising their own risks.

Leighton isn’t getting as much money as it thought it would because the traffic estimates were too high.

Ask the company whether it would have handed the money back if the estimates were too low, and the response is laughter: “We had a contractual right.”

It would all be a great game if the consequences were not serious, but at risk is the level of infrastructure development and who shares the risks and rewards.

In the dispute, Leighton wants to add cream to its considerable booty from the project and in the process hurt minority shareholders by kicking $50 million from ConnectEast’s market value.

You would think Leighton would want ConnectEast to have more, not less, money to pay it.

The dispute creates even more doubt over the aggressive traffic claims bidders use to win the multi-billion-dollar projects.

Unfortunately the system now rewards bidders for being too aggressive.

Behind the facade of nation building, financiers and contractors use every bit of leverage to maximise their take at the risk of hurting the small shareholders who were mistakenly happy to back the project.

After watching this performance they have another reason to think again and — just like last week’s decision by Brisbane City Council to go it alone on the $1.8bn Northern Link Tunnel — taxpayers will have to pick up the tab.

To be fair to Leighton and its chief operating officer David Stewart, the ConnectEast dispute is a straight contractual fight — which means there will be rights and wrongs on both sides — but it’s the timing of this stoush and the regularity of Leighton’s use of lawyers to top up its money jars that raises questions.

Leighton handles virtually 100 per cent of the big road construction in Australia, with most big contracts a battle between its divisions rather than against another firm. The $2.5bn ConnectEast’s East Link project was no different.

The ACCC was happy to wave through mergers among the big developers to leave Leighton in control.

Leighton’s John Holland boss Glenn Palin and Thiess’s Neville Power were negotiating with ConnectEast’s John Gardiner until last Friday when talks broke down.

As it happens, ConnectEast is in the middle of a $420m capital raising, with the institutional issue formally closing yesterday and raising $309m.

As part of the spoils for winning the project, Leighton picked up a $7.5m bonus on completion and 260 million shares in ConnectEast — of which it still owns 113 million. It decided against participating in the capital raising and — as was its right — collected $2.3m for selling its rights.

That after all was the virtue of ConnectEast chair Tony Shepherd’s offer structure, which gave every shareholder a right to participate and to collect some value if he or she decided against taking up the rights.

So Leighton pocketed the money, then dropped the bombshell with news of the litigation, which helped push ConnectEast below the rights price for the first time in over a week, with the stock closing yesterday down 5.4 per cent at 35c.

Maybe Leighton didn’t plan it that way, but it just so happens the litigation threat came at the point of maximum leverage over Shepherd and potentially maximum harm to his capital raising. The claim itself is over traffic forecasts made by Hyder Consulting, which was hired by the bid team that included Leighton, Macquarie Group and ConnectEast.

Hyder said by April the road would carry 258,000 cars a day, but so far it has been more like 159,000.

The difference mattered in several respects, but the important things to know are that Leighton has had a representative on the board the entire time, so knew all about traffic numbers and was happy to pay Hyder’s costs.

One of the problems when governments sell tollroads is they encourage bidders to overestimate traffic numbers — the more cars on the road, the lower the tolls that can be charged and the lower the costs.

In this case, Leighton collected a $7.5m success fee, $2.5bn in constructions fees, plus equity in the project and, as late as yesterday, its $2.3m for forgoing its rights.

All of this because the traffic estimates were higher than reality, which meant Leighton would get a lower bonus for completing the road five months earlier.

The bonus was linked to traffic use and the time of completion with the risk, of course, that finishing late would have resulted in millions of dollars in penalties.

The big rewards are designed to reflect the risks taken, but the dispute throws into doubt the level of risks.

The published claims of $400m in damages are fairyland stuff because the actual amount at risk is more like $75m, of which ConnectEast has already provided for $30m.

When projects are delayed, Leighton sues the government and anyone else to blame them to recover funds, and when the numbers fall short of projections it attempts to recover its upside.

Downside doesn’t seem to be in the equation, which, of course, means risk is not large.

Brookes’ float pitch

ONE of the problems with high-profile floats is they let insiders air their claims, as has happened already with some Myer staff complaining about being forced to work too many weekends, under pressure to sell more and in the process staff morale is at an all-time low.

The retailer rejects the claims and when Saint Bernard Brookes hits the podium on Friday, he will talk up cultural change in the company, helped by the fact that some 18 per cent of full-time staff are on short-term incentives and 400 are in the equity pool, which owns 7.5 per cent of the company.

Saint Bernard also invested in the $1.4bn buyout, but the size of his stake was not divulged yesterday.

Store managers are encouraged to run the business like its their own, with 10 key criteria for their bonuses including sales, costs, shrinkage (theft), profits, customer care, sale of house brand products, maximising sales per transaction, safety and selling warranties with electrical products.

Before TPG acquired the business, it was earning between $60-$100m a year and now, the 2009 year earnings before interest and tax will be more like $235m with earnings margins up from 2 per cent to 7 per cent.

Debt will be cut further from the float proceeds from $660m to around $450m.

With all that profit growth in the past, how much can be expected in the future?

There is no doubt TPG and Saint Bernard have fixed a broken company and in the process have also grown profits dramatically.

So if they are selling a business on historical EBIT multiples of 13 times, even with over $400m in capital expenditure, ask yourself how much in costs have been removed which will have to be replaced?

The good news is TPG’s global track record for retail floats is 27 per cent-plus outperformance against the relevant indexes for the likes of Petco, J Crew, Burger King and Debenhams.

This time, the pitch will also start with Myer One club members being certain targets for the float team of Macquarie, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.

Public private partnerships spread to real estate

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Link to article here.

Rick Perry brought public private partnership toll roads to Texas in 2003. Now public private partnerships are spreading to real estate. Even worse, this version allows China to buy-up distressed U.S. real estate using public money.

China Ramps Up To Buy Cheap U.S. Real Estate
Thursday, September 10, 2009 3:29 PM
By: Julie Crawshaw and Dan Weil
Newsmax.com

China Investment Corporation, China’s $300 billion sovereign-wealth fund (SWF), is preparing to buy distressed U.S. real estate assets.

It will do so using the U.S. Treasury Department’s Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) to fund the investments, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, several Chinese officials warned that Wall Street isn’t taking the recession seriously, and that much more pain is in store for U.S. investors in the near term.

The PPIP program, which limits investments by any single investor to no more than 9.9 percent of each fund, is designed to help U.S. banks get rid of toxic mortgage assets by financing investors’ purchases of such securities.

CIC officials reportedly have held talks with U.S. private-equity fund managers, including BlackRock, Invesco, and Lone Star Funds, about buying securities backed by office buildings, hotels, strip malls and other commercial property, and about buying ownership interests in buildings as well.

Though CIC spent only $4.8 billion in global financial markets last year, it invested that much in a single month recently, CIC Chairman Lou Jiwei said last month.

He said that if future returns are good enough, it might ask the government to let it invest more of China’s $2.132 trillion foreign-exchange reserves.

CIC recently invested in a real-estate trust in Australia and in an owner and developer of office towers and retail stores in London.

The SWF also is considering investing in Hollywood production firms, the Times of London reports.

The move could give Beijing a direct stake in a variety of foreign media content “from South Korean television dramas and Japanese game shows to Hollywood blockbusters.”

The Chinese onslaught against the United States over economic issues continues, with Bank of China Vice President Zhu Min criticizing Wall Street for complacency in the wake of the financial crisis.

Bank of China is the country’s third largest bank.

“You go to Wall Street, the people feel the crisis never happened,” Zhu told Bloomberg. “It’s not only overconfidence, it’s over-myopic. This is too much.”

Much of China’s criticism has focused on the growing U.S. debt burden and the dollar’s role as the sole reserve currency.

In March, Premier Wen Jiabao said he was “worried” about China’s investment in U.S. Treasuries, now $776.4 billion, and wanted assurances that they were safe, Bloomberg reports.

As for Zhu, he told Bloomberg that the credit crisis isn’t over yet. “It’s sort of stabilized from a cliff drop,” he said. “But the real economic crisis has just started.”

Zhu expressed some concern about China’s economy too.

“The potential risk is that a lot of liquidity goes to the asset market,” he said. “So you see asset bubbles in commodities, stocks and real estate, not only in China, but everywhere.”

The Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index has soared 61 percent this year, topping the MSCI World Index by 41 percentage points.

China’s concern about the United States apparently hasn’t spread to its sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp. The fund is looking at plowing some of its $300 billion kitty into U.S. real estate.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Taxpayers get shafted in toll deal with Spanish company

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TxDOT inks LBJ toll deal with foreign toll operator, Cintra
By Terri Hall
Examiner.com
September 10, 2009

Is there ANY elected official looking out for the taxpayers anymore? So much for taxpayer protections and oversight from Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott. Even after Abbott held-up several controversial comprehensive development agreements (CDAs, also known as public private partnerships, PPPs) for months declaring them unconstitutional, he recently gave final approval to allow a contract with Spanish toll operator, Cintra, to takeover parts of the LBJ freeway, I-635, in Dallas. The deal will use Dallas Police and Fire Pension System and will charge 75 cents PER MILE to use toll lanes, and even worse, a half a billion in gas taxes will subsidize the deal with Cintra, in a massive DOUBLE TAX scheme.

It’s the hefty amount of public money in the deal that caused Abbott to deem it an unconstitutional – to have one Legislature bind a future Legislature with its obligations. Wasn’t this a major objection to the Wall Street bailouts? Privatizing profits and socializing losses?

Governor Rick Perry, who has grown fond of criticizing Washington, has taken a page out of their playbook and applied it to Texas toll road. There’s a reason these deals are called public private partnerships.

Read the complete Examiner article here.

Man wears monkey mask for red light cameras

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Link to article here.

Don’t think someone won’t try this to avoid paying tolls. too.

Man Dons Mask for Speed-Camera Photos
AOL.com
September 8, 2009

(Sept. 8) – An Arizona man who has been served 37 speeding tickets in the mail is refusing to pay them because he says the pictures captured by the state’s photo-enforcement cameras don’t show that it’s him driving, AZcentral.com reported Tuesday.
The photos on the tickets all show the driver wearing a monkey mask.

Skip over this content

Driver dons monkey mask in speeding camera photo.

Arizona Department of Public Safety

This image captured by a speed camera in Phoenix shows a driver wearing a monkey mask. While the car belongs to Dave Vontesmar, he claims it’s not him.
“Not one of them there is a picture where you can identify the driver,” said Dave Vontesmar, a flight attendant who works at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. “The ball’s in their court. I sent back all these ones I got with a copy of my driver’s license and said, ‘It’s not me. I’m not paying them.’ “

But police disagree and say they’ve been watching him closely.

“We watched him four different times put the monkey mask on and put the giraffe-style mask on,” Officer Dave Porter told AZcentral.com. “Based on surveillance, we were positive that Vontesmar was the driver.”

Still, Vontesmar is confident that he won’t have to pay the fines, which could exceed $6,500.

“It’s obviously a revenue grab,” he said of the new photo-enforcement program. “They’re required by law to ID the driver of the vehicle. If they can’t identify the driver or the vehicle by the picture, what are they doing to identify the driver?”

Arizona police are having a hard time getting a lot of speeders to pay tickets they receive in the mail. Read more about that on AZcentral.com

2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved.
2009-09-08 22:32:57

Re-named TTC alive and well in Loop 9 project

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Link to article here.

TxDOT continues to mislead the public into thinking the Trans Texas Corridor is DEAD when in fact, it’s just been renamed. If you read this article carefully, they even say so. The new name is “innovative connectivity plan” where they plan to break it up into segments instead of build the massive new corridor all at once. It’ll still be a gigantic foreign-owned toll road. Our tax dollars at work…in order to truly KILL the TTC and reform this rogue agency, we need a new Governor. The current regime is a one trick pony…mislead and railroad the public until it’s too late to stop it.

Trans Texas Corridor as such is gone

Regional segments, such as Loop 9, part of new vision

Leslie Gibson
Rockwall County Herald-Banner
September 9, 2009
Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has no intention of developing the Trans Texas Corridor TTC, said agency spokesperson Chris Lippincott, on Wednesday.

He confirmed what was said by transportation planners in the Aug. 26 Rockwall County Road Consortium meeting, that the TTC is almost gone. Instead, local input will be key to developing transportation segments serving regional needs, through a new plan, Innovative Connectivity in Texas/Vision 2009.

The vision was unveiled in January at the fourth annual Texas Transportation Forum, in which TxDOT Executive Director Amadeo Saenz outlined new plans for corridor width, transportation mode, use of existing facilities, timelines, and level of involvement of local officials and citizens in the planning.

“Texans have spoken, and we’ve been listening,” said Saenz. “I believe this transformed vision for the TTC and other major corridor development goes a long way toward addressing the concerns we’ve heard over the past several years.”

Focus will be on segments closer to 600 feet wide, rather than the 1,000 plus of TTC, and be named per the highway numbers originally associated with each segment, such as I-69, SH 130 and closer to home, Loop 9.

Loop 9 is proposed to be a 44-mile-long new road running along the southern edge of Dallas County, dropping into Ellis County, and turning north through the western edge of Kaufman County and back east into Dallas County in order to connect Interstate 20 and US 287, as well as major cross streets. It was first conceived in the 1950s. “It may be developed by the private sector, it may end up as a toll road because of lack of resources,” Lippincott said.

It is a TxDOT project.

It’s east-west portion would also tie into the Outer Loop, a ring of connected roadways around the Metroplex, being coordinated by North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG).

At the Kaufman/Dallas County border, where Loop 9 heads northwest, the Outer Loop would break off and head northeast into Rockwall County if Rockwall County’s preferred Outer Loop alignment is ultimately chosen, or into Hunt County.

“North Central Texas COG is as sophisticated an agency of this type as there is in this state,” Lippincott said in the phone interview. “The means it has are vast,” he said, noting NCTCOG, as the other metropolitan planning areas in the state, receive some federal funding.

When told that some citizens expressed concern at the Consortium meeting that the Outer Loop is a Trans Texas Corridor in disguise, he said, “I don’t want to minimize questions. They (the citizens who are concerned) should stay involved.”

“Every time we build a road, we’ve got to listen and work with the people,” he said.

Right of way can not be purchased until there is money, and not until an environmental impact statement is approved. A draft environmental impact statement for Loop 9 is due in late 2009.

“At some point we will have to acquire the land if we build Loop 9,” Lippincott said. On that subject, he said roads “mean different things to different people. “If you’ve got a McDonalds or a 7/11, Loop 9 could be the greatest thing that could happen. If you’ve got a retirement home, you’ll have a different view,” he said.

TxDOT is expected to hold a public hearing on Loop 9 in the fall; the date is yet to be announced.

Though TTC is essentially gone, “what remains is the challenge created by traffic across our state,” Lippincott said, noting that Texas grows by 1,000 people a day. To that end, TxDOT is still holding public meetings on the 600 mile I-69 project.

Officials ink LBJ toll deal with Cintra

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Link to article here.

Does the state really need Spanish money to rebuild LBJ?
By Rodger Jones / Dallas Morning News
September 8, 2009

newlbj.gifThe answer is heck yes.

News from Austin may come as a provocation to situational toll-road critics, especially those whose blood last boiled because of Spanish money’s interest in the SH 121 project that eventually went to NTTA.

TxDOT signed an agreement last week with a consortium headed by the Spanish company Cintra. It will put up money along with the Paris-based Meridiam Infrastructure Fund. The complete list of the LBJ project’s partners includes the probable investment by the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System.

After completion about six years from now, the new LBJ will be part free, part tolled, with the private developers getting tolling rights. The new roadway will have more free lanes, but the three tolled lanes will be VERY expensive — like maybe 55 cents a mile to start off.

I don’t see how this roadway gets built if not for this kind of exotic arrangement and outside capital.

See if you agree:

The project was tentatively awarded to the Spanish-group in February but now the deal is signed and the consortium lines up financing.

Why that outside money is critical: The local share of the state’s hard-pressed construction funds have dwindled to the point that the local TxDOT district couldn’t reasonably do the $2 billion LBJ project even over time. And under that scenario, no other new projects could go forward.

Financial background information from a district spokesman, Mark Pettit. [Bracketed comments, like this one, are mine.] :

It is our understanding the Dallas District will only have $171M for FY 2010 for new construction (that excludes 14M ARRA [stimulus] and $266M RTR [redistributed 121] funds). This is mostly due to lower than normal gas tax revenues, federal recisions [broken promises] and prop 14 [state borrowing program] debt.To the point … so if everything in the universe remained unchanged for the next 20 years, Dallas will have accrued $3.4B. And if it was all put toward the $2B LBJ project it would still not be enough, because we have to account for inflation and construction cost increases. Extremely conservative inflation estimates of %3 raise the project cost to approx. $3.6B.

Meanwhile nothing else gets built (Pegasus I-30 bridge, Loop 9, SH 183, Trinity, SH 175, I-35E … basically anything in the seven counties not maintenance related).

Not a good picture. If there’s a way to keep building major urban roadways short of inviting private money and giving up toll rights, the model hasn’t been proposed. Start with the fact that lawmakers have refused to raise the gas tax.

NTTA has said it’s not interested in part-toll roads. NTTA’s list includes the Trinity and the Loop 9 super-outer-loop. And make no mistake: NTTA doesn’t do these projects without a good bit of tax money. The $2 billion LBJ project, for example, includes about a half-billion in tax money.

Meanwhile, the North Central Texas Council of Governments lists tens of billions of dollars in unfunded but needed road projects.

There two other part-toll roads moving ahead in North Texas, both with Cintra-led outside partners. The others are the DFW Connector (led by Kiewit Texas Construction, Fort Worth, and Zachry Construction, San Antonio), and the North Tarrant Express (a Cintra-led project). I-35E will be part-tolled, but there’s no money for it yet.

Where does the financing come if not from abroad? Are critics of toll roads willing to press lawmakers for higher fuel taxes? Some of them say the state should start by ending the raids on the highway fund that’s made up of fuel taxes. But those so-called “diversions” amount to less than $1.5 billion every two years, and Dallas gets only a fraction of that.

If it was your choice, would you turn to Cintra or higher gas taxes first?

Citizens file lawsuit over Virginia toll road abuses

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Link to Examiner article here.

You gotta love this group of sharp citizens who have made the exact arguments so many of their fellow Americans have been making (like TURF, the Toll Party tax revolt), regarding these toll road boondoggles. The politicians pass the buck (of raising taxes) to unelected bureaucracies who have no legitimate authority to levy taxes.

Examiner Exclusive: Federal lawsuit challenges funding of Dulles Rail
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
Washington Examiner
08/07/09 3:08 PM EDT
Christopher Walker, owner of commercial property in Reston and president of the Dulles Corridor Users Group, has filed a 131-page federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the validity of the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority’s (MWAA) takeover of the Dulles Rail project.

The lawsuit asks the federal court to force MWAA to return the Dulles Toll Road (DTR) to the Commonwealth of Virginia and to refund some $300 million in tolls it claims have  been illegally collected, as required under Virginia’s Revenue Bond Act. Gov. Tim Kaine handed over the toll road to MWAA on March 28, 2006.

Walker maintains that MWAA has no legal authority to impose tolls on the general public or even to build a construction project outside airport property. He also accuses MWAA of deliberately lying about the official cost of Phase I, which will not reach the airport. MWAA advertised the cost at $2.5 billion; according to the lawsuit, the full funding agreement with the Federal Transit Administration officially lists the price tag at $3.1 billion.

The suit also charges that MWAA inserted “hell or high water” language in its July 21 proposed bond prospectus that assumes unilateral authority to raise tolls as high as it wants: “At no time will [MWAA] subject its exclusive right to establish, charge and collect Tolls and other User Fees for the use of the Dulles Toll Road to the approval or consent of any other individual or entity, government or otherwise.”

This means that MWAA plans to impose the largest tax in Virginia history – to cover 75 percent of the $6 billion total initial construction costs of the Silver Line and another $14 billion in interest over the 40-year life of the project – without the consent of the governed. The lawsuit points out that Section 11 of the Virginia Constitution requires that all tax increases first be approved by the General Assembly.

“The sole reason that MWAA is involved in this project in the first place is that nervous politicians tried to hide the ball from their tax-shy constituents,” the lawsuit claims. “Their way out was to pass the hot potato to an unelected authority… just a scheme to insulate the politicians from the effects of inevitable tax increases resulting from this boondoggle.”

The suit has been assigned to federal Judge Gladys Kessler. We’ll be following it closely.

___________________________________________________________

Link to article here.

Note: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s bill to prevent federally funded highways from being tolled, since it’s a double tax to charge taxpayers to use what’s already built and paid for.

Dulles Toll Road Faces Lawsuit
Critics Say Backing For Bonds Illegal
Bond Buyer
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
By Audrey Dutton

WASHINGTON – An advocacy group in Virginia is suing federal and state transportation officials over the Dulles Toll Road, arguing that drivers are being illegally charged tolls used to back bonds issued for a Dulles Metrorail project.The 130-page lawsuit was filed last month in the U.S. District Courts for the District of Columbia and Eastern District of Virginia by the Dulles Corridor Users Group against James Bennett, president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, as well as federal transportation officials and the Virginia Transportation Secretary. It asks for a refund of $200 million of tolls already collected and for the road to be made a free highway.

The complaint was filed three days after the MWAA sold more than $900 million of bonds to fund construction of the new Metrorail line that will transport riders to the Dulles International Airport.

“We don’t see at the moment the authority behind the taxing power for the toll road that is the basis for payment on the bonds,” said Christopher W. Walker, who founded the civic group. “They’ve cut corners; they don’t have an elected group of people.”

The complaint comes in anticipation of a 25-cent toll increase on the road, and as lawmakers in Congress are pushing to ban tolls on federally funded highways, arguing that those tolls amount to double taxation because taxpayers already paid for them.

The Virginia civic group charges that tolling drivers on the Dulles Toll Road is illegal based on state law.

According to the complaint, state law requires that when payments have been made, or set aside, for bonds issued for a project, tolls can no longer be charged – except to pay for maintenance, repairs, operations, improvements, and reconstruction on the projects, or if they are pledged to the transportation trust fund.

In addition, the toll revenues could only be diverted to another project aside from the toll road if approved by the state General Assembly, and that body has taken no action, the lawsuit says. “This pork-fest has gone on too long by parties who have ignored the law in favor of interested parties who want to receive fees,” it says.

The group claims that the Dulles corridor is “in danger of being taxed to death,” in part “to subsidize the money-losing rail venture” that will add a new Dulles Metrorail line to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority transit rail network.

In addition, the group alleges that 75% of the money for the first phase of the Dulles Metrorail project will unfairly benefit private landowners in Tysons Corner, a suburban area in Fairfax County, Va., that contains a major shopping mall and upscale shopping centers.

The Dulles Toll Road, part of a Virginia state highway, was built in 1984 and was operated until 2006 by the Virginia Department of Transportation. The 16-mile stretch of highway is now operated and financed by the MWAA, and part of its revenues are dedicated to financing the planned Metrorail line.

The MWAA and Virginia DOT have diverted $133 million of surplus toll road funds to pay for rail operations already, the group said. The complaint says that a 2008 Virginia Supreme Court ruling set a precedent that taxes cannot be levied by non-elected officials, and decided that the appropriate remedy is to repay taxpayers.

The lawsuit – which points to a YouTube.com rap music video about Arlington, Va., as a parody of smart growth in the corridor area – also claims that the Metrorail line is a poor investment driven by political interests.

The MWAA declined to say when it would file any court action in relation to the lawsuit. The deadline is Oct. 15, according to Walker.

“We are in the process of reviewing the complaint, and the airports authority will respond appropriately in court,” said MWAA spokesman Rob Yingling.

The legal battle against the Dulles Toll Road comes as lawmakers are mulling whether to ban states, private parties, and others from adding tolls on existing untolled federal highways, bridges, or tunnels that have been constructed with federal funding.

A bill introduced by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., in May would prohibit such tolls nationally. Hutchison already successfully banned the tolling of existing federally funded highways in Texas by adding a provision to a fiscal 2008 appropriations bill that was enacted. That prohibition expires at the end of this month.

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TxDOT leaves 281, 1604 out of its "most congested" list

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Link to story here.

Here’s more proof that TxDOT politicizes transportation policy. It notably leaves 281 north of 1604 and 1604 at Braun Rd. off its list of the top 100 most congested roads in Texas. Anyone with a pulse knows 281 and 1604 are two of the the most congested areas in San Antonio. Considering TxDOT’s own traffic assessments of 281 and 1604 have been at the worst level of congestion, traffic level F (the worst rating), for years, this “Top 100 Most Congested Roads” list is suspect at best.

It also shows that just as a political poll can get the results the authors want it to, TxDOT’s data can yield the results it seeks to push it’s agenda. Ironically, if 281 and 1604 aren’t measuring on its most congested list, and toll roads require congestion to work, TxDOT may have inadvertently made our case against toll roads!

TX-DoT Releases List Of State’s Most Congested Roadways
By Christian Bove
KTSA Newsradio 550
September 2, 2009

The Texas Department of Transportation has released a list of the most congested roadway segments in the state, and you may be surprised by which local segment didn’t make the list.

TX-DoT used methodology developed by the Texas Transportation Institute to identify the 100 most congested roadway segments on the state highway system.

“Total in Bexar County there are eight roadway segments that were identified as being among the top one-hundred most congested in the state,” said TX-DoT Spokesperson Karen Amacker.

A segment of I-35 from Highway 281 to Highway 90 topped the list for Bexar County as the tenth most congested segment in the state.

One local segment which didn’t appear anywhere on the top 100 list is Highway 281 outside Loop 1604.

“I understand when you’re frustrated and sitting in your car, you think that is the most congested road anywhere. I’ve been there, but sometimes other places seem to have it worse.” said Amacker.

You can find the entire list on TX-DoT’s website.