Link to article here.

We are now in uncharted territory with the price of gas hitting historic highs, even higher than the 1980 oil embargo. There is no rational argument to be made in favor of toll roads in these economic conditions, much less taking out a second mortgage on our existing freeway system by converting it to network of toll roads simply as a tax-grabbing cash cow for government and road builders.

Gas price record reaches $4 a gallon
AAA’s daily survey tops the milestone for the first time after a 1.7-cent rise. Lundberg survey nears $4 as well.
By Mark M. Meinero and Ben Rooney, CNNMoney.com staff writers
June 8, 2008
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Gasoline rose to a milestone mark Sunday as the national average compiled by motorist group AAA reached $4 a gallon for the first time.

In a second survey, the average price came within 0.2 cent of $4 a gallon in the Lundberg Survey, which showed a 20-cent rise in the past three weeks to a new record.

The national average for regular unleaded rose 1.7 cents to $4.005, according the daily measure on the AAA’s Web site. That surpassed the previous record of $3.989 set Thursday.

The milestone was expected after a surge in crude oil prices added more than $16 to a barrel of oil over the last 2 trading days. Crude settled at a record $138.54 a barrel Friday, up by $10.75, after setting an all-time intraday high of $139.12.

The $10.75 gain was the biggest one-day advance in dollar value ever, nearly doubling the previous mark of $5.49 set Thursday. Weakness in the dollar, geopolitical concerns and an analyst’s prediction of $150-a-barrel oil by July 4 helped spur Friday’s advance.

In a statement Friday, AAA urged gasoline station owners not to overreact to the single-day oil spike.

“Consumers should not be overcharged for gasoline simply because the oil markets reacted so strongly to today’s news,” AAA said.

Big jump felt across the nation

So far this year, crude prices have increased more than 40%.

The average price is $4 a gallon or more in 14 states and the District of Columbia, according to the survey. California pays the most for gasoline, averaging $4.436, with Alaska and Connecticut both at $4.296. Other states above $4 are Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and West Virginia.

Missouri has the lowest average price at $3.802, followed by South Carolina at $3.809.

Gas prices have risen more than 10% from $3.671 a month ago and are nearly 29% higher than the $3.105 average a year ago, according to the AAA figures.

Gasoline prices in the survey have risen for 31 of the past 33 days, setting records on 29 of those days.

The price of diesel fuel, used by truckers hauling goods across the country, rose 0.8 cent to $4.762 a gallon. That’s 3 cents below the all-time high set May 30.

On its Web site, AAA says the information is gathered by Oil Price Information Service based on credit card swipes at 85,000 gasoline stations across the nation.

‘Essentially $4 a gallon’

In the Lundberg Survey, the average price of gasoline jumped up another 20 cents a gallon in the past three weeks to a record-breaking $3.99 a gallon for self-serve regular.

The survey showed that the average price at gas stations around the nation was just a fraction of a cent under $4 a gallon, said survey publisher Trilby Lundberg.

“We got an average price of $3.9985,” said Lundberg. “This is essentially $4 a gallon. And unfortunately all indications are showing that this number is going to grow.”

The Lundberg survey tallies prices at thousands of gas stations across the country. The latest survey was conducted from May 16 until June 6.

The main reason for the price hike was record highs in crude oil prices, Lundberg said.

The area with the highest average gas prices was Stockton, Calif., which posted $4.41 per gallon. The area with the cheapest gas was Wichita, Kan., which posted an average price of $3.65 per gallon.

Average prices in other areas included: Denver, $3.85; Houston, $3.82; Baltimore, $3.93; Detroit, $3.95, Atlanta, $3.99; Seattle, $4.22; and Hartford, Conn., $4.23

Prices put a brake on driving

Higher gas prices have prompted a growing number of Americans to modify their driving habits.

A recent study by the Department of Transportation showed that the number of drivers on the road in March fell 4.3% versus the previous year. That was the first time March travel on public roads fell in nearly 30 years.

In addition to driving less, many consumers are shifting away from large, low mileage vehicles toward smaller vehicles that consume less gas.

Falling demand for gas-guzzlers has hit some of the nation’s largest automakers hard. General Motors announced plans last week to shut four truck and SUV plants and said it would ramp up producing more fuel-efficient cars. Ford also recently said it would trim production of large trucks and roll out more small cars and crossovers.

But carmakers aren’t the only ones hurt by soaring gas prices. The airline industry, which was ailing even before gas prices spiked, has been fraught with near-bankruptcies, drastic cost cutting efforts and mass groundings of aircraft.

Last week, Continental Airlines said it is eliminating about 3,000 jobs and grounding 67 mainline aircraft to cope with the rising cost of fuel. Other airlines have hiked fuel surcharges to fares and added fees to once-free benefits, such as food and checked baggage.

–CNN Wires contributed to this story

Link to article here.

If this comes to fruition, Mockingbird lane, a public surface street open as a non-toll, already built and paid for neighborhood street, will be converted to a toll road to keep the “rif-raf” out of a wealthy community. Can you say, economic discrimination and wrong-headed public policy? This says it all: “..charging tolls on a road discourages some drivers from using it, leaving a less-crowded road for those willing to pay.”

Highland Park considers plan to make Dallas drivers pay to use stretch of Mockingbird
Thursday, June 5, 2008
By IAN McCANN and MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News
Highland Park’s solution to unclogging traffic congestion on Mockingbird Lane: Make Dallas drivers pay for it.

Since most of the 18,000 drivers on the road each day cut through the town, officials are exploring a proposal to toll the road. Most local drivers would not be charged.

A plan is far from developed, but if it comes to pass, transportation experts say the stretch of Mockingbird between Hillcrest Avenue and Dallas North Tollway could become the first tolled surface street in the country.

The concept, known as congestion pricing, was among dozens of ideas in an application last year in which Dallas Area Rapid Transit led a team of North Texas officials seeking part of a $1 billion federal grant program. It was aimed at finding innovative fixes for traffic-clogged streets in big cities.

The proposal did not win, but Highland Park town engineer Meran Dadgostar said he believes the Mockingbird idea merits consideration.

“Mockingbird was a thoroughfare that would be a good candidate,” he said. “The idea is still a good one.”

Mr. Dadgostar plans to brief the Town Council later this year on congestion pricing before the town will move ahead with further study. But first, officials must address a litany of questions: Is there public support? Can Highland Park legally charge tolls? How much would drivers pay, and how would revenues be used? Who would run the program?

Studying those issues was exactly what local officials had in mind when they included the proposal in the grant application, said Christopher Poe, an assistant director of the Texas Transportation Institute.

The grant would have paid for a detailed report that would have also addressed pricing policy, operations and enforcement.

“There was definitely the recognition that any potential project would have to be thoroughly vetted through the public and political process,” Mr. Poe said.

The tolling idea is not the first time talked-about changes to Mockingbird Lane have stoked tensions between Highland Park residents and the many non-resident drivers who rely on the road.

Highland Park’s opposition to widening the road, some have said, was an attempt to keep out non-residents. The current project, a multimillion dollar reconstruction of the road, will leave it generally narrower.

Highland Park Mayor Bill Seay said that while he is unfamiliar with congestion pricing, he would be open to investigating it for Mockingbird. But he acknowledged potential problems.

“I’m sensitive to the fact that the town has been seen as being selfish with the use of that road,” he said.

Dallas City Council member Linda Koop, a member of the Regional Transportation Council, said Mockingbird is seen as a key road in the region’s fight to handle traffic, not just a residential street. Highland Park planners would have to be careful that their efforts don’t lead to heavier traffic on crowded streets nearby.

Mockingbird’s value has been clear since late September, as construction work has sent the 18,000-plus drivers a day looking for detours.

Initially, drivers streamed down Beverly Drive, but added stop signs and tough enforcement have spread traffic to Lovers Lane and other nearby thoroughfares. Mockingbird is expected to reopen by the end of the year.

Despite the traffic it carries, many Highland Park residents see Mockingbird as a residential street. In fact, resident Don Chase said, a congested Mockingbird may discourage people from driving on it.

“I love looking out on a Friday afternoon and seeing those cars stacked up in front of my house,” he said. “Drivers will go for the path of least resistance. We’re not using their neighborhood street, so why should they use ours?”

Mr. Chase says he doesn’t think the plan is viable. But transportation experts say congestion pricing has been tested and proven elsewhere.

“This idea works, and it works anywhere there is a capacity problem and the need to smooth traffic flows,” said Tyler Duvall, a top U.S. Department of Transportation official and one of the Bush administration’s leading voices on congestion pricing and other new approaches.

Mr. Duvall said all the finalists for the $1 billion in grant money had plans for some form of congestion pricing or similar approaches. The Mockingbird Lane proposal was part of what made the North Texas application stand out, he said.

One of the grant recipients was San Francisco, which proposed, but later stepped back from, tolling a city street leading to the Golden Gate Bridge. While that proposal was designed to produce revenue, the Mockingbird idea would instead use fluctuating pricing to manage traffic, Mr. Duvall said.

Other tolling ideas that were in the North Texas application will probably go forward without the grant money.

DART, for instance, plans to begin converting some of its carpool lanes to managed lanes sometime later this year. Eventually those tolls would fluctuate according to how congested their adjacent roads are.

Mr. Dadgostar, the Highland Park engineer, said he’d like to refine the Mockingbird proposal as much as possible before taking it to the council for discussion. He said the program could:

•Use cameras or other technology on each end of Mockingbird in the town.

•Charge drivers detected by each scanner within a limited amount of time – those using Mockingbird as a through route.

•Discourage drivers from using parallel residential streets through strict traffic enforcement.

Mr. Dadgostar said most traffic on Mockingbird is going through the town but that he didn’t have detailed data. While many people would choose another route instead of paying a toll, roads such as Northwest Highway, which is north of the town, are better designed to handle large amounts of traffic, he said.

“This is to get drivers to change their habits,” Mr. Dadgostar said. “We’re telling people that there are other routes out there. You pay for things that are worth paying for.”

imccann@dallasnews.com;

mlindenberger@dallasnews.com

Congestion pricing is a way to use tolls to regulate traffic on crowded roads. The pricing can take several forms, from a flat fee to a changing rate on a so-called managed lane.

THE PROBLEM – AND SOLUTION: In a growing area, when more roads or lanes are built, it seems that more cars drive there. Congestion pricing uses the principles of supply and demand, applying a charge to drivers at certain times, like peak hours, to prevent traffic jams.

WHY IT WORKS: Fundamentally, charging tolls on a road discourages some drivers from using it, leaving a less-crowded road for those willing to pay. Since road demand varies throughout the day, the tolls needed to influence driver choice can vary as well.

Link to article here.

Our good friend Ken Allard comes after TxDOT once again with a perfect blend of fact and candor to conclude we need fundamental change at TxDOT.

Ken Allard: Texans must demand more from TxDOT, politicians and themselves
San Antonio Express-News
06/04/2008
Hotly debated public policy questions are rarely settled so decisively, so cleanly, so unanswerably. But Tuesday’s Sunset Commission Report on the Texas Department of Transportation read like an indictment.

Its overall finding: the agency is “out of control” and desperately needs new leadership. TxDOT apologists must have felt as though they had been presented with DNA evidence that Dad had never married Mom: because even the agency’s most strident critics turned out to have understated their case.

There was, of course, the small matter of the billion dollars mislaid by TxDOT, as well its nasty habit of spending public monies to advocate pet projects like the Trans-Texas Corridor, justifiably despised by many citizens. But the report also found TxDOT’s strategic planning is “disjointed;” its project selection not “understandable or transparent.” Even in the information age, agency planning is so chaotic that there is only limited public access to “objective and reliable information about the state’s transportation system.” Bottom line: TxDOT is simply not trusted by Texans or the people we elect to the Legislature.

Gov. Rick Perry must have anticipated the stinging rebuke. On Monday, he suddenly left for Europe, there to boast about Texas business and to participate in the annual D-Day commemoration. (Hint: the Germans lost there because, among other things, we bombed their transportation networks into oblivion.)

Back home, where each day roughly 1,200 new Texans join the hordes already jamming state roads, bad planning is building toward gridlock levels usually produced by war or natural disaster. While we may need something like TxDOT, what would a more effective agency look like? Because the Sunset Commission report marks only the start of that larger debate, there are some basic questions about the future that Texans should begin considering carefully:

•Appointed or elected? Who is in charge and who put them there are basic questions at TxDOT or anywhere else. Leaders naturally owe their first loyalty to whoever they feel is most responsible for selecting them, whether governor, legislature or the electorate. So whose loyalty should govern the decisions TxDOT commissioners typically make? For example, do you think the present incumbent, a thirty-something whose sole qualifications are her ties to the governor, could win statewide election to the office? (I don’t either.)

•One or Many? Travel here more than five minutes and you become aware that Texas is a subcontinent in its own right, with every conceivable kind of terrain and transportation challenge. We are rural and urban; coastal marsh and upland desert; piney woods and endless prairie. So why do we think a Soviet-style central planning bureau like TxDOT is the appropriate model for such a diverse and often fractious state? There have been ample precedents here for local planning authorities. Why not empower them with more decentralized planning and execution responsibilities, maybe even electing local transportation leaders as well?

•Strategy or Tactics? Straighten out the structure and you also enable more precise divisions of labor. Elected local authorities are far better able to decide small but urgent issues, like building a ramp to the Dominion versus one connecting Loop 1604 with U.S. Highway 281. A reformed TxDOT could then focus more effectively on the overall system, including vital strategic questions like road versus rail or even the injection of new technologies like high-speed, magnetic-levitation trains. Eventually we might even engineer roadways that didn’t look as though they had been designed by Martian bureaucrats.

•Who pays and how? Like it or not, we need more and better roads as well as the means to pay for them. Texans, tolls and taxes have never gone well together, but even less so with gas climbing steadily toward $5 a gallon. So how do we raise the money, especially with fewer prospects for bailouts from Washington? Creative financing is one thing, but public expenditures always mean debt or taxes.

So let’s begin by demanding better accountability from our public servants and our political leaders.

But most of all, from ourselves.

Retired Col. Ken Allard is an executive-in-residence at UTSA.

Link to article here.

Mr. Guerra nails TxDOT to the wall in his very truthful and accurate assessment of what’s gone wrong at TxDOT. One of my favorite lines: “TxDOT — which spends $8 billion annually — is not only dysfunctional, it is clearly hell-bent on pushing an agenda that few outside of the road-construction industry agree with.” Amen, Mr. Guerra!

Carlos Guerra: TxDOT’s problems warrant not just a fix, but replacement
Express-News
06/06/2008
Outside its own, its contractors’ and Gov. Rick Perry’s offices, the Texas Department of Transportation doesn’t exactly have a bunch of fans.

That was apparent earlier this week when cheers erupted statewide after the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission released its blistering 159-page staff report on the agency.

Created by the Legislature in 1977, the Sunset Commission reviews each of the state’s 150 agencies every 12 years, looking for waste, inefficiency and duplication.

The commission’s 12 members often tweak staff recommendations, then fire them to the Legislature before the agencies are reauthorized.

If an agency is not reauthorized, it dies. This seldom happens, but Sunset recommendations have led to changes, even a few important ones.

One big reason TxDOT’s evaluation got so much ink and air time is that it is unusually harsh and extensive. But it also confronts incredibly contentious Texas issues: TxDOT’s relentless drive to build toll roads, privatize state roads and build the Trans-Texas Corridor that will cut through thousands of acres of private property.

TxDOT’s ham-handed actions have created a broad and deep-seated distrust of the agency, so it wasn’t surprising to read in the staff report’s second paragraph: “Sunset staff found that this … distrust permeated most of TxDOT’s actions and determined that it could not be an effective state transportation agency if trust and confidence were not restored.”

And if that isn’t clear enough, ask the thousands who attended TxDOT’s public hearings on these issues and were treated rudely and then blown off entirely, or the reporters and others who sought public information only to be stonewalled.

TxDOT — which spends $8 billion annually — is not only dysfunctional, it is clearly hell-bent on pushing an agenda that few outside of the road-construction industry agree with.

But the Sunset report also excoriates its secrecy, and disingenuousness, and for how it remains unaccountable, even to the lawmakers who appropriate its budget. It also details management, bookkeeping and policy-development practices that are, at best, questionable.

TxDOT’s projected $86 billion shortfall, for example, was even disputed by the Governor’s Business Council Transportation Task Force before the state auditor faulted its seriously flawed methodology.

And what about that $1.1 billion accounting error that TxDOT kept under wraps for months? Or the instances in which the propriety of expenditures — like spending millions to promote and lobby for the Trans-Texas Corridor — have been seriously questioned?

And some of its practices have also made it difficult, if not impossible, to verify if appropriations are being spent for their intended purposes.

When the Sunset Commission meets in August to review this report in Austin, they can count on drawing a big crowd.

But replacing the five-member, governor-appointed Texas Transportation Commission with a single commissioner — the Sunset staff’s principal recommendation — doesn’t address long-term issues that need attention now.

Lawmakers need to replace this insular agency entirely with one that does not view itself as a self-governing road-building entity that lets private-sector vendors write its policies. In today’s fast-changing world, Texas must deal with transportation more comprehensively by seriously incorporating rail and other public-transit options into its plans.

And if we don’t, our grandchildren will inherit a huge system of largely underused highways that either will be controlled by unaccountable private-sector operators from who knows where, or will have been sold back to the state but their debt will remain unpaid for generations to come.

What kind of future is that?

Unintended consequences
Letter to the Editor
June 10, 2008
Express News

In a rush to find the “silver bullet” to solve the energy crisis, Congress quickly latched on to two technologies: compact fluorescent bulbs (CFBs) and ethanol. Now that Congress has committed the country, it comes out that both products cause problems.

CFBs, which contain mercury, will contaminate our landfills and will not work with dimmer switches. The wholesale shift to ethanol has led to a worldwide food crisis resulting in civil unrest in places like Haiti, Indonesia and Afghanistan. Members of Congress refer to these outcomes as “unintended consequences.” They can do so truthfully because they never bothered to study the subjects before making these decisions on behalf of the American people.

Now we are seeing the same practice on the state and local level when it comes to toll roads. Despite numerous requests to do so, TxDOT, the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, etc. have refused to perform routine impact studies before committing our region to toll roads. So ultimately when traffic reroutes itself through surrounding neighborhood streets to avoid paying tolls, it will be an unintended consequence.

When businesses close along toll road corridors because tolls have absorbed the discretionary spending dollars of families, it will be another unintended consequence. When toll receipts prove insufficient to pay off the bonds and the bonds become the burden of taxpayers … well, you get the picture.

You would think that before these organizations bind our region to 50-year obligations, they would want to check these things out. Of course, the members of these organizations expect to have moved on long before the chickens come home to roost and expect that voters will forget who got us into this mess.

Marc Smith
San Antonio