San Diego’s South Bay Expressway foreign-owned toll road has become the new poster child for the failed policy of road privatization. Up until now, most “conservative” and libertarian think tanks have promoted PPPs (public private partnerships) as the “free market” solution to road building. I’ve said all along it’s no such thing. They’re government-sanctioned monopolies and the Editorial Board of a leading conservative national newspaper, the Washington Times, agrees.

The editorial also notes the flaw in raising toll rates when traffic drops, which is the exact opposite of a free market response to fewer customers. To increase demand they need to lower not increase toll rates. Yet what did the North Texas Toll Authority, a publicly run toll entity (so this problem isn’t just isolated to privatized toll roads), do when its toll road system experienced a decline in traffic? Raised its rates by 32%!

The new generation of toll roads that have relied on “innovative financing” (ie – taxpayer subsidized toll roads, often co-mingled with private money) find themselves consistently upside down on their debt despite the taxpayer bailouts that help front the construction costs. The foreign toll operator of the South Bay Expressway was one of the first to snag a federal, taxpayer-backed, low interest loan called a TIFIA loan (think public money for private profits). Now that the toll road went bankrupt, will the taxpayers EVER be paid back? The taxpayers long, sordid history of being fleeced by politicos who are nothing more than putty in the hands of special interests gives us the answer.

Taxpayer-funded lobbying for Wall Street’s sweetheart deals

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has twice directly lobbied Congress for PPPs, but also to relax any federal restrictions on them. Their latest lobbying push (see pages 5 & 6 here, draft only available, the final was adopted by the Commission but has not been posted on TxDOT’s web site) tells Congress not to mess with Texas (let us do whatever we want, even if it means fleece our own citizens without their consent), yet it also asks them to aggressively fund the TIFIA loan program and other means to maximize the use of taxpayer money to subsidize private profits using these PPP toll roads.

Our insolent, taxpayer-funded highway department has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce, PPP crowd, particularly when Texas law specifically prohibits state agencies from using public money to lobby. TURF still has a pending lawsuit to stop TxDOT’s illegal lobbying. Perry vetoed the bill the Texas Legislature passed last year, HB 2142, to close TxDOT’s perceived loophole it exploited to wage PR campaigns to persuade the public to accept PPPs and the Trans Texas Corridor. However, the bill only sought to clarify that advertising toll roads to seek to change public opinion against toll roads was indeed illegal. The law still very clearly prohibits lobbying, yet onward TxDOT marches with impunity.

Our sold-out politicians are creating an infrastructure bubble that will be deemed “too big to fail” requiring even greater taxpayer bailouts if we allow this tax raid to continue. I have yet to see any data that shows increasing the cost of transportation (toll taxes on top of high gas prices) is good for the economy. All available data shows the opposite is true. When the cost of transportation goes up, driving and, subsequently, gas tax revenues go down, a principle that translates to toll roads. When the price of gas and or tolls go up, the usage of toll roads goes down.

Bogus traffic projections the norm with toll roads

Also, the Washington Times piece mentions a study TxDOT did that admits toll roads are based on FLAWED traffic projections (that are kept secret until after the contracts are signed). The foreign toll operator, Macquarie, based in Australia, was off by nearly 40,000 vehicles per day! Such overblown traffic forecasts are the norm with this new generation of toll roads, so much so that the bond investors and toll operators are suing the traffic modelers when the traffic projections are so obviously akin to a fairytale than reality.

The Editorial sums up why politicians like Rick Perry and his fellow so-called fiscal conservatives in the Texas Legislature support these deals — outsourcing the tax hikes: “Bureaucrats and politicians turn to public-private partnerships because they, in effect, outsource unpleasant revenue-raising duties to private companies. As we see from the South Bay Expressway, the deals governments strike with companies to perform this task frequently are based on faulty, unsustainable assumptions.”

Second mortgage on our highway system

Yep, government gets quick cash up front to build yet more toll projects in exchange for generations of debt and sky-high toll taxes in the hands of private companies to whom they defer all blame for the draconian tax hikes. This is precisely what we tried to stop in a bill that passed the Texas Legislature (SB 792) in 2007. SB 792 was the counterfeit PPP moratorium, which replaced a genuine moratorium, HB 1892 that was vetoed by Rick Perry, with the Governor’s version that grandfathered the Trans Texas Corridor contracts along with close to a dozen others.

A provision known as market valuation also forced public toll entities to jack-up toll rates as high as the private ones using toll rates as high as the “market” will bear in order to suck some speculative future “surplus revenue” out of the deal up front so they could go spend the money, today, building more toll roads (leveraging these projects to the hilt, never mind that surplus revenue has yet to show-up using “innovative finance” techniques). It’s like taking out a second mortgage on our public highway system using the worst and most costly financing schemes.

Housing bubble turned infrastructure bubble

Essentially politicians, at Perry and the banksters behest, enshrined in law known risky multi-leveraged debt financing schemes using OPM (other people’s money)…YOURS AND MINE! It’s the very same financial scheme (monetizing the debt and spreading its toxicity to the far corners of the markets) that brought down the housing bubble and required massive taxpayer bailouts of the banksters and brokers who orchestrated the thievery.

SB 792 allowed these traffic and revenue studies (toll viability studies that give the traffic estimates) to stay secret until AFTER the contract is signed. We tried to get lawmakers to remove this provision from the bill, and the amendment only got 19 votes (so much for OPEN GOVERNMENT, especially the kind that saves taxpayers money). This must be changed. We’ve long held that it violates federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), that requires the public and decision makers to be fully informed of the financial impacts of ALL the alternatives of a roadway project so it can properly weigh them and determine the preferred alternative.

Revealing these flawed traffic projections BEFORE going to contract will help taxpayers ferret out the truly viable (and sensible) toll projects from those that aren’t, which are being propped up by HEAPS of taxpayer subsidies (gas taxes, Texas Mobility Funds, Prop 14, Prop 12, stimulus money, TIFIA loans, PABs, etc., up front) that end up going bankrupt anyway.

The failure of the San Diego South Bay Expressway PPP toll road in less than three years exposes the mythical “free market” concept of public private partnerships (called CDAs in Texas). It’s a fad whose time has ended.

Link to article here.

Sounds eerily familiar…the Trans Texas Corridor would also eat-up prime Texas farmland, the Blackland Prairie, and just one corridor would displace $1 million people. Wait till the Oregonians find out about non-compete agreements and guaranteed profits for these private toll road operators…

Proposed toll road south of Portland runs into opposition
By Dana Tims, The Oregonian
April 05, 2010

View full sizeSteve Cowden/The Oregonian A proposal to build Oregon’s only privately financed and operated toll road, almost all of it crossing prime farmland south of Portland, is running into stiff opposition from local residents, farmers and elected officials.

Backers of the Coastal Parkway — a proposed 11.77-mile four-lane highway linking Interstate 5 near Woodburn with Dayton in Yamhill County — have been meeting quietly since last fall with landowners and officials in potentially affected towns.

But their apparent goal of building grass-roots support, one willing seller at a time, doesn’t seem to be working.

“I’m a little fascinated by their assertion that there is any support for this at all,” Marion County Commissioner Patti Milne said. “We don’t need a bypass here that does nothing but solve Yamhill County’s traffic problems.”

Milne and fellow commissioners Sam Brentano and Janet Carlson are scheduled to meet with parkway promoters April 15, “just to hear first-hand where things stand,” she said.

View full sizeBrent Wojahn/The Oregonian/2006When the idea of establishing toll roads came up in 2006 as a way to relieve traffic congestion in the Dundee area, the reaction from residents in the area was swift and clear. A new toll-road proposal also faces an uphill battle.Newberg businessman Robert Youngman, president of Royal Chinook Development Co., has, to date, been the parkway’s most visible public spokesman. He met with Donald-area farmers at a local cafe March 13 and has made recent presentations to city councils and planners in Dundee and Newberg. Similar talks are set for later in April with councilors in St. Paul and Donald.

Reached at his Newberg office this week, Youngman declined to comment on a project that, if completed, would be only the third or fourth privately operated toll road west of the Mississippi River.

“We appreciate your call,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.”

Phil Martinson, a West Linn civil engineer who has attended many of the same meetings with Youngman, said it’s too early to say much about the project. “Hopefully, within a few weeks, I can give you something more,” he said.

Youngman, according to meeting minutes, told Dundee City Council members in October that the Coastal Parkway’s financial backers want to proceed because they don’t believe the long-planned and publicly financed Newberg-Dundee Bypass will ever be built.

He tagged the Coastal Parkway’s estimated cost at $260 million and said the limited-access roadway’s preferred option would have only three interchanges — at Interstate 5, at Oregon 219 north of St. Paul and at Oregon 18 near Dayton. The route crosses prime farmland in the French Prairie area of northern Marion County.

Without one or the other projects, he said, commercial and commuter traffic on Oregon 99W through Dundee will continue to remain hopelessly gridlocked.

Asked to identify the Coastal Parkway’s financial supporters, Youngman listed Hampton Lumber, Evergreen Aviation, Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, the Oregon Trucking Associations and the Business Transportation Group.

Steve Zika, Hampton Lumber’s CEO, said he wasn’t familiar with details of the Coastal Parkway proposal, but said any alternative to the current congestion jamming Yamhill County’s main highways would be welcome.

Bob Russell, executive director of the Oregon Trucking Assocations, said his organization “has not indicated its support for any alternative to the Newberg-Dundee Bypass, “nor have we provided any financial backing.”

None of the other groups cited by Youngman as backers immediately returned calls.

Sterling Anderson, Marion County’s planning manager, said that even if sufficient funding is found, the Coastal Parkway will run into significant legal and regulatory obstacles.

State requirements mandating that exclusive farmland remain in parcels of at least 80 acres, for instance, would have to be addressed, since a new road running through the middle of that land would create two parcels of 40 acres each, he said.

In addition, the need to build a new bridge crossing the Willamette River, and perhaps the Yamhill River, would present huge hurdles for developers.

“This would be the biggest, most significant land-use case the county has dealt with in my 26 years here,” Anderson said. “And the biggest road project since I-5 was built.”

State Transportation Department officials have sat in on several of Youngman’s presentations, but said it’s too early to assess the project’s chances of success.

“We’re treating it as if it were a private development,” said Tim Potter, ODOT’s Area 3 Region 2 manager. “When it’s to the point they want to talk seriously about traffic impacts and the exact locations of tying into our road system, we’ll roll up our sleeves and get serious.”

Local residents, meanwhile, say that French Prairie farmland is not for sale, certainly not for a new highway.

“Farmers here are united,” said Marcie Garritt, a St. Paul resident and member of the town’s planning commission. “Whether the route would cross their land or not, they all agree — you don’t do this to farmland.”

— Dana Tims

The South Bay Expressway foreign-owned toll road is the new poster child for the failed policy of road privatization. Up until now, most “conservative” and libertarian think tanks have promoted PPPs (public private partnership) as the “free market” solution to transportation finance. I’ve said all along it’s no such thing. They’re government sanctioned monopolies and this editorial states it.

It also notes the flaw in raising toll rates when traffic drops, which is the exact opposite of a free market response to fewer customers. To increase demand they need to lower not increase toll rates. Yet what did the North Texas Toll Authority, a publicly run toll entity (so this problem isn’t just with privatized toll roads), do when its toll road system experienced a decline in traffic? Raised its rates by 32%! The new generation of toll roads that have relied on “innovative financing” (ie – taxpayer subsidized toll roads, often co-mingled with private money) find themselves consistently upside down on their debt despite the taxpayer bailouts that help front the construction costs. We’re creating an infrastructure bubble that will be deemed too big to fail that will require even greater taxpayer bailouts if we allow this tax raid to continue. I have yet to see any data that shows increasing the cost of transportation (toll taxes on top of high gas prices) helps the economy either.

Also, this article mentions a study TxDOT did that admits toll roads are based on FLAWED traffic projections (that are kept secret until after the contracts are signed). This is precisely what we tried to stop in SB 792 from 2007 (the counterfeit CDA moratorium) that allowed these traffic and revenue studies (toll viability studies that give the traffic estimates) to stay secret until AFTER the contract is signed. We tried to remove this provision from the bill, and only got 19 votes (so much for a conservative majority that should be for OPEN GOVERNMENT, especially the kind that saves taxpayers money). This must be changed. We’ve long held that it violates federal law, NEPA, anyway. Revealing these flawed traffic projections BEFORE going to contract will help us ferret out the truly viable (and sensible) toll projects from those that aren’t which are being propped up by HEAPS of taxpayer subsidies (gas taxes, Texas Mobility Funds, Prop 14, Prop 12, stimulus money, TIFIA loans, PABs, etc., up front) that end up going bankrupt anyway.

We’re going to continue to work against this mythical “free market” concept of public private partnerships (called CDAs in Texas). It’s a fad whose time has ended!
Link to article here.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010
EDITORIAL: The trouble with tolls

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A toll-road project in San Diego, once held up as a model of the “innovative” public-private partnerships, collapsed last week.

The South Bay Expressway filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after being open for business less than three years. Proponents of the tolling fad insist that allowing private companies to charge motorists to drive on roads represents the free-market solution to all of our transportation funding woes. The South Bay Expressway failure shows that plan is a road to nowhere.

Thanks to gasoline prices around $3 a gallon and the ongoing recession, hard-pressed consumers weren’t interested in shelling out an additional $4.50 to drive 10 miles. Macquarie Infrastructure Group, the Australian firm that owns the expressway, assured federal highway officials that 60,000 paying customers would use the road daily. In fact, only 22,600 did so, leaving the project without enough revenue to sustain its debt obligations.

It turns out that estimates based on rosy scenarios are the norm in the world of tolling schemes. A Texas Department of Transportation study completed last year found that a majority of toll-road projects overestimated traffic levels in the first five years by at least 20 percent to 30 percent. Because public transportation agencies generally cut deals with private tolling companies behind closed doors, such detailed forecasts are not available for public review until long after the contract is signed.

Plunging traffic is also the norm nationwide. The Pocahontas Parkway in Richmond reported a 12 percent drop in traffic last year. Transurban, the Australian company that owns the road, responded by raising prices every year since 2008 and is scheduled to continue doing so until 2016. Dulles Greenway traffic is similarly down 7.2 percent, and Macquarie has put in motion a series of regular price hikes.

In a true free-market environment, the projects would follow the law of supply and demand, dropping rates to attract new customers. Instead, the foreign companies operating these roads are hiking tolls as fast as they possibly can – the opposite of what one would expect in a truly competitive marketplace.

Toll roads get away with this conduct because they are state-sanctioned monopolies, not free-market operations. Bureaucrats and politicians turn to public-private partnerships because they, in effect, outsource unpleasant revenue-raising duties to private companies. As we see from the South Bay Expressway, the deals governments strike with companies to perform this task frequently are based on faulty, unsustainable assumptions.

We hope Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell heeds this lesson and drops his support for the foolhardy plan to impose tolls on the Interstate 95/395 high-occupancy vehicle lanes.

________________________________________________________________

Link to article here.

PFI – First US TIFIA road files for protection
Reuters – Thursday, March 25NEW YORK, March 24 – South Bay Expressway, the first US toll road to tap the federally subsidized TIFIA loan program, has filed for bankruptcy protection. The 9.3-mile electronic tollroad is located in southern California.

Toll collections have been dramatically under projections since the road opened in late 2007. The road is owned by Macquarie funds – 50% by Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, the US fund owned by large institutional investors and 50% by the Australian listed Macquarie Atlas Roads.

South Bay Expressway currently has US$340m outstanding of a US$400m construction loan converted into a term loan facility according to bankruptcy filings. The term loan was arranged in 2003 with BBVA as admin agent and Depfa as co-lead, and matures in 2021. Other lenders to the project include Allied Irish, Bank of Ireland, BNP Paribas , Commonwealth Bank, DVB Bank, DZ Bank and HSH Nordbank.

In addition, South Bay took out a US$140m, 35-year TIFIA loan, under which the first mandatory interest payment was due in 2011. That facility now totals US$170m after the capitalization of US$30m in interest.

South Bay sought bankruptcy protection after attempts to negotiate a settlement with ORC, a contractor to the tollroad, failed to result in a settlement. ORC has made claims totaling US$600m, which is disputed by South Bay Expressway.

__________________________________________________________________

Link to article here.

Toll road builder files for Chapter 11
The Newspaper.com
March 24, 2010
Toll increases were not enough to save the company that built the South Bay Expressway from bankruptcy.

The 10-mile toll road in San Diego was built in 2007 by California Transportation Ventures, a group that eventually became South Bay Expressway Ltd. The group is a subsidiary of toll operator Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Australia, the same Macquarie that holds stakes in the Indiana Toll Road, Chicago Skyway and Dulles Greenway.

South Bay Expressway Ltd. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in recent days according to the San Diego Union Tribune.

Company officials had projected 60,000 vehicles per day using the roadway, but daily traffic in 2009 averaged just 22,600.

The roadway will remain open as the company restructures $510 million in debts.

Land Line Magazine reported throughout 2009 that the South Bay Expressway was falling behind in traffic counts and that the company would have lost money if it had not raised tolls.

“Apart from the toll increases, traffic volumes on South Bay Expressway continue to be impacted by the weak regional housing market and a slowdown in economic activity which has also led to a decline in Mexican border crossings,” company officials stated in a 2009 financial report.

Macquarie-operated roadways have relied on toll increases – most of which have been guaranteed in contracts with state entities – to stave off financial losses.

South Bay Expressway Ltd. is less than three years into its 35-year agreement to operate the tollway. Caltrans is scheduled to take over operations in 2042.

The $635 million expressway was one of the first toll roads in the U.S. to use federal tax dollars under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act – or TIFIA – program developed by the Federal Highway Administration.

– By David Tanner, associate editor
david_tanner@landlinemag.com

Trans Texas Corridor routes moving at freight train speed
By Terri Hall, City Brights Blogger
Mar 20, 2010
San Antonio Express News
After Rick Perry’s highway department announced the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) route known as TTC-35 was “dead” in 2009, we find out post-election in 2010 that it, along with free trade, is very much alive and well. Canadian officials have shown renewed interest in a multi-modal trade corridor along I-35. Winnipeg recently announced its intention to build an inland port similar to those in San Antonio and Dallas. One such inland port in Kansas City has ceded sovereign United States territory to Canada and Mexico with the flags of all three countries flying over it. Officials in Winnipeg said it also intends to run a logistics and trade corridor to include rail and high speed highways all the way to Mexico as an Asia-Pacific gateway connecting to Toronto and Montreal.

It should surprise no one that former San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger and tolling authority (Alamo RMA) Chairman Bill Thornton took a trip to Toronto in 2006, partially at taxpayer expense, to promote Trans Texas Corridor-style trade connections and to be certain it includes the Port of San Antonio.

Norris Pettis, Canadian Consul General in Dallas, notes in the latest San Antonio Business Journal that “of all the urban centers I deal with, San Antonio is right up there in preaching free trade.” The article also said Canadian officials observe an anti-trade sentiment in the U.S. as a whole, but see an open door in Texas, which they say doesn’t share “protectionist policies.”

Read the rest of the story here.