Category: General

Thornton: "The prize is only 5 months out"

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Yesterday’s tolling authority (Alamo Regional Mobility Authority) meeting was interesting theater. Executive Director Terry Brechtel came under fire by Board member Bob Thompson, who also acted aggressively toward yours truly. Thompson, appointee of Commissioner Lyle Larson, seemed visibly shaken that the RMA doesn’t seem to have the money to pull off the first toll project, US 281. He recognized that even if there’s not one hitch, it’s teetering on the edge of “no go.” Brechtel and Chairman Bill Thornton explained they’re doing the best they can and the project has now been delayed for FOUR MONTHS in order to accommodate Washington Mutual’s offices and employees by extending the project to Marshall Road.

So for all the tens of thousands of motorists who use Hwy 281 daily, you don’t have the RMA’s ear, but if you’re Washington Mutual who already received millions in tax breaks, you get special treatment. So when TxDOT tells you that a lawsuit by concerned citizens caused delays to the fix on 281, remember that it’s TxDOT who intentionally delayed it to turn it into this toll project and now even the RMA is causing further delays. So all this time we’ve been told tolling is the ONLY option to accelerate these road projects….but the opposite is true if you look at the FACTS.

The original gas tax FUNDED improvement plan on 281 would have already been finished by now (funding became available 2004). The funding for the Borgfeld overpass has been available since 2003, and now even with the toll road, it won’t be extended past Marshall Rd for the foreseeable future. Brechtel admitted they plan to use the “surplus revenue” from 281 users to make improvements to 1604 rather than extend the improvements to Borgfeld as has been promised, funded, and on the books since 2003!

Even more telling was Thompson saying he was FOR the toll roads and eager to use that slush fund gathered from 281 users to fund mass transit. While we are FOR more mass transit options, taxing one corridor to death in order to fund other roads or programs is a discriminatory and unequal distribution of taxation (WITHOUT REPRESENTATION I MIGHT ADD).

So I asked if Thompson had checked with Commissioner Larson’s constituents who are very much opposed to tolling 281 if they support his pro-toll position to fund mass transit, and he came unhinged trying to defend himself having let the cat out of the bag.

It also became clear that TxDOT WANTS the RMA to fail so that it can then advance the CDA private toll contract for Loop 1604. The RMA wants the pot of money, so they’re against the private stuff, but TxDOT has not released Loop 1604 to the RMA because it still wants to give it to Cintra-Zachry. The same could be said of Hwy 121 in the Dallas area. TxDOT wants the public tolling authority’s bid to fail so it can give the project back to Cintra-Zachry. TxDOT is not only flouting the law, the leopard is showing its spots. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of the road lobby that is burning any bridges it had left with County Judge Nelson Wolff and other local officials.

So the RMA’s venture into tolling has a rough road ahead, with more bumps coming….

Thornton, eager to get access to your wallets, had this to say to the road contractors who filled the room: “The prize is only 5 months out.” Well, not if the citizens have anything to do with it!

Commish asks Hutchison for non-toll overpasses on 281!

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Link to article here.

View Commissioner Lyle Larson and Councilman John Clamp’s letter here.

Larson asks Hutchison for non-toll overpasses on 281!
KSAT 12-TV
September 18, 2007

SAN ANTONIO — Lyle Larson, Precinct 3 Bexar County commissioner, said Monday night that he has a new plan to put the brakes on the tolling of U.S. Highway 281.Larson sent a letter to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson asking her to assist him at the federal level by working on utilizing a portion of Texas federal highway funds for the construction of overpasses.Larson believes the construction of overpasses on the most congested portions of Highway 281 makes more sense than building toll roads.

“I’d like to see seven overpasses built north of 1604,” Larson said.Hutchinson has spoken out against toll roads built on existing highways ever since the Texas Department of Transportation received the green light to build tolls along Highway 281.TXDOT plans to build the tolls on Highway 281 just north of Loop 1604 to Borgfeld Road.Larson said in light of the Senate approving a one-year moratorium on the ability to toll existing interstate highways, Hutchinson should consider Highway 281 an interstate that should not be tolled.

KSAT-TV General Mgr: TxDOT Needs Funding Oversight

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TxDOT Not Spending Money Wisely

KSAT 12 Vice President and General Manager Jim Joslyn says that the Texas Department of Transportation needs to watch the way it spends taxpayer money

View this Editorial on video here.

TxDOT Needs Funding Oversight

SAN ANTONIO — The Texas Department of Transportation seems to have a funny way of doing business lately.

They’re spending $7 million to $9 million on an ad campaign to sell the public TxDOT’s point of view on issues like toll roads.

And they’re using taxpayer money to do it.

TxDOT is trying to buy back interstate highways so they can turn them into Texas toll roads and wants to spend public money to make the public feel good about it.

This — from an agency that’s also claiming $86 billion in budget shortfalls for projects that can really keep highways moving.

Where’s the oversight?

As a state-run agency, TxDOT should have some answers for how it manages or mismanages millions of taxpayer dollars.

Those millions might be better spent on fixing roads than on fancy slogans.

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Dollar continues to slide, make way for the Amero

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Link to article here.

Former Federal Reserve Chief, Alan Greenspan, indicates the Federal Reserve may shift its reserve currency to the Euro due to the decline of the dollar. As Jerry Corsi warns in his book, The Late Great USA, the Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada, that the collapse of the dollar is coming in large part due to “free trade,” which has undermined American wages and our national wealth which will subsequently open the door to the Amero. The excuse will go something like this. See, we can’t compete with the strong European Central Bank and the Euro, so we need to join with our regional North American partners, Canada and Mexico, to remain competitive in the “global market.” For a guy who criticizes Bush for abandoning smaller government, Greenspan’s rush to the Euro and centralized banking and governments is interesting if not hypocritical.

Greenspan: Euro Gains As Reserve Choice
Report: Former Fed Boss Says Euro Could Replace U.S. Dollar As Favored Reserve Currency
Monday September 17, 2007
Associated Press

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said it is possible that the euro could replace the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of choice.According to an advance copy of an interview to be published in Thursday’s edition of the German magazine Stern, Greenspan said that the dollar is still slightly ahead in its use as a reserve currency, but added that “it doesn’t have all that much of an advantage” anymore.

The euro has been soaring against the U.S. currency in recent weeks, hitting all-time high of $1.3927 last week as the dollar has fallen on turbulent market conditions stemming from the ongoing U.S. subprime crisis. The Fed meets this week and is expected to lower its benchmark interest rate from the current 5.25 percent.

Greenspan said that at the end of 2006, some 25 percent of all currency reserves held by central banks were held in euros, compared to 66 percent for the U.S. dollar.

In terms of being used as a payment for cross-border transactions, the euro is trailing the dollar only slightly with 39 percent to 43 percent.

Greenspan said the European Central Bank has become “a serious factor in the global economy.”

He said the increased usage of the euro as a reserve currency has led to a lowering of interest rates in the euro zone, which has “without any doubt contributed to the current economic growth.”

MPO wkshps silent on tolls in public but tolls likely in 25 yr plan

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Link to article here.

In another deceptive, underhanded way, the San Antonio Metropolitan Planning Organization (SAMPO)is seeking public participation on its 25 year plan without allowing citizens a say in how future roads get financed. The toll roads got placed in prior MPO short and long-range plans under the radar, and now that federal law requires public participation in MPO planning, they’re holding meetings but refusing to discuss the elephant in the room…toll roads! It’s imperative the public shows up and makes this an issue. If they sneak in toll roads in the long range plan, they can toll them at ANY time over the next 25 years and the public will have little to say in the matter! Go the events page to see dates, times, locations.

Toll roads absent from transportation talks
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
09/16/2007

Metropolitan Planning Organization officials will hold public meetings to get input on how city growth and transportation should be shaped through 2035, but they aren’t prepared to say how toll roads could impact various scenarios.

At four MPO workshops scheduled over the next two weeks, people will be shown three options for living, working and traveling:

Same ol’, same ol’, which means a lot more sprawl that shackles people to cars.

Compact development along key corridors to make transit and walking more viable.

Higher densities in the city’s core so there’s more places to go that are closer together.

But the issue of the day — toll roads — won’t be included as a factor.

Tolling speeds up financing of road construction by years and even decades. Could a spurt of toll lanes quicken development of sprawling subdivisions?

Also, toll roads don’t eliminate congestion, which is needed to make them financially successful, but rather pushes growing traffic to frontage roads and other streets. Could toll fees, coupled with an option to stay stuck in worsening gridlock, change development patterns and encourage more transit riding and carpooling?

People who go to the workshops won’t find out.

“It’s not an answerable question at this stage,” said Jim Harvey of Alliance Transportation Group, a consultant helping the MPO update its 25-year plan.

Nevertheless, toll critics will likely attend the meetings to object to toll plans.

“Folks need to turn out to these meetings to be sure toll roads aren’t part of our future,” said Terri Hall of San Antonio Toll Party, which has members in Bexar and Comal counties. “Let’s say no to tolls.”

The long-range plan, updated every five years in a year-long process, is a framework for how more than $200 million a year in federal and state gas taxes, along with local matching funds, get spent in San Antonio.

New this time around is a MySpace page — www.myspace.com/mtp2035 — to reach a larger and younger crowd. Another site — www.mtp2035.org — has been set up as a one-stop place for information. Also, people can call (210) 785-0888.

The current plan, Mobility 2030, programmed a total of $8 billion. A fourth was earmarked to help build more than 70 miles of toll roads, while a tenth was flagged for non-toll lanes.

Blame game, cost escalation on 281 won't change the fact TxDOT is LYING!

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Link to article here. Also see reporter Pat Driscoll’s blog with a link to the timeline following the 281 freeway to tollway conversion debacle here.

Wow! TxDOT District Engineer David Casteel actually admits his incompetence. He says “I don’t know how to do that” (referring to the simple solution to fix US 281…which is to install the already funded gas tax plan). Won’t you join me in calling for his resignation? If the citizens of Texas and their elected representatives can come up with the fix and the certified civil engineer in charge of our highway district can’t, then he doesn’t deserve to serve! TxDOT can point the finger of blame on everyone else all it wants, but TxDOT’s own documents prove otherwise. The lawsuit didn’t come into play until years AFTER the overpasses should have been installed. Concerned citizens didn’t delay 281, TxDOT’s greed and incompetence did.

Rep. Macias already did the math and looked-up construction cost increases…and once again, you can’t trust TxDOT’s figures (they have a history of lying about costs). It’s time to clean house at TxDOT and get some honest, competent leadership to inject some sanity back into our highway program. If this coupled with the two State Audit reports and the Texas A&M Study don’t demonstrate how out of control TxDOT is, I’m not sure what else would.
Costs, delays with 281 argued
09/15/2007
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News

One of the biggest blame games in the muddy debate over toll roads involves jaw-dropping escalations in costs to widen U.S. 281 and years of frustrating delays to start construction.
Work actually did start in late 2005, but it was two years behind schedule, and all that crews managed to do before having to stop was snap some live oaks and scrape them into piles.

As noise continues to mount on whether to build an 8-mile tollway from Loop 1604 to Comal County or go with just three miles of freeway and a non-toll overpass at Borgfeld Road, costs soar in double digits annually and accusations fly over the holdups.

When Texas Department of Transportation officials outlined a plan in 2001 to rebuild eight miles of U.S. 281 into a freeway and add long-awaited ramps directly linking the highway to Loop 1604, they figured it would cost $263 million.

But they could only afford three miles, from Loop 1604 to Stone Oak Parkway, and the bridge at Borgfeld.

So to raise cash for all eight miles and then some, the freeway plan was converted several years later to a tollway plan — tolled express lanes with free frontage roads. Critics followed with a lawsuit to force more study of the environmental impacts, halting the work in January 2006.

Then last month, as the Federal Highway Administration announced a finding of no major impacts, allowing the project to proceed, TxDOT dropped a bombshell: The tollway will now cost $675 million.

The stunning difference is enough to strike fear in motorists weary of worsening slogs on the highway and to stoke desperation in those fighting the freeway versus tollway battle.

“Simply unbelievable,” said state Rep. Nathan Macias, R-Bulverde, who called for TxDOT to revert to the freeway plan. “Attempts to overrun the citizens with numbers games is the oldest trick in the book.”

TxDOT explains

TxDOT officials insist that they’re not playing around and can explain. The costs didn’t go up as fast as critics claim, they say, but there’s still cause for alarm.Part of the problem is that the estimates for 2007 and 2001 aren’t comparable. The latest number includes $85 million for studies and engineering and $120 million for land that wasn’t part of the 2001 figure.

That leaves $470 million for construction, an apple-to-apple cost that’s still a whopping $207 million, or 79 percent, higher than six years ago.

And that’s what’s scary, TxDOT officials say. Highway construction costs in Texas have shot up 73 percent in the past five years — much faster than consumer inflation — because of spiraling fuel prices and intense global competition for asphalt, concrete and steel.

“The longer we wait to build it, the more costs will go up,” said David Casteel, TxDOT’s lead engineer in its San Antonio office. “It is not a conspiracy, it is just inflation in the construction market.”

A low bid in 2005 to start the first three miles of U.S. 281 even outstripped statewide construction inflation. The $78 million offer was $19 million more than forecast.

“The free market ruled,” Casteel said of the unexpected bump in cost. “The 2, 3 and 4 bidders were much higher.”

The free market is still having a say on costs for the three-mile project, which could have been 70 percent complete if Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas and People for Efficient Transportation hadn’t filed a lawsuit to demand a detailed study of tolling and pollution impacts.

Estimated costs have since gone up another $20 million.

“The delay caused by the legal challenge made it tougher to provide mobility and improve safety for the public,” TxDOT engineer Frank Holzmann said. “What a shame and what a waste of tax money.”

Bait and switch?

Critics charge that TxDOT pulled a bait and switch years before, dangling funds and then stalling to switch to a toll plan and let burgeoning traffic bring motorists to their knees.“They know what they’re doing,” Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson said. “They wanted to get it into an untenable situation where people say, ‘Well, just do something.'”

As a board member of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which oversees spending of federal gas taxes in San Antonio, Larson helped line up funds in 1999 for several bridges to bypass U.S. 281 traffic lights. In 2001, money was earmarked for the three miles of freeway lanes.

TxDOT, with two engineers on the MPO board, was scheduled to start work on the bridges in 2002 and the freeway the next year. But by early 2003, the agency was studying which projects statewide could be financed with tolls, and U.S. 281 emerged as a hot prospect.

“We would have had those overpasses built by the end of 2004,” Larson said. “This is long before the lawsuit.”

Rising with aggravation was the price. By the time TxDOT was ready to start construction, the expressway and its interchange at Stone Oak Parkway went from $48 million in 2003 to $78 million just two years later, a jump of 63 percent.

The cost today is $100 million, up another 28 percent because of the lawsuit.

TxDOT says the financial and environmental studies needed to turn the freeway into a tollway didn’t slow anything down.

“We bought the last piece of property in 2005, so we couldn’t have gone to contract any sooner than that,” TxDOT engineer Julie Brown said.

Freeway or tollway?

Critics are fuming and say some of the nearly $300 million in gas taxes and other public funds that the MPO has set aside through January 2011 to subsidize toll lanes on U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 should be used to refund the original U.S. 281 freeway and overpass plan.
“Why should anyone have to pay a toll when they have the plan, the clearance and the money to fix U.S. 281 as a freeway?” said Terri Hall of San Antonio Toll Party. “There is no justification other than greed and to tap the vein of 281 users to fund other road projects.”

Casteel, in charge of TxDOT’s San Antonio office since 2003, said money would have to be taken from other projects or raised some other way to add non-toll lanes to U.S. 281. With toll lanes, funds could be borrowed and repaid from tolls.

“I really don’t know what she could be talking about as far as a funded expressway project, because there’s not one,” Casteel said. “If people could figure that out, that’s a good thing. I don’t know how to do that.”

Ed Board: Banning all Mexican trucks violates NAFTA…FYI, that's the problem!

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Link to article here. Excuse me, but no one asked the American people if we wanted to undermine our national sovereignty with NAFTA. This is no free trade agreement, it’s a treaty and didn’t receive the Constitutionally required two-thirds vote from Congress to make it legal in the first place. At least 1.2 million Americans have been put out of work due to NAFTA, and countless more who never applied for federal assistance.

And this is before putting American truckers out of business with this hoax of a Mexican trucking program being cloaked as beneficial when it’s bringing in more trucks to beat up our roads and is certain to push our air quality into non-attainment (where it’s been teetering on the edge as it is). Border patrol is already admitting waving Mexican trucks trough because of the backlog. The safety of these trucks cannot be assured.

A NAFTA tribunal is forcing the U.S. to comply with a treaty that’s unconstitutional and mandate a controversial bi-lateral trucking program against the will of Congress (that overwhelmingly voted to ban the program!). If the Editorial Board of this newspaper will give up our national sovereignty this easily, no wonder we’re under assault by globalists and terrorists! REPEAL NAFTA NOW!

Banning all Mexican trucks violates NAFTA
Editorial Board
The Herald-Zeitung
September 13, 2007

The Senate vote Tuesday night that proposes to stall the pilot program allowing Mexican trucks on American highways is Democracy at its worst.

A week ago, we encouraged restricting any Mexican trucks that don’t meet the standards required of U.S. trucks and drivers. We stand by that opinion; safety for drivers and passengers traveling on U.S. roads must be the goal of whatever laws are passed.

Whether you agree or disagree with the North American Free Trade Agreement, it has been signed and in place for a decade. Texas Sen. John Cornyn attempted to have an alternative amendment to the $106 billion transportation bill that would have put strict checks in place that could have suspended the pilot program if a Mexican truck passed outside the border zone but was not checked.

American truckers unions, including the Teamsters, have opposed allowing the Mexican trucks into the U.S. citing safety fears. However, the safety aspect is insufficient by itself to ban Mexican trucks from U.S. highways. A blanket ban is a violation of the NAFTA obligations the U.S. signed up for. The fear that Mexican truckers will take work from U.S. drivers and trucking companies is very real. If the U.S. companies are more expensive than their Mexican counterparts  just as automakers found with their production facilities in the last two decades  the unions fears could be realized.

The United States needs to stand by its transportation safety laws and its democratic and capitalist principals on this issue. Unsafe Mexican (or American) trucks should be banned from U.S. highways, but while a complete ban on Mexican trucks may have been passed by the Senates democratic vote, it ignores the principles of fair trade that America should hold dear.

Ultimately, President Bush could veto the transportation bill because of its cost. Protecting American trucking jobs is important, but the U.S. also needs to live up to its NAFTA obligation.

Commissioners yank loan from tolling authority!

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Link to article here. Terrific, now if we could just get TxDOT to stop throwing money into this money pit, the mini-TxDOT bureaucracy known as the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, the Texas taxpayers would be much better off!

Use it or lose it
By Pat Driscoll
Express-News
September 12, 2007

Bexar County commissioners this week yanked a $500,000 loan to the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority because, one commissioner said, the agency has been obsessed with toll roads.Commissioners formed the mobility authority in April 2004 to exert local control over toll roads that the Texas Department of Transportation would otherwise develop, and also, hopefully, spearhead other new ways to finance transportation.

But the authority has no money source, and the only promising possibility so far has been future tolls. So to get started, the agency lined up $1.25 million in loans from the county, $500,000 from the city and $8.5 million from TxDOT.

Meanwhile, it’s been the county and VIA Metropolitan Transit forging ahead with new non-toll financing solutions.

The county cut a deal last year to back bonds for $54 million worth of work to widen parts of Culebra and Blanco roads, and VIA in November 2004 ushered in a sales tax increase that created a dedicated TxDOT fund to help pay for such highway projects. TxDOT will use its VIA fund and other money to reimburse the county.

“The only innovative funding the RMA has brought in is tolling,” said Commissioner Lyle Larson, a longtime critic of toll plans. “They really haven’t been able to represent themselves in any way other than as TxDOT’s arm in local communities.”

As of July 31, the mobility authority had drawn $1.25 million from the county and city and $4.2 million from TxDOT to cover such things as salaries, consultant fees, rent and supplies. The agency hadn’t spent another $500,000 available from the county, and that’s what commissioners pulled Tuesday when they passed their budget.

Commissioners voted 5-0 on a motion last week to take the $500,000 loan back and use it to pay for five new deputy sheriff positions. They followed with another unanimous vote this week to approve the budget.

rma.budget.jpg
From latest audit report for the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority.

Was amendment publicity stunt to distract from Hutchison, Cornyn’s controversial support for Mexican trucks?

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We applaud Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison for attempting to begin the long process of reining-in our rogue state agency, TxDOT, with an amendment added to an appropriations bill to ban tolling existing interstates. But the news of this amendment appeared in the press the same day Hutchison and Senator John Cornyn cast a controversial vote in support of Mexican trucks beating up our State’s highway system and putting our air quality (teetering at non-attainment in all of our urban areas already) at risk.

And that doesn’t even tackle the national security and jobs controversy swirling around the pilot Mexican trucking program. With Cornyn also feeling the political heat, he came out on Dallas TV Friday saying he’s against tolling I-35. Is this an attempt to shore-up the angry public with a politically popular position against DOUBLE TAXING drivers to use our existing interstates? (Read the pro-tollers’ take on it here).

Let’s look at the bill to find out. This amendment does little overall to stop any current toll projects in the works throughout Texas. The State can still bulldoze our existing interstates to their heart’s content and re-arrange the pavement to make way for toll lanes down the middle. They call them “new lanes” but they’re using our existing right of way already paid for with gas taxes. So it’s still a DOUBLE TAX. The State can also continue to toll existing STATE highways, all or in part, unabated event though they, too, were built with federal dollars.

TxDOT TRICKERY TO MAXIMIZE REVENUE, GUARANTEE SLUGGISH “FREE” LANES
Consider TxDOT’s tricks to replace “existing lanes” with frontage roads or to narrow the width of the existing lanes (after they destroy them, then re-build them, taking twice the construction time as a freeway at more than double the cost), it will narrow the free lanes to slow down or manipulate traffic in such a way as to maximize the number of people on the tollway. Or they’ll outright steal the entire existing freeway tolling all the expressway lanes like they plan to do on US 281, making second class citizens out of those who cannot afford tolls by relegating them to frontage roads.

So it begs the question, if politicians fell all over themselves to be the first to repudiate tolling existing interstates (like Texas State Senator John Carona, State Representative Lois Kolkhorst, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, San Antonio Councilwoman Sheila McNeil), then why won’t they stop TxDOT and the tolling entities from tolling ALL existing highways?

TOUGH TALK, NO ACTION
The people of Texas are tired of tough talk and no action. They’re tired of politicians playing games with the plain meaning of words. TxDOT is tolling EXISTING STATE HIGHWAYS and rights of way, which is no different than tolling existing interstates, which they claim to object to. So why don’t we stop the tomfoolery and end this. If they want to build toll roads, make them completely NEW roads, but stop tolling our existing corridors (whether federal or state highways).

So this amendment is a start, but doesn’t come close to addressing the fundamental concerns of taxpayers outraged by what’s happening in this state. On the flip side, after Hutchison and Cornyn (and Congressmen Charlie Gonzalez and Ciro Rodriguez for introducing a permanent ban in the House) kicked Ric Williamson’s teeth in with a public spanking, Williamson showed his usual arrogance by thanking Hutchison for likely hastening the addition of toll lanes to our existing roads since her amendment didn’t prohibit it and took away one of their tools in the infamous “toolbox” by prohibiting buying back segments of interstates in order to toll ALL existing lanes.

OTHER SOLUTIONS IGNORED
When the Texas A&M Study says we don’t need a SINGLE toll road in Texas to meet our future transportation needs, it’s confounding that some politicians either pander or press ahead over the people’s objections. In any case, if ANY of these politicians want to curry favor with an incensed public, we need to see a REAL bill become LAW and FAST that puts a PERMANENT stop to tolling existing corridors in ALL of TxDOT’s machinations of them.

Overall, the privatization of our public infrastructure is far from over. The U.S. Department of Transportation just announced it will spend $66 million in YOUR GAS TAXES to attract private partners for several tolled trade corridors, many of which happen to be existing or future interstates. Notice they’re not spending the little gas tax money they claim to not have to actually build badly needed roads, rather your hard earned cash will be used to jet set bureaucrats to Europe seeking someone to foot the bill for America’s second mortgage on its highway system. Interstate10 from CA to FL and I-69 from TX to Michigan are eligible to become privately financed, tolled trade corridors called “corridors of the future.” Ominously resembles the NAFTA superhighways Bush and Perry are so fond of denying. If it looks like a duck…

The battle against unbridled toll taxation is not over either, and Senator Hutchison vows to continue to fight this DOUBLE TAXATION in its many forms. We surely hope so, but after getting repeatedly burned by the Texas Legislature, we’ll trust but verify!

Hutchison's bill just pandering to anti-tollers?

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Link to article here. Considering this bill does nothing to stop TxDOT’s trickery of bulldozing and rebuilding highways so they can toll them and allows them to continue to bend the plain meaning of words, for once I agree with Peter Samuel on something…

Hutchinson flip flop – says toll prohibition bills don’t really prohibit tolling
Toll Road News
9/13/07
Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Repub) has now issued a statement claiming that none of her “toll prohibition bills” really prohibit tolling! A statement of Sept 12 from her office says: “Efforts to toll newly constructed lanes or new highways would not be prohibited in Sen Hutchinson’s amendment (S AMDT 2825 to HR3074), or in S2109 or HR3510.”

“I’ve long believed that if local communities and the state want to come together and build a toll road, they should be able to do it,” she is quoted.

see http://hutchison.senate.gov/pr091207a.html

The main purpose of the ambiguous Hutchinson bills seems to be to reassure every constituency – pro and anti toll and in-between – that Senator Hutchinson is on their side.

It’s a giant pander.

When is road new and when is it existing – Clintonian parsing used to obfuscate

We are told the reference in Hutchinson’s S2019 to prohibiting tolls on existing interstates does not preclude toll financing of the reconstruction of an existing interstate since the toll would be on a new highway in the sense of new pavement and bridges not on the existing pavement and bridges.

All the bill would do, under this interpretation, would be to prohibit imposing a toll on old pavement while doing nothing to reconstruct it. In other words it would outlaw imposing tolls and then abandoning the highway – something no highway operator would do anyway. Every real world state DOT, public toll authority or concessionaire will have plans for reconstruction as the road deteriorates and needs improvements.

The road oncer myth too

The confusion may not be entirely a pandering effort to make friends with opposites and to have it both ways for political purposes, but also a failure to understand roads. Widespread is the oncer myth, the false notion of a road as something that is built and paid for – the ribbon-cutter’s perspective.

In reality roads are being constantly rebuilt so they go on costing and the earlier payments were for capital structures now being lost to the rigors of weather, the pounding of trucks and obsolescence. Motorists don’t pay just once or twice for a road but repeatedly over the years.

“Protected from paying twice”

Hutchinson’s statement claims the amendment of hers to a US appropriations bill “protect(s) Texas taxpayers from paying twice for a highway.” Her statement contains peans of praise from state senator Robert Nichols hailing her as “a hero to every Texas driver.”

And state rep Lois Kolkhurst who led the moratorium so-called in the Texas legislature is quoted: “I deeply thank Sen. Hutchison for being a voice of reason on this issue. Asking Texans to pay twice for the same road violates the trust that should exist between people and government.”

This is blather.

Texas DOT already had a policy in place which rules out tolls on existing lanes. It has been TxDOT policy to only toll new lanes on existing roads, and Hutchinson now insists her bills place no obstacles in the way of that.

Strawman there.

And federal law already limits tolling of interstates to approved reconstruction or congestion pricing projects.

The Hutchinson amendment (2845/HR3074) merely prohibits the use of federal FY2008 funds from being used to consider imposition of tolls on existing “federal highway facilities” in Texas. Her initial amendment covered the whole of the US but she quietly added a phrase limiting the coverage of her bill to her own state, apparently because opposition was developing (especially from Pennsylvania over I-80).

Federal highway facilities are defined in Hutchinson’s bills as interstates (in S2019) and also in the appropriations amendment 2845 also as “any United States highway,” apparently a reference to US routes.

All these “federal highway facilities” are in reality state owned, state operated and state maintained roads, though they have received varying amounts of federal funding, environmental permits and route designations.

In the 2845 amendment an exemption is specified for Sec 1216 (b) of TEA21 which provides for tolling under an Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program.

see http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tea21/h240subb.htm#1216

The posturing moves soon to the US House of Representatives.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-09-13

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