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!

Link to article here.

Though Mr. Casey seems fine with toll revenues subsidizing everyone else’s free roads (versus the tolls going to that highway only then ceasing when the road is paid for) and for making those who cannot afford the tolls second class citizens relegated to frontage roads, he’s exactly right on Governor Perry’s push privatize our highways in what can only be described as a MASSIVE boondoggle to benefit his campaign contributors and road contractor friends. However, even the Houston model (or traditional turnpike model) has now been replaced with the “Perry public tolling model” called “market valuation.” No longer will tolls be kept as low as possible, now the tolling entity has to BY LAW charge market-based tolls which includes “profit” (except this is government profit) just like Perry’s privatized dream. Mr. Casey and Houstonites need to realize this MAJOR shift in policy is coming to a road near them thanks to SB 792…

For whom the toll bills
By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 12, 2007

With all the madness in the world, I meditated Tuesday on two matters of great gratitude.

One is that through vigilance and good fortune we have, so far, gone six years without another major attack on U.S. soil.

The other is that I wasn’t one of the Texas officials who was forced to attend a workshop in Austin in which PR flacks would try (under a $20,000 contract) to teach me techniques for selling Gov. Perry’s massive toll road boondoggle.

It was a small part of a $7 million to $9 million campaign that will include feel-good ads pushing Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor.

Magic word didn’t work

Given the growing uprising in both the Legislature and the public, that may not be enough.It would have been much wiser for Perry just to consult Harris County officials on how to do toll roads right.

It looks like Perry was caught by surprise by the hostility to his plan. He seems to have thought that by invoking the magic word “privatization” he could lull Texans into thinking we were getting something for nothing.

Under Perry’s plan, private corporations, including at least one from Europe, will build the roads at little or no cost to Texas taxpayers.

It’s a politically powerful idea, playing on the popular notion that the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector.

Harris County’s better way

That’s such a tantalizing tenet of current political theology that Harris County last year paid for a set of studies that looked at whether it should sell its toll roads.Based on the results of the studies, commissioners voted unanimously not to sell.

The two Democrats and three Republicans agreed that privatization isn’t always better. And this is one of those cases.

The Houston approach is superior to Perry’s in at least three ways:

• Despite recent hikes in tolls, drivers will pay considerably less per mile than they would on a privatized road.
The reason is simple. The private sector can’t build or maintain the roads appreciably more cheaply, and their operating costs are higher.

For one thing, corporations must pay federal taxes. For another, they must pay their shareholders.

What’s more, their job is to maximize their profits. Unlike the Harris Toll Road Authority, they will make substantial political contributions and hire the best lobbyists to persuade state officials to let them charge whatever the traffic will bear.

TxDOT’s Web site promoting the governor’s plan offers this as reassurance: “If it is too expensive, motorists will not use the road.”

• Private sector profits go to shareholders and highly paid executives. Harris County toll road profits are used to pay for nontoll streets and roads.
Currently, $40 million a year in tolls go to non-toll road projects. In effect, those who are able and willing to pay for the speed and convenience of toll roads are subsidizing the “free” streets.

I’d much rather have part of my toll go to other streets I will drive than to wealthy Spaniards, or to wealthy Texans, for that matter.

• Before they will invest hundreds of millions in building roads, private companies want and get noncompete provisions. You would, too.
By contrast, Harris County has consistently built free access roads parallel to its toll roads.

If you don’t have an EZ Tag to get on the Westpark Tollway, you can do pretty well traveling Westpark Drive.

“That’s the way we’ve made toll roads politically acceptable here,” said Art Storey, Harris County infrastructure director.

Elected officials have to worry about such things.

Link to article here.

Considering VP Dick Cheney and others repeatedly deny that NAFTA Superhighways are in the works, here’s yet more evidence that they’re alive and well and being funded by the Bush Administration. When 19 state legislatures have passed resolutions against them, and the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed an amendment de-funding them, it’s abundantly obvious who’s lying to whom. George Bush, Rick Perry and their corporate, globalist cronies have sold out their fellow Americans, eroded our sovereignty, stolen representative government with backroom deals, all in the name of international trade to benefit Wall Street. See a similar announcement about I-10 & I-69 becoming trade corridors (aka – NAFTA highways) on TxDOT’s web site.

Bush administration allocates $66M to ‘NAFTA highways’
by Mike Sunnucks
The Business Journal
September 10, 2007

The Bush administration announced Monday it is granting $66.2 million to reduce congestion and improve freight flow on several so-called NAFTA highways.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is allocating the money so it can work with state and local governments and the private sector on six interstate highways, with projects including the addition of bypasses and trucks-only lanes. Five of those highways connect to or run near the Mexican or Canadian borders:

– Interstate 15, which runs from San Diego through part of northwest Arizona all the way to the Canadian border.
– Interstate 10, which runs near the Mexican border from California through Arizona to Florida.
– Intestates 95, which runs from Florida through the northeastern U.S. to Canada.
– Interstate 5, which runs from the California-Mexico border through Oregon to the Washington-Canada border.
– Interstate 69, which free-trade backers hope to turn into a NAFTA superhighway, connecting an existing freeway between Indianapolis and Canada to a proposed highway running south into Texas and splitting to connect with Mexican border crossings at Laredo, Brownsville and McAllen.
– The only nonborder highway getting grant money from the Bush administration is Interstate 70, which runs mostly through the Midwest.

The USDOT said Monday the money will be used to study transport options, such as bypasses of major cities and trucks-only lanes.

Supporters say improving such routes will enhance North American trade and commerce. Critics worry that such border-to-border corridors will make it easier for foreign goods to get into the U.S. unchecked and that increased truck traffic will damage animal habitats and air quality.

“These routes are unlikely to alleviate congestion for the long term and will result in further habitat fragmentation and degradation, as well as increased air pollution in areas in or near the proposed expansions and especially where they propose new roads,” said Sandy Bahr, state coordinator for the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group.

U.S. self-government is in peril
By Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum
Monday, September 10, 2007

It’s now leaking out that there was more going on than met the eye at the Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in Montebello, Canada, in August. The three amigos – President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon – finalized and released the “North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza.”

The “Plan” – that’s what they call it, with a capital P – is to use the excuse of a major flu epidemic to shift powers from U.S. legislatures to unelected, unaccountable “North American” bureaucrats.

This idea was launched on Sept. 14, 2005, when Bush announced the “International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza.” He was then speaking to the United Nations General Assembly.

We might have thought that idea had some merit because the influenza partnership called for “transparency in reporting of influenza cases in humans and in animals” and the “sharing of epidemiological data and samples.” That’s very different from the Security and Prosperity Summit, where transparency has always been conspicuously avoided like the plague.

This year’s Security and Prosperity Summit in Canada morphed the Influenza Partnership into the North American Plan. Now we discover that the Plan is not only about combating a flu epidemic but is far-reaching in seeking control over U.S. citizens and public policy during an epidemic.

The Plan repeatedly features the favorite Bush word “comprehensive” – it calls for a “comprehensive, coordinated North American approach.” The Plan would give authority to international bureaucrats “beyond the health sector to include a coordinated approach to critical infrastructure protection,” including “border and transportation issues.”

The Plan is a wordy 44-page document, much of which sounds innocuous. It is helpful to exchange information about disease and take precautions against letting foreign diseases enter the United States.

However, self-government and sovereignty are at risk when control over these matters is turned over to a newly created North American body headed by the representative of another country. It’s an additional problem when the entire Plan is a spin-off of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, an arrangement created in secret solely by White House press releases, without Congressional approval or even oversight.

The 2007 Plan acknowledges that it is based not only on the Influenza Partnership, but also on the guidelines, standards and rules of the World Health Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health, the World Trade Organization, and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Plan sets up a “senior level coordinating body to facilitate the effective planning and preparedness within North America for a possible outbreak of avian and/or human pandemic influenza under the Security and Prosperity Partnership.” The Plan identifies this Security and Prosperity Partnership coordinating body as “decision-makers.”

The Plan then (ungrammatically) states: “The chair of the Security and Prosperity Partnership coordinating body will rotate between each national authority on a yearly basis.” Thus, a foreigner will be the “decision maker” for Americans in two out of every three years.

What powers will this foreign-headed coordinating body exercise? The Plan suggests that these include “the use of antivirals and vaccines; … social distancing measures, including school closures and the prohibition of community gatherings; … isolation and quarantine.”

Will this foreign-headed coordinating body respect the First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble”? Or will the rules of the Plan, Security and Prosperity Partnership, World Health Organization, World Organization for Animal Health, World Trade Organization and NAFTA take precedence?

In evaluating the Plan, it is instructive to recall the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, an anti-epidemic plan launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Oct. 23, 2001. Designed to be passed by all state legislatures, the model bill was primarily written by Lawrence O. Gostin, a former member of U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s discredited Task Force on Health Care Reform, and was promoted by the Bush administration during its first year.

The proposed Emergency Health Powers Act would have given each governor sole discretion to declare a public health emergency and grant himself extraordinary powers. He would have been able to restrict or prohibit firearms, seize private property and destroy it in many circumstances, and impose price controls and rationing.

Governors would have been given the power to order people out of their homes and into dangerous quarantines. Children could have been taken from their parents and put into public quarantines.

Governors could even have demanded that physicians administer certain drugs despite individuals’ religious or other objections. The Emergency Health Powers Act was based on the concept that decision-making by authoritarian bosses and unelected bureaucrats is the way to go in a time of crisis.

The proposed Emergency Health Powers Act roused a nationwide storm of protest because it was an unprecedented assault on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, as well as on the principle of limited government, and so it never passed anywhere in its original text. Will similar totalitarian notions now bypass legislatures and be forced upon us by Security and Prosperity Partnership press releases?

Link to the US DOT web site here. So for all the establishment, globalist media calling NAFTA Superhighways “conspiracy theory,” feast your eyes on the government’s own documents that show it’s real and in plain view. Those promoting privatization of our existing tax-funded highways and building massive new trade corridors to benefit multi-national global corporations have come up with new names for the NAFTA superhighways: “corridors of the future” and “high priority corridors.” No matter, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, September 10, 2007
Contact: Ian Grossman
(202) 366-0660
DOT 95-07

U.S. Department of Transportation Names Six Interstate Routes as “Corridors of the Future” to Help Fight Traffic Congestion
I-95, I-70, I-15, I-5, I-10, and I-69 selected

The U.S. Department of Transportation today announced six interstate routes that will be the first to participate in a new federal initiative to develop multi-state corridors to help reduce congestion.

“We are using a comprehensive approach to fighting congestion along these major interstate routes. What we are doing represents a real break from past approaches that have failed to address growing congestion along our busiest corridors,” said Deputy U.S. Secretary of Transportation Thomas J. Barrett.

Today’s announcement follows a year-long competition to select a handful of interstate corridors from among the 38 applications received from public and private sector entities to join the Department’s “Corridors of the Future” program aimed at developing innovative national and regional approaches to reduce congestion and improve the efficiency of freight delivery. The selected corridors carry 22.7 percent of the nation’s daily interstate travel.

The routes will receive the following funding amounts to implement their development plans: $21.8 million for I-95 from Florida to the Canadian border; $5 million for I-70 in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; $15 million for I-15 in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California; $15 million for I-5 in California, Oregon, and Washington; $8.6 million for I-10 from California to Florida; and $800,000 for I-69 from Texas to Michigan.

The proposals were selected for their potential to use public and private resources to reduce traffic congestion within the corridors and across the country. The concepts include building new roads and adding lanes to existing roads, building truck-only lanes and bypasses, and integrating real-time traffic technology like lane management that can match available capacity on roads to changing traffic demands.

The Department and the states will now work to finalize formal agreements by spring 2008 that will detail the commitments of the federal, state, and local governments involved. These agreements will outline the anticipated role of the private sector as well as how the partners will handle the financing, planning, design, construction, and maintenance of the corridor.

# # #

Fact Sheets:

• Interstate 95 (I-95)
• Interstate 70 (I-70): Dedicated Truck Lanes – Missouri to Ohio
• Interstate 15 (I-15) – California to Utah
• Interstate 5 (I-5) – Washington to California
• Interstate 10 (I-10) Freight Corridor – California to Florida
• Interstate 69 (I-69) Texas to Michigan

Link to article here.

NAFTA Superhighway plans advance south
Texas governor, Mexico agree to extend Trans-Texas Corridor
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
September 10, 2007

Official Mexican government reports reveal Mexico has entered discussions with the state of Texas and top officials in the Bush administration to extend the Trans-Texas Corridor into Mexico, with a plan to connect through Monterrey to the deep-water Mexican ports on the Pacific, including Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas.

The official website of the Mexican northeastern state of Nuevo León contain multiple reports that José Natividad Gonzáles Parás, governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo León, has actively discussed with numerous U.S. government officials, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the extension of the Trans-Texas Corridor into Mexico to create what’s called a “Trans North America Corridor.”

In an August trip to Mexico, Perry made news in U.S. media by calling the idea of building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border “idiocy.”

Largely unreported in the American press were meetings Perry held in Mexico with Gonzáles Parás in which the two discussed extending the corridor into Mexico.

In their private meetings, the pair thoroughly discussed extending TTC-35 into Mexico, according to a report on the government’s site.
In an interview prior to Perry’s visit, Gonzáles Parás made it clear the extension of TTC-35 into Mexico would be a discussed during Perry’s time there.

“We have had interaction with the governor of Texas,” Gonzáles Parás said. “We have had a very productive relationship with Rick Perry, who is also interested in what we can do to continue that which is known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, that in reality is the corridor of North America, the Trans North America Corridor, that includes railroads, bridges, passenger automobile highways, and truck highway lanes.”

Gonzáles Parás further explained the extension of TTC-35 into Mexico would connect through Monterrey, a city which he suggested would function as a hub for truck-freight traffic. Monterrey is the capital of Nuevo León.

“One of the themes that merited the most attention on the part of the two governors was the development of the infrastructure needed for the competitive development of the region as it relates to developing the Trans-Texas Corridor in connection with the project we call the Corridor of Northeastern Mexico,” the Nuevo León government website reported Gonzáles Parás saying Sept. 1, at the conclusion of Perry’s visit.

Gonzáles Parás is reportedly pursuing plans to establish Monterrey as an “inland port” where international container freight cargo, largely delivered into Mexico via the Mexican ports on the Pacific, could be transported via a Trans North America Corridor into the United States via Laredo, Texas.

Once on I-35, the Mexican trucks transporting the Chinese containers could travel north, heading toward U.S. inland ports, such as WND has previously reported are being established by the Free Trade Alliance San Antonio in San Antonio and in Kansas City by the Kansas City SmartPort.

NASCO’s original homepage in June 2006 opened with a map highlighting the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada.

On May 24, Gonzáles Parás announced during his recent meetings in Austin, Perry had agreed the envisioned Trans North America Corridor would pass through Laredo and connect with San Antonio, just as Mexico ultimately planned to extend the superhighway south into Colombia.

“We have also worked in Monterrey to create an inland port, a metropolitan center for moving rapidly the commercial traffic from Monterrey to the inland port at San Antonio,” Gonzáles Parás said in the state-published interview.”For this strategic project to be accomplished, we have been working with the federal government in Mexico and well as holding discussions with the secretary of transportation and the secretary of state in the United States.”

WND has previously reported similar comments made by Gonzáles Parás at a Feb. 22 press conference in Mexico that first announced Transportes Olympic had been selected as the first trucking firm to cross the border in the Mexican truck-demonstration project.

In speaking to the group assembled at the company’s headquarters, Gonzáles Parás announced the Trans-Texas Corridor was not just the NAFTA Superhighway, but “the Logistical Trans-Corridor of North America,” uniting Mexico, the United States and Canada.

He next announced the time had arrived to declare a North American Economic Community.

Gonzáles Parás explained the Trans-Texas Corridor was more accurately known in Mexico as the “Logistical Trans-Corridor of North America.”

“I want to let you know how much we in this border state of Nuevo León have been working with our neighbor state of Texas,” he said, “making agreements which permit us to enrich what in Texas is called the ‘Trans-Texas Corridor,’ but what we in Mexico know as the ‘Logistical Corridor of North America.'”

“We – Canada, the United States and Mexico – have to perfect this Logistical Trans-Corridor of North America for our mutual benefit,” Gonzáles Parás continued.

He expanded his vision of a Logistical Corridor of North America to include the construction of a train and truck corridor that would cut through the heart of North America.

WND has previously described as a new NAFTA Superhighway, the first segment of which is the planned four-football-fields-wide Trans-Texas Corridor which the Texas Department of Transportation plans to build parallel to Interstate 35.

WND has also reported that at the recent Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) third summit held in Montebello, Quebec, President Bush and Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper ridiculed the idea that SPP might result in the creation of a North American Union or NAFTA Superhighways.

These reports in Spanish published on the Nuevo León government website suggest that discussions about extending TTC-35 into Mexico are much further advanced that have been admitted by the Bush administration or reported upon in the U.S. mainstream media.

Link to article here.

Toll road deal imposes ‘century of traffic congestion’
No-compete clauses granted foreign investors

An agreement has been reached with foreign investors to take over operations of the Denver area’s Northwest Parkway transportation corridor, but one critic says the contract includes a no-compete clause that will impose mandatory traffic congestion – for the next 99 years. “It’s bad enough that the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority and its member governments sharply increased the tolls for today’s drivers, but to intentionally impose a century of congestion on future generations in exchange for this short-term bailout is shockingly shortsighted,” said Golden Mayor Pro Tem Jacob Smith.

The Northwest Parkway runs around the northwest corner of the Denver metropolitan area, and connects to several other segments of a transportation corridor that is being developed about 20 miles outside of the Denver downtown. The metropolitan area has been identified as an ultimate target for construction in several different NAFTA Superhighway configurations.

Golden has been battling the plans, because the proposals have been for a new highway to bisect the historic Colorado foothills town.

Officials with the highway authority, who report daily road usage totals ranging from 1,891 to 16,451 vehicles, recently announced a 99-year lease agreement with Auto-Estradas de Portugal, S.A., which is known as Brisa.

The Northwest Parkway outside of Denver is a 70-mile per hour toll road that is a part of a transportation corridor circling the metropolitan area. It is being leased to a company that obtained a no-compete clause.

Officials in Portugal noted that it is the company’s first adventure in leasing and running a toll road in the United States, although it already runs hundreds of miles of toll roads in Europe and South America.

Brisa reports it has 90 percent of the contract, while its Brazilian subsidiary Companhia de Concessoes Rodoviarias has 10 percent. The Colorado project already has about nine miles of roadway built and open for use, with another two miles yet to be constructed.

The company estimates it will invest about $543 million in the project. A different estimate came from Northwest Parkway officials, who said the company will pay off the $503 million in bonded indebtedness, and allow another $100 million for other costs.

But Golden officials, fearing the encroachment of transportation megaprojects, warned that Article 14 of the lease to privatize the Northwest Parkway operations “requires payments to the foreign corporation if certain roads or facilities are built in the area that would compete with the toll road.”

“The lease provides that ‘the construction of a Competing Transportation Facility’ constitutes an action that gives the foreign corporation the right to terminate the lease and seek significant damages from the Highway Authority,” the city said in a statement.

Such competing facilities, the city noted, would include the extension of several major arterials in the vicinity of the Northwest Parkway, certain other road projects within five miles of the highway, as well as even some mass transit projects.

“Because such damages would likely return the Authority to a financially perilous position, it will create a large impediment to future transportation projects in the area,” the city said.

“This noncompete agreement intentionally ties the hands of local and regional governments and the state to address transportation needs in this area, which can only serve to further congest area roads over the 99-year term of the lease. The beneficiaries of this agreement are the Portuguese and Brazilian companies that will collect the tolls. Even then, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to generate sufficient traffic on the road,” Smith said.

“If demand existed or was expected to materialize for the Northwest Parkway or potential extensions of the toll road, there wouldn’t be a need for such a noncompete agreement. However, all the traffic studies to date show there is very little demand for a major tolled highway between Broomfield and Golden, and tolling could only pay for a small fraction of what would be needed to build such a road. The only thing that could make the noncompete agreement worse would be if taxpayers were forced to subsidize extensions of the toll road and then be forced to pay to use them,” Smith said.

City officials noted that noncompete clauses on toll roads have produced difficulties in other parts of the region, and nation. In the 1990s, communities in the corridor northeast of Denver, which now includes Denver International Airport, agreed no roads would compete with the E-470 toll road there. So Commerce City was required to lower the speed limit and install traffic lights on another publicly funded corridor, Tower Road.

“According to a 2004 report from the U.S. Government Accounting Office, ‘The language in the noncompete clause for the SR91 Express Lanes in Orange County, Calif., effectively prevented the state from improving the nontolled freeway lanes of SR91 until 2030 – the term of the franchise agreement – and was the subject of litigation and considerable public outcry,'” the city said.

The result there was that the Orange County Transportation Authority bought the road back from the private operator.

The contract also allows the tolls to rise from the current $2 for the nine miles to $3 over the next year, and then at least 2 percent every year thereafter.

The consortium will handle road maintenance, traffic enforcement and making improvements, and in return will take all of the tolls.

WND previously reported that North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc., or NASCO, also has figured out a way to cash in on the Chinese containers passing along the NAFTA Superhighway from the Mexican ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas to U.S. and Canadian destinations.

WND has obtained a copy of a draft preliminary joint venture contract between Savi Networks and NASCO, specifying that NASCO will get paid 25 cents for each “revenue-generating intermodal ocean cargo container” registered by the RFID sensors the communist Chinese are now installing along Interstate 35.