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Follow TURFBuy out of SH 130 tollway could make it a freeway
$3 billion plan would end tolls on Texas 130
By Ben Wear
Austin American Statesman
March 20, 2013
How could the state lure people away from Interstate 35 and onto the Texas 130 tollway several miles to the east? State Rep. Paul Workman has a $3 billion answer to that question: make it free.
The solution proposed in House Bill 3682 by the Austin Republican, whose district doesn’t include Texas 130, likely faces more political hurdles than there are miles in Texas 130 — 90. Some lawmakers Wednesday referred to it as a “statement” bill, in effect no-hope legislation filed mostly to make a point.
But that statement, if nothing else, echoes community frustration that a road seen by many as an I-35 safety valve seemingly has done little since its first section opened in 2006 to ease congestion on Central Texas’ perennially clogged main artery. Workman said that if he doesn’t get a show of support in the next three weeks from Texas members of Congress he has contacted about federal funding, “I’m not going to push forward with the bill.”
Workman’s legislation, which was filed March 8 and hasn’t been assigned to a House committee, would allot $1.5 billion from the state’s “rainy day” fund contingent on landing another $1.5 billion in federal funding. That money would then be used two ways.
First, Workman proposes to “buy back” from a private consortium the 41 miles of Texas 130 from Mustang Ridge to Seguin, constructed at a $1.4 billion cost by the consortium and opened in October. Second, the money could be used to pay off a significant portion of the huge sum the Texas Department of Transportation borrowed in 2002, the part used to build the northern 49 miles of Texas 130 from Mustang Ridge to north of Georgetown.
TxDOT still owes $2.7 billion on bonds used to build Texas 130, Texas 45 North and the Loop 1 tollway.
Texas 130 then, under the bill, would be redubbed I-35E and have no tolls. The current interstate would remain I-35, he said.
TxDOT couldn’t immediately say what buying back the 41 miles operated by the SH 130 Concession Co. might cost. TxDOT’s contract with the company spells out a complex procedure for determining the fair market value of that section of toll road in the event that TxDOT decides, before the end of the agreement’s 50-year term, that it wants to take over that section. Agreeing on a price, officials said, would require considerable time, expense, negotiation and, possibly, litigation.
“Our preliminary analysis suggests that the estimated total cost of Rep. Workman’s proposal could be $3.0 billion,” TxDOT spokeswoman Veronica Beyer said.
Getting that $3 billion, however, is at best a long shot.
The notional $1.5 billion in federal funding is roughly half of what the state gets in federal transportation funds each year, and that money is spoken for years into the future. What Workman has in mind is an additional federal grant, coming when the federal transportation program already is underfunded by gas taxes and requires that Congress prop it up each year with deficit spending.
As for the state share, Workman’s proposal to tap the rainy day fund — expected to have about $12 billion by the end of fiscal 2015 if left alone — would be competing with a large group of other legislative designs on that money. That includes one initiative to establish a transportation funding bank and, in effect, loan money to local governments for road projects.
Any of these would require a two-thirds vote in both legislative chambers, a tall threshold, and Gov. Rick Perry’s signature.
Taking tolls away from Texas 130 would eliminate much of a revenue stream of more than $100 million a year for the Central Texas Turnpike System, which officials expect to grow to more than $250 million a year within a decade. The road and its three companion tollways in Central Texas, not profitable at this point, are expected to begin producing steady annual surpluses by 2018 and $1.5 billion in cumulative profit by 2042.
Workman’s proposal would eliminate the revenue stream for maintaining the road and building other projects.
State Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, the Senate Transportation Committee chairman, hadn’t heard of Workman’s bill and didn’t sound like he wanted to hear much more.
“The political viability is not good,” Nichols told the American-Statesman.
Austin state Rep. Mark Strama represents a district that includes Texas 130 and, as a Democrat in a Republican-controlled Legislature, “carries a lot of statement bills.”
Workman, he said, “is thinking creatively. I can’t argue with the logic of having 130 fulfill its original purpose.”
Texas 130, in 2011 traffic counts, saw a high of 43,000 vehicles a day on it in Pflugerville, about a fifth of what I-35 sees in Central Austin. Traffic on Texas 130 steadily ebbed further south, to just 9,600 vehicles a day near Mustang Ridge. Officials haven’t released traffic counts for the privately operated section south of Mustang Ridge, which opened last fall.
Strama questions whether removing tolls from Texas 130, which cuts a meandering path through Central Texas 12 miles longer than I-35, would actually make a significant difference on what happens on the interstate. A recent pilot program by TxDOT to reduce truck tolls by two-thirds increased truck traffic on the tollway by about 50 percent, but the overwhelming number of cars and trucks are still using I-35.
“Isn’t the real problem,” Strama said, “that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?”