Virginia enters into design-build public private partnership with Cintra to build a new stretch of Hwy 460 as a tollway

Bloomberg reported it here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 20, 2012

Governor McDonnell Announces That Commonwealth Signs Comprehensive Agreement and Reaches Financial Close to Build the New Route 460 in Southeast Virginia
Project to greatly improve transportation, create thousands of jobs and have a multi-billion dollar economic impact

RICHMOND - Governor Bob McDonnell announced today that the Commonwealth has reached a commercial and financial close with US 460 Mobility Partners (a partnership of Ferrovial Agroman, S.A. and American Infrastructure) and the Route 460 Funding Corporation of Virginia to finance, design and build a new 55-mile section of U.S. Route 460 in southeastern Virginia. Project development begins immediately for the new $1.4 billion roadway, which has been a top transportation priority locally, regionally and statewide for nearly a decade. The project was developed to address roadway deficiencies, improve safety, accommodate increasing freight shipments and reduce travel delays among many other needs.

See a map of the Trans Texas Corridor & all the NAFTA trade corridors here.

Trans Texas Corridor commences despite opposition
By Terri Hall
January 6, 2013
Examiner.com

When Jerry Corsi talks, people listen. Corsi’s recent column on the revival of the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) gave national attention to what Texans have been warning for a decade -- that despite Texas-sized opposition and claims of its demise by Texas Governor Rick Perry and his Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the Trans Texas Corridor is quietly being built piece by piece. The Texas Transportation Commission just awarded a public private partnership (P3), known in Texas as a Comprehensive Development Agreement (CDA), for a segment of Interstate 35E between Dallas and Denton County at its last meeting.

The award for I-35E followed on the heels of the Commission’s award of a CDA for I-35W to Spain-based Cintra as part of the Master Development Plan for the North Tarrant Express in October. Both projects relate to Perry’s original Trans Texas Corridor vision of building a 4,000-mile network of international trade corridors four football fields wide using P3s, to include toll roads, toll commuter and freight rail, utilities, telecommunication lines, and pipelines of all sorts, developed and operated by private, even foreign, corporations free of competition for a half century.

Link to article here.

Fourth in a four-part series. See the first article with interactive map here. See the second article on why the state is moving toward tolling here. Read the third article on more cities turning to tolling here.

Tolling Texans: Impact of Trans Texas Corridors lingers
By Aman Batheja
Texas Tribune
December 3, 2012

Nearly 11 years ago, Gov. Rick Perry offered a vision for Texas that was covered in toll roads.

At a news conference in Austin, Perry delivered the first of hundreds of pitches for the Trans-Texas Corridor, a 4,000-mile network of privately operated toll roads, railroad tracks and utility lines that would stretch across the state. The projected timeline for the project: roughly 50 years. The price tag: $175 billion.

With just a year as governor under his belt, Perry proposed the most expensive transportation project in the country. As originally planned, it could have redirected national trade routes, sparked development across rural Texas and provided a big boost to public transit.

“Some might ask, ‘Is this too big?’” Perry said at the time. “I say nothing is too big for Texas when our economic security, our environment and our quality of life are at stake.”

Link to article here.

Tolling Texans: Toll projects spread as state funds lag
By Aman Batheja
Texas Tribune
November 30, 2012

The first major toll road in Texas, which opened in 1957, was a 30-mile, six-lane stretch of highway between Dallas and Fort Worth. A drive from one end to the other cost 50 cents.

By 1977, tolls had generated enough revenue to recoup the cost of the road’s construction. The tollbooths were dutifully removed. Drivers know the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike today as Interstate 30.

Fast forward 35 years and I-30, while still free, is surrounded by billions of dollars in road projects featuring toll roads or lanes. It is a similar story on a smaller scale in the state’s other urban centers as well as in some communities along the border with Mexico. As public officials across fast-growing Texas look for ways to build more roads amid a lack of public financing, toll revenue or investment from private firms hoping to collect that toll revenue are repeatedly emerging as the antidote.

Washington Post

Seventeen years ago, Virginia passed what was said to be one of most progressive pieces of legislation in the country. The Public-Private Transportation Act would help build road in the tax-averse state by shifting some of the cost and management to the private sector.

The result has been 14 miles of adjusted-toll HOT lanes on Interstate 495 in Northern Virginia, proposed extensions to tunnels in Hampton Roads, superhighway connectors in the Richmond area and a planned $1.4 billion road linking Suffolk to Petersburg.

But just how much oversight is there in such public-private partnerships? Hardly any, argues James J. Regimbal Jr., a transportation analyst in a new report published by the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center.

A consumer group that has written extensively on the pros and cons of public-private partnerships wants Gov. John Kasich and his state-hired consulting firm to think long and hard before deciding to lease the Ohio Turnpike to private investors.

The national Public Interest Research Group and its Ohio affiliate have released eight questions they want to see answered before the consulting firm KPMG makes a recommendation later this year concerning the fate of the turnpike.

Link to article here.

Texans for boycott of first foreign-owned toll road
By Terri Hall
November 12, 2012
Examiner.com

Today marks the first day Spanish toll operator, Cintra, starts charging Texas commuters tolls to use SH 130. San Antonio-based Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF) and Austin-based Texans for Accountable Government (TAG) object to Texas’ first foreign-owned toll road, especially since SH 130 is part of the original Trans Texas Corridor TTC-35 (see it here). Though Cintra invented an innocuous sounding name, like the SH 130 Concession Company, make no mistake, a Spanish company, Cintra, controls and operates SH 130 for the next HALF CENTURY -- and some say it represents a multi-generational theft of public assets.

These controversial contracts called public private partnerships (P3s) will usher in the new railroad robber barons of our time -- private toll companies operating state-sanctioned monopolies and charging Texans a premium to drive. This is about our right to travel being trampled on by well-connected special interests with ties to the Texas Governor Rick Perry's office.

Link to article here.

Change in public HOV policy smooths way for private toll roads
By Terri Hall
November 8, 2012
Examiner.com

It’s been a long time coming, but don’t tell Dallas and Ft. Worth commuters that.

North Texas officials say the days of a free ride on HOV lanes were numbered from the beginning, but most area commuters don’t know that and haven’t a clue what’s coming outside the handful who happened to catch the poorly attended public meetings on the proposed increase in occupancy requirements for a free ride to go from two people (HOV+2) to three (HOV+3). Officials are also considering allowing single occupancy vehicles (SOV) to use HOV lanes -- if they pay a toll.

Link to article here.

Spain's empty highways lead to bankruptcy

Like the housing bubble, pumped up until it burst in 2008, and its speculation-funded phantom airports, the folly of Spain's road-building boom too is now being laid bare in vast stretches of tarmac.

Link to article here.

This project is a TOTAL fraud upon the public. The private corporation getting this golden goose isn't putting in ONE dime of its own money. It will be 100% paid for with public money, yet Virginians will be charged a DOUBLE TAX toll to use the lanes. Public private partnerships are a BIG RIP-OFF and corporate welfare for special interests with political connections. Look who's applauding the deal, certainly the average commuter...

U.S. 460 toll project to begin in 2014
Tolls would be $3.69 for cars and $11.72 for trucks for the 55-mile stretch between Petersburg and Suffolk.
By: PETER BACQUÉ | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: October 16, 2012

Nearly two decades in the making, construction should start on the $1.396 billion U.S. 460 project in 2014, with the road opening in 2018, according to the state's Office of Transportation Public-Private Partnerships.

Drivers will pay $3.69 for cars to use the 55-mile road between Petersburg and Suffolk and $11.72 for trucks.

The road-user fee is 6.7 cents a mile for cars and 21.3 cents a mile for trucks. The fee will be collected electronically — by E-ZPass — making charging a toll figured to the cent practical.

Link to article here.

What will Romney do with transportation policy?
By Terri Hall
October 21, 2012
Examiner.com

When it comes to political candidates, the axiom ‘you are what you eat’ can be tweaked to -- ‘you are who you surround yourself with.’ According to Politico, presidential candidate Mitt Romney is gettin’ cozy with former Bush transportation staff who are shaping the former governor of Massachusetts’ future road policy.

What advice is he getting?

Forget addressing the gas tax or finding an affordable way to sustain public roads and keep the program financially solvent, just keep relying on tolling and public private partnerships.

Link to article here.

Perry calls for end to gas tax diversions - Really?
By Terri Hall
October 20, 2012
Examiner.com

After starving & raiding the gas tax for his entire administration, Texas Governor Rick Perry has finally decided to get on board with ending diversions of our state gas tax for non-transportation purposes. Conservatives have been crying foul for over a decade to end the raid of our gas taxes for things that have nothing to do with transportation. So while this is a welcome announcement, it’s a bit late in the game.

Gas tax diversions are part of the reason there’s a structural shortfall in funding for roads. Twenty-five percent of the state motor fuels tax goes to public schools per the Texas Constitution, which represents approximately $750 million a year. Perry and the Texas legislature have habitually raided an additional five to ten percent on top of the education diversions for things that have nothing to do with transportation like pensions, enhancing employee benefits in the Attorney General’s Office and for computers in the Comptroller’s Office. These non-education diversions topped $1 billion a year in the last budget.