TxDOT changes rules for MPOs, does little to give local control

Link to article to here.

Bottom line, we read every single rule change and the Governor and his Transportation Commission still have the final say on MPO allocations and MPO plans and Rural Planning Organizations are not even legally established in the Transportation code and yet TxDOT is adopting rules for them!

TxDOT approves rules to strengthen MPOs

By Jon Vanderlaan, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Plano Courier

Published: Thursday, September 2, 2010 3:23 PM CDT

Texas’ Metropolitan Planning Organizations have secured their authority in planning decisions with new rules adopted by the Texas Department of Transportation.

According to news release from TxDOT, the rules will enhance the role citizens and communities play in planning the state’s transportation system.

Michael Morris, director of transportation for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which is the Dallas-area MPO, said the rules changes were based on House Bill 300, which did not pass in the last legislative session.

  Morris said the biggest change is authority that previously was rooted in policy is now written in rule and much more difficult to change.

“I think clearly TxDOT got a message from the legislature that they want metropolitan planning organizations to be recognized as entities within each of the metropolitan regions,” he said, “to be decision makers when it comes to transportation questions.”

One of the best examples of the changes, Morris said, is the allocation of Surface Transportation and Environment Planning funds.

Previously, programs to benefit from STEP funds were picked in Austin, Morris said, but now 50 percent of those revenues will be available to the Regional Transportation Council to decide what projects will benefit.

Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, said in a released statement the changes put more control in the hands of leaders, planners and citizens of a community, who better understand the needs of the communities.

“For the first tiem, the new rules make sure that local decisions are made in each community across the state, rather than handed down by officials in Austin,” he said.

According to a TxDOT news release, the rules will allow MPOs to develop long-, mid- and short-range transportation plans.

The process also will include the use of an extended cash forecast to provide additional flexibility in planning.

Rep. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said in a released statement the rule changes put control in the hands of MPOs and will help them do a “great” job for communities.

“Under the new rules, MPOs will be better armed with the information they need to craft plans that transparently and accountably address the infrastructure needs in their communities,” he said.

The new rules may also help the RTC allocate Proposition 12 bonds that were authorized by the legislature in 2009, Morris said.

“It’s being made clear that the elected officials on the RTC want the Prop 12 fund to be allocated,” he said, “and we have the foundation now for that given the rulemaking that has been adopted.”

The $2 billion in bonds that were authorized are backed by state revenue and will go toward highway improvements, according to the TxDOT website.

Morris said the formula for allocation of those funds was always a question with the RTC -- TxDOT districts and MPOs identified more than $8.9 billion in possible projects to benefit from the funds.

Rural Planning Organizations also were officially recognized with the rules changes, which Morris said is important because of the implications of metropolitan planning in rural areas.

“Often the visions in the metropolitan regions cross over into the rural,” he said.

Report: 'Toll roads not the answer to congestion'

Link to article here.

From the second article below: "'Toll roads are not, and will never be, a solution to congestion on Britain's roads, no matter how attractive they may appear to cash-strapped politicians desperate to deliver otherwise unaffordable road schemes," the report concludes."

Can toll roads ever work?

A report into Britain's first major toll road claims it is an "expensive failure", doing little to ease congestion.

 
By David Millward, Transport Editor

London Daily Telegraph
31 Aug 2010

The conclusions may be a matter of debate, but at the very least the report suggests that British motorists are a pretty mean bunch.

A road to help motorists dodge the worst of traffic around Birmingham seemed a no-brainer. Surely drivers would shell out a few quid rather than be stuck bumper to bumper during the rush hour.

Related Articles

M6 toll road 'has failed'

Apparently not.

The number of motorists using the toll road has fallen back to where it started, the project is costing Macquarie a shedload of cash and congestion on the M6 is back where it was when the project started.

This poses a few interesting questions. If the Government can't afford to build roads, will the private sector step in?

The answer is probably no, unless they can be guaranteed a return – which is probably why in an unguarded moment the head of Macquarie plaintively wished for congestion to get worse on the M6.


French motorists seem to accept that their credit cards are going to take a hammering when they use the autoroutes – as do British tourists heading to the sun.
When I drive in the US, I always have a mountain of quarters to pay tolls which are a part of everyday life.

This will only happen in Britain if a Government is prepared to handle the outcry if we start charging for using all our motorways.

And that would be a "very brave" decision, bordering on political suicide.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Link to article here.

Toll relief road 'has failed' report claims

A privately-built toll road, which was hailed as the answer to congestion on Britain's motorways, has been an expensive failure according to a new study published today.

By David Millward, Transport Editor

London Daily Telegraph
31 Aug 2010


Traffic jams around Birmingham are at least as bad as they were before the road was opened as motorists refuse to pay to use the 27-mile stretch which was intended to end gridlock on the M6.

The report by the Campaign for Better Transport, an environmental group, comes at a time when the Coalition has said it believes that private investment will be needed to pay for more motorways.

Related Articles

Motorists to pay tolls for new roads under Tory plans

The M6 toll road, which runs around the north west of Birmingham, opened in December 2003. It was designed to take some pressure off one the busiest stretches of the motorway in Britain.

When it opened, drivers were charged £2 to use the road. A series of above inflation increases has seen the bill rise to £5.

This has coincided with the number of motorists willing to pay falling dramatically, the study says.

In the spring of 2006 it attracted just under 60,000 drivers a day. By the start of this year, the figure had fallen to just over 40,000, marginally more than when the toll opened.

Those who are willing to pay can enjoy a far quicker journey during the rush hour, especially when traveling southbound when using the relief road takes around 40 minutes - about half the time needed on the M6.

But at other times the time saving is marginal - in many cases little more than five minutes. This, the Campaign says, means the toll is poor value for the motorists.

Meanwhile there is little evidence of congestion easing significantly on the M6 itself, the report says. Any gains which might have been made have been eroded by steadily increasing traffic levels.

The Campaign says that the Highways Agency itself has admitted that by 2008 traffic levels on the stretch of the M6 running parallel to the toll road were as they were before it opened.

"The M6 Toll has provided so little congestion relief that the Highways Agency has been forced to allocate hundreds of millions of pounds for additional capacity," the report adds.

Proposals include allowing cars to use the hard shoulder during the rush hour. But this, according to the Campaign, would cost between £300 to £500 million.

"Toll roads are not, and will never be, a solution to congestion on Britain's roads, no matter how attractive they may appear to cash-strapped politicians desperate to deliver otherwise unaffordable road schemes," the report concludes.

However an AA spokesman defended the M6 toll road. "Drivers who use it are happy to pay the premium, because it avoids the horribly lorry-congested M6.

"Macquarie who built the toll described it as one of the jewels in the crown. The drop in traffic has been a reflection of the economic situation.

"It will be very useful when the economy improves and does have a major role to play in the national network."

A Department for Transport spokesman added. "The construction of a privately funded and operated toll road was not the only answer to cutting congestion on the M6.

"While it is making a contribution, the Government is also considering other transport initiatives to ease congestion such as hard shoulder running schemes and the development of a national high-speed rail network with the first route running between London and the West Midlands."

____________________________________________________________________________________

Link to the story here.

Toll roads are no answer to congestion, says campaign group

Tuesday, 31 August 2010

The M6 Toll in the West Midlands has been a costly failure and the Government should not rely on toll roads to solve transport problems, according to a new report released today by Campaign for Better Transport.

Earlier this year Transport Secretary Philip Hammond signaled an interest in using tolls to pay for future road building schemes, most of which are expected to be halted after the October spending review. However, this report shows the 27-mile toll motorway has failed to provide any significant congestion relief for the original M6 and the price, which has been increased significantly year on year, is bad value for drivers who use the toll.

Despite the toll now charging motorists £5 on weekdays – the initial cost was £2 – the report shows that operator Midland Expressway Ltd, a subsidiary of the international infrastructure group Macquarie, is losing tens of millions every year and has written down the value of the road to below its cost. Meanwhile, M6 congestion is now so bad that the Government is considering spending another £500m on it to deal with the problems the toll road was supposed to solve.

Richard George, Campaign for Better Transport’s Roads and Climate Campaigner, said: “The research shows that the toll road has failed to cut congestion on the original M6 and has made big losses for its operator. With Government coffers running empty, it is no surprise that politicians are looking at toll roads as a way to deliver funds for new road building projects. But our research shows that private toll roads such as the M6 Toll don’t help motorists or the surrounding area, and don’t make money for investors either.

“Instead, the Government needs to spend scarce public funds on maintaining the roads we have and giving people good alternatives to car use.”


Key findings of the report

M6 Toll: bad for the West Midlands
  •  The toll road has failed to significantly cut congestion on the M6.
  •  Traffic which once used the toll is now returning to the M6, making congestion worse at peak times.
  •  Traffic has increased dramatically at either end of the toll, causing more congestion.
  •     Half a billion pounds of additional capacity is planned to relieve congestion on the M6 that the M6 Toll
     was supposed to deal with.

M6 Toll: bad for drivers
  •     Journey times on the M6 are only slightly better than before the toll opened.
  •     Outside of peak times, journeys on the M6 Toll are not much faster than on the M6.
  •     Average time savings were between 7 and 12 minutes in the opening year.
  •     The cost of the toll has risen sharply each January, well above inflation.
  •     The toll road’s operators are exploring ways to charge more at peak times.

M6 Toll: bad for investors
  •     Midland Expressway Ltd has lost around £26 million a year since the toll opened.
  •     Revenue has been in steady decline, as traffic on the toll has been falling since 2006.
  •     The toll road’s value has plummeted, from A$2.2bn in 2008 to A$412m in 2009 (the parent company
     is Australian).
  •     Even when the toll was busiest (when there were major roadworks on the M6), MEL was still losing
     millions of pounds a year.

And finally

According to the report, Steve Allen, the chief executive of Macquarie Infrastructure Group (MEL’s parent company), told an Australian newspaper that “What we need is to slow down the M6” to make the toll road more attractive...

To see the 12-page report, go to
www.headlineauto.co.uk

New $50 billion stimulus plan for roads floated

Link to article here.

Not only is the $50 billion an outrageous sum (with no known means of paying for it), the first round of the stimulus was largely supposed to go to "stimulate" jobs immediately with public works projects to "fix" our aging infrastructure (at one point in Texas, 70% of that money was going to prop-up LOSER toll projects with subsidies, which is a DOUBLE tax to build a project with stimulus money and then charge us AGAIN to use it!). It did NOTHING to "stimulate" the economy or give us any meaningful job creation.

Apparently, the road lobby doesn't think that was enough, so they're coming back for more. What's worse, is the New York Times article speaks of Obama pushing these PPPs (public private partnerships) as part of the package, which is the sale of Texas roads to foreign companies like Cintra of Spain. These grant the toll operators monopolies in sweetheart deals that charge taxpayers 75 cents a MILE to get anywhere. They have non-compete agreements that GUARANTEE congestion on the free routes, and other provisions that GUARANTEE profits and manipulate speed limits on our free roads to drive more traffic to the toll roads.

You may remember that we KILLED those deals in 2007 (and prevented Governor Rick Perry from re-authorizing them during the special session last year), so now the big money is going over our heads to the BIG DADDY federal government to accomplish what they couldn't get Texans to choke down...
___________________________________________________________________________________

September 6, 2010

Obama Offers a Transit Plan to Create Jobs

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH


MILWAUKEE — President Obama, looking to stimulate a sluggish economy and create jobs, called Monday for Congress to approve major upgrades to the nation’s roads, rail lines and runways — part of a six-year plan that would cost tens of billions of dollars and create a government-run bank to finance innovative transportation projects.

With Democrats facing an increasingly bleak midterm election season, Mr. Obama used a speech at a union gathering on Labor Day, the traditional start of the campaign season, to outline his plan. It calls for a quick infusion of $50 billion in government spending that White House officials said could spur job growth as early as next year — if Congress approves.

That is a big if. Though transportation bills usually win bipartisan support, hasty passage of Mr. Obama’s plan seems unlikely, given that Congress has only a few weeks of work left before lawmakers return to their districts to campaign and that Republicans are showing little interest in giving Democrats any pre-election victories.

Central to the plan is the president’s call for an “infrastructure bank,” which would be run by the government but would pool tax dollars with private investment, the White House says. Mr. Obama embraced the idea as a senator; with unemployment still high despite an array of government efforts, the concept has lately been gaining traction in policy circles and on Capitol Hill.

Indeed, some leading proponents of such a bank — including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican of California; Gov. Ed Rendell, Democrat of Pennsylvania; and Michael R. Bloomberg, the independent mayor of New York — would like to see it finance a broader range of projects, including water and clean-energy projects. They say such a bank would spur innovation by allowing a panel of experts to approve projects on merit, rather than having lawmakers simply steer transportation money back home.

“It will change the way Washington spends your tax dollars,” Mr. Obama said here, “reforming the haphazard and patchwork way we fund and maintain our infrastructure to focus less on wasteful earmarks and outdated formulas, and more on competition and innovation that gives us the best bang for the buck.”

But the notion of a government-run bank — indeed, a government-run anything — is bound to prove contentious during an election year in which voters are furious over bank bailouts and over what many perceive as Mr. Obama pursuing a big government agenda. Even before the announcement Monday, Republicans were expressing caution.

“It’s important to keep in mind that increased spending — no matter the method of delivery — is not free,” said Representative Pat Tiberi, an Ohio Republican who is on a Ways and Means subcommittee that held hearings on the bank this year. He warned that “federally guaranteed borrowing and lending could place taxpayers on the hook should the proposed bank fail.”

The announcement comes after weeks of scrambling by a White House desperate to give a jolt to the lackluster recovery, and is part of a broader package of proposals that Mr. Obama intends to introduce on Wednesday during a speech in Cleveland. The transportation initiative would revise and extend legislation that has lapsed.

Specifically, the president wants to rebuild 150,000 miles of road, lay and maintain 4,000 miles of rail track, restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next-generation air-traffic control system.

The White House did not offer a price tag for the full measure or say how many jobs it would create. If Congress simply reauthorized the expired transportation bill and accounted for inflation, the new measure would cost about $350 billion over the next six years. But Mr. Obama wants to “frontload” the new bill with an additional $50 billion in initial investment to generate jobs, and vowed it would be “fully paid for.” The White House is proposing to offset the $50 billion by eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for the oil and gas industry.

After months of campaigning on the theme that the president’s $787 billion stimulus package was wasteful, Republicans sought Monday to tag the new plan with the stimulus label. The Republican National Committee called it “stimulus déjà vu,” and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, characterized it as “yet another government stimulus effort.”

But Governors Rendell and Schwarzenegger, and Mayor Bloomberg, who in 2008 founded a bipartisan coalition to promote transportation upgrades, praised Mr. Obama. And in policy circles, the plan, especially the call for the infrastructure bank, is generating serious debate.

“This is a very ripe policy question now,” said Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, who has been working for several years on blueprints for a bank.

On Capitol Hill, Representatives James L. Oberstar, Democrat of Minnesota and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has been developing his own bill, as has Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut.

Ms. DeLauro’s plan would create an infrastructure bank that would be part of the United States Treasury, where it would attract money from institutional investors, then channel the funds to projects selected by a panel. The program, which would make loans much like the World Bank, would finance projects with the potential to transform whole regions, or even the national economy, the way the interstate highway system and the first transcontinental railway once did.

The outside investors would expect a competitive return on their money, so many of the completed projects would have to charge fees, taxes or tolls. In an interview, Ms. DeLauro said she would be “looking at a broader base,” meaning the bank would finance not just roads and rails, but also telecommunications, water, drainage, green energy and other large-scale works.

But if the projects did not raise enough money, the Treasury might get stuck paying back the investors, a prospect that gave pause to so-called deficit hawks like Mr. Tiberi. In an e-mail last week, he said he agreed the nation’s road and communications networks needed to be improved but was concerned about creating another company like Fannie Mae that might need a bailout.

Inside the White House, the idea for a transportation initiative, and in particular an infrastructure bank, is one that the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has been promoting. It was not included in the original $787 billion stimulus program because the administration and Congressional Democratic leaders wanted to pass that package as quickly as possible.

There is no shortage of projects in search of money. The problem, analysts say, is that Congress, which would create the bank, is not known for its ability to single out strategic priorities for growth. Instead, it traditionally builds broad support by giving a little something to everybody — Montana, for instance, would get a small amount of Amtrak money in return for its support for improvements along the Northeast corridor.

“We don’t prioritize,” Mr. Puentes said. “We take this kind of peanut butter approach of spreading investment dollars around very thinly, without targeting them.”

Samuel Staley, director of urban growth and land-use policy for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian research group, said the best way to spend money efficiently would be to establish the bank as a revolving loan fund so that money for new projects would not become available until money for previous projects had been repaid.

Mr. Staley expressed concern that in their zeal to spur growth and create jobs, Congress and the Obama administration would not impose such limits.

“With the $800 billion stimulus program, they were literally just dumping money into the economy,” he said. “There was little legitimate cost-benefit analysis.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Milwaukee and Mary Williams Walsh from New York.

Superstreet fixes proposed for Austin highways

Link to article here.

There's already a "superstreet" re-work of intersections under construction on US 281 in San Antonio with another one planned for parts of 1604 West. We'll let you know how well it works when it's completed later this month.

Light changes aim to ease jams on Texas 71

TxDOT also adding eastbound lane to portion east of Austin airport.

By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Published: 11:04 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010

The Texas Department of Transportation, lacking the sort of big cash it takes to eliminate stoplights on Texas 71 by building overpasses, will turn the thoroughfare into a "superstreet" just east of the Austin airport.

The counterintuitive changes — drivers wishing to turn left from FM 973 onto Texas 71 would instead turn right and then make a U-turn about 300 yards down the road — will actually allow many more cars to pass through the area, officials said Tuesday. The work is scheduled to be completed by 2012 .

And in the short term, TxDOT crews wielding paint and new signs will add a third eastbound lane on Texas 71 where it currently narrows to two lanes at FM 973. Currently, that third, outside lane allows only right turns onto southbound FM 973. That work is expected to be completed by October.
"If you can't do what you know to be the ultimate fix, then don't stop looking for other fixes," said state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, at a news conference announcing the changes.

"Superstreets" is a catchall term for a variety of lower-cost fixes that are intended to increase traffic flow through clogged intersections. In the case of Texas 71 and its two intersections with FM 973 (which doglegs as it hits Texas 71 east of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport), TxDOT plans to restrict left turns.

Two new signal lights on Texas 71 would allow those making U-turns to easily complete their turns. But officials say that when the $1.6 million project is completed, drivers on Texas 71 in both directions would encounter a green light a greater percentage of the time and that at least 45 percent more cars would pass through those intersections.

Given that 60,000 cars a day pass that spot on Texas 71, according to a 2010 count by TxDOT consultant Pape-Dawson Engineers , that would make a huge difference for commuters, particularly during the morning and evening rushes.

Kent O'Brien , a senior vice president with Pape-Dawson, said the changes will also substantially improve, if not eliminate, long backups that occur each afternoon on southbound FM 973 at Texas 71.

About 11,500 vehicles a day pass Texas 71 on FM 973, O'Brien said.

Watson and Carlos Lopez , the Austin district engineer for TxDOT, said the agency is looking at other busy Central Texas highways, such as Loop 360 and U.S. 290 in Oak Hill, to see what "superstreet" changes might decrease congestion.

Ogden floats idea of as tax increase to pay off DEBT

Link to article here.

NOTE: This is pure lunacy! Lawmakers have failed to properly fund highways for at least the last 15 years and they've refused to do it using the most affordable option, gas taxes. So they turned to borrowing and incurring more debt, which costs infinitely more with interest in the long-run. Now that they're in a hole that's too big to climb out of, the debt hole is totally irresponsible and unsustainable, they are finally proposing a gas tax increase but not to fix our roads, it's to retire debt and to bail them out for their BAD decisions.

Proposal gives voters a say on gas-tax increase

Peggy Fikac - Peggy Fikac
Web Posted: 08/30/2010 12:00 CDT


AUSTIN — If you're willing to pay a little more for gasoline for highway improvements, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden wants to give you that chance.
The Bryan Republican isn't proposing a straight-ahead state gas-tax increase. Instead, he plans to offer an amendment to the Texas Constitution to say lawmakers can raise the gas tax a few cents a gallon to pay off debt service for road bonds financed through the highway fund.

The proposed amendment, which Ogden plans to push in the coming regular legislative session, would require a two-thirds vote from lawmakers plus voter approval statewide.

“Going with a constitutional amendment does a couple of things. It provides some political cover for people who don't want to be responsible for raising taxes, and it gives the voters a legitimate option: If you want us to continue to borrow money to improve the highways, this is how we propose to pay for it,” Ogden said. “And whatever their answer is, I'd accept.”

Read the rest of the story  here.

Hoosiers to pay big for toll violations

Link to article here.

NOTE: The problem of unpaid tolls is at epidemic proportions. Drivers cannot afford to pay extra to get around. Rather than government using our transportation taxes wisely and building public roads freely accessible to all, we're fracturing our road system into one for the "haves" and one for the "have nots." Also, governments are making a killing off toll violations, more than the tolls themselves. It's a racket. Especially since the advent of electronic toll collections (fraught with problems and mistakes in billing), innocent people are the target of punitive fines than can ill afford.

Tollway to go after Hoosiers for unpaid tolls, fines

August 25, 2010

The Illinois Tollway has targeted about 116,000 Indiana motorists who owe an estimated $7 million in unpaid tolls and fines due to a two-year lapse in issuing violation notices.

The problem is prompting tollway directors Thursday to hire an outside auditor to review the agency's electronic toll collection system.

The problem started in May 2008 when the tollway and its contractor, Texas-based Electronic Transaction Consultants Corp., turned off the system for issuing violation notices to Indiana motorists, officials said Tuesday.

The shutdown was intended to reprogram equipment to better differentiate between multiple types of license plates with the same numbers.
But when the system was restarted two months later, "filters" were left in place that kept some notices from being sent out, a mistake not caught until June, officials said.

The result was that some Hoosiers didn't get notices for racking up about 1.9 million violations.

Tollway Executive Director Kristi Lafleur said she is recommending the audit to ensure that other violators aren't being missed. It was only fair to toll-paying motorists that the agency go after all those unpaid tolls and fines, she said.

Tollway Director Bill Morris said administrators were "frustrated" that the mistake had occurred and that officials hoped to put checks in place to prevent more problems.

The tollway incurred a similar backlog of tolls and fines during a 13-month period ending in 2007 when no toll violations were sent out during a change in contractors.

Hundreds of thousands of drivers were shocked to get steep fines for violations that allegedly occurred at least a year earlier.

Tollway policy is to send notices to all violators accumulating three or more toll violations within a two-year period. Violation notices require payment of all missed tolls, and $20 fines are assessed for every unpaid toll.

-- Richard Wronski

Cisneros jumps on road privatization bandwagon

Link to article here.

NOTE: Henry Cisneros is joining the ranks with Zachry and Red McCombs by jumping into road privatization schemes that fleece taxpayers. Hendricks tries to frame the issue around the token buzz word "jobs," yet these companies fail to grasp that unless an employee can afford to get to that job, the supposed job creation is a fantasy. Plus, road building jobs are very temporary compared to the long-term damage of multi-generational public debt, sweetheart deals, and private toll operators that charge 75 cents a mile to get to work. It's totally unsustainable. So few take SH 130 that ALL taxpayers, not just the users, are bailing it out for the entire life of the debt. The Transportation Commissioners are openly trying to figure out ways to incentivize trucks to take the expensive toll road (guess what, fellas? Truckers can't pony-up bucks they don't have and print money out of thin air like the feds do-- it's simple economics) with no success. This also poses a conflict of interest with Cisneros' wife as a sitting San Antonio City Councilmember that contributes to toll road decision-making for our region.
 
Private investors eye public projects

David Hendricks - David Hendricks
Express-News
Web Posted: 08/31/2010 4:47 CDT

Roads, bridges, parking garages, airport systems, utility lines, solar energy projects: U.S. cities need more and more of them, either to serve population growth or to replace aging and crumbling systems.
Despite a mountain of money from last year's Recovery Act, many projects cannot happen. Private debt markets have shrunk because of the economic recession. Insurance companies have all but disappeared as investors, partly because of AIG's role in the financial industry crisis. Credit ratings agencies have toughened their standards, making bonds harder to issue.

Cities and states are broke anyway. The Texas Department of Transportation, for example, barely receives enough in gasoline tax revenues to pay for maintenance of existing roads, never mind new projects.

This pushes the nation to the verge of a new era of private investment for public projects, argues former Mayor Henry Cisneros in the preface to a new book, “The Handbook of Infrastructure Investing,” edited by Michael Underhill (Wiley, $95).

Read the rest of the story here.

Brownsville plans to privatize toll road in rail corridor

Link to article here.

NOTE: At least in this project, it's supposed to be 100% financed by revenue bonds, which do NOT put the taxpayer on the hook in case of losses. However, the devil is always in the details. If the deal contains a non-compete that prohibits or penalizes taxpayers if the government builds any free roads surrounding the toll road, Brownsville residents can count on congested free routes for the next 30-40 years! The first two segments of SH 130 are the poster child for FAILED toll roads, and the not only did the taxpayers pay to build it, they are bailing it out every year of the life of the bonds. Segments 5 & 6 of SH 130 were also taxpayer subsidized while Spain-based Cintra gets to walk away with all the profits for 50+ years. It contains a non-compete agreement, too, guaranteeing congestion on free routes for the next 30+ years. Don't expect I-35 to get fixed without tolls anytime soon (since free lanes "compete" with Cintra's profits). This is hardly a project that should be held up as a good example of toll road success or as a model for appropriate private financing.

Private financing, revenue bonds could build toll road

2010-08-29 22:57:09

The only way to pay for building a new road along part of Brownsville’s Union Pacific rail corridor” once the track is out, that is” is to make it a toll road.

That’s according to David Allex, head of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority, the agency behind the plan to build the proposed West Parkway tollway on an eight-mile stretch of the Union Pacific corridor.

The city of Brownsville doesn’t have the money, he said, and neither does the Texas Department of Transportation.

"So we looked at various ways of how we might be able to finance this thing without burdening any of our citizens on any taxes” either statewide, locally or individually," Allex said. "The only feasible way that we can do it is to do a toll road. We want to make this the most outstanding parkway in the state of Texas, and we can do that, because we can finance it through the tollway."

The most recent cost estimate on the project is $160 million, according to Richard Ridings, vice president for Austin-based HNTB Corporation, which serves as "general engineering consultant" for CCRMA on the project.

Ridings was CEO of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority in the early 1990s when the state launched PikePass, the country’s first electronic toll collection system.

HNTB’s conclusion on the West Parkway project is that the toll road would be able to generate enough revenue over the life of the project to pay for operations, maintenance and to service the debt on the revenue bonds that might have to be sold to finance construction.


The CCRMA may look for other sources of funds in addition to revenue bonds, Ridings said.

"On all projects you continually look for ways to minimize the cost," he said. "If you can get some of the project paid for with some other means and methods you certainly try to do that, to minimize the amount of revenue bonds you have to sell. We also look for ways to finance the project strictly from a private-sector standpoint."

David Garcia, Cameron County deputy administrator and CCRMA assistant coordinator, said private investment is the most likely scenario at this point. Waiting for state funding to come along with money for a highway” well, it would be a long wait, he said.

"You’re looking at 10 to 20 years and a minimal amount of funding coming to different parts of the state," Garcia said. "You start asking yourself are we going to wait till that funding comes down, or are we going to try to do something about it and build this project sooner? The role of the (CCRMA) is to try to develop those partnerships through the public private sector” putting packages together."

To date, the CCRMA has lined up no potential private partners, though Allex said it has had interest from investors toward the parkway and other projects on the CCRMA’s to-do list, including construction of a second causeway to South Padre Island.

"We’re out there soliciting the private sector for several reasons," Allex said. "Number one, there is no money. There’s no money available from the city, the county or TxDOT to do things that need to be done to plan out a 30- or -50-year transportation development plan for the county."

Ridings said privately financed toll roads aren’t unusual. State Highway 130 toll road in Central Texas, for example, is a public-private toll project built in response to a surge in traffic on I-35 created by NAFTA.

"That was a very similar situation where the state just could not pull together enough toll revenue bond money to fund it, so they entered into a partnership with a private firm," he said.

Three similar projects are under construction in the Dallas area, Ridings said. In such models, private investors pay much of the up-front cost of building, he said, then share toll revenues with the local mobility authority or department of transportation.

Allex said the CCRMA is determined to make sure any toll road project it pursues in Cameron County will be able to generate enough revenue that some of it can be used for non-toll roads in the county.

"If we had (the West Parkway) in place and ready to go right now, we would already have a financial mechanism in which we could have funded the Morrison Road project rather than the city doing it," he said. "We also have a policy that we will not tax our local citizens for any of our projects. These are supposed to be pay-as-you go type projects, and that’s our philosophy."

Allex said the rumor that Brownsville residents will be taxed to pay for the toll road is a "total lie."

Even if the toll road gets built and traffic revenue projections are way off, taxpayers still won’t be stuck with the bill, Ridings said. If the road is financed by private investors, then those investors are responsible for refinancing if the going gets tough, he said.

If the road is built through toll revenue bonds” a type of municipal bond used for toll projects, such as roads and bridges” then the bondholders are financially liable, Ridings said.

"If the economy goes in the tank and stays there for 10 years it’s going to be tough to meet your projections," he said. "But there have been very few tollways in the United States that have faced that financial dilemma."

The toll roads that turn into money pits

Link to article here.

The toll roads that turn into money pits

September 1, 2010
By Matt O'Sullivan
Brisbane Times
 

Toll road co. verging on collapse

Another company involved in a Public-Private Partnership to build transport infrastructure, River City Motorway, is verging on collapse.

Rosy traffic forecasts have turned into red faces and red ink, writes Matt O'Sullivan.

It is not easy finding people who will put Brisbane in the same league as New York. For a start, its population is less than a quarter of New York's five boroughs, which include Queens and the Bronx. In virtually every respect, the Big Apple dwarfs the Queensland capital.

Yet traffic forecasters predicted that thousands more motorists would use the new Clem7 tunnel under the Brisbane River every day than another four-lane artery in New York linking Queens with central Manhattan.

Running under the East River, the two-kilometre Midtown Tunnel has had about 80,000 vehicles passing through it each day. And it has been that way for much of the 70-year-old tunnel's life. Half a world away in the Sunshine State, well-paid traffic forecasters had predicted that 91,000 vehicles daily would use the Clem7 by now and, by late next year, more than 100,000.

Maunsell, the consultancy firm that did the forecasting for the 6.8-kilometre tunnel, was so bullish that it even predicted the Clem7 would notch 116,000 daily trips within six years. All this in a state where the locals are known for their disdain for dipping into their own wallets for basic infrastructure such as roads.

As it has turned out, fewer than 28,000 vehicles are now using the Clem7 - less than a third of the original predictions - even after RiverCity Motorway, the operator and builder of the tunnel, halved tolls and introduced other incentives in a desperate bid to entice motorists.

With those ambitious traffic forecasts now seemingly impossible to meet, the tunnel named after former Brisbane lord mayor Clem Jones is on the verge of following the lead of Sydney's failed Cross City and Lane Cove tunnels.

Yesterday RiverCity revealed the extent of its predicament when it posted a $1.67 billion annual loss and conceded it will have to work overtime to persuade its bankers to prop it up until mid-2012. By then, it is hoping against hope, the opening of the $4.8 billion Airport Link tollroad will channel more motorists into its tunnel.

It will be a tough ask to win over its syndicate of 24 banks. After all, RiverCity is burning through about $10 million in cash a month and, to cover its interest bill alone, needs traffic to double from its dire levels while at the same time it must reinstate full tolls.

The Brisbane tunnel highlights yet again a tragic episode in Australia's history of partnerships between governments and the private sector to build much-needed roadways and tunnels. Investors are now shunning so-called greenfield projects, pushing the burden directly back on to taxpayers. It has left governments, financiers and the industry grappling to find an alternative funding model.

So how did traffic forecasters, charging millions for their expert opinions, conclude that thousands more motorists would use the $2.8 billion Clem7 than the Midtown Tunnel? Put simply, the traffic forecasts here were made to fit the financial models.

John Goldberg, an honorary associate of the University of Sydney and a leading critic of the toll-road model, says the predictions for the Clem7 and other projects such as BrisConnections' Airport Link are the result of a ''work-back from the financial outcome promised to equity investors''.

''They worked out what the investor was going to be happy with in terms of rates of return, and they worked back to a set of numbers which would produce that return for investors. Such forecasts do not properly relate to the interaction of land use and transport, and it is not surprising that they are not fulfilled. Moreover, the forecasts usually correspond to congested conditions during the peak periods.''

Goldberg has brought his concerns to the attention of investors and politicians for nigh on a decade yet they largely fell on deaf ears - as RiverCity's latest woes show.

In the case of the Clem7, RiverCity's then boss, Peter Hicks, said in 2006 that the company had adopted a more conservative approach to traffic forecasting after the Cross City Tunnel debacle. ''We have always had a very careful approach to traffic forecasting,'' Hicks told The Australian at the time. ''If anything, the example in Sydney has led us to put more emphasis on traffic forecasts.''

After it was paid at least $2.75 million for its expertise, Maunsell (now AECOM) was replaced as RiverCity's traffic forecaster by IMIS, a Melbourne consulting firm that has been charged with reviewing the original modelling and estimate traffic volumes to 2016.

Maunsell, which has also done traffic forecasting for the Cross City and the Lane Cove tunnels, and the CityLink in Melbourne, has refused to comment despite the former client, RiverCity, approving of it talking to this newspaper about its off-target traffic forecasts.

Traffic forecasters were not the only ones to bank handsome payouts from the project. Fees in excess of $50 million were dished out to the legion of advisers for the public float of RiverCity - ABN Amro Rothschild pocketed $39 million in underwriting and development fees, and the now failed Babcock & Brown took home a financial advisory fee of $11 million.

Even after the well-publicised failure of infrastructure projects in Sydney and Brisbane, fund managers have doubts about whether a better model will be found. ''I think something has been learnt, but whether this translates to an improvement in the way things are done remains to be seen,'' says Will Seddon of White Funds Management. ''There is definitely a place for the private sector in these type of projects, but it probably means there has to be a rethink in the way the deals are structured.''

Meanwhile, governments will have to meet the huge shortfall in funding as investors run scared from putting equity into greenfield infrastructure projects. Kyle Mangini, the global head of infrastructure at Industry Funds Management, agrees the model of a bid team selling a greenfield tollroad project to retail investors is ''going to be off the table for a very long time''.

Toll roads that have been operating for some time are ''quite dependable assets'', but Mangini says ''when you have no history [for greenfield projects] at all it's very difficult to predict traffic with any degree of certainty''.

One option now on the lips of industry leaders is the so-called availability model used for the $750 million Peninsula Link highway in Melbourne. Unlike toll-road projects under the public-private partnership arrangement, the Victorian government will make periodic payments to the builder to maintain the 25-kilometre Peninsula Link once it is operational, regardless of traffic volume.

It also means that if motorists fail to use the Peninsula Link after it is completed in 2013 the Victorian government, rather than the private sector, ends up with a white elephant.

''What is happening is that the patronage risk is being pushed back onto government. Capital markets are saying, 'We don't want to guess what the traffic is,''' an Austock analyst, Andrew Chambers, says. ''In the case of the Sydney and Brisbane tunnels, it is the equity investors that have borne the brunt of a shortfall in traffic. It is now falling back on government or it won't get built.''

The chief executive of Leighton Holdings, Wal King, agrees the appetite for companies such as his investing in greenfield projects has been ''very much reduced'' after the recent failures. He believes projects will be able to be done under the likes of the Peninsula Link model but says governments will have to stump up more.

''The issue for government will [be whether they] have the courage to implement these under some sort of [public-private partnership] arrangement or builder-owner-operator arrangement that in fact provides a fair return for investors.''

Before a better model emerges, more pain is likely in the next few years. BrisConnections grabbed the headlines over the past two years after its failed public listing in 2008 but the project it is building, the Airport Link toll road, still must meet challenging traffic forecasts when it opens in two years.

BrisConnections, through its traffic forecaster Arup, has predicted that the Airport Link will attract about 135,000 vehicles a day just a month after it opens, rising to 291,000 vehicles in 2026. But despite the failure of other projects elsewhere, BrisConnections is sticking resolutely to the optimistic predictions for the Airport Link.

As much as the legion of advisers, traffic forecasters and companies behind the failed projects share the blame, governments, too, deserve to take much of the criticism for creating a model that enabled the group with the most optimistic forecasts to win the project bids. Ultimately, taxpayers will have to shoulder a larger burden if their demands for bigger and better public transport infrastructure are met.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Toll and MPO woes

The trouble with tolls and MPOs

By Terri Hall
Express-News Blog / Houston Examiner
Aug 31, 2010

Last week, lawmakers got an earful about federally-mandated transportation planning boards called Metropolitan Planning Organizations (or MPOs). It seems neither the citizenry nor the boards themselves are happy with their past interactions with TxDOT. Though MPO Directors in both Dallas and Houston said their working relationship has improved since TxDOT's been on the hot seat (several scathing audits and sunset review), the taxpayers can't exactly say the same.

The major complaint: the use of bullying, threats, and intimidation to push toll roads despite massive public opposition.

Who's really in charge?
TxDOT rules dictate that "funding levels are estimated in cooperation with TxDOT." That's a real problem when many MPOs want to resist tolling, but have to rely on TxDOT's numbers and its heavy reliance on tolling and forecasts that have been consistently unreliable. If an MPO would prefer to use gas tax or sources of funds other than tolling to project future funding scenarios, it should have the flexibility to do so, but it doesn't under current rules.

Examples of threats and intimidation to push unwanted toll roads:
- Members of the Capitol Area MPO board admitted TxDOT strong-armed them into voting for toll roads their own constituents didn't want or funding for other projects would be pulled.
- TxDOT also threatened to withhold funding for a road project as well as joint rail relocation study with New Mexico when the El Paso MPO voted to reject toll roads by electing NOT to create an RMA.
- TxDOT saw to it local transit board members were removed from their positions on the Bexar County-San Antonio MPO for voting against toll roads (a perceived offense to TxDOT for not being team players and advancing TxDOT's toll agenda).
-The Governor himself threatened to call repeated special session unless lawmakers gave him the pro-toll transportation bill he wanted (when lawmakers attempted to put the brakes on the sale of Texas' public roads to private entities).

This behavior MUST stop before any progress can be made with restoring the public trust.

Taxation without representation

There are plenty of concerns with how MPOs govern as well. They're just as tone-deaf to the public as TxDOT. Only elected officials should have voting powers on MPOs. Since MPOs have the power to allocate billions in tax money, to allow un-elected bureaucrats voting powers is tantamount to taxation without representation. The San Antonio-Bexar County MPO, in particular, egregiously lacks representation of taxpayers' interests in this way with nearly half of its members being un-elected bureaucrats. Though the federal law creating MPOs allows TxDOT and transit officials to be a part of MPOs, it should be limited to an advisory capacity only.

Not only is there a conflict of interest in voting for its own projects and to vote itself more money (through tolls, etc.), it already possesses the power to approve all projects through the Texas Transportation Commission, which already results in most MPOs deferring to TxDOT in formulating and voting on MPO plans. For all the talk of "local control," TxDOT steers and often controls MPOs, not the local officials who sit on these local transportation planning boards.

Ignoring the public outcry
All of the above notwithstanding, MPOs consistently vote against the public input when making transportation decisions. When hundreds of concerned citizens show-up on their own dime and take the time to wade through hundreds of pages of MPO plans and do their due diligence to be heard on multi-billion dollar tax decisions, and when federal law requires MPOs to take into account the public input, and an MPO STILL votes to toll roads when the overwhelming public input begs them to do otherwise, it demonstrates the total disregard for the public interest if not the corruption of these boards.

MPOs, like TxDOT, view public comment as a box to check, then proceed to completely ignore the public feedback, especially regarding toll projects. This MUST be remedied in order to fix the completely dysfunctional state of transportation funding and decision-making in Texas. It's forced the citizens to turn to the courts and use other means to seek remedies (causing more delays).

It's the Legislature's duty to reform these entities and restore the public interest. The public cannot continue to be kicked to the curb if the goal is to move transportation forward. Failure to recognize this will only continue the gridlock.

Money and the toll regime
Something must be changed in regards to how projects are marked in an MPO Transportation Improvement Program (or TIP) and other plans. TxDOT and tolling entities rig the planning process by exploiting the federal requirements that plans be "financially-constrained." Since they endlessly claim there's no money to build roads, these entities almost exclusively mark projects "toll" (instead of using other funding scenarios to keep the plan financially-constrained) to get a project into the plan. The Federal Highway Administration has said that as long as a project is marked "toll" in an MPO plan, it will only be considered for tolling, not as a non-toll project. So this locks in a toll scenario for nearly all new capacity to Texas roads for the next 25 years.

This practice not only violates the National Environmental Policy Act (or NEPA), which requires that all alternatives be considered, but neither the public nor the Department can wrest the project away from a tolled scenario once the toll entity becomes the project "sponsor." A state law passed in 2007 gives toll agencies the right of first refusal on toll projects; therefore, reverting a project back to a non-toll road after its been marked toll is near impossible. The bureaucrats want access to your wallets and they'll stop at nothing to do it.

Considering many toll entities are conducting their own environmental studies, the control remains in the hands of those who stand to benefit directly from a toll alternative emerging as the "preferred alternative" under NEPA. This is the fox guarding the henhouse and takes virtually all decision-making on toll tax decisions out of the hands of the public and their elected representatives.

The crystal ball syndrome
While MPO long-range plans ought not to have wildly overoptimistic plans that are way outside the realm of reasonable funding sources, requiring MPOs to show anticipated funding for projects 20 years from now is completely flawed. The Texas Legislature funds all state programs in two-year budget cycles. Local governments often operate using a single budget year. Yet, MPOs have to show funding for projects 20 years out in order to even start ANY level of work on a future road project? It makes no sense. Just think of the changes in how we live, work, and play have impacted the way we travel in the last 20 years, how can anyone accurately predict the future of transportation funding so far into the future?

An entity ought to be allowed to conduct environmental work and preliminary engineering for a project without having to show funding for construction which could be years, even decades away. Both engineering and environmental review need to be underway if not completed in order to even have realistic project cost estimates for which an MPO can properly program funding.

Federal rules and how TxDOT and toll agencies exert control over MPOs are just a few of the many areas that plague our broken transportation system. Citizens need to stay engaged to ensure reforms are FINALLY enacted in next year's legislative session or we'll hopelessly remain in gridlock. 

Money trail: Pro-toll MPO Chair had ties to Zachry

NOTE: Zachry is a partner in many toll deals that sell Texas freeways to private entities (using contracts called PPPs). McNeil is the former MPO Chair, the body that gives thumbs up or down on local toll projects and has a say in whether or not it'll be done using public private partnership (PPPs) contracts or not.

Report shows McNeil-Zachry ties

Greg Jefferson -
Web Posted: 08/21/2010 12:00 CDT

Judging from Sheila McNeil's latest campaign finance report, it turns out there really was no sunlight between herand Zachry Construction Corp., just as many East Siders had come to believe during her four years on the City Council.

But while they're close, they're not cozy these days. There's discord over McNeil's methods as she lined up financing for her long-shot — and losing — campaign against County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson in the Democratic primary.

Filed last month, the report shows $25,000 in contributions from H.B. Zachry Jr. after the March 2 contest. The magnate signed off on two checks to help clean up some of McNeil's campaign debt, which reportedly reached about $60,000 and included a handful of loans.

Her lenders certainly were close at hand.

Read the rest of the story here.

TransCanada threatens property owners over pipeline

Link to article here.

TransCanada Already Bullying Landowners in Nebraska

— By Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones


Fri Aug. 27, 2010 12:48 PM PDT

A Canadian oil giant wants to expand an already-massive pipeline to bring oil from the tar sands of Canada all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. The US has yet to even approve the 1,980-mile TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, but the company is already sending threatening letters to landowners in their pathway.

In a letter sent last month to a landowner in Nebraska provided to Mother Jones, the company warns that the landowner could be forced to surrender his or her property if the landowner doesn't consent to the pipeline construction on their property. The company invokes a Nebraska state statute to threaten eminent domain should homeowners turn down their offer of financial compensation for agreeing to let the pipeline cross their land:

In order to construct the pipeline, Keystone must acquire a permanent and temporary easement over your property. It is Keystone's strong preference to negotiate a voluntary transfer with each property owner. However, int eh event we cannot come to an agreement, Keystone will use eminent domain to acquire the easement, which is authorized pursuant to Nebraska Revised Statute 57-1101 et. Seq.


The letter goes on to offer a price to the landowners, which has been blacked out. It warns that this is the final letter, and gives the landowner just one month to respond. The company also offers to "provide compensation for any damages that occur during the course of construction including crop loss and any damages to fences, trees, or other improvements."

In case the landowner didn't get the threat the first time, the threat is repeated:

While we hope to acquire this property through negotiation, if we are unable to do so, we will be forced to invoke the power of eminent domain and will initiate condemnation proceedings against this property promptly after the expiration of this one month period.

This letter comes despite the fact that the project isn't even approved yet; in July, the State Department extended the review period for the pipeline by 90 days to give federal agencies additional time for comment. People who live in the region are justifiably outraged by the bullying from TransCanada before the oil giant even has the green light on the project.

The pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, to Houston would pass through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. It has been the subject of plenty of debate already, and even more so in the wake of the giant oil disaster in the Gulf. Then there was yet another oil spill in Michigan last month, one that dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude from the tar sands into the Talmadge Creek. That pipeline belongs to TransCanada rival Enbridge Energy, and certainly hasn't helped the public feel much better about the Keystone XL project (more on that here).

Environmental groups and the US EPA have raised concerns about the large amount of emissions from tar sands oil as compared to conventional sources. But there's a growing concern about the safety of the pipeline, which would cross 71 rivers and streams and the Ogalalla aquifer if it is completed.

The full letter, which was obtained by the National Wildlife Federation, is here.

Florida toll violators better pay up

Link to article here.

Toll violations in Central Florida: Expect to pay up sooner

Changes to toll violations in Central Florida take effect Sept. 1.

August 26, 2010|By Dan Tracy, ORLANDO SENTINEL
Motorists in Metro Orlando who do not pay their tolls face much smaller penalties than they used to, but they are about to get the bill sooner, too.

The Orlando Orange County Expressway Authority decided Wednesday that it will send out notices to violators after two unpaid tolls per month, rather than three, which was the old standard.

The change, which takes effect Sept. 1, could bring in an additional $725,000 annually to the agency, which owns and operates 105 miles of toll roads in Orange.


 
Violators are caught by camera, which takes a picture of the license plate of each vehicle that passes through a plaza without paying. That happens, on average, about 24,000 times a day.

People who do not pay after receiving a notice in the mail have a hold put on their tag registration, meaning they cannot get a new license without settling up with the authority.

Previously, toll scofflaws had their driver's license suspended and had to go to court, where they also faced heavy fines.

The agency changed the process last year after a series of Orlando Sentinel stories about how punitive the old system was. Before the change, motorists could lose their licenses for failing to pay as few as four tolls.

Now, the fine is 10 cents per violation, plus a $3 handling fee.

"This looks like a better system for our users," authority Chairman Walter Ketcham said. "That's why we opted to go for it."

Habitual offenders still are being referred to court, said David Wynne, manager of toll operations for the authority. Those are "the worst of the worst" who do not pay tolls and ignore requests for payment.

Toll violators cost the agency about $6 million a year.

The old penalty system came under scrutiny in April 2008, when a Sanford judge decided that an Osceola firefighter had been unfairly punished by Florida's Turnpike.

The judge not only overturned the $3,000 fine and license suspension, but also terminated the turnpike's ability to go after toll violators in Seminole County, where the turnpike operates a portion of S.R. 417. That ruling eventually was overturned.

The turnpike also sends out notices after two missed tolls.

DMN: Bill White a bit sharper on transportation issues

Bill White a bit sharper on transportation issues 

9:19 AM Thu, Aug 26, 2010
Rodger Jones/Editorial Writer

The bosses asked me to bone up on the governor's race and transportation for an editorial that ran today. Bill White's people put him on the phone with me, and I had a chat with Perry spokesman Mark Miner. I also pored over both of their answers on the DMN's voter's guide (which hasn't gone on line yet).

My take:

-- White has essentially the same message as in the spring, but it's a little sharper, and he seems better prepped on the politics of options and financing. One frustration is that he still will not get into individual taxes or fees that should be available for a local-option vote, and he won't get off of the tiresome subject of the Trans-Texas Corridor. The TTC was one of KBH's pet attack issues. It didn't get her anywhere, but it may poll well for White's people. (More on that in a separate blog.)
-- Perry has a pat hand: No new taxes, White is a taxer, government has to tighten its belt, projects have to be prioritized. Miner said: "Everything that people say needs to be built aren't going to get built." Message: the important things will get done, and other stuff will have to wait.

Miner said a local-option bill is "taking the easy way out." Why not let voters have their say, since they might think certain unfunded projects are important enough to get built? "Gov. Perry is against raising taxes."


As our edit said, the status quo guarantees more tolls. Tolls have become a proxy for gas taxes, and they hit some wallets a lot harder. Look at the NTTA's toll schedule. The Richardson  resident who works in Las Colinas pays $8 a day to commute round trip on the GBT.

Why doesn't he live closer to work or take free roads? 1) Consider realities of the job market. My nephew moved to Dallas less than five years ago to do corporate recruiting. So far he has officed out of Addison , CityPlace, Irving, Richardson and now Southlake. 2) Toll roads are built along corridors that people need to travel. Alternatives take time out of your day.

With money tight out of Austin and Washington, the region has little choice but to rely on tolls. The NTTA says building the Bush as a toll road sped up its construction by 10 years.

If you ask politicians about tolls, they say that planners need "all the tools." Ask the toll-payers about that. They'll tell you that the real tools are the politicians.

Full disclosure: White is somewhat aligned with the DMN editorial position of many years, which is to let voters decide. And we've been bullish on using new money to extend the rail transit network. We have also endorsed Sen. John Carona's call for a 10-cent tax increase on motor fuels.

Irony: Our editorial was kind to White and rough on Perry, but the governor's people probably came away more than satisfied. The accompanying graphic excerpted their positions, and Perry was first alphabetically. He's got to be loving the fact that the page showcased this quote from him: "I do not favor a plan that would include raising local taxes."

I'm attaching a transcript with a Q&A I had with White. I sent the same questions to Perry's camp, but didn't get answers back. I deleted a portion of the conversaion I had with White on the TTC. It'll be in another blog.

I'm also attaching the two candidates' answers to the DMN voters guide questions.

Interview with Bill White:

White's opener: Long-term planning for our state requires leadership from the governor. Leadership is more than passing a law or giving a speech for selling one's own ideas. One of many flaws with the Trans-Texas Corridor idea of Rick Perry's was a top-down push rather than involving stakeholders including local elected officials, the business community and transportation professionals, as well as members of the Legislature, in crafting that plan. ...

As a candidate for governor, I want to give a clear sense of direction that leadership is not dictating the details of a long-term transportation plan. ...

In Houston, we found that we improved mobility in the community by using the best ideas, setting a course of direction, and they crafting a plan with broad-based participation.

Q. What's your position on allowing metro areas to vote on raising new transportation money locally, and what fees and taxes ought to be made available?

A. Current state law confines local government to raising property taxes to pay for transportation infrastructure. Local voters should have more options than that. I don't think the state should be in the business of binding the options that local voters desire.

Q. Is there a list of potential option you have considered?

I don't want to have a list that limits things, but I have heard many different people, including Sen. Carona, Sen. Williams, Sen. Watson, and local elected officials, including those in the metroplex, talk about different options. It would be fair to say my bias would be to sign a bill with any option that local officials wanted the voters to consider.

It's a philosophy of government. Rick Perry has tended to concentrate power in Austin. I like to see local voters have more power and options.

Q. What's your position on raising the statewide motor fuels tax?

A. That wouldn't be on my agenda. We have to have -- end the diversions over time of the current motor fuels tax. That's the first step.

Q. Would locally raised money be enough to meet transportation needs, or would metro areas need more revenue out of Austin?

A. Let's start with the revenue that we have in Austin through motor fuels taxation and federal formula funding.

For projects of regional significance, I think we will be able to stretch those dollars by more grants to local folks within the regions who are capable of managing all that project and reducing the duplicative overhead between TxDOT and those regions.

For projects of statewide significance -- such as expanding I-35 -- those should take the high priority for new-start funding by the state. So there are projects of statewide significance-- the de-bottlenecking of I-35 being the classic case, and another one being the extension of the interstate highway system to the Lower Rio Grande Valley -- that have statewide significance. Those should be funded in part by federal funds and new start money funded from traditional sources.

Q. Should the state gas tax ever be raised?

A. I think the place to start on that is to phase out the diversions. I'm not one to say what happens in five, 10, 20 years in the future of the state.

There are many people who realize that cars are becoming are more and more fuel efficient -- and they should become more and more fuel efficient. So the mix between motor fuels taxes and other sources of revenue I can't predict in the future. But I'll say this: We need to have a broad, bi-partisan expert panel develop such a plan and those kind of projects.

Q. The D-FW area is relying on tolls to build nearly every major highway project. Do you favor more of this in the future?

A. I would defer entirely to the priorities of local government, with the approval of voters on how they fund locally managed transportation infrastructure.

Unlike [late Transportation Commission Chairman Ric] Williamson and the cabal of investment bankers and private concerns, I wouldn't be pushing tolls roads as the solution.

Q. Local officials say they have no choice but to turn to tolls because of the lack of highway money. How would you help them do things otherwise, if that were their wish?

A. I would remove some of the impediments of the alternatives they could offer to voters, and we would make more predictable and direct grants to regional organizations where their priorities could be determined within those regions, and the projects could be managed within those regions, rather than have the duplicative overhead taken out in phases between the transportation professionals and the engineers at each level of government.

Q. Do you support creation of more state borrowing programs for highways (and we've had a bunch in recent years)?

A. Debt is appropriate if it is approved by voters and there is a dedicated source of funding that does not cannibalize needed maintenance. This occurs routinely for generations in Texas for local transportation infrastructure. So for example, in Houston and Harris County, as bonds to build roads have been paid off, then voters have authorized new debt as old bonds are paid off without raising taxes. There's a portion of the available funds for property taxes that's dedicated to capital improvements and a portion dedicated to operations and maintenance.

Most local jurisdictions, when they are managed well, maintain those percentages in accordance with a plan. In contrast, according to Ms. Delisi [Transportation Commission Chairman Deidre Delisi], the bonds that TxDOT has issued will result in the cannibalization and reduction of required maintenance, and that's harvesting and not planning.

From the DMN voters guide questionnaire:

Q. How would you characterize the financial needs and condition of Texas' roadway system?

Bill White: Texas' transportation system is broken, as a massive recent audit confirmed. Texas must have a long-term transportation plan in which local communities have a voice. Priorities should be set from the bottom up and not the top down. Planning should be multi-modal. The Perry Administration was diverted from effective long-term planning because of its preoccupation with the Trans Texas Corridor. Lack of planning has caused enormous bottlenecks and traffic congestion, which hurts Texas families and the state's ability to attract new businesses.

Rick Perry: For years, Washington has short-changed Texas taxpayers, sending back around 70 cents for road construction for every dollar in motor fuels taxes that Texans send to Washington. We have the lowest rates of return on our dollar compared to any other state. This is due to Washington's failure to uphold a system that is fair, not driven by pork and earmarks for powerful congressional members. Texas also currently diverts a large portion of dollars intended for transportation to other state programs. These diversions must end. Despite these challenges, Texas has found innovative ways to build the roads we need, building more roadway miles than any other state in the last 10 years.

Q. What ways of generating new transportation revenue would you support -- taxes, tolls, borrowing, fees, other? Please be specific.

Bill White: I do not support tolling existing roadways but support allowing local entities, with voter approval, various options to fund local transportation and mobility projects. Before any new funding plan is enacted, careful effort and study must be made to look for efficiencies within TXDOT and its budget.

Rick Perry: First of all, we need to get more of our money back from Washington D.C. for road construction. Texas has for years been short-changed by Washington, receiving only 70 cents back for road construction for every dollar in motor fuels taxes. Secondly, we need to end diversions of state money and put dollars collected from gas taxes into building roads. Last session, we had some success with ending diversions, sending more than $300 million back to TxDOT, but next session we need to do more - we need to end all diversions from our state transportation fund.

Q. Do you favor a proposal to allow counties to call elections on local taxes and fees that could be used for transportation projects?

Bill White: I support giving local governments the opportunity, with the consent of their voters, to raise funds for transportation projects.

Rick Perry: I do not favor a plan that would include raising local taxes. Texans already pay a lot of money on a state, local and federal level on taxes that do not go to road construction as they are intended to. Before any other options are considered, we need to end diversions and get more of our money back from Washington D.C.

White to let voters decide on gas tax hike, road funding


Link to article here.

Of course, Perry (and the reporter) leaves out the fact that he's purposely starved the gas tax to push toll roads (and hand Texas highways over to foreign companies who charge 75 cents a mile to drive TX roads) or that he's jettisoned Texas taxpayers into MOUNDS of debt for toll roads to be paid back with interest at a much higher rate of taxation than a gas tax increase. For just the first $6 billion of the $12 in STATE road debt, it will cost taxpayers $21 billion to pay back. That's ALL Texans, not just those who actually use the toll roads (they'll pay an extra tax on top of this one) as Perry would have you believe.

White won't rule out debt, taxes to pay for roads

By APRIL CASTRO Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press

Aug. 17, 2010, 6:35PM

AUSTIN, Texas — Democratic candidate for governor Bill White on Tuesday wouldn't rule out higher debt, tax increases or more seizures of private property to build new roads and relieve congestion on the state's aging highways.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, White acknowledged the need to increase capacity on the state's roads and criticized Gov. Rick Perry's policies and proposals, but he struggled to offer specifics on raising the money to address the problem.

The topic illustrates a stark difference between the two candidates, with Perry flatly refusing any tax hikes — even those approved by voters — and White leaving higher taxes up for consideration.



Perry spokesman Mark Miner said Perry "has been very clear ... raising taxes is not on the table. A better way to manage government is to cut costs and use fiscal responsibility."

White said Perry's administration had been "fiscally irresponsible" in borrowing money to pay for roads, but he said it might be OK for local governments to take on more debt if voters agreed to it.

"I believe that local voters have a lot of wisdom and the fact is that for generations, in Texas communities large and small, voters have approved and sometimes disapproved bond issues to pay for transportation infrastructure," White said.

When asked whether he would support an increase in the state's gas tax, the former Houston mayor said he would "work with the legislative leadership to address a long-run transportation plan."

But working with the Legislature on transportation funding hasn't always been easy.

The House and Senate engaged in a bitter dispute during the most recent regular legislative session over $2 billion in transportation bonds. Angry Republican senators said it was preferable to quit and let Perry call the Legislature back into a special session, which he later did.

One senator threatened a filibuster over House legislation because it didn't allow certain counties to approve increases in gas taxes and other fees to raise money for road projects he said were desperately needed.

In the subsequent special session, lawmakers approved the road bonds, but blocked Perry from continuing to make contracts for privately built toll roads. A disappointed Perry vowed that improving the state's transportation would continue to be a top priority.

White wouldn't rule out more deals with private road builders, saying he didn't "want to tie the hands of local voters on the kinds of financing they want" for transportation projects.

But as governor, White said his first order of business on transportation would be ensuring lawmakers stop diverting millions of taxpayer dollars, mostly from the state's 20-cent per gallon gas tax, which was intended to pay for new roads. In the current budget, lawmakers diverted $1.15 billion from highway funds to cover other needs in the budget.

"The citizens of this state need to see a plan for phasing out the current diversions of the motor fuel taxes," White said. "Those taxes were imposed for a particular purpose and have been diverted for other purposes."

The diversions amount to a fraction of the $315 billion experts say will be needed over the next two decades to prevent congestion from getting worse and to keep roads safe.

Asked if a higher gas tax would be an option to pay for new roads once the diversions are halted, White remained noncommittal.

"I suppose it depends on how long I'm governor and the views of the Legislature," White said. "It can't be done in a year, but it probably can be done in a period of 10 years."

White said the state should use more grants to allow local entities to implement their own transportation ideas — even if that means more voter-approved tax hikes to repay more debt — rather than the Texas Department of Transportation enforcing their own plans.

"Under Rick Perry, he's consolidated power in Austin over school districts, cities, counties and regional planning organizations," White said. "There are effective regional organizations that are in better position to assess regions' needs than having that dictated from above."

White also deferred to local authorities on toll roads.

"There will be no topdown land grab like the Trans-Texas Corridor," he said. "We will defer to local communities concerning what works best for them."

White sharply criticized Perry's failed proposal to create a massive, almost $200 billion network of toll roads and high-speed rail, saying it went too far, did not adequately compensate land owners and should not have allowed land to be taken from one private owner and turned over to a private developer. Still, he wouldn't rule out condemning more land to build more roads.

"The problem with the Trans-Texas Corridor is they seized large amounts of land, more than was needed for the actual right of way and turned it over to private businesses," White said. Government land seizure should only be used as a last resort for traditional public purposes, he said.

Editorial: End diversions to highway fund

Link to article here.

End diversions to fix highway fund

Express-News Editorial Board -
Web Posted: 08/29/2010 12:00 CDT

The Texas Department of Transportation is willing to consider all options to raise revenue and reverse a funding shortage for road construction and maintenance. That was the message Amadeo Saenz Jr., TxDOT's executive director, delivered to the San Antonio Mobility Coalition recently, Express-News staff writer Jeorge Zarazua reported.
That shortfall is huge and growing. Due to the weak economy and increases in automobile fuel efficiency, revenues from the gas tax — the largest funding source for the highway fund — fell for the first time in fiscal year 2008. Last year, they fell again for a second year.

Increasing the motor fuels sales tax and motor vehicle registration fees are among the possible alternatives TxDOT is considering. So is a controversial measure that would assess fees on motorists based on the number of miles they drive. Nothing can be done without action by the Legislature.

Read the rest of the editorial here.

Politicos now want a driveway tax to fund roads


Link to article here.

I hope I'm not alone in thinking these people have lost their minds. Sadly, the Dallas City Council has also floated this idea and Austinites are already paying this type of tax.

Posted on Wed, Aug. 18, 2010

Mission City Council approves 'driveway tax' to fund roads

By BRAD COOPER
The Kansas City Star

Mission homeowners and businesses are going to pay for roads in a new way that officials believe breaks ground in the Midwest.

Instead of relying on sales and property taxes for roads, the city will start charging fees based on how much traffic properties produce.

The City Council on Wednesday night approved a new fee charging every homeowner $72 a year and small businesses $3,558 a year beginning in December.

Larger businesses that generate lots of traffic, such as Mission Bank, could pay $5,659 a year. A drive-thru fast food restaurant could pay $12,200 a year. Target could pay as much as $64,750 annually.

City officials and some local experts believe the fee, sometimes called a “driveway tax,” would be the first in Kansas and possibly in the entire Midwest.

The new fee is aimed at properties that produce the most traffic and put the most wear and tear on roads. Big-box stores are going to be charged more than residential homes, which don’t generate as much traffic.

It affects roughly 5,650 developed or developable properties, including churches, schools and government buildings that are tax-exempt but still generate traffic.

Engineering formulas estimate that a single-family home generates about 9 1/2 vehicle trips a day. The Target store, meanwhile, generates about 8,500 trips a day. McDonald’s is predicted to produce 2,700 trips.

The fee is expected to raise $1.2 million a year to help finance $38 million in road improvements during the next 10 years. It also will help fund a new express bus service between Overland Park and the Country Club Plaza that will run through Mission.

City officials said they desperately needed the money for deteriorating streets. But some residents said it’s a bad time economically for what’s essentially a tax increase.

The fee has had limited use across the country, but has become popular in Oregon, where it’s been adopted in at least 18 cities.

The fee is gradually spreading nationwide because it’s a more direct way to pay for road costs by charging the people and businesses that create the most traffic.

DFW toll bridge a flop

NTTA toll bridge: Inflated projections, increased congestion

Toll Bridge Doesn't See Much Traffic

Fewer drivers than expected are using Lewisville Lake Toll Bridge

8/2/10

By OMAR VILLAFRANCA
NBCDFW.com
Copyright 2010

There's a fast way to get across Lake Lewisville, but it's not by boat, and it's not free.

The Lewisville Lake Toll Bridge opened up one year ago this month. The bridge, operated by the North Texas Tollway Authority, spans over Lewisville Lake and runs east and west. The lanes connect Lake Dallas with Lakewood Village.
Online statistics show that drivers aren't using the bridge as often as the NTTA had projected. From January to May of 2010, the NTTA projected that about 2.17 million drivers would use the bridge. In reality, 1 million fewer vehicles -- about 1.15 million drivers -- actually used the bridge in that time period.

NTTA spokeswoman Sherita Coffelt said it could be because many drivers don't know how about the bridge.


So far, drivers have mixed feelings on the 1.7 mile stretch of toll road, which was billed as a major traffic reliever for Denton County.

"I like it," said Merideth Burnett, of Hickory Creek. "It cost too much, but I like it."

The toll for the bridge is $1 for drivers with toll tags or $1.50 if for drivers using Zip Cash.

Several drivers said they don't use the bridge but have noticed an increase in traffic congestion where the bridge and Interstate 35 merge.

"It's not been good ever since they opened this up," said Lisa Fair, of Corinth. "It's backed up in every direction and (has) a lot more cars than it used to have."

Pension fund buys toll operations

Link to article here.

NOTE: Rick Perry's son, Griffin, works for one of the players below, UBS. Perry also appoints the board that invests Texas public employee retirement funds who have invested millions in toll roads recently. It's a tainted web he weaves with quite a money trail to follow. Increasingly, pension funds, particularly public pension funds, are investing in risky toll road operations. When toll revenues are dipping globally, and with public pension funds needing bailouts, it defies logic to see yet more risky moves with retirees nest-eggs.

Canada Pension Agrees to Buy Intoll for $3 Billion

By Angus Whitley and Doug Alexander - Aug 27, 2010

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board agreed to buy Intoll Group for A$3.44 billion ($3 billion) to gain stakes in toll roads in Toronto and Sydney in the pension fund’s largest purchase.

The offer from Canada’s second-biggest pension manager values Intoll shares at A$1.52 each, 36 percent higher than before an initial approach was announced on July 15, the Sydney- based company said in a statement today.

The deal gives the Canadian fund a 30 percent stake in the 407 ETR near Toronto, and follows its failure earlier this year to buy toll-road operator Transurban Group. Intoll shares had fallen 9.3 percent since being created by the split of Macquarie Infrastructure Group in January and the opening takeover proposal.

“It’s good for shareholders to realize value,” said Xu Han, an analyst at UBS AG in Sydney. “The market is pretty skeptical about long-range infrastructure investments.”

Intoll agreed to the bid after Canada Pension increased the Australian dollar component of the offer. The July 15 bid had been 23 Australian cents and C$1.186 for each Intoll share. The value of that proposal had slipped to A$1.495 from A$1.535 at today’s foreign-exchange prices, Intoll said.


Shares Rise

Intoll shareholders including Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Lazard Asset Management Ltd. can also accept stock in Canada Pension’s bidding vehicle and 22.4 cents cash a share, Intoll said. The shares today climbed 1.4 percent, the most in six weeks, to A$1.475 at the 4:10 p.m. local time close in Sydney trading.

Canada Pension will finance the takeover of Intoll with existing cash resources, according to a statement.

Canada Pension is betting it’s better placed than equity investors to profit from the toll roads as it seeks to match its long-term liabilities with assets set to deliver steady returns in economies that weathered the global recession.

Canada Pension’s joint offer for Transurban in November and a revised bid in May collapsed after they were both rejected and co-bidder Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan sold out.

Canada Pension has been increasing investments in infrastructure in the last five years, and at the end of June had about C$6.1 billion worth of utilities in its C$129.7 billion investment portfolio, according to filings.

Australian Assets

Canada Pension owns a stake in Australia’s broadcast transmission provider Broadcast Australia and all of Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group, which the fund bought last year for about C$1.52 billion.

The fund’s other infrastructure assets include stakes in British gas distributor Wales and West Utilities, U.S. electrical utility Puget Sound Energy and Chile’s electrical transmission company Transelec S.A.

Canada Pension has also been increasing its private equity investments and last month bid about $4.5 billion to buy British auto-parts firm Tomkins Plc with Onex Corp., Canada’s biggest publicly traded buyout firm.

Worldwide, companies have announced $203 billion of takeovers in August, including Intel Corp.’s purchase of security-software maker McAfee Inc. and BHP Billiton Ltd.’s $40 billion hostile bid for Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc. Those deals are set to make this month the busiest of the year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Westlink M7

Intoll was formed in January after Macquarie Infrastructure split into two in a bid to buoy valuations. As well as the stake in the 108-kilometer Canadian highway, Intoll owns 25 percent of the Westlink M7, a 40-kilometer toll road in Sydney’s west. Intoll said today it swung to a profit of A$1.51 billion in the 12 months to June 30 from a year-earlier loss of A$1.7 billion.

“The listed market has significantly undervalued Intoll stapled securities over an extended period of time,” Chairman Paul McClintock said in the statement.

To boost Intoll’s value, McClintock said the company had considered a dual listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange as well as buying an additional 10 percent of the 407 ETR.

“It is not clear that these strategies would deliver the same certain return of value,” he said in the statement. Intoll directors recommend shareholders opt for Canada Pension Plan’s cash offer, he said.

A completed sale of the business to the Canadian fund would mark an exit for Macquarie Group Ltd., Australia’s largest investment bank and the biggest shareholder in Intoll, according to Bloomberg data.

States turn to tolls to fund roads

Link to article here.

NOTE: Peter Samuel makes his living off toll roads and so does HNTB. Both seem to want states to continue to starve the gas tax so they can force more toll roads, particularly using public private partnerships (PPPs) that give toll operators monopolies and guaranteed profits that charge toll rates of 75 cents a mile like two deals in Dallas. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has it right, tolling existing roads and bridges is tantamount to DOUBLE TAXATION.

States turn to tolls to fund roads
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
August 3, 2010

Toll roads are increasingly emerging as the go-to strategy for states and metro areas eager to build and maintain expressways amid a recession that has battered government budgets.
"There's more interest in tolling today than there has been" in more than three decades, says Jack Finn, national director of toll services with the Kansas City-based consulting firm HNTB.

A traditional main source of road funding — gasoline taxes — has eroded as motorists drive fewer miles and more fuel efficient vehicles. The Obama administration opposes increasing the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal share of the gas tax. It has been at that level since 1993. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says that public-private partnerships and tolling are additional ways to support transportation projects.


"There is something of a trend for local governments, especially state, but also counties and in some cases, metropolitan areas, to do tolling," says Peter Samuel, editor of TollRoadsNews.com, a newsletter on tolling. "It's resistance to raising the gas tax."

 

GAS TAX: A break at the pump
OPINION: Gas tax key to ending oil addiction
Local governments are getting the message. "There's a paucity of money at the state and federal level," says Lloyd Robinson, a Fredericksburg, Va., official working on a new toll road near Interstate 95. "If we are going to help ourselves, we need to raise more revenue. One of the ways to do that is to have toll roads."

Among recent projects:

• The governors of Illinois and Indiana in June signed an agreement to move forward with the Illiana Expressway, a toll road that would connect Interstate 65 in Indiana with Interstates 55 and 57 in Illinois.

• Authorities in Louisville and southern Indiana recently said tolls could generate more than half the $4.1 billion needed to build two new bridges across the Ohio River and refurbish a major highway interchange. Drivers currently pay no toll.

• Tolling is funding three major road projects under construction or planned in the Washington, D.C., area: the Inter-County Connector, an 18-mile, 6-lane limited access road in Maryland; four new lanes on a 14-mile stretch of the Capital Beltway, and converting two express lanes to three on 28 miles of the I-395/I-95 freeway, both in Northern Virginia.

• North Carolina, which began construction last year on its first modern toll road, is spending more than $6 million studying how to pay for much-needed improvements to a 182-mile stretch of Interstate 95 in the state. "We have to wait for the study to be completed so we can have an educated conversation about whether tolling is an option," says Greer Beaty, spokeswoman for the state transportation department.

• Birmingham, Ala., Mayor William Bell is considering tolling as a way to reopen a 74-year-old bridge over Lake Purdy that's been closed since December. Under a $4 million plan, a private company would rebuild Grants Mill Road bridge as a toll bridge at no cost to the city.

• Transportation officials in the Fredericksburg, Va., area last month moved ahead with a plan to build a new I-95 interchange and toll road. Tolls would pay about half the $300 million cost, says Robinson, administrator of the Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization.

• States are pressing Washington to change federal rules that limit their ability to toll on interstate highways. "In the last two or three months, there's been a real surge of interest in this topic," says transportation policy consultant David Hartgen, of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

"Public officials are coming to the realization that building the interstates was the easy part," says Patrick Jones, executive director and CEO of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association. "It's going to cost way more to repair and rehabilitate it, and the funds are simply not available."

Tolls for the new or proposed projects vary: 25 cents per mile during rush hour on the first section of the Inter-County Connector; $3 each way across the bridges in Louisville, and $1 on the Fredericksburg road.

New toll projects usually generate fierce opposition. In Louisville, toll opponents staged rush-hour protests. "We are opposed to tolls on existing bridges," says Shawn Reilly, co-founder of Say No to Bridge Tolls. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, a trucking group with about 154,000 members, also opposes adding tolls on existing roads and bridges. "We consider that double taxation," spokeswoman Norita Taylor says.

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