Posted on 04/02/2007 10:48:34 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Read the story closely -- look at the "no-compete" clause about the State's committing to deny traffic-congestion relief by refraining from building other viable routes.
That is a cardinal rule of toll-road operation.
Texas's DoT enshrined it as a bullet point on their website presentation on their own toll-road proposal presentation, and it was pounced on and preserved by Texans opposed to what the Governor of Texas is doing (converting existing public highways to toll roads, selling toll roads to private companies [this was called "publicanism" under the Roman Empire; publicans were among the most hated people in the world], and doling out secret contracts to foreign firms to build giant toll-arteries through the State).
The arch-tollroader of the Texas DoT has made his motto,
TOLL ROADS OR SLOW ROADS OR NO ROADS!!
Get the idea? They're selling the public infrastructure to cash-flow opportunity guys.
The impetus for this stuff is coming from investment banks in New York and Europe who are very eager to tap into public revenue flows so their clients can "participate".
Of course, the forward look for an arrangment like that is congestion, poor/no maintenance (ever see an apartment complex that was managed for cash flow keep up the property?), and constant lobbying by the toll-road operators behind the scenes against construction/maintenance bills for remaining public roads. Interstate routes that are even remotely viable alternatives to toll roads will be allowed to crumble and fall by the wayside -- watch, see if I'm wrong.
IMHO they can go "participate themselves".
Pinging for possible interest .... (one-off ping, not making a “ping list”)....
Nah, don't think so. MHO.
The roads will still be public property.
It gets worse. Putting aside the fact that the voters of Texas get no input on Perry’s decisions to sell off public roads, with the contracts he’s signing with the European companies - if a highway is later built near any of the roads they are acquiring/building, then the state has to pay very stiff “penalities”.
Thanks for pinging me.
So the state sold a future revenue stream for $4 billion. May look good on today's cash flow, but the money the state no longer gets from tolls will have to come from someplace else.
You have rent-seeking (no-compete clauses) and corporate socialism (penalties to the tollroad operator) rolled into one!
What is that assuming about the tolls that will be imposed by private operators, as compared with those that would be imposed by the state?
I'd be happier with these operations if, rather than having the tollway operators give the state a windfall, they were required to escrow the money and have lower toll rates; they would receive the escrowed funds, with interest, at the successful completion of their contract.
Thanks for the ping!
Really? News to me, but completely consistent with toll-road interests. Just look at a map of Pennsylvania, Ohio, northern Indiana. See any alternatives to the big turnpike? The Jersey Turnpike? Nah. Here's a little map game you can play for a few minutes: get a road atlas and try to find a way to get to Atlantic City or New York City from just about anywhere, without paying some nice fat tolls adding up to about what you'd pay for an evening at the New York Met. Go ahead, have a look.
No matter how crowded and congested these routes get (exception: Indiana, on the western part of the Indiana Turnpike, which is parallelled by an Interstate), it's going to be tough to get any traffic relief for the public with that 1000-pound gorilla of a vested-interest group sitting on the state DoTs' and legislatures' heads.
The "civil urban living" alternative that some of these "new urbanism" morons keep yapping about (which they won't be living in; they'll be retired to Arquitectonica A-frames tucked under a bunch of ponderosa pines in a national forest somewhere, if they have their way) involves train commuting for the hoi polloi who perversely insist on living in suburbs as opposed to downtown tenements barracks warrens hives rat-infested cement towers upscale midrise apartments, and a trip back to the 19th century, so that the EZ-Tag commuting elite -- which of course will include the intelligentsia -- can have the less-crowded Lexus lanes and Bimmerways to themselves. Special roadways and lanes like the Moscow bosses used to have, that Hedrick Smith wrote about in The Russians, that were reserved for official limos with KGB drivers screaming through downtown at 80 mph. Now that is a "civil urban community" for you!
The Florida public, with the Sunshine Turnpike going through the middle of the state and I-75/"Alligator Alley" tolled across the Everglades east-west, will play hell trying to get any more good access routes into South Florida -- I-95 is it. Plus, Lakeland/Winter Haven and greater Orlando are pretty much hemmed in by toll roads, so good luck getting any more commuter capacity built. Floridians already have a big toll-road political "audience" sitting on their faces. They're kinda screwed.
Did the newspapers ever pry loose that "secret contract" that Gov. Rick Perry executed with Cintra-Zachry? The Houston Chronicle was in court trying to get it, last I heard. First useful thing the Stumpicle will have done in a while, if they succeed, and partial expiation of all that straight liberal bilge they're putting on their editorial page the last few years.
Meanwhile the state of Texas pokes it's nose in all kinds of business and the Texas taxpayers foot the bill for expanded government. But the same state abdicates a prime and historic responsibility to build and maintain roads. It's going to hire some damn foreigners to do it. I never heard such ass backwards nonsense!
One, investment and private bankers in New York and abroad are economically motivated to try to stick their snouts into public revenue streams. They do this by offering to do a better job (publicanism). History is not encouraging. The public work-houses for the poor execrated by Charles Dickens were atrocities incentivized the same way. Fixed payments to caretakers incented skimping on the kids' welfare. Hence, Oliver Twist.
Two, someone told Gov. Rick Perry that income from tolling could serve as a new tax revenue source without the name of "tax increase". It's a substitute for a state income tax, the third rail of Texas politics (at least until the Mexicans take over and raise statues to Santa Anna all over the place, and start taxing los gueros para nuestros).
The traditional way is for a state to setup a Turnpike Authority. No tax increase needed for this. Bonds are issued to build the road, the bonds are paid off by tolls. Same as the Spanish company Cintra will be doing. It will borrow money and pay it off with tolls
Except that the state administration's budget writers have for years been diverting the flow of supposedly dedicated gasoline taxes to other purposes, which is dirty pool.
Now they plead poverty of revenue resources, and they want to take us to the well again for improvements we've already paid for.
Except this time, the public revenue stream will have a private "participant" -- which includes the Australian Macquarie Group of very, very private, hush-hush investors, and King Juan Carlos of Spain.
And the deal is secret. We don't know who will have final control over engineering, construction, specifications and standards, safety, or anything else.
It might also be noted that the mobility auths. in central Texas are already at odds with local law enforcement, attempting to bill them for right of passage except during emergency situations. Some are passing on emergency response to other districts.
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