Posted on 07/02/2006 1:22:43 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Our team will get needed roads built more quickly at very little cost to taxpayers and even expect to return money to the state. Our road projects utilize the latest design and construction techniques to help assure safety, environmental quality and convenience for motorists and surrounding communities.
So if the state pays $1 and the tollway company pays the other $99 of the construction costs the state is subsidizing the tollway company? Because that is the approximate ratio (actually smaller) of the total costs of the Trans-Texas Corridor (not the TX130 project that is the subject of this article) that the state and Cintra will pay on the TTC. A few million paid for by the state for studies, $6 billion land and construction costs paid by Cintra, plus Cintra will pay the state $1.2 billion a concession fee (which the state will use for connecting roads and the leftover to anything else on TXDOT's list anywhere in the state.) The tradeoff is Cintra gets a 50-year operation and maintenance concession to collect tolls, but the land and facility is owned by the state.
Basic math says that in no way is a subsidy from the state. Quite the opposite.
Have you posted how wonderful Corsi is over at Democrat Underground, or do you leave that out of your DU posts?
Quit smoking tinfoil dope.
This road only connects Seguin to Georgetown. The TTC when first built in about 10 years will only connect DFW to San Antonio. The stretch to Laredo isn't scheduled to be built until around 2025.
BTW, if this is about aiding illegal alien smugglers and all sort of nefarious characters, why would they take this upcoming toll road, with cameras at every tollbooth, when the roads that exist now don't have those? Wouldn't they prefer to evade the cameras and booth operators?
Actually the state does have accountability over Cintra, because the contract allows for the state to cancel the agreement at any time for any reason. Of course in that case they'd have to buyout based on a pre-determined formula that is basically the remaining costs from construction that haven't yet been repaid from the tolls.
Probably because they submitted the highest bid. Cintra is Spanish, but their partner Zachry is US, based in San Antonio.
1) You don't have to pay to use the highway, there are plenty of free choices that already (and will continue to) exist.
2) No it isn't, it is a choice cost. The only people who pay are those who choose to use it.
3) If enough public sentiment is there, it can be ended by the state cancelling the contract and making it free. But depending on the timing that might take a lot of tax dollars to pay off the remaining construction debts. New roads have costs, this is just letting a private firm pay for it then recoup the costs through tolls, rather than the traditional way of using taxes to pay for construction.
4) Texas voters passed a constitutional amendment several years ago that authorized the state to use toll financing to build roads.
5 & 6) Please actually do some research (beyond simply visiting an anti-toll propaganda website) into the actual finances of TXDOT. The current gas tax barely keeps up with maintenance now. Yes, 1/3rd of it should NOT be diverted to education (like it is currently) but even with that added back the state would be far short of the funds required to pay for the needed roads. The amount of tax per gallon hasn't changed in years, but inflation has raised costs. In fact steel and concrete prices have risen much faster than inflation the last 2 years. Toll financing is a way to get the private sector to pay for roads and get them built years faster than traditional financing, because it increases the amount of funds available and to borrow against without raising taxes.
Texas is adding about 400,000 new residents a year. Meaning every 3.5 years we add another Austin. That requires a heck of a lot of new roads. Without toll financing we'll fall further behind in building them, unless we raise taxes.
No current roads will be tolled, just some new roads and some new construction along existing roads. Only those who choose to use it will pay, unlike the current method where everyone is taxed without a choice. Why do some conservatives call for the efficiency and reduced amount of government via privatization except for roads? Is it that they are actually only conservative when it doesn't affect their personal middle-class welfare?
doesn't sound to me like you've actually disagreed with me.
I hope at least you're being paid to post.
at very little cost to taxpayers.
Sounds somewhat Clintonesque to me. It dedpends on what the word is, or what the word little means.
After reading your comment #6, I hope to God you're not.
Looks like Corsi found his issue too late.
Can you link to any of the bids?
Actually I was against toll roads (used to hate the NJ and PA turnpikes) until I started researching how roads are financed in Texas.
I still remember the days when conservatives were in favor of privatizing non-essential government functions.
Actually the Houston toll roads are controlled by a single gov't entity, the Harris County Toll Road Authority.
No, I don't have a link to the bids, but contact TXDOT. While some of the actual bid specifics might be kept secret as proprietary data, there should be public info on who bid and how a decision was reached. Might be simply a total cost comparison or perhaps some kind of decision matrix where various factors were weighed for a total score.
If you do contact them, ask them for a link to portions of the Trans Texas Corridor contract that was put online last year. I saw it once and posted the link, but didn't save it. Would be great if that could be posted to these threads, might head off a lot of questions and false speculation arising from the lies of some of these anti-toll road groups.
It looks as though Corsi has turned into a mix of Larry Klayman and Art Bell! LOL
Time for you to change your tinfoil diaper.
Who says that some of these people are conservatives? They do, but after reading their posts, who can thrust their word for anything? LOL
the issue in the end i is not really public vs private but rather one of sovereignty;
The TT Corridor is about knocking down national borders.
Mexico so corrupt that the USA really needs much stronger borders with that country. According to O reilly last week Mexican illegals cost the US taxpayer 80 billion last year while the illegals shipped 20 billion home to Mexico.
Imagine a north american state like the script kiddies at turtle bay figure. it works out to be a gigantic raid on fort knox. there is unlimited liabilities for the US taxpayer in return for nothing.
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