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.
at very little cost to taxpayers.
Sounds somewhat Clintonesque to me. It dedpends on what the word is, or what the word little means.