Posted on 12/15/2006 6:17:42 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
Austin is fortunate that they don't have the enviro-wackos delaying the roads for decades.
A large proportion of the envirowackos in Texas live in Austin.
I don't live in Texas so I'm not allowed to comment on what Texas does and should just 'mind my own business', according to freeper whathisname, one of the front men from Texas who is pushing this. So I'll just Bump this without comment.
Actually, envirowhackos have delayed 2 road projects in Texas that I know about: US 281 toll lanes north of San Antonio, and SH 45 SE south of Austin.
LOL!!! I've been getting a LOT of that kind of thing lately as well. "You shouldn't even be commenting on..." Yeeeesh...
The Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll Road are privatizations that have occurred over the past year or so, not several years ago, as the article states.
And YES, I know that anti-toll forces joined in the lawsuit against US 281...
I do live in Austin so I will say it for you--LOL! Personally, I think this whole thing sucks big time!
'But we're going to re-capture those jobs by placing taco vendors at the 10,000 exit ramps upon completion of the project.'
(Jeez, I hope I don't get strong-armed for funnin' this.)
There won't be 10,000 exit ramps. It's likely there will only be one for each major city on a TTC corridor. They aren't being designed like the Interstate Highways in Texas.
Let's look at just a few of her sentences to illustrate my point:
They also point out that the concession fees and the revenue they’ll get from private toll operators can be used as seed money to build other badly needed infrastructure. (In reality, though, it seems this revenue will more likely be used for the construction of feeder roads, bridges, and overpasses that will funnel motorists into the for-pay lanes and super-corridors.)
Yes and no. The state is getting $1.2 billion in concession fees just on TTC-35, and while some of that will indeed be used to pay for new and upgraded connections, nowhere near all of it will be consumed by this. And widening the existing crossroads also benefits through traffic that doesn't get on the toll road, plus the new roads open up new land for development if the fronting property owners so choose. That can add to the local tax base, so it is indeed paying for local development beyond just connections.
House Bill 3588, like subsequent legislation, has clauses buried within it that should raise enormous public concern. An anticompetitive clause, for example, puts a two-year moratorium on TXDOT’s ability to build or improve roads that would compete with a toll road. XDOT officials say Interstate 35 is exempt from that clause, as well as some other roads identified in its 20-year plan, but that clause ensures that customers on additional toll roads won’t be siphoned off to a free highway during the critical period in which the toll facility is ramping up.
Only two years? That is no big deal and makes complete sense. So once again the scaremongers wildly exaggerated what was the actual case.
Another section of the legislation requires TXDOT to construct connections to and from the Trans-Texas Corridor. By doing so, TXDOT will help prop up a private developer’s operation,
Well duh, only because a private contractor will build and operate the road. No different than when a municipality builds a new garbage dump and a new road to it when private firms collect the garbage instead of a gov't firm. Technically one can excitedly scream that such is helping to prop up the private garbage collectors, but it also is mutually benefiting the city that wants its garbage collected and determined that private collection would be cheaper than gov't collection.
and quite possibly divert funds from free roads elsewhere that need improvement.
Clintonian technique. As long as she stays away from the actual numbers, she can insinuate 'may', 'could', and 'might' while maintaining plausible deniability. The truth is that the toll road will subsidize local roads. But even if what she wrote was true, it is still total BS that it is diverting money from free roads, because the state is getting built a superhighway with virtually no state tax dollars spent on it. If it wasn't built as a toll road that would be $6-8 billion limited tax dollars diverted fromt the existing pot of tax money to build the superhighway, which means billions fewer dollars left for the other roads without a tax increase.
A third provision provides a limited waiver of sovereign immunity, giving greater financial protection to developers by making it easier for them to sue the state and force TXDOT or the commission to comply with its obligations.
I don't know anything about this one, but given how much she has spun and mischaracterized other info in her article, I would guess that there is actually good logic in that and more limited than it is portrayed here.
And a fourth allows the state to enter into contracts on other than a low-bid basis.
It would be criminal not to. There have been too many instances where companies have abused the mandatory low-bid clause some municipalities have, completely low-balling and then recouping profits with the inevitable costs overruns. You also don't want to get stuck with a lowest-bid from a company that isn't capable of the work or has a history of shoddy construction. There are steps in the process designed to weigh the merits and weed out proposals, but a pure lowest-cost requirement isn't always a good idea. Which is why not everyone buys the cheapest priced produce at Walmart or Fiesta.
Also buried in Krusee’s bill was the legal language that explains why TXDOT is now paying million in stipends to losing bidders. It went unnoticed by the public. But the road-builders cleared their desks, sharpened their pencils, and got to work drafting proposals. They had a win-win situation–even if they lost
Yes, always jump to the conclusion that every business is Halliburton pushing Cheney into a war for profits. Actually the stipends are simply to offset some of the costs of preparing bids on such a massive projects. Think about it, for a 600-mile corridor the companies have to do some preliminary design and engineering work to derive their cost estimates, and on such a huge project that could easily run into the millions. I'm not sure whether or not the stipends are indeed justified, but they certainly may be. I wouldn't be surprised if the losing bidders still ended up with a loss even after the stipend. That may be a fact of life for various architect and engineering firms, but when projects get this big it can definitely be a disincentive to bid, and the idea is to get as many qualified bids as possible. In fact she does explain that side further down in the article, but most people aren't going to read that far and will simply conclude that, "Hey, she did a lot of research and gets specific, so I guess maybe her conspiratorial accusations are correct." Heck, even I gave up on reading the entire article.
Bottom line, what I read just further convinces me that the TTC is a wise project that other states will follow and that the current leadership in Austin is trying to run gov't more like a lean business, which is what (most) conservatives want them to do.
Taxpayers are going to be mighty surprised when they start paying for the road that's supposed to pay for itself. The biggest income generators (truck drivers) are already saying "hell no" to paying more per mile than most make per mile.
It is pitiful that they are so desperate they have paid posters, but the aid firms have to have their people do something.
There is no highway anywhere anyone has ever built to compare with the atrocity that is the NY state thruway system. Yeah they call it a system...but it's more like a hole: a wormhole down which our taxes disappear into the coffers of that modern Babylon - Albany.
And we keep paying and paying and paying...
Horrible example to use for so many reasons.
If they tried this in NYS, it would be called corruption. Interesting how all this came about.
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