About like this?
Posted on 03/23/2007 4:34:04 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
In the political world, rapid change only occurs when the public focuses attention on a specific issue.
We have that situation right now in Austin. Public and legislative attention is focused on the Texas Department of Transportation and a proposed moratorium on the Comprehensive Development Agreement process, including the recently announced CDA to construct State Highway 121 in Collin County. This public and legislative attention may offer an opportunity for Texas to reaffirm our commitment to focus government spending on core functions – in this case, transportation.
There are many subplots swirling in this complex CDA moratorium issue – reining in TxDOT, stopping the Trans Texas Corridor, protecting the North Texas Tollway Authority, stopping the announced CDA contract to build Highway 121 in Collin and Denton counties, and determining whether the Highway 121 CDA contract is a "good deal." I will address only the potential damage to the economic development of Collin County, if some equally beneficial and timely funding source is not quickly identified to build Highway 121.
Highway 121 received strong support from Sen. Florence Shapiro following my testimony Wednesday before the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. Representing Collin County on the committee, she strongly assured the citizens of our county that she is "absolutely not here to kill the road" and that she will work to fund the construction in the most economical way possible.
Simply put, a two-year delay in Highway 121 construction is unacceptable. The rapidly growing population in Collin County will overwhelm the existing transportation network and bring our explosive growth to an end, costing our county many millions of dollars in economic development and the tremendous economic momentum that we have today.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Given the region's growth rate of a million people every seven years, a legislative moratorium on comprehensive development agreements would be catastrophic for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Transportation projects immediately affected include:
Additionally, in the absence of anticipated concession payments, no funding source would be available for the billions of dollars in nontolled projects now scheduled for construction.
The Regional Transportation Council's Mobility 2030 Plan, adopted Jan. 11, includes about $16.8 billion of anticipated revenue from innovative funding strategies incorporating CDAs. If a moratorium is passed, the council would be forced to eliminate most of the new capacity in the 2030 plan. With construction costs skyrocketing at 10 to 12 percent annually, any delay would be devastating to our region.
No one agency, including the North Texas Tollway Authority, has the bonding capacity nor project delivery mechanisms in place to successfully deliver the number of projects that are needed to relieve congestion.
Carona runs afoul of anti-toll crowd
By Ben Wear | Thursday, March 22, 2007, 04:00 PM
State Sen. John Carona has learned in the last 24 hours how quickly a politician can go from champ to chump in the anti-tollroad blogasphere.
The Dallas Republican, chair of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, has become something of a rock star in those circles for his direct — and surprisingly effective — challenge of what had become the new orthodoxy in Texas transportation circles. In the past few months Carona had described the Texas Department of Transportation and Texas Transportation Commission chairman Ric Williamson as “arrogant,” filed bills to rollback some of the agency’s toll road tools and held an all-day hearing March 1 where toll opponents got their best chance to fire back in the past four years.
And he signed on as co-sponsor of SB 1267 by state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, which would allow no more private toll road contracts with the state for two years. When more than 125 legislators signed on to the House and Senate versions of the bill, a seeming veto-proof majority, toll opponents saw a chance to deliver a crippling blow to Gov. Rick Perry and his Trans-Texas Corridor plan, if not to his whole toll road agenda.
Then Carona was quoted in this paper and the Dallas Morning News today indicating that, well, he didn’t plan to let SB 1267 come up for a vote in his committee. Tarrant County officials, at yet another Carona hearing Wednesday, had made it clear they don’t want a moratorium because it could delay for years some road projects they were counting on to get going.
People like David Stall, with anti-Trans-Texas Corridor group Corridor Watch, and Austin toll opponent Sal Costello went into action. Carona’s office was flooded with demands that he give the bill a vote, and some of his staffers said, well, he’d been misquoted.
No, Carona’s office, later said, the news stories got it right. But he issued a statement at mid-afternoon trying to put his position on SB 1267 in context.
“There are things we need to accomplish this session, such as stopping or reducing diversion of transportation revenues, and indexing the motor fuels taxes,” the Carona statement said. “If all we do is pass SB 1267, then we have told TxDOT it is okay to build all future roads as toll roads, just not (private) toll roads… . We have heard the public loud and clear about toll roads, public private partnerships, and the Trans Texas Corridor. We have also heard from Tarrant County and others for whom SB 1267 creates a hardship, and we have an obligation to listen to them as well.”
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
Build brand new roads. Don't bother to add lanes and other dysfunctional improvements to existing roads.
Got that?
"Tax Increase" is what the man said, and let's not let him forget it!
First he sponsors a bill that looks great, but which he has no intention of ever letting come to an actual vote, and then he lets slip he really wants tax increases!
About like this?
Firm Advises Cintra in First Privatization of Toll Road in Texas
Bracewell & Giuliani LLP advised Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., a Spanish transportation company, in its successful bid to develop State Highway 121 into a toll road through Collin and Denton�counties. The award to Cintra, approved by the Texas Transportation Commission, is the first privatization of a Texas toll road.
Excerpt
Imagine driving on a rural state highway on the Texas plains and suddenly coming across one of those!
Especially not when the "added" lanes are cr@p like "HOV" lanes that are of limited usefulness in actually reducing traffic congestion.
One idea of Carona's that certainly deserves more discussion is his plan to reduce "diversion" of highway taxes, i.e., eliminating these misbegotten "mass transit" subsidies that local governments get all lathered up over, since they translate to big handouts to local groups.
Easy, you drive over it on an overpass.
It would still be a sight to see, especially if the overpass just uses the usual "guardrail" design rather than those extra-high jersey walls that highway departments are so fond of these days.
flip/flop flip/flop.
In the first article above, it is mentioned that construction costs are going up 10-12% per year, and since the built-in tax increase would be tied to increases in construction costs, the gas tax would increase at 10-12% per year.
So you work for middle eastern oil??
Kinda like the "tax increase" they'll get when they can redirect the existing gas taxes to other stuff and let Texans pay for roads at the toll booth.
I'm amazed that there are Texans that think paying for roads twice, once at the gas pump, and again at the toll booth, is better than just raising the fuel taxes a bit. Or even better, spending 100% of the gas taxes on roads instead of using some for other stuff.
By definition, Texans will pay for the roads they drive on one way or another. It makes more sense to have just one method of extracting money from drivers at the gas pump, instead of gas pump AND toll booths.
If Texas politicians are incompetent at building and maintaining roads, they can be defeated at the ballot boxes. But a private monopoly on a road on a particular route can't be changed for 50 years, whether the company is competent or not (and since there can be no competition, what is their motivation to be competent?).
the legislature should raise the gas tax to accomplish the roads desired.
if consumers think the gas tax too high, they'll do what all consumers do, use less of this resource.
imo, the toll roads are a cintra/zachary/perry chronies scam.
Thanks for the ping!
BTTT
Yes, that will be pretty. You'll be able to see it from space. <:P
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