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On Thursday, the state highway chiefs approved $77 million in so-called transportation enhancement projects for the next year. Enhancement projects are funded by the federal government, which sets aside 10 percent of federal gas tax dollars for the program. The local government requesting the money must pay for the project up front, and the state -- using federal money -- reimburses 80 percent of the cost. The program has been criticized -- see stories here and here -- but often provides money for projects that stoke the biggest enthusiasm from nearby residents. An example in Dallas has been the Woodall...

The social and economic costs of lost productivity and wasted fuel from traffic-choked streets are estimated to be $87 billion a year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Urban Mobility Report. So far, federal, state and local efforts — focused mostly on expanding road capacity — have been largely unsuccessful at slowing the growing congestion on U.S. roads. Transportation experts now advocate a different approach, changing the emphasis from increasing supply to reducing demand. To reinforce smart growth policies, plug mounting transportation funding gaps and achieve immediate traffic relief, London, Stockholm, Singapore, Milan and three cities in Norway have...

Sara was late for work. The alarm clock didn't alarm, the kids were unusually slow getting ready for school, and nothing went right. She finally got to her car -- a brand new 2020 Chevy Adventure. She touched the finger-print secured start button. Nothing. It wouldn't start. She touched it again. Nothing. Furious, she banged the steering wheel with her fist. Then she noticed the paper hanging from the receipt printer on the dash. "Your designated visa account rejected your Road Use Tax in the amount of $87.32 for the month of June, 2020. You must insert a valid account...

The Waxman-Markey bill is making just about every segment of the oil and natural-gas industry unhappy. Oil refiners would be hit, because they would likely be among the largest buyers of emissions allowances. In addition to covering their own emissions, the refineries that turn crude oil into gasoline, diesel and other fuels will be responsible for the carbon emissions from transportation. That puts the industry on the hook for some 44% of U.S. carbon emissions, according to the American Petroleum Institute, but it would receive just 2% of the emissions allowances available under the bill. Refiners would have to buy...

Some policymakers and economists have proposed a carbon tax for the United States. In practice, such a tax must take the form of a tax on the consumption of energy products, such as gasoline. How effective would this be in controlling harmful emissions? In Estimating the Effect of a Gasoline Tax on Carbon Emissions (NBER Working Paper No. 14685), authors Lucas Davis and Lutz Kilian seek to answer that question by exploiting the historical variation in U.S. federal and state gasoline taxes. Their central estimates imply that a 10 cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax would reduce U.S....

Two years ago, lawmakers went to war with Gov. Rick Perry over his push to privatize Texas toll roads, but their efforts to stop the idea largely failed. As they return Tuesday to launch the 2009 legislative session, lawmakers will be faced with a choice of either raising taxes – which both Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst have called a bad idea – or giving private companies a greater role in paying for, and operating, a fast-expanding network of toll roads. The two-year moratorium on private road deals that passed in 2007 slowed but didn't kill Perry's plan to...

A proposed gasoline tax hike to fix the state's crumbling roads and bridges is pitting road builders against gasoline station owners, who say it would give Michigan the highest tax in the nation. With the proposed hike being considered by the lame duck state Legislature, Michigan would jump ahead of California, the nation's current No. 1... "It's the last thing this ailing economy needs right now," ... "Cheap fuel prices are fueling the (economic) activity we have now. Taxing gasoline to fix roads is an old way of doing it." A recent poll of truckers ranked Michigan interstates as the...

The Texas Legislature is coming back Jan. 13, and change may be in the air. The Sunset Advisory Commission, by a narrow margin, recently voted to abolish the five-member commission that oversees the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoOT), and replace it with a single commissioner. This is but the latest in the continuing evolution of Texas state government. When legislators think an agency isn’t working right, the urges generally are to change the agency’s personnel; to change the agency’s structure; to combine it with some other agency; to investigate it; or to abolish it. Such it is with TxDOT. In...

Confronted with a struggling transportation fund, lawmakers in Texas soon are expected to wage battle on various methods to help generate $14 billion for roads and bridges throughout the state. Another bill is intended to sideline the planned Trans-Texas Corridor. A report released this week from the Texas Department of Transportation says that the state will need to come up with $313 billion by 2030 for road and bridge maintenance and for congestion solutions. The report’s unveiling happened a couple of weeks before the Texas Legislature is set to convene its 2009 session. Lawmakers say they already were committed to...

Savor the occasional cause for optimism that top leaders can value teamwork over turf in the contentious area of transportation financing. Take the years of squabbling over how Texas can scrape up billions of dollars to catch up with road-building needs. Suddenly, there's positive movement, first from Gov. Rick Perry last week. He told this newspaper's transportation writer, Michael Lindenberger, that he would not use his veto to obstruct a move by lawmakers to index the lagging motor-fuels tax to inflation. "If it is the will of the people, and of the Legislature, I suspect I would go along with...

Having tolls removed from a major route in British Columbia, Canada, has taken some of the sting out of the cost of operating a trucking business in that province, but there’s still plenty of sting to go around. In late September, the government removed a $20 truck toll and $10 passenger vehicle toll from the Coquihalla Highway, which connects the city of Hope to Kamloops, B.C., in the Canadian West. Provincial officials said that truckers were pleased with the move, and they were. “Given the price of fuel, truckers are very happy with this,” Bridgitte Anderson, spokeswoman for British Columbia...

State transportation officials are poised to issue billions of dollars in debt to help speed road construction, a move that will keep Dallas-area projects on schedule for now but will do little to shore up the state's long-term road-funding crisis. The Texas Department of Transportation will likely begin issuing $1.5 billion in bonds within 60 days, pending the recovery of the nation's upended credit markets, and is taking steps to borrow another $6.4 billion over the next few years. Historic turmoil in the credit markets is already costing the department hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra interest payments each...

The Texas Department of Transportation, which has alternated between fiscal gluttony and subsistence the past few years, may be about to belly up to a feast again. A feast paid for with money to be borrowed, mind you. Given the state of credit markets, one hesitates to reach for the salt right away. But absent the financial Armageddon that the president and others have been gabbing about, TxDOT might be sitting on an $8 billion stash this time next year. Even in the zero-laden world of government spending, $8 billion would be a significant infusion into TxDOT's budget. Without that...

The Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission met Thursday to hear a presentation by the commission's president, Hank Gilbert, who said the plans to move the Trans-Texas Corridor to the current U.S. Hwy. 59 location may not come to fruition. The Texas Department of Transportation initially planned to build a new highway system, which would have been as large as 1,200-feet wide, that would run through rural areas of East Texas, including Nacogdoches County. However, TxDOT scrapped those plans in June and announced a new proposal to build the TTC along the existing route of U.S. Hwy 59. But Gilbert, of the...

It's good to see the state's top three leaders now on the same page – literally – on at least a few ways to attack the problem of under-funded roadway needs. Breakthrough No. 1 – admitting a problem. Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick – never political chums – all put their signatures on a joint statement last week conceding that Texas' "ability to fund needed transportation projects in the future is limited." Breakthrough No. 2 – committing to specific fixes. The most welcome one was a pledge to quit siphoning off road money...

Governor Perry and other state leaders have agreed to bring a halt to the practice which some say has led to toll roads...the diversion of money from the state's highway fund to other projects, 1200 WOAI news reports. "Implement a plan that sets a definitive course to end the practice of funding the Department of Public Safety with gas taxes that are needed for road construction, and return to funding the DPS with general revenue," is the first goal in a long term transportation funding plan released by Perry, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, and House Speaker Tom Craddick. 1200 WOAI...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Public investment funds based in Texas could invest directly in transportation projects through a new corporation under a plan unveiled on Thursday by the state's legislative leaders and the governor. Texas has the nation's biggest road privatization plan but the legislature, reacting to criticisms that developers were enriching themselves at the expense of taxpayers, enacted a two-year moratorium. That has crimped road-building projects and led to a series of clashes between the governor and the legislature, who now have agreed on a compromise plan. Developers, including overseas companies, investment banks and private equity funds all vie...

BAGHDAD -- A political turf war is threatening the stability of Iraq's biggest cash cow: the embattled but so-far dependable South Oil Co. After chasing gunmen off the streets of the southern oil city of Basra this year, Iraq's central government is trying to reassert control over South Oil, the state-owned oil company based there. In May, Baghdad said it was reassigning the company's top executive, Jabber el-Leaby, to an advisory position at the Oil Ministry -- a move many observers see as a demotion. Mr. Leaby is widely credited by U.S. officials and Iraqi oil technocrats with having led...

Paraphrasing, here's how the exchange went between congressional Democrats and the president over lifting their respective bans on offshore drilling: President Bush: "We need to lift the bans. Americans are being hammered by high gasoline prices." Democrats in Congress: "You go first." President Bush: "OK, I hereby lift the presidential ban on offshore drilling. Your turn." Democrats in Congress: "Forget that. Gasoline prices are too low. Let's raise the gasoline tax 56 percent instead." Why would they propose that? Because next year, the Federal Highway Trust Fund, where gasoline-tax receipts collect, will be at least $3 billion in the red;...

Melissa mayor mailing resolutions to fellow mayors to stop state from using gas tax funds for non-road projects BY DANNY GALLAGHER, McKinney Courier-Gazette Melissa Mayor David Dorman said he sits in his office everyday and watches as cars zoom down State Highway 121, a road that will soon start collecting tolls from drivers who use it to get to Dallas, McKinney, Frisco or the Dallas North Tollway and back again. Dorman said before that happens, he wants to know the roads his citizens and drivers are paying the state to use will be maintained and built with those funds. “I...