Date:        6/20/01 12:40 PM
From:        rcbaker@eden.infohwy.com
To:          austin-bikes@topica.com

I notice on the federal Record of Decision on SH 130, no bicycle lanes 
are being required on either the frontage road portions of this highway 
or the non-frontage road portions; in both cases it is up to someone else 
to do later with their own money. The feds rubberstamped the TxDOT/TTA 
plans for SH 130 as acceptable, despite the fact that an alignment has 
not even been chosen, nor the exact roadway function determined -- (Will 
SH 130 be built initially as a narrowed segment from East Austin into 
Williamson County for commuters, or a toll road, or a bypass for NAFTA 
traffic clear down to Seguin? Nobody is quite sure yet, but the feds are 
certain of this one thing; that whatever design finally comes out of the 
ongoing SH 130 planning process need not include bike facilities!)

The fact that the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce is organizing a 
large delegation of 40 to go to washington to lobby for more federal 
money for this $1.5 billion dollar SH 130, as reported about a week ago 
in the Statesman, should be sufficient proof that roads remain a big 
political pork barrel in Washington, even now that Bud Shuster of the 
House transpo Committee is gone. Those who have the political clout get 
the roads as the Chamber junket proves.

The more the money runs short, the more political the big roads get. Did 
anyone catch my letter in the Austin Chronicle this week to that effect?

I have heard through the grapevine that the New York bond houses may be 
reluctant to fund Texas toll roads on the grounds that their funds for 
this kind of purpose may be more limited than TxDOT and the Chamber are 
assuming. 

Of course TxDOT's position is that current sprawl trends will continue 
for decades to come, making the roads designed by private real estate 
interests seem like sound investments in terms in terms of future toll 
revenues. If you look at the SH 130 documents, they make no effort to 
even consider future gasoline costs as a planning factor! 

The truth is that these big roads are little more than federally/state 
funded real estate development subsidies.  With no reality check other 
than any tendency of Texas politics to reform itself, despite drastic 
shortfalls compared to TxDOT's historic funding, which is why toll roads 
are all the rage nowadays. (Sort of like solving future social security 
shortfall problems by telling folks to invest their SS payments in the 
stock market).

And did you see the James Scaggs letter to editor blasting light rail in 
the Statesman this morning? It says that since light rail is not a proven 
magic cure for congestion and pollution problems it is thenrefore 
worthless as a step in the right direction! These guys are trying to 
define light rail as a failed cure for what roads themselves cannot cure 
-- and are making worse. This as a warm-up for killing the next light 
rail election here in Austin. One good response is to point out that the 
Ben White/IH 35 interchange will cost about $160 for every citizen in 
Austin in taxes yet do practically nothing to really speed up trips, as 
pointed out by Kelly Daniel in the Statesman a few months ago.

Also, the federal certification review of the CAMPO planning process is 
being drafted by FHWA Mike Leary and is proposed for release in mid-July 
and then will probably be given to CAMPO at their August meeting. This is 
the report card the feds give to CAMPO to tell them how to improve their 
planning process.

In truth the CAMPO planning process could scarcely be worse, the CAMPO is 
not financially constrained as federal law requires, and the feds are 
toothless watchdogs except where the federal law has numbers like on 
ozone levels, and even there the CAMPO reforms are a very slow process. 
You could die of old age waiting for CAMPO to make the fundamental 
reforms outlined by the Peer Review process last year. I think Sen. 
Gonzalo Barrientos considers CAMPO his personal  political fiefdom, and 
will decline to reform it no matter what the $200,000 Peer Review team 
recommended. 

By far the most likely factor to stop this historical pattern of denial 
and corruption, IMHO, is the end of cheap oil as world production peaks, 
now predicted within five years by the best experts like Colin Campbell. 
Some estimates like the World Resources Institute put the peak at ten 
years, but in any case, it is far less than the planned toll roads need 
to pay back their cost. 

The road goes on forever, and the party never ends. -- Roger