BIKE: Response to today's Chron article

[rcbaker]

[This may be too long to get in the Chron, but its all true, IMO]

I believe Mike Clark Madison's article "The Transporters" was factual, 
but did not make very clear the complex politics needed to properly 
understand what is happening and why. 

The toll road lobby associated with Pete Winstead, "Citizens for 
Mobility" is closely tied to the same real estate and road construction 
special interests that have always promoted roads. Roads in Texas 
have evolved into a sort of institutionalized public subsidy for private 
real estate development. Molly Ivins hasn't called TxDOT the 
"Pentagon of Texas" for nothing. 

My take on the toll roads is that the real justification for quick approval 
is political because the interests promoting these roads sense growing 
political opposition if the public thoroughly examines and starts 
questioning the true long-range implications of these same toll roads. 

The special interests are trying to hold a relatively small $65 million 
regional rail plan election in November hostage to the immediate 
approval of their far larger $2.2 billion toll road package. Mike Krusee's 
threat is that if the traditional progressive transit advocates don't 
support the toll roads, then the road lobby will raid Capital Metro's 
budget and permanently cripple rail. I do think this rail line is a sensible 
if modest first step toward rail transit in this area, but it should not be 
held hostage to fast approval of billions in future debt for special-
interest toll roads involving little comprehensive planning. 

The $2.2 billion toll road package is being jointly promoted by TxDOT 
and the unelected Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority 
established by Rick Perry. These interests are trying to pressure the 
elected officials on CAMPO to immediately approve the entire multi-toll 
road package in July after only one public hearing. Since a large part of 
the burden of future cost would fall on suburban residents by tolling 
existing publicly funded roads, it is easy to understand why suburban 
residents are among the most vocal in questioning the fairness of these 
roads. 

The political argument is that if we do not approve all these toll roads 
immediately, then Dallas and Houston are waiting to steal away our 
share of Texas Mobility Fund money. The fact is that there is only now 
about $26 million in the statewide Texas Mobility Fund, while the big 
money claimed to be at risk is to come only later in the legislative 
biennium. Furthermore, there have been no traffic or revenue studies of 
these toll roads that could be said constitute a coherent workable plan 
to solve future congestion problems. In fact, TxDOT has not even 
roughly calculated what it would cost the average Austin area driver or 
commuter to drive on these proposed roads. Nor has TxDOT publicly 
revealed or approved the Texas Mobility Fund's "strategic plan" that the 
enabling legislation requires before it can start doling out Mobility Fund 
money. TxDOT's current road planning is so short-sighted that it has 
not reserved the money to assure the future maintenance of the roads it 
has already built.

The toll road proponents will tell you that TxDOT is facing a road 
funding crisis, which is true in a sense, but they don't want you to ask 
why their planning has been so short-sighted that they have gotten 
themselves into such a crisis. The fact is that you cannot build your way 
out of congestion by building new roads, unless you first stop trying to 
serve the unsustainable sprawl-as-usual land use development 
patterns that got us into this mess. 

The reason that gasoline prices are now soaring is that world oil 
production is now stretched to the limit, but that this key risk factor has 
been ignored by the toll road planners, even though it is highly likely to 
cause travel and land use patterns to change over the thirty year 
lifetime of toll road municipal revenue bonds. Bond default could ruin 
the credit ratings of local county governments that helped to issue the 
toll road bonds.

If the current policies are so bad that the only way out of this crisis is 
said to toll existing roads plus go deeply into debt to continue status 
quo road-building policies, then surely we ought to delay toll road 
approval long enough to examine whether alternatives to these 
policies make better sense. 

-- Roger