BIKE: Click here fast! TIME reports on Texas toll roads

[David Dobbs]

Dear fellow cyclists,

In case you had a problem (as I did) with the TIME URL for the Texas 
toll roads story, here is the story and the URL that worked for me. 
The URL probably has a limited shelf life.

This is a huge media kudos for those on the front line of this fight. 
Roger deserves a lot of credit for this.

Dave Dobbs

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Texas Association for Public Transportation
9702 Swansons Ranch Road
Austin, Texas 78748
Ph 512.282.1149

Visit our website at  http://www.lightrailnow.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From the Dec. 06, 2004 issue of TIME magazine

URL = 
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101041206-832224,00. 
html

The Next Wave in Superhighways, or A Big, Fat Texas Boondoggle?

The fight is on over a plan to build vast corridors for cars, trucks, 
trains - and almost everything else

By CATHY BOOTH; THOMAS HUTTO

Monday, Dec. 06, 2004
 To see the future of transportation in Texas, you have to drive out 
to the prairie north of Austin, past the sprawling plants of Dell and 
Samsung, to the farthest suburbs, where wild grass and cornfields 
nuzzle up to McMansions with their perfect green lawns. There, giant 
earthmovers, their wheels taller than a Texan in his boots, are 
ripping up the gummy, black soil to lay a 49-mile stretch of concrete 
tollway. State Highway 130, at a cost of $1.5 billion, is the biggest 
highway project under way in the U.S. today. It is also the first 
test in concrete for the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC)--a radical 
rethinking of the nation's Eisenhower-era roadways.

 The brainchild of Texas' Republican Governor, Rick Perry, the TTC 
would, if built, completely transform the state's highways over the 
next 50 years, creating a 4,000-mile network of multimodal corridors 
for transporting goods and people by car, truck, rail and utility 
line. Each corridor would have six lanes for cars, four additional 
lanes for 18-wheel trucks, half a dozen rail lines and a utility zone 
for moving oil and water, gas and electricity, even broadband data. 
The corridors could measure up to a quarter of a mile across. The 
projected cost, at least $183 billion, is more than the original 
price tag for the entire U.S. interstate system. But Texas, going it 
alone, is seeking private companies to take on the mammoth job of 
constructing, financing, operating and maintaining the network. To 
pay for the roads, developers will rely on a familiar but 
long-neglected method of financing: tollbooths.

 Depending on whom you talk to, the Trans-Texas Corridor is either an 
innovative solution to the U.S.'s overcrowded highway system or a 
Texas-size boondoggle. Backers claim that such corridors are needed 
to divert road and rail traffic - NAFTA truckers driving up from 
Mexico, railcars of Chinese goods from Western ports, hazardous 
cargoes of all kinds - from congested urban areas. Buying land for 
the system now, decades before it's needed, would cut acquisition 
costs and might entice businesses to relocate inside the corridors. 
T. Boone Pickens could ship his West Texas water across the state in 
pipelines through the corridors; oil and gas could be shipped north 
from Mexico; even high-speed passenger rail lines could become 
reality. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is not just a road, not just 
asphalt," says Perry. "It's a vision."

 Opponents of the corridor range from environmentalists (the Sierra 
Club has called it "evil") to the Texas Republican Party, which has 
urged the legislature to repeal it. Texas, which is losing more land 
to sprawl than any other state, would need more than 9,000 sq. mi. of 
right-of-way for the corridors, affecting critical wetlands and 
pristine prairie lands. The Big Thicket National Preserve, considered 
"the biological crossroads of North America" for its mix of habitats, 
was put on the list of most-endangered parks by the National Parks 
Conservation Association this year, in part because of the threat 
from the Perry plan.

 Environmentalists have found an unlikely ally in traditionally 
conservative landowners worried about property rights. David 
Langford, an activist for the Texas Wildlife Association, is 
organizing farmers and ranchers whose land could be cut in half or 
condemned by the Trans-Texas Corridor. An early plan for central 
Texas showed a corridor passing near the homestead Langford's family 
settled in 1851. With the state's new "quick claim" ability - granted 
under TTC legislation - his family homestead could be gone in 90 
days, he says, transferred to private investors operating the 
corridor. Though he would be compensated financially, he's still 
steamed. "I can't believe Rick Perry's grandfather would want his 
house and ranch taken and turned over to Paris Hilton's family to 
build a hotel on one of these roads," he says.

Page 1 of 3

 Local politicians are mobilizing too. The TTC legislation, passed 
after eight hours of debate, in June 2003, drew little attention 
until Republican activist David Stall, a former city manager of 
Columbus, in East Texas, discovered a notice for hearings buried in 
the ads for gravel and road-material bids. He was "horrified" to 
discover that the corridor, as a limited-access turnpike, would steal 
business his town gets from travelers. Today public officials from 
six counties along the corridor route have joined his grass-roots 
group, CorridorWatch, to oppose the TTC. "There is no legislative 
oversight, no elected officials overseeing the contracts to build and 
operate these toll roads," Stall complains.

 But the worst ruckus broke out in Austin last summer, when commuters 
realized that the "innovative" financing authorized by the 
Trans-Texas legislation meant they would start paying tolls. 
Traditionally, highways have been financed by gasoline-tax revenues. 
But that money now barely covers road maintenance, much less new 
construction, and raising gas taxes is as politically unpalatable in 
Texas as it is everywhere else. The state, for the first time, can go 
into debt by issuing bonds for new roads. Although those bonds can be 
paid back by a number of possible revenue sources (such as steeper 
fines for drunken driving), Texas policy now is to look first at 
tolling for all new highway projects.

 What's more, the TTC legislation allows existing roads, not just new 
ones, to be converted to tollways. "They can take any highway 
anywhere, anytime, and put a tollbooth there," says Sal Costello, 
whose group, AustinTollParty, argues that putting tollbooths on roads 
already paid for with gas taxes amounts to "double taxation" of 
commuters. The political outcry is having an effect. After Austin 
approved eight new toll projects for roads and bridges, a recall 
campaign was launched against the Democratic mayor and two city 
councilmen. "It's been a true grass prairie fire," says Brewster 
McCracken, one of the city councilmen targeted. He's now against 
conversions.

 Congress in the 1950s expressly rejected tolls as a way of financing 
the nation's interstate highways. But the Bush Administration, faced 
with an aging freeway system and a lack of money for building and 
maintenance, is rethinking the idea. Mary E. Peters, head of the 
Federal Highway Administration, has called Perry's TTC plan a "bold 
concept." President Bush has threatened to veto any increase in the 
nation's 18.4¢ gasoline tax and has expressed support for tolls on 
interstate highways. Other states, such as California, Missouri and 
Minnesota, are closely watching the Texas toll experiment.

 Perry, a farm boy from West Texas who studied animal science at 
Texas A&M University, sees the Trans-Texas Corridor as a way to make 
his mark by tackling the state's growing congestion. Urban rush-hour 
drivers were stuck in traffic for an average of 46 hr. in 2002, 
nearly triple the time in 1982, according to a study conducted by the 
Texas Transportation Institute. Increasingly, tolls are seen as a way 
to reduce traffic. "We simply can't afford to build our way out of 
traffic congestion, so we have to better manage it," says Michael 
Replogle, transportation director of Environmental Defense, a 
nonprofit group that advocates "time-of-day tolling": tolls that 
would take effect during rush hours to discourage driving at peak 
times.

Page 2 of 3


 The Trans-Texas Corridor has won accolades from conservatives like 
Wendell Cox, transportation guru at the Texas Public Policy 
Foundation, who hails it as "the first serious innovative thinking in 
transportation in a half-century." Texas economist Ray Perryman 
estimates that the TTC could generate $135 billion in annual personal 
income for Texans and nearly 2.2 million jobs. But not everyone 
accepts his projection of $13 billion a year in revenues from the 
corridors. Kara Kockelman at the University of Texas' Center for 
Transportation Research warns that NAFTA-generated trade could 
decline and unforeseen crises, like the terrorist attacks in 2001, 
could affect travel. The state has had to buy back its first private 
toll road - promoted by a former Democratic candidate for Governor, 
Tony Sanchez - for $20 million.

 None of that has stopped an array of private companies from trying 
to get a piece of the new Texas road-building boom. Sometime in 
December, the Texas Transportation Commission, a five-member board 
appointed by the Governor, will award a $24 billion contract to 
develop proposals for the TTC's first multimodal corridor - a 
600-mile stretch from Mexico to Oklahoma needed for NAFTA trucking 
and rail. In the running are three consortiums, one headed by the 
California-based Fluor Corp., another that includes Halliburton's 
Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary and a third headed by the Spanish 
tollway operator Cintra. Fluor got into the game early. It submitted 
an unsolicited bid for work on the Trans-Texas Corridor in early 
2002, before there was even an approved state plan. "Our work on SH 
130 is considered the TTC's precursor," says Fluor vice president 
Steve Dobbs.

 The toll issue could come back to haunt the Governor, who is up for 
re-election in 2006. Perry's hefty donations from construction firms 
have been noted by public watchdogs. Since 1997, he has received more 
than $1 million from highway interests, according to reports filed 
with the Texas ethics commission. Two Republican rivals - Senator Kay 
Bailey Hutchison and state comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn - have 
opposed the tolling of existing roads. Perry now says he, too, is 
against conversions, but notes that those decisions are up to local 
authorities.

 Meanwhile, in the town of Hutto, north of Austin, the construction 
on State Highway 130 is a sign of things to come. Farmers no longer 
gather at the cotton gin, but the town's first national chain, Home 
Depot, has moved in. Mayor Mike Ackerman drives by the construction 
site every day on his way to work and is sanguine about the changing 
face of his town. "Anything we can do to get traffic moving north and 
south, we need to do," he says. The question is whether the rest of 
Texas agrees with him.

- With reporting by Hilary Hylton/Austin

Road to the Future?
 THE VISION: Cars, trucks, and rail and utility lines will travel 
along the same intrastate corridors, up to a quarter-mile in width. 
The cost: at least $183 billion, financed primarily by tolls.

 THE CASE FOR: A way to move NAFTA traffic and dangerous cargo away 
from urban areas, relieving congestion. Buying swaths of land now is 
cheaper in the long run. And with gas taxes unable to support new 
roads, tolls are needed.

 THE OBJECTIONS: The roads will gobble up too much land, may harm the 
environment and will take business away from the bypassed towns. As 
for the return of tollbooths - no way!

Page 3 of 3

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 12820 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bicycleaustin.info/private.cgi/forum-bicycleaustin.info/attachments/20041129/f8cfae9d/attachment.bin