BIKE: proctology of Texas road politics

[Roger Baker]

[I've posted some of this before, but here is a restatement of the big  
picture. -- Roger]

The Texas Transportation Commission approved the eight metro plans from  
around the state yesterday, as a basis for handing out their state  
mobility fund money.

The Statesman article is reproduced below. (Incidently I think Ben Wear  
is an excellent transpo reporter; he digs deep into the policy  
background, understands the politics, and writes pretty good too).

There is now an interesting bureaucratic tug-of-war going on here  
between the state and federal levels whereby the state TTC hands out  
mobility fund money based on distant future projected need; this  
planning was mandated from the state TTC level to be done by the eight  
metro areas as if long term funding were unlimited, congestion could be  
improved by building lots of roads to facilitate future proposed  
developments, etc.

Meanwhile, federal TEA-21 law still mandates that the MPO (CAMPO's)  
planning be financially constrained. So CAMPO is apparently doing a  
sort of double bookkeeping; its 2030 plan to be finished early next  
year will satisfy federal requirements will be financially constrained,  
but the toll road-centric plan approved yesterday by the TTC as a basis  
for passing out money is not.

To have the TTC undercutting federal law by awarding money to cities  
that plan otherwise seems to be unambiguously bad oversight by the  
Federal Highway Administration. (I anticipate that if Kerry wins he  
will run a tighter ship in term of federal oversight of state policy).

Meanwhile, in Texas, anything goes.  Accordingly, the TTC assures us  
that we are about to see a huge surge in road contracts, partly funded  
by various creative funding schemes like privatizing Loop 360, etc. For  
the moment at least, Texas remains a road contractor's and land  
speculator's paradise.

But the TTC is also aware of all the messy politics that is coming out  
of all this (see www.corridorwatch.org) as the political backlash,  
especially now that Strayhorn is making tolling of existing roads an  
issue (much of current state policy may be considered to have  
originated from Perry's office).  In essence the suburbs do not like  
being used as cash cows to generate the money for TxDOT's new roads by  
tolling existing roads.

Thus my interpretation is that because of the political pressure from  
the toll roads, the TTC is now willing to do political deals with  
squeaky political wheels.  They recently soothed feelings of local  
residents on the tolled part of Loop 1 north  at an added TxDOT cost of  
$25 million. Likewise, they may be willing to remove the Loop 1 south  
toll bridge, or grant sound walls along Loop 1, etc. Or maybe even  
re-negotiate the recent amendments to the toll road plan, all depending  
on the political pressures involved.

Meanwhile, nobody should have any illusions that what the TTC approved  
yesterday, CAMPO's portion of the statewide TMMP approved yesterday, is  
actually a workable plan.

It clearly is not, even aside from the political problems it is now  
generating. The two major reasons the plan they approved will not work  
are unresolvable funding gap debt and rising fuel costs.

The plan has $8.5 billion in unfunded road maintenance debt,  
acknowledged in writing in the plan approved by the TTC yesterday, plus  
another $3.4 billion that is likely an unfunded mandate for widening  
Austin's arterials to complement the toll roads.

Does anyone seriously believe that CAMPO's planners were so incompetent  
as to completely ignore $8.5 billions in road maintenance costs while  
at the same time doing good planning on billions of dollars worth of  
toll roads?

All that is documented here:

http://www.dot.state.tx.us/transcom/agendas/1004.htm

If you go to item 7 of the above link and open it up, you will find a  
blue MO link to TxDOT's new statewide Texas Metropolitan Mobility Plan,  
with Austin's toll roads featured as a prominent central element, this  
being subject to approval this Thursday morning at the TTC meeting.

This is a 71 page long PDF file, and if you go the appendix item  CI,  
there you will find Austin's new plan (as mandated in accord with the  
wishes of Governor Rick Perry) and here summarized by TxDOT in ten or  
so pages.

"In addition to the $3.45 billion needed to fill the gap, the CAMPO   
TMMP has identified the need of $8.5 billion to address the  
rehabilitation of the transportation system. This important aspect will  
require further study".  -- page 27

Finally, the toll roads are planned as roads to be be built as soon as  
possible, with tax-free municipal bond debt money gotten as soon as the  
CTRMA can go to Wall Street and borrow the cash. They are designed to  
satisfy current travel and growth trends 30 years into the future  
(until the long-term bonds are paid off).

But if you look at the financial analysis in the billions in CTTP bonds  
already issued by TxDOT, the consultant says that the bonds are only  
good investments so long as the price of fuel does not exceed $2.50 a  
gallon adjusted for inflation -- over the long life of the bonds.

In other words, if the price of gasoline goes up over the next thirty  
years even as much as it has in the past year, the SH 130 toll road  
bonds already sold would not be considered by the official CTTP bond  
analyst to be sound investments!

I think all the toll road bonds already issued by TxDOT are doomed to  
default only a few years after they open. Just read what immediately  
follows. -- Roger Baker, road scholar

                                 ***********************************

This warning from OPEC to the USA to start selling its emergency  
strategic petroleum reserves to hold down
oil costs is an ominous sign. It is OPEC's way of telling the USA that  
it is facing an emergency. It amounts to the captain of an airliner  
telling his passengers to make sure their parachutes are ready to  
deploy:

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news? 
pid=10001099&sid=a5SegP7d1RuA&refer=energy


                                             
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http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/auto/epaper/editions/ 
friday/metro_state_1418be257535306e0027.html

Signals encouraging on South MoPac toll plan

But no certainty yet on removing tolls from MoPac at William Cannon

By Ben Wear

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, October 29, 2004

The Texas Transportation Commission sent some pretty thick smoke  
signals Thursday that it will go along with an emerging plan to refrain  
from charging tolls on MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) at William Cannon  
Drive. But it was still smoke.

  Certainty, in the form of explicit promises to replace that lost toll  
revenue with state money for sound walls or other projects on MoPac  
(Loop 1), will have to wait for another day.

  But state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, Austin Mayor Will Wynn  
and Travis County Commissioner Karen Sonleitner got a double helping of  
sympathy and bonhomie when they spoke at the commission's monthly  
meeting.

  "It's safe to say that all five of us (commissioners) have grieved for  
you," commission Chairman Ric Williamson said to Wynn, who's the target  
of a recall effort because he joined 15 other members of the Capital  
Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board in a July vote  
authorizing tolls on seven new or expanded Central Texas roads.  
Frontage roads on those highways would be free.

  Barrientos said the South MoPac toll road "has probably been the most  
discussed, or cussed, part of this plan." He said a better approach has  
been found: tolling a fourth lane added to each side of MoPac (without  
widening it) from Town Lake to Parmer Lane. "To do that, we're going to  
need your help."

  Wynn delivered much the same message.

  If Barrientos and Wynn were vague in expressing just what help they  
wanted, the commissioners were encouraging but equally vague in  
offering to help.

  "We're going to say, 'Look, we're your partner. We're here to do all  
we can," Williamson said.

  bwear; 445-3698
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