BIKE: Sea-of-red-ink planning by CAMPO

[Roger Baker]

Note agenda item #5 on the 2030 plan at the following link.

http://www.campotexas.org/comm_tpb_agendas.php

You can get a CD of the latest 100+ page draft of the 2030 plan at the 
CAMPO office, or download the full file too, I think.

One of the miraculous things about CAMPO planning is how it flips back 
and forth from the financially unconstrained, 
make-every-developer-happy network of toll roads urged by Perry and 
TxDOT and road contractors -- like TxDOT's planning marching orders 
under which the toll roads recently got approved.

But now CAMPO is flipping back to the federal rules that mandate that 
CAMPO planning must be financially realistic, even in theory. But as we 
can see from the following, the toll road mode of planning has created 
a $5.8 billion local dollar sea of red ink, even ignoring the generous 
assumptions of boomtown sprawl development that CAMPO is using (by 
choosing the high in-migration assumption state data center numbers). 
Once you take out all the light rail, like CAMPO effectively did on 
secretive arm-twisting from Krusee., and once you shift from compact 
transit-friendly development over to serving sprawl with roads, what do 
you expect? The finances then just spin out of control, even on paper, 
according to whatever mysterious future travel demand model is used by 
CAMPO.

Essentially, for toll road approval purposes, CAMPO plugged in all the 
toll roads and then pretended that all the widenings of the secondary 
arterials throughout Austin needed to handle the generated traffic 
would be unimportant in cost, and scarcely worth mentioning during the 
toll road debates. (It may even be that a dollar spent building a free 
toll road makes you have to do two dollars worth of stuff like widening 
of 45th running through Central Austin; you'll have to ask CAMPO that 
at their next meeting).

Things are now so royally screwed up that Aulick's memo quoted below 
merely says there is a whole lot of red ink involved in whatever 
transportation revenue and future travel modeling process they use in 
constructing our toll road future. The major second part of Aulick's 
memo is a pretty dumb article from the Brookings institute, which 
article says we cannot solve our congestion problems because of our 
permanently booming economy, but that we should pretty much just try to 
muddle through with many small solutions, much as usual. We are 
referring here to congestion problems that toll roads were supposed to 
solve, remember?  (and with which material CAMPO director Michael 
Aulick said he agrees on transpo planning).  -- Roger

"...Financially Constraining the Second Draft  As CAMPO staff refines 
the 2030 roadway and transit networks for the second draft of the plan, 
  we will also need to identify project cost savings and additional 
revenue that can be included in  the plan.  Anticipated toll revenue 
will play an important part; however, this revenue alone will  not be 
able to make up the entire $5.8 billion shortfall identified in the 
first draft plan..."

(From page 3 of agenda item 5)