BIKE: Texas House Transportation Committee meeting

[Roger Baker]

Most of the HTC meeting yesterday, March 29, centered on the following  
bills, all apparently supported by Rep. Mike Krusee and TxDOT. Krusee  
seems to do usually what TxDOT wants, and echoes their arguments pretty  
consistantly in his House Transpo Committee, which in this case was a  
pretty docile group:

HB 2653

This is claimed to allow denser development around transit stations in  
return for land preserves elsewhere. There is a tax increment financing  
element that might be controversial since it raises taxes on everyone  
else until the projected development occurs.

<http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/tlo/textframe.cmd? 
LEG=79&SESS=R&CHAMBER=H&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=02653&VERSION=1&TYPE=F>

HB 2658

This is a bill, supported by landowners along SH 130, to declare this  
toll road between Austin and Georgetown a billboard free zone. A big  
reason is probably that billboards make an area look tacky; they  
decrease the appeal of an area for the new development that the many  
powerful land development interests hope the road will attract. Another  
angle is that anti-billboard policies apparently enable some federal  
funds.

SH 130 has been historically promoted by land development interests  
(particularly by land use planner, transportation consultant, and  
ex-CTRMA official Mike Weaver). SH130 is essentially a highway to  
attract future Williamson County development outside Austin's tax base,  
rather than the IH 35 bypass that it was once claimed to be. Will  
Wynn's aide Matt Curtis spoke in favor of this bill on behalf of Mayor  
Wynn.

HB 2138

This is a "permissive" bill strongly supported by TxDOT which would  
"allow" existing transit and toll road authorities to be absorbed into  
RMAs. Just offering a possible hypothetical choice, right?

This is really a turf battle between existing transportation  
authorities such as the NTTA, the North Texas Transit Authority versus  
TxDOT. The existing authorities fear that any bill that merely gives  
permission to TxDOT (or the RMAs that it effectively controls) to take  
over rival authorities, very likely means that it will really happen --  
or else why would TxDOT take the trouble to make the change legal?

TxDOT usually gets its way in the end; it is the biggest pork  
barrel/political lobby in Texas. TxDOT seems to want to take all such  
authorities under its own control and management. It argues that what  
the urban areas need is unified planning which its RMAs can provide.  
(But isn't the function of MPO's exactly to provide this unified  
regional planning?)

One problem is that there are bonds involved, and bond lawyers hold  
enormous legal veto power over any changes in the control of a project  
once the bonds are sold. They don't like takeovers or any changes to  
their long range signed contracts.

Another angle might be that TxDOT has expressed a determination to have  
a seamless statewide toll collection system; one big integrated tolling  
system for the whole state. The NTTA and their political allies to the  
north of Dallas, the Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition, etc.,  
testified that they already have their own stand-alone, smoothly  
functioning toll tag system.

The NTTA says it isn't broke and doesn't need fixing by TxDOT. This  
could threaten Capitol Metro's independence in the future by making  
them subject to a CTRMA takeover.

HB 2666

This would allow a special collection and fining system to be set up  
outside normal county authority. Apparently, there are typically maybe  
100 toll violations per day and this would overload county courts and  
require a separate toll fining and collection system. Toll roads need  
their own separate local justice system.

<http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/tlo/textframe.cmd? 
LEG=79&SESS=R&CHAMBER=H&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=02666&VERSION=1&TYPE=F>

HB 3308

There is an increasing tendency for local government to be used as a  
collection agency to collect fines for TxDOT. TxDOT now wants a bigger  
piece of the defensive driving action; about $30 per, also the overload  
vehicle fine increases sharply. The total diversion of money from the  
Texas general revenue fund to TxDOT's Texas Mobility Fund would be  
about $280 million per year which would have to be made up some other  
way by the legislature.

This steady fine-based revenue stream is what TxDOT hopes to use as  
collateral to borrow much more money from Wall Street to supply the  
Mobility Fund to contract building toll roads in the eight major urban  
areas of Texas where 2/3 of this money is to be used.

<http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/tlo/textframe.cmd? 
LEG=79&SESS=R&CHAMBER=H&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=03308&VERSION=1&TYPE=F>

TxDOT's justification is that  the Texas legislature ordered them to  
relieve congestion, and the only way they know way to relieve  
congestion (without changing the current urban sprawl land use trends)  
is by building lots of roads. Unfortunately, roads take lots of upkeep,  
especially as they age, so that the cost of maintaining a road for 30  
years is about the same as building a whole new road.

Using creative financing to build lots of new toll roads right now, as  
TxDOT hopes to do, of course means that the new roads will have lots of  
debt and administrative costs to pay off, plus these upkeep costs.

Building toll roads immediately with the leveraged Texas Mobility Fund  
is in effect a huge gamble that current trends with regard to driving  
costs and driving habits and growth patterns will not change for  
decades to come.

In order to help bolster the argument for toll roads and sell them to  
an increasingly unhappy Texas legislature, Rick Williamson says TxDOT  
is number crunching to calculate the negative costs of congestion and  
also the positive benefits of building more toll roads now rather than  
later.

There was a recent setback for TxDOT when the Texas Bond Review Board  
did not certify some TxDOT bonding for approval. Since TxDOT's finances  
are stretched quite thin by their recent expansion of road contracting,  
by every possible means, this has caused them to cancel some projects,  
at least until they can squeeze some more money out of the Texas  
Legislature.  -- Roger Baker