SH 130 in the red--taxpayers making up the difference

The Statesman’s Ben Wear reports that the Texas Transportation Commission may be considering lowering tolls for trucks on SH 130 in order to lure more trucks from I-35. The article has an interesting discussion on what level of tolling would result in more trucks taking 130 at what result to overall toll revenues.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/truck-relief-on-i-35-maybe-a-little-718333.html

Wear notes that financially 130 is in the red. He reports, “The 2002 financial prospectus for investors who put $2.2 billion into Texas 130, Loop 1 and Texas 45 North showed initial toll rates unchanged until 2015, when a 50 percent increase was scheduled. Transportation commissioners have the power to raise rates before then, but they aren't talking publicly about doing so. But they might be considering it privately. According to figures from TxDOT Chief Financial Officer James Bass, the three-road system has required $68 million in tax money to balance the books over the first three years.”

So why is it a good idea to continue to build toll roads where taxpayers will be paying the investors? By the way, ground has been broken on the tolled interchange at 290 East and 183—a tolled interchange being paid for by taxpayer stimulus money.

Lone Star Rail hopes to move UP freight to Coupland area

The Statesman’s Ben Wear has provided an update on moving freight rail out of Austin to the Coupland area to make way for passenger rail on Union Pacific’s Austin line. Here’s the link to his column “A rail district by any other name still needs money.”

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/11/09/1109wear.html

Recently, the Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District held a news conference to announce that they have changed their name to the Lone Star Rail District.

Wear notes, “[T]he train service is still mostly a line on a map. As agency board chairman Sid Covington says, the main obstacles to creating a commuter line between Austin and San Antonio are now and always have been Union Pacific freights and money. . . . To make commuter rail viable, almost all of Union Pacific's freight runs would have to be moved to new or refurbished tracks east of the existing tracks.”

The 2008 Central Texas Rail Relocation Study shows two alternatives for the freight rail—expanding the rail line that goes through Coupland or constructing a new line from Taylor to San Antonio through the countryside west of Coupland. Wear points out, “Rerouting the Union Pacific trains from Taylor . . . would cost anywhere from almost $900 million . . . to $2.4 billion. The rail district last year was saying that construction of the line itself would take another $600 million.”

The Lone Star Rail District hopes that TxDOT and Union Pacific will pay for the alternate freight route.

Wear reports, “As for the passenger rail construction — 16 stations, trains, track and signal improvements, maintenance facilities — Lone Star officials see TxDOT paying half, the other half split roughly in thirds among governments in the Austin area, Bexar County and Comal and Hays counties.”

Right now, there is no money for this construction. What is new now is the Rail District will receive $40 million from the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and the San Antonio Metropolitan Planning Organization for design work and the environmental process. Wear says that these studies will begin early in 2010.

"The 290 E project is falling apart"

Ben Wear's recent coverage of the shrinking plan to toll 290 E

http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/2009/08/05/0805tollroad.html

has brought out varying ideas of what is really going on and what will happen on 290 E.

Vince May, Elgin-area resident, who has been fighting the 290 E toll plan for years, has sent out this message:

"The 290E project is falling apart.

"1) Notice that they have reneged on the promise of 3-lane frontage roads. This will mean only 1 lane going straight through at intersections. That is less than we have now, and violates state law.Why do I say this? Drive to Walmart on 183S. The frontage roads are 3 lanes. As you approach Cameron Rd the frontage road widens to 6 lanes. But only 2 lanes go straight through the light. No matter what time of day, there is always a queue in those lanes. You have to wait through 3 or more signal cycles during rush hour. TxDOT did this to force people to get on the proposed toll lanes and stay on the toll lanes. I have the map for the part of 183S that is still proposed for tolling. It has 2 lane frontage roads but the frontage roads narrow down to 1 lane at some intersections. I have to assume that they plan the same thing for 290E.

"2) Look at the $91 million that they plan to spend "buying right of way for the remaining several miles" while they have bridges missing on the first mile. This money will be spent on Kirk Watson's property and Green Line infrastructure, none of which is 290E ROW. I wonder if any of our other illustrious leaders are partners with Kirk?

"I don't think any of this will actually happen. But this is what they intended all along. Promise you a nice road for 15 cents per mile, then build an abomination and charge 50 cents per mile."

Senate has passed TxDOT Sunset Bill--what might happen next?

The Statesman's Ben Wear discusses where TxDOT Sunset stands now and its possible future.
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2009/05/26/txdot_sunset_now_what.html

HB 300 started out in the House as a huge bill and it has grown. Wear says:

"The thing had gotten so big by the time it reached the Senate floor that staffers printed it in an unusual single-spaced, legal-size paper format just to keep the height of the stack down. . . . The rough estimate is that in normal format HB 300 was a 700-page bill at least when it hit the Senate floor."

There are important differences between the House and Senate versions, and Wear discusses what might happen now and the timing:

"First, the 15 or so Senate amendments have to be incorporated and it has to be printed. This alone could take 24 hours. But we’re told that in the meantime, or perhaps after this is done, the bill would then go back to the House for concurrence.

"[S]tep two, the House declines to concur and appoints its five conference committee members. The two leaders of this almost surely will be Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, the bill sponsor, and Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, the House Transportation Committee chairman. . . . [The Senate] will then appoint its own conference committee members. The leaders there will be Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, the Senate sponsor, and Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee.

"Both the House and Senate must vote for final bills emerging from conference committees by midnight Sunday, the session’s penultimate day. . . . Realistically, then, negotiations have to be done by sometime Friday."

Some sort of measure to keep TxDOT going, rather than Sunset it, must be passed. It sounds like it will be difficult to go through all these steps in time to complete all the reorganization contained in HB 300. If the House and Senate can't get this bill out in time, or if they complete their work, but Perry vetoes it, I assume there will be some mechanism to keep TxDOT going the way it is for two more years and start the whole Sunset process over again for the 2011 session. If this is the case, untold hours of work by the Sunset staff, legislators, and citizens giving input will have been for naught, at least at this point.

HB 13 to prohibit free lane to toll lane conversions heard on April 21

In addition to HB 11 to kill the Corridor, the House Transportation Committee heard HB 13--like HB 11 authored by Leibowitz with one of the coauthors our HD 52 Representative Diana Maldonado.

HB 13 would plug the loopholes in a similar plan from Sen. Nichols--SB 220. The loopholes or exceptions in SB 220 would allow the tolling of 290 East to go ahead. HB 13 does not have these exceptions and would save 290 East as a free highway.

The Statesman's Ben Wear says "the legislation would effectively kill what used to be called the Phase 2 toll road plan." He opines that since there is still political support in Austin for the Phase 2 toll roads and since Kirk Watson, the CAMPO chair, is in an influential member of the State Senate, HB 13 probably will not pass the legislature.

Many members of the public at the hearing who spoke or filled out witness forms in favor of HB 11 also registered their support for HB 13. Like HB 11, 13 was left pending in committee.

Transportation Commission NOT using stimulus funds where most needed

Ben Wear has coverage of the tolled "Manor Expressway" flyovers that will be built with the stimulus funds that are supposed to be going to help people and the economy:

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/03/09/0309wear.html

"Q: I saw that $90 million of federal stimulus money will be used to build four flyover bridges connecting U.S. 290 and U.S. 183. Wouldn't it make more sense to use that money for flyovers at U.S. 183 and Interstate 35, or 290 and MoPac Boulevard? Isn't there more traffic at those places?

"A: Well yes, there is more traffic and missing flyovers at several other locations around town. The interstate has almost 250,000 cars a day at U.S. 183, which has 84,000 cars a day there, according to Texas Department of Transportation counts, and there are only two "direct connectors" there. It's the same at MoPac/U.S. 290 — two flyovers — with MoPac having 110,000 cars a day and U.S. 290 with 80,000 cars a day. At 183/290, by contrast, U.S. 183 has 50,000 cars a day and U.S. 290 has 43,000 cars a day.

"The key difference: tolls. The 183/290 interchange will be the west entry to and exit from what will be a toll road within three years, and the plan is to charge a 25-cent to 50-cent toll on the flyover bridges.

"The Texas Transportation Commission controlled the stimulus purse and, as evidenced by two-thirds of the $1.2 billion for new roads going to tollways, they had a clear preference."

If you follow the link, you can see several reader comments criticizing the stimulus funds going to this toll project.

Freight rail has to stay on Austin line to serve quarries, Ben Wear notices

Ben Wear had an interesting column in the Statesman several days ago--at least interesting to those of us who hope that moving freight rail from the Union Pacific line through Austin will NOT destroy the Coupland community. His column explains why it might be harder than the "powers that be" have let on to remove the UP freight traffic. Compliments to Ben for noticing and analyzing this, and I wonder why the activists in the movement to run commuter rail from Georgetown to San Antonio have not mentioned it.


http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/02/23/0223wear.html

Quarries present quandary for commuter rail push

A half-dozen quarries line the Union Pacific track in Round Rock-San Antonio corridor, making it problematic to move freight traffic to a new line east of Austin.

Ben describes the "quarries out west of the interstate. First, one just south of Buda. Then a large one by the community of Hunter, between San Marcos and New Braunfels. I saw two more before I got to Loop 1604 north of San Antonio.

". . . They hug the east edge of the Hill Country, just as I-35 does. And just as does Union Pacific's rail line, the one that cuts through Austin and San Marcos.

"Moving Union Pacific's freight traffic off to some new track miles to the east [eastern Williamson County], something that Central Texas civic leaders have pursued fruitlessly for years, may be more complicated than I had been led to believe. Because all those quarries, plus Austin White Lime in Northwest Austin and an enormous quarry operation north of Round Rock send their rock off to market on that Union Pacific track.

". . . Without finding a way to move all or almost all of those freight trains to some alternate track in the Taylor-Elgin-Bastrop corridor [possibly through downtown Coupland], the grandly named, if ill-financed, Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District is just spinning its notional wheels.

"Asking them to truck all that rock 20 miles east to a new line would make little sense. . . .

". . . The Round Rock-San Antonio corridor was already going to have to compete with other parts of the state for what might be $1 billion to $2 billion, and a state study last year showed that relocating Union Pacific would cost between $883 million and $2.4 billion. [This is the Central Texas Rail Relocation Study that showed either a new line going from Taylor to San Antonio or expanding the existing line through Coupland.]

"No one has yet identified other funding sufficient to move Union Pacific, much less the additional $600 million or more to get the passenger trains up and running. . . . The Austin-San Antonio commuter line may eventually be the little train that could. But it may have to navigate around a bunch of limestone to get there. "

Ben Wear on transportation legislation

Ben Wear has an interesting column in the Statesman today (“Tight budget may affect road bills”), discussing the bills that have been filed or are expected to be filed dealing with transportation for the current session.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/19/0119wear.html

The recent low revenue report from Comptroller Susan Combs indicates that legislators will have less money to distribute than they had expected, including for transportation projects.Some bills to watch:

(1) John Carona’s SB 217 which would adjust the gas tax. Transportation analyst Roger Baker says this new money “is small change compared to the billions a year shortfall envisioned by TxDOT’s ‘projected’ needs.”

(2) Given the proposal to move Union Pacific’s freight rail off its current Austin line to a new or expanded line in Eastern Williamson County, we should watch HB 564 and its companion SB 383 which would put $200 million a year into the currently empty Rail Relocation Fund.

(3) Unpopular with folks who have been fighting public-private partnerships is SB 404, Carona’s attempt to extend by six years TxDOT’s authority to use these PPP’s for toll roads. Some analysts speculate that this bill does not mean that Carona has become more of a fan of the PPP toll roads, but that he hates to take this option off the table if sufficient (in his opinion) road money cannot be raised otherwise.

(4) More of a favorite with anti-tollers will be Carona’s SB 384 that takes away TxDOT’s authority to pay for campaigns to promote toll roads. TxDOT’s Keep Texas Moving campaign--ads, signs, literature, lobbying etc.--is the subject of a lawsuit by Terri Hall’s TURF organization. Roger Baker says, “It looks like Carona’s bill to prohibit TxDOT from lobbying for toll roads means that the issue that Terri Hall has been pushing has wide Lege political support as Carona sees it.”

(5) SB 220 from Robert Nichols would take away the Transportation Commission’s authority to convert a free road to a toll road. Given the hostility on the Sunset Advisory Commission to TxDOT’s efforts to change free lanes to toll lanes, this bill may see some success.

(6) As discussed here, last but certainly not least, will be the TxDOT Sunset legislation. This will be what legislators decide to do with the changes, some of them very major, that the Sunset Commission has proposed. Depending on how far the bills get, there may be hearings on some of them, which, Baker points out, “will be interesting, and at which the public can usually testify.”

If not dead, at least Corridor is wounded

Yesterday, from the Texas Transportation Forum, the Statesman’s Ben Wear report is headlined “Trans-Texas Corridor R.I.P.” To read the whole thing, go to

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/traffic/index.html

“The Trans-Texas Corridor, as a name and as a guiding concept of the state’s transportation future, is dead, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz told an audience of more than a thousand this morning at an Austin hotel.”

Showing that the issue will still be an issue in the 2010 governor’s race, “A spokesman for . . . U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, said that in fact the name isn’t the problem but rather the cross-state tollways associated with it and the rural land that would be needed to build them.”

As we reported at the time, “Outgoing Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick had created a stir a few months ago by declaring in an election forum that the Trans-Texas Corridor was dead. TxDOT officials at the time said, well, no, not exactly.”

“Saenz, at the Texas Transportation Forum at the Hilton Hotel, confirmed that the corridor’s death — or at least the death of its name — had in fact not been exaggerated.”

As described by TxDOT, the original Trans-Texas Corridor “vision,” or “nightmare” as residents called it, will not be pushed anymore. What TxDOT will do is “a series of smaller projects.” Included as one of these smaller projects will be SH 130, which is completed through Williamson County. This announcement seems to confirm what some have already been saying—that 130, and only 130, with no more land taken for any more Corridor development, will be the route of TTC-35 through Williamson County.

Replacing Perry’s 2002 plan, called “Crossroads of the Americas,” which called for 4,000 miles of 1,200-foot wide corridors criss-crossing the state, is a new document called “Innovative Connectivity in Texas/Vision 2009. You can see it at

http://www.keeptexasmoving.com/var/files/File/Vision_2009_Brochure.pdf

The “Innovative Connectivity” brochure is not a white flag on TxDOT’s part, but does mark a recognition that its grandiose schemes were unrealistic pipe dreams. One encouraging point is the statement on page 3 that the right of way for new projects would rarely exceed 600 feet (the approximate width of a freeway with access roads, e.g. SH 130 at Pecan Street east of Pflugerville), rather than the quarter of a mile envisioned by TTC planners. On pages 8-9, TxDOT commits to using existing ROW whenever possible, before “breaking new ground,” a concept at odds with the TTC vision. When the TTC was first being introduced in 2003 to a small Austin gathering, unpublicized and attended by very few members of the public, TxDOT rolled out the TTC as a “green fields project.”

Corridor Watch’s David Stall says,"We think that today is a huge leap forward in getting control over transportation projects and seeing that they serve a transportation need and not just a revenue-generating role . . .The reality is the move that's been made today turns it from a statewide massive corridor project into a much more reasonable transportation project, which they should have been from the beginning.”

He continues,"We still need to particularly be wary of public-private partnerships which are to line the pockets of Wall Street financiers more than provide transportation for ordinary Texans.”
He calls today’s announcement “a major victory for farmers and ranchers.”