Link to article here.

Toll roads are speculative debt bombs in the worst case scenario, and unaccountable slush funds, in the best case scenario (when they actually cash flow and have excess revenue, that is). Either way, people who care about responsible fiscal policy and freedom to travel should want none of them. This article ought to make every Texan hopping mad!

Toll road authority doubles as bank for county
By Mike Morris | December 1, 2012 | Updated: December 3, 2012 1:59pm
Houston Chronicle

The Harris County toll road system is many things: The route to work for thousands of area commuters; a 120-mile colossus of engineering and concrete; and the growing region's best hope, members of Commissioners Court say, to ease traffic congestion.

It also has become a cash cow, collecting nearly $520 million in tolls a year.

Arguably, the toll road authority's most crucial role is that of a bank.

Toll revenues have covered a $26.3 million debt for the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, paid $33.5 million to clear debris and repair roads after Hurricane Ike, sped project approvals with $4.9 million for the county's Public Infrastructure Department and bridged temporary shortfalls in the county's general fund.

Read more: Houston toll system an unaccountable slush fund

Virginia enters into design-build public private partnership with Cintra to build a new stretch of Hwy 460 as a tollway

Bloomberg reported it here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 20, 2012

Governor McDonnell Announces That Commonwealth Signs Comprehensive Agreement and Reaches Financial Close to Build the New Route 460 in Southeast Virginia
Project to greatly improve transportation, create thousands of jobs and have a multi-billion dollar economic impact

RICHMOND - Governor Bob McDonnell announced today that the Commonwealth has reached a commercial and financial close with US 460 Mobility Partners (a partnership of Ferrovial Agroman, S.A. and American Infrastructure) and the Route 460 Funding Corporation of Virginia to finance, design and build a new 55-mile section of U.S. Route 460 in southeastern Virginia. Project development begins immediately for the new $1.4 billion roadway, which has been a top transportation priority locally, regionally and statewide for nearly a decade. The project was developed to address roadway deficiencies, improve safety, accommodate increasing freight shipments and reduce travel delays among many other needs.

Read more: Cintra snags P3 for Hwy 460 toll project in Virginia

Link to article here.

TxDOT sees tollway profits just around the bend
By Ben Wear
American-Statesman Staff
Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012

News flash: Our local toll roads could all be profitable by 2014.

If only it were that simple.

I got a call the other day from Terri Hall, an anti-toll road activist from the San Antonio area. She had just met with Texas Department of Transportation officials, and they had shared with her the startling news that their system of four tollways in and around Austin would reach profitability by the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year. Hall was skeptical.

Read more: Austin tollways require double taxation to be profitable

Link to story here.

Oregon officials propose per-mile tax for gas sippers

By The Associated Press Published: Jan 2, 2013

SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Oregon state officials are proposing an alternative tax for drivers who have bought efficient or electric vehicles that seldom or never stop at the gasoline pump, where government has traditionally collected money to build and fix roads.

But the auto-making industry calls the idea of mileage taxes another roadblock for its efficient vehicles, the Salem Statesman Journal reports.

Read more: Oregon officials eye road use tax on hybrid, electric cars

Link to article here.

Editorial:Lawmakers must get serious about Texas highways
Dallas Morning News
December 16, 2012

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus has been saying he wants a “serious” lawmaking session next year to address the state’s basics, transportation being high on his list.

A stiff test will be lawmakers’ willingness to get serious about paying the true cost of building and keeping up the state’s 80,000-mile roadway network, the nation’s largest. They haven’t been serious for years, acting like tenants with lame excuses to the landlord for falling behind on the rent.

Read more: Editorial: Lawmakers must get serious about funding transportation

Link to article here.

Dallas-area transit officials compile legislative wish lists
Agencies hope to clear way for projects
BY TOM BENNING
Staff Writer
Dallas Morning News
December 17, 2012
 
North Texas transit officials are compiling their legislative wish lists as they wait for the next session of the Legislature to begin in January.

While much of the transportation policy talk in Austin is expected to center on funding and perennial hot-button issues like red-light cameras and texting while driving, the 140-day session is also critical to advancing the region’s broader mobility goals.

Read more: WARNING: DFW officials seek two more P3 toll roads

Link to article here.

Caddell: Three-quarters say America no longer run by consent of governed
By Terri Hall
January 7, 2013
Examiner.com

Tonight, Pat Caddell, committed Democrat and political film consultant, received a standing ovation from a room full of Texas conservatives. Women on the Wall hosted an awards banquet honoring Texas women activists on the eve of the Texas legislature convening in Austin, and Caddell headlined the event.

He perfectly articulated what’s broken in politics today: government no longer operates by the consent of the governed, it’s rigged against the ordinary citizen by lobbyists, special interests, and corruption, and as a Gallop poll announced today, two-thirds of Americans believe Congress cares more about retaining their power, even to the detriment of the country, than they do about serving and preserving the country.

Read more: Caddell: Three-quarters say America no longer run by consent of governed

See a map of the Trans Texas Corridor & all the NAFTA trade corridors here.

Trans Texas Corridor commences despite opposition
By Terri Hall
January 6, 2013
Examiner.com

When Jerry Corsi talks, people listen. Corsi’s recent column on the revival of the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) gave national attention to what Texans have been warning for a decade -- that despite Texas-sized opposition and claims of its demise by Texas Governor Rick Perry and his Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the Trans Texas Corridor is quietly being built piece by piece. The Texas Transportation Commission just awarded a public private partnership (P3), known in Texas as a Comprehensive Development Agreement (CDA), for a segment of Interstate 35E between Dallas and Denton County at its last meeting.

The award for I-35E followed on the heels of the Commission’s award of a CDA for I-35W to Spain-based Cintra as part of the Master Development Plan for the North Tarrant Express in October. Both projects relate to Perry’s original Trans Texas Corridor vision of building a 4,000-mile network of international trade corridors four football fields wide using P3s, to include toll roads, toll commuter and freight rail, utilities, telecommunication lines, and pipelines of all sorts, developed and operated by private, even foreign, corporations free of competition for a half century.

Read more: Trans Texas Corridor alive & being built

Link to review here.

Last great interstate a NAFTA highway fraught with controversy
By Terri Hall
Examiner.com
December 18, 2012

With the end of 2012 marking the 20th anniversary of NAFTA, it’s instructive to take a fresh look at the book that chronicles that battle over the last interstate highway -- a NAFTA superhighway -- yet to be built - Interstate 69, The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway by Matt Dellinger.

Dellinger credits David Graham, grandson of a railroad magnate and son of an auto manufacturer in Southern Indiana whose family farm and businesses made them legendary in their small community for decades, with the idea of building an interstate highway connecting Evansville with Indianapolis. That little idea that started over breakfast with some of Graham’s influential friends grew into a NAFTA superhighway concept in short order. Absent federal funding, an interstate through southwest Indiana was a non-starter, but connect that idea to a larger intercontinental highway connecting the busiest trade crossings in Canada with those in Mexico, and now you’ve got six other states and a plethora of economic interests joining Indiana in the quest for not only funding, but also a whole new trade corridor that will transform North America.

Read more: Book Review: I-69, the Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway

Link to article here.

Fourth in a four-part series. See the first article with interactive map here. See the second article on why the state is moving toward tolling here. Read the third article on more cities turning to tolling here.

Tolling Texans: Impact of Trans Texas Corridors lingers
By Aman Batheja
Texas Tribune
December 3, 2012

Nearly 11 years ago, Gov. Rick Perry offered a vision for Texas that was covered in toll roads.

At a news conference in Austin, Perry delivered the first of hundreds of pitches for the Trans-Texas Corridor, a 4,000-mile network of privately operated toll roads, railroad tracks and utility lines that would stretch across the state. The projected timeline for the project: roughly 50 years. The price tag: $175 billion.

With just a year as governor under his belt, Perry proposed the most expensive transportation project in the country. As originally planned, it could have redirected national trade routes, sparked development across rural Texas and provided a big boost to public transit.

“Some might ask, ‘Is this too big?’” Perry said at the time. “I say nothing is too big for Texas when our economic security, our environment and our quality of life are at stake.”

Read more: Tolling Texans: Impact of Trans Texas Corridor lingers