Perry: "This is powerful, powerful stuff."

State is on road to new highway era
San Antonio's Zachry Construction tapped for Trans Texas Corridor.

December 17, 2004

Patrick Driscoll, Staff Writer
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
Copyright 2004

The Texas Transportation Commission selected a construction consortium that includes a San Antonio firm Thursday to build the first leg of the Trans Texas Corridor - launching what officials called the nation's most important highway project since the 1950s.

The group, led by Cintra of Spain, will build and operate the corridor 's first segment of toll roads from Dallas to San Antonio.

Zachry Construction Corp. will partner with Cintra on the 10-year project, the first phase of a 50-year venture promising greater mobility for drivers and profits for the operator.

Cintra will invest $6 billion over the next decade to construct the four-lane toll road and relocate some Union Pacific tracks to the east of San Antonio and Austin.

Toll lanes to the border, high-speed passenger rail between San Antonio and Dallas and new freight tracks from Austin to Dallas are expected to follow sometime after 2025.

"Today's action by the Texas Department of Transportation will go down as one of the most significant days in the history of transportation," said Gov. Rick Perry, who compared the project to the interstate highway system launched during the Eisenhower administration.

The highway department, after signing a contract with Cintra within the next two months, will pay $3.5 million to refine plans over the next year or two - but not a penny more.

In fact, Cintra will pay the state $1.2 billion by 2014 for the right to operate the toll system. And the firm will shoulder the risk of bonds to fund the work.

Perry, who unveiled his dream of the Trans Texas Corridor almost three years ago, joined commissioners as they listened to Cintra officials lay out the terms of the deal.

"We've just seen the future and it is here," he said. "This is powerful, powerful stuff."

But there will be a price to pay for the massive project.

The Trans Texas Corridor is huge and costly. The $184 billion endeavor is eventually supposed to crisscross the state with 4,000 miles of 10-lane highways and rail lines in swaths up to a quarter-mile wide.

Officials will have to charge tolls to finance bonds and pay for operations and maintenance. They'll also have to confiscate farmlands and wildlife areas.

"This is just one of those things that is painful and there's not an awful lot we can do about it," said commission Chairman Ric Williamson.

Motorists now pay from 10 cents to 20 cents a mile to use toll roads in Houston and Dallas, and Cintra says that will be a starting point to decide its fees on the route it will build along Interstate 35.

Cintra will have to rely on traffic congestion on I-35 to drive frustrated motorists to its toll lanes.

As a result, Texas will likely limit expansion of the interstate - probably to six lanes - to ensure a lucrative market for the company.

"They need to have an expectation that they can get a profit," Williamson said. "And we shouldn't be ashamed of that."

Besides, Williamson added, the Transportation Department couldn't afford to do much more on I-35 anyway.

However, the state can use the $1.2 billion rent from Cintra for other projects on or near I-35. Ideas include passenger and freight rail lines, and truck routes to connect the Port of Corpus Christi, the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo.

The first segment of the corridor would link to Texas 130, now under construction, extending it from Lockhart to Seguin east of Austin. Work could start in about a year.

"Get it done so that the people of San Antonio can hook up and get going," Perry said.

Toll lanes along Interstate 10 east of San Antonio and along Southeast Loop 1604 could be completed in 15 years.

The local Alamo Regional Mobility Authority may consider picking up parts of those sections.

"It is something we're gong to have to look at," said Tom Griebel, director of the authority.

Cintra, which competed against Fluor Enterprises Inc. of Sugar Land and Trans Texas Express of Dallas to win the project, is one of the largest toll-road construction companies in the world, currently involved with 17 jobs.

Zachry Construction is a 15 percent partner on the project.

Family-owned Zachry was founded in 1924 in Laredo to build highways but later diversified and moved to San Antonio. Recent work includes Dallas' light-rail system, power plants in Puerto Rico and the rebuilt U.S. embassy in Moscow.

Transportation Commissioner Hope Andrade of San Antonio said a new age has dawned in Texas .

"We've certainly proven that TxDOT has a new way of doing business," she said. "The governor has made Texas proud, and we appreciate his vision."

pdriscoll@express-news.net
San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

"Widespread glee at what Cintra is offering."

Corridor to get private jump-start

Consortium will build $6 billion alternative to I-35 at "no cost" to state

12/17/04

Ben Wear, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2004

The Texas Transportation Commission agreed Thursday to let a private consortium build a $6 billion turnpike from San Antonio to north of Dallas, all without costing the state a dime.

The companies will throw in $1.2 billion for other state transportation projects as part of the 50-year deal.

The long-term partnership with the consortium, led by Spanish toll road operator Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte SA and San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Corp., is at once shockingly new for Texas and historically familiar.

Spaniards, after all, built the first road in Texas , El Camino Real, about four centuries ago, some of it in the same corridor where Interstate 35 now lies and where Cintra and its partners would start the turnpike. But handing over a major state highway project to private operators, this in a state that could not even build toll roads until recent years, breaks new policy ground.

"When our hair is gray, we will be able to tell our grandchildren that we were in a Texas Department of Transportation meeting room when one of the most extraordinary plans was laid out for the people of Texas ," Gov. Rick Perry said of this first piece of his 4,000-mile Trans -Texas Corridor plan. "I hope there are a lot of people in this room that are knocked back on their heels saying, 'I can't believe it.' Well, believe it."

The consortium, in the first phase of what could be a decades-long partnership, would construct more than 300 miles of four-lane turnpike (with ample room for expansion) from the Oklahoma border to the east side of San Antonio, leaving a gap only for Texas 130 near Austin.

The road would tie into the south and north ends of Texas 130, a toll road currently under construction by the Lone Star Infrastructure LLC consortium. Lone Star's primary partner is Fluor Enterprises Inc., which was the lowest ranked of the three bidders Thursday for the new turnpike.

The Cintra consortium -- Cintra, with 85 percent equity in the partnership, is the primary member -- and the Texas Department of Transportation hope to reach accord on a contract within two months.

If those talks break down, then the state would turn to the second-place bidder, Trans Texas Express LLC. Given the widespread glee at what Cintra is offering, such a breakdown in relations seemed unlikely Thursday.

If the deal is successfully struck, the Cintra group would then have a concession to charge tolls on the road for the next 50 years. The toll rates would be subject to approval by the Transportation Commission.

Officials expect that construction could start on the first segment from the south end of Texas 130 to east of San Antonio by 2007. The other four northern segments would begin in 2009 and 2010, with completion of the entire route by the end of 2014.

Cintra and Zachry, along with about 16 other subcontractors, would also build other segments of the I-35 alternative, including a connection to Mexico either through the Rio Grande Valley or Laredo, sometime after 2025.

The conceptual plan submitted by Cintra recommended that the extension go to the Valley (rather than the hometown of the man Perry defeated in 2002, Tony Sanchez), but a final decision on that route is likely years away.

The specific path of the entire project, in fact, is still a work in progress.

The Transportation Department, in conjunction with Cintra and federal highway regulators, plans to narrow that route down to a 10-mile-wide corridor by late spring. The final route would likely be as close as possible to urban centers, officials said, but still far enough enough to be largely free of city traffic.

Perry, who proposed the Trans -Texas Corridor during the 2002 election campaign, made an unusual appearance at the commission meeting, joining the commissioners on the dais for a long presentation on the I-35 alternative. At the end, Perry, who has taken hits from every direction for what many saw as an unrealistic pipe dream and for his staunch support of toll roads, took a few minutes for a rhetorical victory lap.

"We have just seen the future, and it is here. It is today," Perry said.

State Rep. Mike Krusee, a Williamson County Republican who is chairman of the House Transportation Committee and the author of the bill making the corridor project possible, remembered meeting with Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson and Perry when he first joined the Legislature 12 years ago.

Krusee said they talked about leadership, about doing great things for Texas . "Ric, I think we were talking about days like this," he said, his voice cracking with emotion.

Just how Cintra and Zachry can afford to lay out $7.2 billion and still make a profit remained unclear Thursday.

Jose Lopez, United States and Latin America director for Cintra, said the toll rates would be comparable to current Texas toll rates, which generally fall between 10 cents and 20 cents a mile for passenger cars and three to four times that for large trucks.

And, Lopez said, the company's financial plan did not include making money off concessions along the roads such as fast food restaurants, souvenir stores or gas stations.

Cintra and Zachry, simply put, believe that if they build it, the drivers will come. One possible incentive: The 2003 legislation that allowed the state to build the Trans -Texas Corridor , or let someone else build and operate it, allows speed limits on the road of up to 85 miles per hour.

David Stall, a former Columbus city manager who quit that job to fight the Trans -Texas Corridor concept, said that if the Cintra deal sounds too good to be true, that may be because it is. He said just what kind of a deal the state and the public are getting won't be clear until the contract is signed and released for scrutiny.

"I would liken what happened today to a teenager stopping by the car lot on the way home from school and having a car salesman pitch him a deal on a car," Stall said. "And the car looks great, it's shiny, and as a matter of fact, we'll give you a billion dollars to take home with you.

"Now comes the time when we'll all get a chance to raise the hood and see what's in there, and walk around and kick the tires," he said. "Until we see what's in the agreement, we won't know what our risks and hazards are."

bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698


Copyright (c) 2004 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

"Texas Transportation Commission voted unanimously to begin negotiations with Spain-based Cintra"

Trans Texas Corridor closer to development

State negotiating with Spanish firm on initial phase

12/17/04
Associated Press
Copyright 2004

AUSTIN - Gov. Rick Perry's Trans Texas Corridor , a network of new tollways, railways and utility lines crisscrossing the state, took a major step forward Thursday with the selection of a contractor to begin developing the first phase.

The Texas Transportation Commission voted unanimously to begin negotiations with Spain-based Cintra, one of the world's largest private transportation developers, to begin work on an 800-mile traffic and trade route from Oklahoma to Mexico.

Cintra was one of the three groups to submit detailed proposals to accomplish Perry's call for a 4,000-mile transportation network he says is needed to power the Texas economy and keep commuter traffic moving.

Perry laid out his plan in 2002 with a price tag of at least $175 billion.

While most of the details remain secret during contract negotiations, Cintra's plan calls for developing $6 billion in new roadways roughly parallel to Interstate 35 by 2010.

The first phase would be 316 miles of new four-lane divided highway from Dallas to San Antonio. Construction could begin as soon as the plan clears environmental hurdles and scrutiny in public hearings.

Other projects in Cintra's proposal include freight rail and utility lines and a long-term projection of potential high-speed passenger rail.

Trans Texas Corridor brings in private funding which recovers its investment from tolls.

The Associated Press: www.ap.org

Texas Transportation Commission votes unanimously to accept Spanish company's bid

Spanish contractor to begin Corridor

$7.2 billion in privately built toll roads planned from Red River to San Antonio

December 16, 2004

By TONY HARTZEL
The Dallas Morning News,
Copyright 2004

AUSTIN – State leaders on Thursday unveiled what they hope will be the next era of Texas transportation with a proposal to funnel $7.2 billion in corporate money to help build a privately operated toll road from the Red River to San Antonio in nine years.

The Texas Transportation Commission, with Gov. Rick Perry in attendance, voted unanimously Thursday to accept a bid from Spanish company Cintra to build the first leg of Mr. Perry's ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor plan.

The proposal calls for Cintra and its partner, San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Corp., to build $6 billion worth of toll roads by 2013. Other segments to the Mexican border would be built later. Details must be negotiated by the end of February.

As part of the deal, the company also pledged to pay the state an additional $1.2 billion. In turn, the state agrees to allow the company to set and collect tolls on whatever it builds for the next 50 years.

"I have an idea a lot of people in the state of Texas don't realize how big this is yet," said Mr. Perry, who envisioned the plan more than three years ago. "I'm not sure I do."

Both sides still must hammer out more precise – and binding – details of what will be built and when. That process will involve an initial 60-day period, followed by up to 12 months of negotiations that will result in final goals, project financing and project schedules.

All ideas, costs and locations presented Thursday were preliminary.

Still, the proposal could offer some hope for Dallas-area motorists looking for an alternate, free-flowing path to an increasingly congested Interstate 35. Part of that path will include State Highway 130, a $1.5 billion project east of Austin that will connect with corridor segments and stretch from Georgetown to northeast of San Antonio.

The scale of the project is unprecedented in Texas, and also is at least two to three times as big as any current Cintra project, said Jose M. Lopez, the company's director for U.S. and Latin American operations.

Funding sources

The company expects to finance the road through several sources, including private investors such as pension funds, special taxing districts and about 20 percent to 30 percent of the company's own equity, Mr. Lopez said.

The concept calls for the state to own the land and lease it to Cintra. The state also will not guarantee the debt or financing sought by Cintra. Tax-exempt bonds like those used through government agencies also are not under consideration.

"When you have a project that has solid standing, you normally finance it in different ways" than tax-exempt bonds, Mr. Lopez said.

When completed, the 600-mile corridor generally will parallel Interstate 35 from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Many compared the proposal to President Dwight Eisenhower's push to build the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Only this time, the proposal calls for the entire Trans-Texas Corridor to be paid for with private funds.

"This is one of those days where actions speak louder than words," said state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, chairman of the House Transportation Committee. "You have made this the most historic day in transportation, not just for Texas but for the United States, since Eisenhower."

When first proposed, the corridor idea included provisions for freight and passenger rail lines, new utility corridors and truck lanes. Aside from a Central Texas rail relocation project and creation of some truck lanes east of Austin, the initial project outline presented Thursday made virtually no mention of rail, truck lane or utility projects until 2025 and beyond.

Even with massive amounts of private investment, Thursday's decision will have a big effect on the pocketbook of Texas motorists. The state encouraged bids that limit the amount of government involvement, but that lack of participation could raise project costs – and potentially tolls. Cintra now must strike a delicate balance between using state funds, charging tolls and using excess toll revenue to pay investors or extend the corridor into less-congested areas.

Although specifics have not been finalized, Cintra could set its tolls in the 10- to 20-cent-per-mile range.

"The general assumption we have made is for tolls to be in line with actual tolls in the state of Texas," Mr. Lopez said.

Principal Partners

CINTRA
Cintra is a publicly traded company based in Madrid, Spain. The company has years of transportation experience, including major investment and operating interests in the $1.8 billion Chicago Skyway, the $3.1 billion (Canadian) 407 ETR highway in Toronto, and several highway investments in Spain, Ireland, Chile and Portugal. Cintra is also the leader in the parking lot business in Spain, managing more than 200,000 parking slots. Cintra's parent company, Grupo Ferrovial, is also publicly traded.

ZACHRY
Zachry Construction Corp. is a family-owned construction and industrial maintenance service company in San Antonio. Its projects are from coast to coast, with a concentration in the southern United States. During the last 80 years, Zachry has completed more than 5,500 projects, including power generation plants, chemical refineries, highways, bridges and dams. Locally, Zachry Corp. has been involved in the $261 million Dallas High Five interchange, $85 million Interstate 35E reconstruction and $113 million Central Expressway reconstruction.

SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research

Deals involving private toll roads in other states have included provisions to prevent widening of a nontoll highway nearby. The preliminary proposal does not include any noncompete clauses, Mr. Lopez said. Texas Department of Transportation officials added that they will continue with plans to widen the congested interstate to three lanes in each direction, but they probably would not have the money to do anything else.

"We fully expect that there will be a limit on our ability to compete with a road he [Cintra's Mr. Lopez] is going to be spending his money on," said Ric Williamson, chairman of the transportation commission. "They need to have an expectation that they can generate a profit."

Project's critics

The move toward building such a massive project has drawn its share of critics. The state Republican Party and the Texas Farm Bureau oppose the corridor.

Leaders of cities along I-35, including Dallas, Hillsboro and Laredo, have formed the River of Trade Corridor Coalition.

Although not opposed to the corridor concept in general, its members have questioned whether a new toll road would siphon vehicle and truck traffic that is the lifeblood of many communities along the interstate. State officials say the impact on communities will be reviewed.

Other critics worry that, because much of the road can be built with private funds, the state will not conduct as many public hearings before construction begins. They also say that such a major deal deserves more than just oversight than from a board with all of its members appointed or reappointed by Mr. Perry.

"There has not been a public dialogue," said David Stall, founder of Corridor Watch, based in Fayetteville, east of Austin. "There has not been any discourse on whether Texas is ready to have a massive, closed corridor across the state."

The federal environmental review process will allow for public input, Mr. Williamson said.

thartzel@dallasnews.com
Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

"Designing a highway with a meat cleaver."

Toll corridor vote is set for today

Texas panel poised to strike a deal to begin Interstate 35 parallel.

December 16, 2004

Patrick Driscoll and W. Gardner Selby, Staff Writers
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
Copyright 2004

It could be a landmark day for the Trans Texas Corridor - a 50-year project hailed by some as a cutting-edge transportation vision and criticized by others as a meat-cleaver approach to traffic woes.

The Texas Transportation Commission is poised to strike a deal today with a consortium that will build and operate the toll corridor 's first segment, an 800-mile stretch paralleling Interstate 35 from Mexico to Oklahoma.

The decision is shadowed by questions and opposition that has swelled in recent months, while companies linked to two of the three consortiums competing for the project are dealing with controversies outside Texas .

"Right now you've got the majority of the central part of Texas up in arms because they woke up to what was going on," said Bill Blaydes, a Dallas city councilman who's helping lead a coalition of cities worried about traffic being siphoned off I-35.

But highway commissioners are ready to push forward with Gov. Rick Perry's futuristic plan to crisscross the state with 4,000 miles of superhighways and railroad lines to speed up traffic, skirt congested urban areas and pump more money into the economy.

"It could be the most important economic development decision the department will make in its history," Commission Chairman Ric Williamson said of the vote.

The statewide network would be built in pieces over the next half-century as warranted by traffic, using $184 billion in private and public funds, officials say. Each corridor would have six car lanes, four truck lanes, six rail lines for freight and passengers, and a utility zone for water and gas lines.

As much of the rest of the world twiddles with traffic problems, the Trans Texas Corridor has helped put the state at the forefront of transportation efforts, said Wendell Cox, a St. Louis-based consultant known for his advocacy of roads and attacks against passenger rail.

"You people have an awful lot to be proud of," he said. "It is only in Texas where they are not fiddling while Rome burns."

But a disparate collection of critics, from tree lovers to cotton farmers, hold various opinions about Perry's plan. Many say it's ambitious but flawed, while others see little merit.

"It's hare-brained," said Dick Kallerman, an Austin resident who serves as the transportation point man for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "It's designing a highway with a meat cleaver."

Environmentalists suspect rising gas prices and a peak in world oil production would thin the traffic needed to support so many toll lanes. Also, the nearly quarter-mile-wide corridors likely would run through sensitive natural areas.

Texas Farm Bureau members voted last week to oppose the corridor project, fearing the loss of crop and grazing lands, damage to wildlife and hunting areas, the slicing up of farms and a lack of highway exits to keep traffic and money flowing to rural towns.

Even Perry's Texas Republican Party came out against the plan over concerns about property rights and state sovereignty.

San Antonio leaders, with KellyUSA and the planned Toyota plant in mind, don't want to be left withering too far from the newest vine.

They've asked the state to wrap the corridor 's lanes into Interstate 10 on the East Side and into Loop 1604 and I-35 on the South Side.

"We want to make sure it's built to be the most user friendly to San Antonio," said Vic Boyer, director of the San Antonio Mobility Coalition.

Precise routes haven't been chosen, but there's plenty of time to work out details, state officials say.

Meanwhile, supporters say the fact that three groups are vying to build and operate the toll lanes and rail lines for the leg alongside I-35 helps prove the plan is feasible.

"The need exists," Commissioner Robert Nichols said. "It will be built."

All the bidders pulled together well-balanced groups of international companies, said Peter Samuel, editor of Maryland-based Tollroads News.

"All three of them could do the job," he said. "The selection is going to revolve around the price and what they're offering to do."

Companies linked to two of the groups have been criticized on other projects.

Cintra, based in Spain, is under investigation in Ontario for its management of the 67-mile 407 Electronic Toll Road.

Motorists complained of overbilling and slow responses to concerns. Also, the province's government failed this year in a court attempt to roll back toll rates.

"Most of these complaints are from years ago," 407 spokesman Dale Albers said.

Albers, noting the group paid $3.1 billion in Canadian dollars for the concession in 1999, said tolls have increased along with growing use of the road.

"It's absurd we would price ourselves out of the market and charge more than customers are willing to bear," he said.

Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas Inc., part of a group led by Fluor Enterprises Inc. of Sugar Land, is under fire in Boston for its role as the lead contractor with the Bechtel Group in the Big Dig highway project.

Since September, authorities there have complained of hundreds of leaks in a highway tunnel connecting a turnpike to Logan International Airport.

The other consortium competing for the I-35 parallel corridor is led by Dallas-based Trans Texas Express, which incorporated last year.

pdriscoll@express-news.net

San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

"Sweeping new policy became law without public demand or awareness."

This session, tolls will get full attention

Ben Wear, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2005

When I moved back to Austin about 16 months ago after living elsewhere since early 2001, everything I saw and was told indicated that Texas had a discussion about toll roads while I was gone and decided that turnpikes were the wave of the future.

Texas 45 North was under construction, and bulldozers were warming up for Texas 130 and the MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) extension. A route had been picked for Texas 45 Southeast, and a newfangled thing called a "regional mobility authority" was hard at work planning another toll road. Several months earlier, in the 2003 session, the Legislature had overwhelmingly passed a huge transportation bill that, in a variety of ways, prepared the ground for turnpikes.

As state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said to me last year about toll roads: "That's state policy. And I think the public needs to accept that."

The toll road storms of 2004, here and in Dallas, Houston, El Paso and various other locales, indicate that a large chunk of the public hasn't accepted it. And part of the problem may be that this is a rare example of a sweeping and fundamental new policy, one that will affect people every day of their lives, that became law without public demand for it or even much awareness that it was happening.

Think back to the 2003 legislative session. What do you remember about it? Well, Ardmore, Okla., mostly. And the stories weren't about how Democratic House members, trying to foil GOP redistricting plans, got caught in Interstate 35 traffic on their way to Oklahoma and wished they'd been able to take a toll road instead. Oh, and there was that budget problem, too, about $10 billion worth, and school finance.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, and Ogden, chairmen of the two committees overseeing transportation, were knee-deep in a 300-page transportation bill, House Bill 3588, that beefed up regional mobility authorities, made possible Gov. Rick Perry's 4,000-mile Trans -Texas Corridor toll roads, and gave the Department of Transportation all sorts of new powers. That bill passed the House on May 10, two days before the Democrats absconded. Something tells me the Democrats were more interested in their stealth travel plans, and the Republicans in congressional districts, than in the details of HB 3588.

The press, for its part, wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, either. The Austin American-Statesman's transportation reporter left for the Peace Corps as the bill was passing the House and was gone when it passed the Senate, was amended in conference, and became law. The state's other major newspapers don't have transportation reporters in Austin, and the Capitol bureaus were focused on redistricting and the budget.

So toll roads became state policy while almost no one was looking. Everyone's looking now, however, and HB 3588 is likely to undergo significant change in the coming session. Some lawmakers will try to defang it, while toll road supporters actually want more money for tolls and more flexibility. We'll be watching this time.

Getting There appears Mondays. For questions, tips or story ideas, contact Getting There at (512) 445-3698 or bwear@statesman.com.


Copyright (c) 2004 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

Traffic numbers do not justify Trans-Texas Corridor plan

TRANS-TEXAS CORRIDOR
Road to future or a dead end?

Light rural traffic may not justify corridor plan.

By Ben Wear
Austin American Statesman
Copyright 2004

Houstonian Erik Slotboom, by his own description, is a "road geek," a guy who spent a year of his life writing and self-publishing an exhaustive book on his hometown's freeway system.

Highways move him, in other words, both literally and figuratively.

So when Slotboom, a software engineer, first heard about Gov. Rick Perry's 4,000-mile dream of tollways criss-crossing Texas, he was open to the idea of the Trans-Texas Corridor. But then, on his frequent trips on Interstate 45 from Dallas to Houston, Slotboom noticed something. For most of the way, from Houston's outskirts to the Dallas suburbs, the traffic was actually pretty light.

He had a heretical thought: Maybe all or almost all of the state's major routes really aren't all that crowded. And if so, he wondered, do we really need to spend $183 billion of state, federal and private money to build a parallel system of 10-lane highways, railroads and utility lines?

Slotboom's answer, after doing a good deal of research, was no.

And a look at the most recent traffic counts on the state's major arteries would seem to indicate that, aside from the clogged San Antonio-to-Hillsboro stretch of Interstate 35, rural Texas roads are far from congested.

On I-35 halfway between Laredo and San Antonio, for instance, 11,620 vehicles a day were using those four lanes in 2002, about 5 percent of the throng on that same road where it crosses the Colorado River in Austin.

On Interstate 10 near Columbus, between Houston and San Antonio, the count was 21,820 cars and trucks a day. Near Buffalo, the midpoint between Dallas and Houston on I-45, the number was 25,530. U.S. 59 near Livingston, 70 miles northeast of Houston, had 23,000 vehicles a day.

And in West Texas, the numbers drop completely off the table: 8,100 a day on I-10 near Junction, 7,100 on Interstate 20 near Monahans and 10,190 a day on U.S. 87/I-27 south of Plainview.

Even by the conservative guidelines of the Texas Department of Transportation, use on a four-lane rural freeway doesn't reach the "undesirable" range until daily traffic reaches 31,600 vehicles. Add a fifth and sixth lane, and that threshold grows to 47,400 vehicles a day.

Despite those numbers, state officials say all the corridors eventually will be needed, and they won't be built until they are. For now, people like Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson say they're moving seriously only on a parallel route to the increasingly crowded I-35 between Dallas and San Antonio.

Slotboom, looking at trend lines for 30 years of traffic counts on those roads, says all but I-35 will be fine for decades into the future, some without even adding lanes. If the state wants to give vehicles a way to avoid urban bottlenecks on I-35, he says, it could build alternate routes around cities, such as Texas 130 around Austin, rather than separate highways to skirt cities. Perry, Williamson and the Texas Department of Transportation, Slotboom says, want to solve a city problem by building country roads.

"The problem is, really, urban congestion, and to a certain extent Interstate 35 is urbanized," Slotboom said. "The rest of the highways are rural, and there will never be a need on them for a Trans-Texas Corridor. . . . I'd like to see them justify it."

Williamson, a close friend of the governor and his de facto spokesman on toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor, agrees that most of those rural highways won't need a parallel set of toll roads any time soon. He says that's why the commission is about to pick a highway development consortium this Thursday for the 600-mile Oklahoma-to-Mexico I-35 corridor alone, Williamson and department officials say. As for the rest of the 4,000 miles, well, for now those are just lines on paper waiting for traffic growth to justify them.

"None of those corridors will be built until the exact moment in time when the market says it's time to move," Williamson said.

Unpopular vision

The corridor plan, since Perry first introduced it in early 2002 as part of his re-election campaign, has been a slippery subject. Many transportation planners haven't taken it seriously, looking at the hefty cost — equivalent to 35 years of the current state transportation budget — and presuming the futuristic plan had no future. Meanwhile, critics such as Slotboom who did take it seriously, poring over the details and a key 2003 transportation law to glean the plan's ramifications, have been accused of political motivations and nitpicking. The plan is a vision, supporters say, not a blueprint.

That vision includes essentially seven 1,200-foot-wide transportation alleys across Texas, four of them designated as "priority corridors," roughly paralleling I-35, I-10, I-45 and what will eventually be Interstate 69 from Brownsville past Houston and north to Texarkana. The other three corridors, presumably envisioned as coming on line much later, would be an Oklahoma-to-Big Bend route near I-20 for much of its run, a Texarkana-to-Amarillo route hugging the Red River, and the ports-to-plains corridor from Brownsville to Del Rio and then north to the Oklahoma panhandle. The seven corridors would pass near major cities, but not through them.

As outlined by the governor, each corridor eventually would have six toll lanes for passenger cars, four toll lanes for trucks, six railroads and a dedicated corridor for pipelines and electric lines. It's that daunting swath of right-of-way — a nearly quarter-mile-wide no-cow's-land that would divide pastures and take a half million acres off rural tax rolls — that has inspired incredulity and, particularly in rural Texas, opposition.

Last week, the Texas Farm Bureau, on a decisive voice vote at its annual convention, came out against the plan that its political arm had endorsed in 2002.

'A 50-year plan'

Phillip Russell, director of the Transportation Department's turnpike division, said that despite all the cutting-edge ornaments — tolls, the unique long-term "partnership" with a private developer, the marriage of roads, rail and utilities — the corridors are nothing more than good planning.

"It's a 50-year plan," Russell said. "The department's been criticized for a lot of things over the years. Planning ahead is usually not one of those things."

He said the Transportation Department will continue to expand four-lane interstate segments to six lanes as needed, including the sections of I-35 between San Antonio and Dallas yet to be widened. But after that's done, it will get more difficult to add more capacity, he said. The long-term trends, combined with demographers' predictions, show that rural traffic counts have been doubling every 15 to 20 years, Russell said, and even six lanes won't do the job on I-35. Thus the pending contract for the I-35 corridor.

The winning bidder among the consortia — which include one led by Fluor Corp., which is building Texas 130, a second headed by Spanish tollway operator Cintra and a third that includes Hensel Phelps, builder of Austin's new City Hall — will be guaranteed just $3.5 million of planning work over the couple of years. Every step of the way after that, as the various pieces of the I-35 corridor are built over the years, could be subject to all-comers bidding. But Williamson acknowledged that "all of these proposers presume they will be doing most of the building."

If the marriage sustains, in other words, the prevailing group could do several billion dollars of Texas road work over the next decade or two.

The state's assumption, and requirement under the bid, is that the consortium will bring most of that money to the table, either putting up existing capital or borrowing it. Toll revenue would then go to the consortium to pay back the investment.

But the state would also put up a to-be-determined amount of money. That 2003 state law that made the Trans-Texas Corridor possible stipulated that no more than 20 percent of the state's annual federal highway grants, or about $400 million this year, could be drawn from the state highway fund for the corridor projects. But that limit does not apply to preliminary engineering, studies, or operation and maintenance, and there is no limit on how much of the $3 billion Texas Mobility Fund could go to it. In theory, at least, the corridor project could scoop up a lot of money that otherwise would have gone to other transportation improvements.

Slotboom foresees a "financial disaster," one that would require the state to forgo urban highway expansions and to levy tolls on existing interstates to make up for the shortfall on the unneeded and underperforming corridor turnpikes a few miles away. State officials and others say that's unrealistic doomsday talk. Despite, or perhaps because of the unfortunate experience with the state's first private toll road, the Camino Colombia turnpike near Laredo that went bankrupt and was bought by the state, neither private investors nor the state will plow money into an unneeded corridor project, officials say.

"Those (rural traffic counts) are lower numbers than one would have intuitively expected, given the planning for the Trans-Texas Corridor," said Robert Poole, director of transportation studies for the California-based Reason Foundation and a leading national toll road proponent. "But one of the virtues of funding things to a significant degree with tolls is that you have to convince Wall Street that the project makes sense. . . . If a corridor doesn't have the traffic to justify a significant amount of toll financing, it isn't going to happen."


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Numbers show that light rural traffic does not justify Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor

Road to future or a dead end?

Perry's corridors not needed, some say

December 12, 2004

Ben Wear, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2005

CORRECTION: * A story on Page One of Sunday's American-Statesman stated that the Texas Farm Bureau endorsed a plan for statewide transportation corridors in 2002. The Farm Bureau's political arm endorsed Rick Perry for governor; he has supported the plan since his election.

Houstonian Erik Slotboom, by his own description, is a "road geek," a guy who spent a year of his life writing and self-publishing an exhaustive book on his hometown's freeway system.

Highways move him, in other words, both literally and figuratively.

So when Slotboom, a software engineer, first heard about Gov. Rick Perry's 4,000-mile dream of tollways criss-crossing Texas , he was open to the idea of the Trans -Texas Corridor . But then, on his frequent trips on Interstate 45 from Dallas to Houston, Slotboom noticed something. For most of the way, from Houston's outskirts to the Dallas suburbs, the traffic was actually pretty light.

He had a heretical thought: Maybe all or almost all of the state's major routes really aren't all that crowded. And if so, he wondered, do we really need to spend $183 billion of state, federal and private money to build a parallel system of 10-lane highways, railroads and utility lines?

Slotboom's answer, after doing a good deal of research, was no.

And a look at the most recent traffic counts on the state's major arteries would seem to indicate that, aside from the clogged San Antonio-to-Hillsboro stretch of Interstate 35, rural Texas roads are far from congested.

On I-35 halfway between Laredo and San Antonio, for instance, 11,620 vehicles a day were using those four lanes in 2002, about 5 percent of the throng on that same road where it crosses the Colorado River in Austin.

On Interstate 10 near Columbus, between Houston and San Antonio, the count was 21,820 cars and trucks a day. Near Buffalo, the midpoint between Dallas and Houston on I-45, the number was 25,530. U.S. 59 near Livingston, 70 miles northeast of Houston, had 23,000 vehicles a day.

And in West Texas , the numbers drop completely off the table: 8,100 a day on I-10 near Junction, 7,100 on Interstate 20 near Monahans and 10,190 a day on U.S. 87/I-27 south of Plainview.

Even by the conservative guidelines of the Texas Department of Transportation, use on a four-lane rural freeway doesn't reach the "undesirable" range until daily traffic reaches 31,600 vehicles. Add a fifth and sixth lane, and that threshold grows to 47,400 vehicles a day.

Despite those numbers, state officials say all the corridors eventually will be needed, and they won't be built until they are. For now, people like Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson say they're moving seriously only on a parallel route to the increasingly crowded I-35 between Dallas and San Antonio.

Slotboom, looking at trend lines for 30 years of traffic counts on those roads, says all but I-35 will be fine for decades into the future, some without even adding lanes. If the state wants to give vehicles a way to avoid urban bottlenecks on I-35, he says, it could build alternate routes around cities, such as Texas 130 around Austin, rather than separate highways to skirt cities. Perry, Williamson and the Texas Department of Transportation, Slotboom says, want to solve a city problem by building country roads.

"The problem is, really, urban congestion, and to a certain extent Interstate 35 is urbanized," Slotboom said. "The rest of the highways are rural, and there will never be a need on them for a Trans -Texas Corridor . . . . I'd like to see them justify it."

Williamson, a close friend of the governor and his de facto spokesman on toll roads and the Trans -Texas Corridor , agrees that most of those rural highways won't need a parallel set of toll roads any time soon. He says that's why the commission is about to pick a highway development consortium this Thursday for the 600-mile Oklahoma-to-Mexico I-35 corridor alone, Williamson and department officials say. As for the rest of the 4,000 miles, well, for now those are just lines on paper waiting for traffic growth to justify them.

"None of those corridors will be built until the exact moment in time when the market says it's time to move," Williamson said.

Unpopular vision

The corridor plan, since Perry first introduced it in early 2002 as part of his re-election campaign, has been a slippery subject. Many transportation planners haven't taken it seriously, looking at the hefty cost -- equivalent to 35 years of the current state transportation budget -- and presuming the futuristic plan had no future. Meanwhile, critics such as Slotboom who did take it seriously, poring over the details and a key 2003 transportation law to glean the plan's ramifications, have been accused of political motivations and nitpicking. The plan is a vision, supporters say, not a blueprint.

That vision includes essentially seven 1,200-foot-wide transportation alleys across Texas , four of them designated as "priority corridors ," roughly paralleling I-35, I-10, I-45 and what will eventually be Interstate 69 from Brownsville past Houston and north to Texarkana. The other three corridors , presumably envisioned as coming on line much later, would be an Oklahoma-to-Big Bend route near I-20 for much of its run, a Texarkana-to-Amarillo route hugging the Red River, and the ports-to-plains corridor from Brownsville to Del Rio and then north to the Oklahoma panhandle. The seven corridors would pass near major cities, but not through them.

As outlined by the governor, each corridor eventually would have six toll lanes for passenger cars, four toll lanes for trucks, six railroads and a dedicated corridor for pipelines and electric lines. It's that daunting swath of right-of-way -- a nearly quarter-mile-wide no-cow's-land that would divide pastures and take a half million acres off rural tax rolls -- that has inspired incredulity and, particularly in rural Texas , opposition.

Last week, the Texas Farm Bureau, on a decisive voice vote at its annual convention, came out against the plan that its political arm had endorsed in 2002.

'A 50-year plan'

Phillip Russell, director of the Transportation Department's turnpike division, said that despite all the cutting-edge ornaments -- tolls, the unique long-term "partnership" with a private developer, the marriage of roads, rail and utilities -- the corridors are nothing more than good planning.

"It's a 50-year plan," Russell said. "The department's been criticized for a lot of things over the years. Planning ahead is usually not one of those things."

He said the Transportation Department will continue to expand four-lane interstate segments to six lanes as needed, including the sections of I-35 between San Antonio and Dallas yet to be widened. But after that's done, it will get more difficult to add more capacity, he said. The long-term trends, combined with demographers' predictions, show that rural traffic counts have been doubling every 15 to 20 years, Russell said, and even six lanes won't do the job on I-35. Thus the pending contract for the I-35 corridor .

The winning bidder among the consortia -- which include one led by Fluor Corp., which is building Texas 130, a second headed by Spanish tollway operator Cintra and a third that includes Hensel Phelps, builder of Austin's new City Hall -- will be guaranteed just $3.5 million of planning work over the couple of years. Every step of the way after that, as the various pieces of the I-35 corridor are built over the years, could be subject to all-comers bidding. But Williamson acknowledged that "all of these proposers presume they will be doing most of the building."

If the marriage sustains, in other words, the prevailing group could do several billion dollars of Texas road work over the next decade or two.

The state's assumption, and requirement under the bid, is that the consortium will bring most of that money to the table, either putting up existing capital or borrowing it. Toll revenue would then go to the consortium to pay back the investment.

But the state would also put up a to-be-determined amount of money. That 2003 state law that made the Trans -Texas Corridor possible stipulated that no more than 20 percent of the state's annual federal highway grants, or about $400 million this year, could be drawn from the state highway fund for the corridor projects. But that limit does not apply to preliminary engineering, studies, or operation and maintenance, and there is no limit on how much of the $3 billion Texas Mobility Fund could go to it. In theory, at least, the corridor project could scoop up a lot of money that otherwise would have gone to other transportation improvements.

Slotboom foresees a "financial disaster," one that would require the state to forgo urban highway expansions and to levy tolls on existing interstates to make up for the shortfall on the unneeded and underperforming corridor turnpikes a few miles away. State officials and others say that's unrealistic doomsday talk. Despite, or perhaps because of the unfortunate experience with the state's first private toll road, the Camino Colombia turnpike near Laredo that went bankrupt and was bought by the state, neither private investors nor the state will plow money into an unneeded corridor project, officials say.

"Those (rural traffic counts) are lower numbers than one would have intuitively expected, given the planning for the Trans -Texas Corridor ," said Robert Poole, director of transportation studies for the California-based Reason Foundation and a leading national toll road proponent. "But one of the virtues of funding things to a significant degree with tolls is that you have to convince Wall Street that the project makes sense. . . . If a corridor doesn't have the traffic to justify a significant amount of toll financing, it isn't going to happen."

bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698

Copyright (c) 2004 Austin American-Statesman

Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com