2005 in Rear View Mirror: Legislature allows governor to "toll away."
2005: End of the open road
December 26, 2005
Ben Wear
Austin American-Stateman
Copyright 2005
Say goodbye to 2005, the last toll-free year you'll ever see on Central Texas roads.
If 2004 was about deciding what to do about transportation — toll roads and, less wrenchingly, commuter rail — 2005 was about the doing.
It appears that 2006 will be more of the same: construction on four or perhaps five toll roads and planning for Capital Metro's Leander-to-downtown-Austin commuter line.
However, 2006 also will be the year that all or part of three of the toll roads under construction will open, probably sometime in the fall. You'll begin to see a marketing push for electronic toll tags months before that.
But enough about what's to come. Here's a quick look back at what made transportation news in 2005:
The Lege: Toll-speed ahead. After the toll road earthquakes of 2004 in Austin and elsewhere, one might have expected some sort of retrenchment by the Legislature this spring. Didn't happen.
Instead, legislators tweaked Gov. Rick Perry's toll road policy around the edges, guarding rural interests as the governor moves toward building the first leg of his Trans-Texas Corridor network of supertollways and requiring a public election to change a free road into a toll road. But the underlying message — toll away, governor — was a confirmation of the new direction for financing roads.
Lawmakers' handling of the gasoline tax brought it all into focus. Separate efforts to allow the 20-cent-a-gallon levy (frozen since 1991) to grow with inflation and to allow local areas to tack on a few cents for use in their region both died. And this despite House Speaker Tom Craddick's public support of indexing the tax to inflation.
So, given the growth in the state and snarled metropolitan traffic, tolls remain the only option for the burgeoning need.
The Legislature also proposed a constitutional amendment, which voters approved in November, to create a "rail relocation and improvement fund." Lawmakers will have to decide in 2007 how big to make it and how to pay for it.
Republicans in the Legislature, showing their silly side, snuffed out a move to name the future Texas 130 tollway after the notoriously Democratic Willie Nelson. Nelson allowed as how he didn't much want his name attached to a pay-to-drive road anyway.
Pork this! Their big siblings in Washington, meanwhile, finally found a way after two years to pass transportation reauthorization legislation. Congress in July settled on $286.4 billion in road and transit spending over the next five years, including about $24 billion of so-called earmarks designated for specific projects that lawmakers wanted done.
For Texas, which habitually gets a raw deal by having to send about $10 in federal gas taxes to Washington for every $9 it gets back in transportation funds, the measure marginally improved that to 92 percent by 2008. But, with overall spending going up, the state's annual take in federal transportation money will go up about 38 percent anyway.
It might have been more, but President Bush made it clear that he would not sign a bill that raised the 18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax.
Wanna used SUV, cheap? The Republicans in control in Washington and Austin probably would have left gas taxes alone anyway. But exploding gasoline prices through the middle of the year made even a small increase a political moonshot.
Regular unleaded, still in its first year in $2 a gallon territory, barreled on past $3 a gallon in some parts of the country (not here, not quite), leading a lot of people to re-evaluate the hunka-hunka-burnin'-gas in their driveway. After the hurricanes finally stopped blowing in off the Atlantic late in the fall and all the refineries got back online, gas prices plummeted back to 2004 levels.
Velvet crown of toll roads. Construction on the four toll-roads-to-be in Central Texas moved briskly this year, a pace brought on by the promise of revenue when the roads open and bond buyers, who lent the state more than $2 billion to build them, waiting to get their money back.
Work on all or parts of the three roads under construction by the Texas Department of Transportation — Loop 1 North, Texas 45 North and Texas 130 — is well ahead of schedule. Some sections will be ready early next year, but the agency probably will wait to open any of them until drivers can go seamlessly from downtown Austin on MoPac Boulevard to the Loop 1 tollway just north of Parmer Lane, thence to Texas 45 North and on to Interstate 35 in Round Rock.
Parts of Texas 130 on the metro area's eastern edge could open next year, as well, most likely the part between U.S. 79 and U.S. 290 East.
Meanwhile, the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, sort of a TxDOT Jr., broke ground in the spring on U.S. 183-A in the northwest part of the metro area. The 11.6-mile tollway in Cedar Park and Leander — the northern seven miles will be frontage roads only for now and will be free to drivers — is only slightly behind schedule and should open in the spring of 2007.
There are hitches elsewhere, however. Texas 45 Southeast, which will connect the south end of Texas 130 to I-35, has been hung up by a lawsuit (construction was to have begun this year), and ground won't be broken until midyear at the earliest. And several other projects in the controversial second phase of toll roads are on hold pending the result of a study instigated at the behest of Austin City Council Member Brewster McCracken.
Metro capital. The local transit agency, having found the electoral pot of gold in 2004 when voters approved the commuter rail project, this year found the pot deficient of greenbacks to make it all work in the long run. The reasons for the tightening belt vary, depending on who's talking. But the immediate effect was a management proposal to pay newly hired drivers on a lower scale and a resulting (and ongoing) deadlock with the union that represents those drivers.
The agency, looking at a long roll of federal red tape for transit grants, decided not to pursue $30 million in federal funds for the $90 million-plus rail project. And with rail supporters already talking about other, much more expensive projects, the agency's heretofore bountiful 1 percent sales tax suddenly looks insufficient.
Planning work on the rail project, meanwhile, continued behind the scenes. The agency has arranged to buy six rail cars for more than $30 million and will have to borrow the money for that purchase. And it has cut from its plans, at least initially, one of the nine stations advertised to the public during the 2004 election.
So if you want to get off at Highland Mall when the line opens in 2008, better start practicing your drop and roll move.
Getting There appears Mondays. For questions, tips or story ideas, contact Getting There at 445-3698 or bwear@statesman.com.
© 2005 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com
December 26, 2005
Ben Wear
Austin American-Stateman
Copyright 2005
Say goodbye to 2005, the last toll-free year you'll ever see on Central Texas roads.
If 2004 was about deciding what to do about transportation — toll roads and, less wrenchingly, commuter rail — 2005 was about the doing.
It appears that 2006 will be more of the same: construction on four or perhaps five toll roads and planning for Capital Metro's Leander-to-downtown-Austin commuter line.
However, 2006 also will be the year that all or part of three of the toll roads under construction will open, probably sometime in the fall. You'll begin to see a marketing push for electronic toll tags months before that.
But enough about what's to come. Here's a quick look back at what made transportation news in 2005:
The Lege: Toll-speed ahead. After the toll road earthquakes of 2004 in Austin and elsewhere, one might have expected some sort of retrenchment by the Legislature this spring. Didn't happen.
Instead, legislators tweaked Gov. Rick Perry's toll road policy around the edges, guarding rural interests as the governor moves toward building the first leg of his Trans-Texas Corridor network of supertollways and requiring a public election to change a free road into a toll road. But the underlying message — toll away, governor — was a confirmation of the new direction for financing roads.
Lawmakers' handling of the gasoline tax brought it all into focus. Separate efforts to allow the 20-cent-a-gallon levy (frozen since 1991) to grow with inflation and to allow local areas to tack on a few cents for use in their region both died. And this despite House Speaker Tom Craddick's public support of indexing the tax to inflation.
So, given the growth in the state and snarled metropolitan traffic, tolls remain the only option for the burgeoning need.
The Legislature also proposed a constitutional amendment, which voters approved in November, to create a "rail relocation and improvement fund." Lawmakers will have to decide in 2007 how big to make it and how to pay for it.
Republicans in the Legislature, showing their silly side, snuffed out a move to name the future Texas 130 tollway after the notoriously Democratic Willie Nelson. Nelson allowed as how he didn't much want his name attached to a pay-to-drive road anyway.
Pork this! Their big siblings in Washington, meanwhile, finally found a way after two years to pass transportation reauthorization legislation. Congress in July settled on $286.4 billion in road and transit spending over the next five years, including about $24 billion of so-called earmarks designated for specific projects that lawmakers wanted done.
For Texas, which habitually gets a raw deal by having to send about $10 in federal gas taxes to Washington for every $9 it gets back in transportation funds, the measure marginally improved that to 92 percent by 2008. But, with overall spending going up, the state's annual take in federal transportation money will go up about 38 percent anyway.
It might have been more, but President Bush made it clear that he would not sign a bill that raised the 18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax.
Wanna used SUV, cheap? The Republicans in control in Washington and Austin probably would have left gas taxes alone anyway. But exploding gasoline prices through the middle of the year made even a small increase a political moonshot.
Regular unleaded, still in its first year in $2 a gallon territory, barreled on past $3 a gallon in some parts of the country (not here, not quite), leading a lot of people to re-evaluate the hunka-hunka-burnin'-gas in their driveway. After the hurricanes finally stopped blowing in off the Atlantic late in the fall and all the refineries got back online, gas prices plummeted back to 2004 levels.
Velvet crown of toll roads. Construction on the four toll-roads-to-be in Central Texas moved briskly this year, a pace brought on by the promise of revenue when the roads open and bond buyers, who lent the state more than $2 billion to build them, waiting to get their money back.
Work on all or parts of the three roads under construction by the Texas Department of Transportation — Loop 1 North, Texas 45 North and Texas 130 — is well ahead of schedule. Some sections will be ready early next year, but the agency probably will wait to open any of them until drivers can go seamlessly from downtown Austin on MoPac Boulevard to the Loop 1 tollway just north of Parmer Lane, thence to Texas 45 North and on to Interstate 35 in Round Rock.
Parts of Texas 130 on the metro area's eastern edge could open next year, as well, most likely the part between U.S. 79 and U.S. 290 East.
Meanwhile, the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, sort of a TxDOT Jr., broke ground in the spring on U.S. 183-A in the northwest part of the metro area. The 11.6-mile tollway in Cedar Park and Leander — the northern seven miles will be frontage roads only for now and will be free to drivers — is only slightly behind schedule and should open in the spring of 2007.
There are hitches elsewhere, however. Texas 45 Southeast, which will connect the south end of Texas 130 to I-35, has been hung up by a lawsuit (construction was to have begun this year), and ground won't be broken until midyear at the earliest. And several other projects in the controversial second phase of toll roads are on hold pending the result of a study instigated at the behest of Austin City Council Member Brewster McCracken.
Metro capital. The local transit agency, having found the electoral pot of gold in 2004 when voters approved the commuter rail project, this year found the pot deficient of greenbacks to make it all work in the long run. The reasons for the tightening belt vary, depending on who's talking. But the immediate effect was a management proposal to pay newly hired drivers on a lower scale and a resulting (and ongoing) deadlock with the union that represents those drivers.
The agency, looking at a long roll of federal red tape for transit grants, decided not to pursue $30 million in federal funds for the $90 million-plus rail project. And with rail supporters already talking about other, much more expensive projects, the agency's heretofore bountiful 1 percent sales tax suddenly looks insufficient.
Planning work on the rail project, meanwhile, continued behind the scenes. The agency has arranged to buy six rail cars for more than $30 million and will have to borrow the money for that purchase. And it has cut from its plans, at least initially, one of the nine stations advertised to the public during the 2004 election.
So if you want to get off at Highland Mall when the line opens in 2008, better start practicing your drop and roll move.
Getting There appears Mondays. For questions, tips or story ideas, contact Getting There at 445-3698 or bwear@statesman.com.
© 2005 Austin American-Statesman:
posted by Porkus Maximus Tex: at Monday, December 26, 2005
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