"Toll roads aren't the problem, it is how they are being implemented."
Readers say toll road dispute points to troubles down the line
01/31/2006
Carlos Guerra
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2006
Apparently, not many of my thoughtful readers are big toll road fans. And many who write also send me great stuff to read.
"I am one of many San Antonians who are livid that toll roads are being shoved down our throats without a chance for us to vote on them," wrote one, echoing numerous others.
Many also greatly distrust the new regional mobility authorities, which lawmakers empowered to seize private property, issue bonds, establish tolls and even set up special taxing districts for transportation projects. Voters, however, got zero say in the creation of these authorities, picking their board members or reviewing their decisions.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn issued a blistering report on the first RMA created that cited apparent conflicts of interest, self-dealing and lax fiscal controls.
Sal Costello, founder of People for Efficient Transportation, sent several common-sense suggestions. These include purging the Texas Department of Transportation of its good-ol'-boy culture that thrives on building overly pricey highways while turning down less costly options, like double-decking existing freeways instead of buying more right of way for new ones.
Bill Barker, a transportation consultant, says, "Toll roads aren't the problem, it is how they are being implemented." Today's proposals aren't the product of "a rational public policy and a planning process with ample community input" but rather of state officials relying on the vendors to propose highway projects.
"The interstate highway system has been completed and vehicular travel is going down," Barker says. "We need to rethink our entire transportation program."
There are additional things we also need to rethink, others wrote.
"These roads are only a symptom of a greater malady: Our manic push to build huge, horizontal cities with little or no mass transit. ... We no longer have the luxury of putting off the decision. We must build our cities up and install workable mass transit," wrote Gary Keener.
San Antonio and Austin "need more than a few loft conversions in their downtown cores, (and) San Antonio, in particular, has a huge incorporated area filled with substandard housing that begs for redevelopment."
Also received was a warning in a recent Fortune Magazine report.
"Two of the world's most successful investors say oil will be in short supply in the coming months," the magazine said in an article about Hermitage Capital's Bill Browder and legendary commodities trader George Soros.
Soros wouldn't predict an expected price, but Browder detailed six scenarios, each of them plausible in varying degrees, and per-barrel prices they would produce.
Major attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure would give us $88 oil, and an Iranian oil embargo $111 oil. But the fall of the House of Saud would send oil skyrocketing to a whopping $262 per barrel.
Far gloomier is the scenario James Howard Kunstler paints in "The Long Emergency," a five-page article adapted from his book of the same name. Since U.S. oil production peaked at 11 million barrels in 1970, it has dropped to 5 million barrels a day. But we consume 20 million barrels. Many experts expect global oil production to peak by 2010, he writes, and after that, supply will decline steadily and extraction costs will rise.
If such predictions are true, we may not even need the freeways we have, much less costly new ones sticking us with tolls.
To contact Carlos Guerra, call (210) 250-3545 or e-mail cguerra@express-news.net.
© 2006 San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com
01/31/2006
Carlos Guerra
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2006
Apparently, not many of my thoughtful readers are big toll road fans. And many who write also send me great stuff to read.
"I am one of many San Antonians who are livid that toll roads are being shoved down our throats without a chance for us to vote on them," wrote one, echoing numerous others.
Many also greatly distrust the new regional mobility authorities, which lawmakers empowered to seize private property, issue bonds, establish tolls and even set up special taxing districts for transportation projects. Voters, however, got zero say in the creation of these authorities, picking their board members or reviewing their decisions.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn issued a blistering report on the first RMA created that cited apparent conflicts of interest, self-dealing and lax fiscal controls.
Sal Costello, founder of People for Efficient Transportation, sent several common-sense suggestions. These include purging the Texas Department of Transportation of its good-ol'-boy culture that thrives on building overly pricey highways while turning down less costly options, like double-decking existing freeways instead of buying more right of way for new ones.
Bill Barker, a transportation consultant, says, "Toll roads aren't the problem, it is how they are being implemented." Today's proposals aren't the product of "a rational public policy and a planning process with ample community input" but rather of state officials relying on the vendors to propose highway projects.
"The interstate highway system has been completed and vehicular travel is going down," Barker says. "We need to rethink our entire transportation program."
There are additional things we also need to rethink, others wrote.
"These roads are only a symptom of a greater malady: Our manic push to build huge, horizontal cities with little or no mass transit. ... We no longer have the luxury of putting off the decision. We must build our cities up and install workable mass transit," wrote Gary Keener.
San Antonio and Austin "need more than a few loft conversions in their downtown cores, (and) San Antonio, in particular, has a huge incorporated area filled with substandard housing that begs for redevelopment."
Also received was a warning in a recent Fortune Magazine report.
"Two of the world's most successful investors say oil will be in short supply in the coming months," the magazine said in an article about Hermitage Capital's Bill Browder and legendary commodities trader George Soros.
Soros wouldn't predict an expected price, but Browder detailed six scenarios, each of them plausible in varying degrees, and per-barrel prices they would produce.
Major attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure would give us $88 oil, and an Iranian oil embargo $111 oil. But the fall of the House of Saud would send oil skyrocketing to a whopping $262 per barrel.
Far gloomier is the scenario James Howard Kunstler paints in "The Long Emergency," a five-page article adapted from his book of the same name. Since U.S. oil production peaked at 11 million barrels in 1970, it has dropped to 5 million barrels a day. But we consume 20 million barrels. Many experts expect global oil production to peak by 2010, he writes, and after that, supply will decline steadily and extraction costs will rise.
If such predictions are true, we may not even need the freeways we have, much less costly new ones sticking us with tolls.
To contact Carlos Guerra, call (210) 250-3545 or e-mail cguerra@express-news.net.
© 2006 San Antonio Express-News:
posted by Porkus Maximus Tex: at Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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