Why Not Take The Tolls Off SH 130?

[TexasTowelie]

That’s the question Rep. Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) asked yesterday and it’s damn good one. It’s the least bad idea I’ve heard so far when it comes to transportation this session. Via Ben Wear.

State Rep. Joe Pickett, an El Paso Democrat known around the Capitol for understanding transportation finance as well as anyone in the Legislature, on Thursday lobbed what amounted to a policy grenade into his own committee hearing.

Why not, he suggested, take the tolls off of Texas 130?

Not just lower them for trucks, as legislation carried by Rep. Celia Israel and Sen. Kirk Watson, both Austin Democrats, would do on the section from north of Georgetown to Texas 45 Southeast near Mustang Ridge. Take away all the tolls on that section, Pickett said, to provide a powerful incentive for trucks and passenger vehicles to take the metro area’s eastern loop rather than using Interstate 35 through Georgetown, Round Rock and Austin.

“We can do this if we want to,” said Pickett, chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

The cost? About $4.5 billion in debt payments over the next 30 years – $150 million a year, currently covered by tolls – plus whatever it would cost to maintain the road and, eventually, overhaul it. Figures for those expenses weren’t available Thursday.

Read more: http://eyeonwilliamson.org/?p=14533

[think]

1. Would be nice to see 130 free

Round Rocking it....

[TexasTowelie]

2. I wish it had been constructed when I was a college student

going from south Texas to Georgetown. I wasn't very fond of driving I-35 when I was younger and not experienced with driving on a busy freeway. I used to take US 183 to avoid most of the traffic through San Marcos and Austin.

[HubertHeaver]

3. Remove the tolls and reduce the speed limit.

Last edited Sat Mar 14, 2015, 11:34 AM - Edit history (1)

The current speed limit is too high to be safe.

[TexasTowelie]

5. I agree.

Considering that it is near an urban area and there are only two lanes in each direction with no access road the speed limit should be 70 mph instead of 85 mph.

[Jane Austin]

4. Here's why they can't do it

Rick Perry's administration SOLD 130 to a Spanish company complete with contractual restrictions on improving parallel highways, such as I-35.

When Perry was going around the country braying about his budget surplus, no one in the news media (as far as I know) bothered to mention it was because of the billions the Spanish paid for the new toll road.

[marble falls]

6. The same company that had to shut down one of itsown toll roads in Spain. Lower the speed limit....

and tear down the toll booths. I believe the toll from G-town to San Marcos is around $15.00, isn't it?

[GTurck]

7. Best route...

to Austin-Bergstrom Airport but the cost is prohibitive for many of us. We avoid toll roads when we know that there is an alternative that is tax supported.

[marble falls]

8. First foreign-owned toll road in Texas downgraded to junk bond status

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/terrihall/2013/10/first-foreign-owned-toll-road-in-texas-downgraded-to-junk-bond-status/
Posted on October 19, 2013 | By Terri Hall


Hate to say it, but we told you so.

Texas’ first foreign-owned toll road financed through a controversial public private partnership just got downgraded to junk bond status by Moody’s Investors Service. The Spain-based firm, Cintra (65% ownership), and San Antonio-based Zachry (35% ownership), known as SH 130 Concession Company opened the southern leg of State Highway 130 last November.

Concerned citizens with Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF) immediately launched a boycott of SH 130. Since then, the anemically low traffic levels signaled trouble from the beginning and Moody’s downgraded the concession company’s rating in April warning of the risk of default. The downgrade this week warns of default unless the company can restructure its debt or attract a substantial increase in traffic.

Moody’s predicts Cintra will be unable to meet its June 2014 debt service payment: “Thus, absent a sponsor injection of equity, a debt restructuring, or some other method of generating significantly more revenues, there is a high likelihood of a payment default in June 2014.”

The concessionaire has already dipped into its reserves to meet prior debt service payments and will need to tap its contingency funds to make its December payment, leaving inadequate funds to meet its June 2014 debt payment. If Cintra defaults on its debt, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) could execute a termination agreement and takeover the tollway, leaving lenders with limited ability to take possession of the facility as collateral.

It’s unclear whether TxDOT would continue to operate the highway as a toll road or as a freeway. State Representative Paul Workman authored a bill in the Texas legislature earlier this year to tap state and federal funds to buy back the ailing tollway and make it a freeway. Many predict if SH 130 were a free highway that the road would finally attract significant levels of traffic from the heavily congested Interstate 35, which most travelers cannot afford to do now given the high cost of tolls in addition to the higher consumption of gas given the road’s extra distance and the road’s highest-in-the-nation 85 MPH speed limit.

SNIP

Taxpayers footing the bill
Texas taxpayers have already subsidized the privately-operated tollway through advertising and buying down a one-year truck toll rate reduction announced at the beginning of the year. Texans have also paid for new signage along Interstate 410 and Interstate 10 to entice travelers to use the privately-run tollway.

All U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for repayment of a $430 million federal TIFIA loan on the SH 130 project. It’s the TIFIA loan that complicates any default and the potential for the tollway to be converted to a freeway. On the first P3 that received a TIFIA loan, the SouthBay Expressway in San Diego, the project went bankrupt in less than three years after its opening when forecasted traffic was wildly overstated and off by nearly 40,000 cars a day. Taxpayers had to eat nearly $80 million in losses on that TIFIA loan. Building roads with debt is never a good thing.

SNIP