The Texas House has overwhelmingly defeated a bill which would have authorized the exact sort of financial structure that planners of toll lanes on Loop 1604 and I-35 had planned to get the toll lanes constructed, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
HB 2861 would have specifically allowed both the Texas Department of Transportation and regional planning agencies to partner with private construction companies to build toll lanes in exchange for the rights to collect a large chunk of the toll revenue for several decades. The bill specifically listed planned toll lanes on Loop 1604 and Interstate 35 in Bexar County as projects passage of the bill would allow to move forward.
"This was the last gasp of air for toll roads in San Antonio," said Terri Hall of Texans for Toll Free Highways, who has been fighting against the use of tolls to expand highways in the metro area for the past decade.
"They cannot make it work as an RMA project. They cannot make it work as a TxDOT toll project."
In a sometimes heated debate, lawmakers from both parties pointed out that both the Democrat and Republican platforms oppose new toll roads, and the sorts of 'privatized toll roads' that would have been authorized under this bill.
House member Jonathan Stickland (R-Ft. Worth) even brought his fellow members face to face with their own political mortality, pointing out that the sole reason he is in the Legislature is because his predecessor supported a series of toll roads which now criss cross Tarrant County
."It was a huge victory for the people of Texas when it turned out that our representatives actually listen, which is rare these days," Hall said.
The defeat of the legislation leaves few options open to San Antonio and Bexar County planners, who had the Loop 1604 toll lane project on the drawing board and hoped to begin construction in the coming two years.
Since the language of both Proposition One and Proposition Seven state highway funding specify that the money is not to be used for toll projects, and now that the Legislature has killed the use of private money for toll road construction, and because there is no way that toll money alone could allow the floating of the hundreds of millions of dollars in bond money needed to build the proposed lanes, the only option left to local planners would be to float local bonds to build the projects. But that would require a vote of the people, similar to the City bond proposal which was approved on Saturday. Local planners have always strictly opposed any votes on toll projects, because they know they would be overwhelmingly defeated.
"The people of Texas have said no from the beginning on these privately owned toll roads," Hall said. "We don't want them, they are horribly expensive."
She pointed out that the southern half of State Highway 130, which fell into bankruptcy, was built using one of the same Public Private Partnership schemes that local planners hoped to use for Loop 1604 and I-35.
"This is really sweeping away the Rick Perry era of privatized toll projects," she said, pointing out that this is the type of financing Perry championed both for SH 130, but for his discredited 'Trans Texas Corridor' series of toll roads
."A broad coalition of groups across Texas made it clear that they would not tolerate the expansion of private toll roads and the corporate welfare they represent to continue like a cancer across the Lone Star State," said activist JoAnn Fleming of Grassroots America.
Hall said it is time to use public money to construct badly needed expansions to Bexar County highways.
"Special interests continue to push these innovative financing schemes despite the public opposition because private toll contracts and design-build procurements drive up the cost to build, putting more money into the pockets of road builders at great expense to Texas taxpayers," Hall said. "Our elected representatives just said, no more. You're not going to gouge our citizens just to get to work."
WOAI PHOTO