Free Republic

Warning: Unless you put up a roadblock this minute, soon Florida Republicans will "Dubai" all the state's assets. Once again, Elephants in the Florida Legislature have sold their souls, assuming they ever had any. Routinely, they barter the public interest for a buck. This time, in a scheme that only Halliburton could hail, House Republicans just passed H.B. 7033, giving private companies virtual monopoly ownership of most of Florida's toll roads. (Democratic state Reps. Susan Bucher and Keith Fitzgerald told me they were outraged.) That's right! If the scheme becomes law, corporate interests will be able to make a profit...

AUSTIN – A groundswell seems to be developing in Texas against the privatization of toll roads. And State Senator Robert Nichols is a key leader of the fight. Nichols has filed SB 1267, which would place a two-year moratorium on the privatization of toll roads. Companion SB 1268 prohibits converting existing roads to toll roads – a fight many voters thought they’d already won. Under current law an existing road can still be converted to a toll road even though many have regional or statewide use. “These roads were built with public money for public use,” Nichols said March 6...

Over the decades of watching the Legislature, no issue has so inflamed passions — and unified such disparate groups — as the current toll-road proposals winding through state government. Texas Department of Transportation officials have argued that the state's highway needs greatly exceed what fuel taxes will generate, and the only way to catch up with the traffic congestion is to sell some planned and existing roads to private operators and use the cash to build other roads. Clearly, the proposal that has most inflamed opponents has been the Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive 50-year project for which the state would...

FORT WORTH -- Interstate 35W, Loop 820 and Airport Freeway would not be expanded until 2015 at the earliest if a two-year ban on toll roads is approved by the state Legislature, area leaders say. A bill calling for a two-year ban was filed Tuesday and has strong support in the Senate. North Richland Hills Mayor Oscar Trevino says it’s time to hold the Metroplex’s lawmakers accountable for jumping on the anti-toll road bandwagon and endangering Metroplex road projects. The bill was filed by state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, and cosigned by 25 of 31 Senate members, including Jane Nelson,...

AUSTIN -- Texans who are demanding that the state stop building toll roads may get their wish. But they might not like the alternative: Higher state gas taxes. There is broad support in Austin for increasing the state's 20-cents-a-gallon motor fuel tax , says a lawmaker leading the effort to strip the Texas Department of Transportation's authority to build toll roads and enter into agreements with private companies. The Texas gas tax has not gone up since 1991. "The message is loud and clear. You couldn't not hear it. People want us to build roads, and they're willing to pay...

Hundreds of people angry with the state's toll road contracts sounded off before state senators Thursday. Public hearings on toll roads and the Trans Texas Corridor began early Thursday morning. Senators invited public input because state lawmakers will make some important decisions this session about how to pay for highways. So many people showed up that crowds were forced into overflow rooms. The Texas Department of Transportation and toll roads have found many critics, largely because of the private companies hired to build and run them. There are also questions about how much taxpayers pay for the roads. Speakers sounded...

A San Antonio-area lawmaker has filed a bill to kill the Trans-Texas Corridor. State Rep. David Leibowitz, D-Helotes, told Waco-based KWTX that the massive toll road project would “destroy rural Texas as we know it.” State Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, whose district includes Ellis and Hill counties, both of which would be impacted by the proposed toll road, said he would be supportive of the measure. “I support efforts to get more control over TxDOT (Texas Department of Transportation) and the Trans-Texas Corridor,” Pitts said. “The Trans-Texas Corridor will have enormous effects on this area and the people who live...

A coalition to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor voiced its concerns Sunday in Austin, citing border security and gun rights as key issues not being addressed. The large crowd in attendance at the meeting represented a cross section of Texans and included a veterans group out of Houston. “We didn’t fight a war so our government could give away our land,” said ret. Col. Sam Horton of Houston. World War II veteran, ret. Col. Arthur Peterson of Houston, said national security is at stake because the Gov. Rick Perry-supported transportation project would help erase borders between the United States and Mexico...

Across the country, state highway officials are almost giddy about the prospects of selling the right to build toll roads to private investors. Financial wizards have learned how to amass gigantic pools of capital to pay the states for the privilege. Prestigious financial institutions are promoting the new method of financing infrastructure as the greatest development since sliced bread. Left out of the equation is the consumer – the poor working stiff who has paid exorbitant local, state and federal taxes on every gallon of gasoline he ever purchased so that highway officials would have the funds necessary to construct...

Gov. Rick Perry should find someone other than his long-time friend Ric Williamson to lead the Texas Transportation Commission, the incoming chairman of the Senate's transportation committee said today. Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, said Williamson's "abrasiveness" and single-minded commitment to toll roads and privatization as the only solution to traffic congestion "has worn out his welcome in many communities across the state. I think it would be in the best interest of the state that he step aside in favor of new leadership on the commission." Williamson, whose six-year appointed term ends Feb. 1, declined to comment, citing a standing...

Four thousand miles of smooth blacktop. Six open lanes of road with never a traffic jam. Four lanes for trucks to keep the 18-wheelers from bothering Joe Motorist. High-speed rail to get you from San Antonio to Dallas in just a couple of comfy hours. Oil, gas, and water lines running from Oklahoma to the Mexican border. Handy motels, shops, and gas stations to keep you from having to get off the road until you hit the state line. That’s the dream of the backers of the Trans-Texas Corridor, the biggest public works project in the history of the state...

More than 54,000 cars a day pass through Interstate 35 near Hillsboro where the highway splits, leading motorists either through Dallas or Fort Worth. Added volume on New year's Day slowed traffic to 5 mph through the town, with cars stuck in medians and map-savvy drivers turning the Hill County Courthouse square into a traffic jam. Hillsboro is more than 150 miles from Tyler, Longview and Marshall, but one official says the growing pressure on the Central Texas highway is beginning to affect East Texas arteries. "I-35 is one of the busiest in the state, and people are already coming...

Every day I can look out the window of my office in downtown Austin and watch traffic creep along Interstate 35, half a mile away. The time of day doesn’t seem to matter, nor does the weather: morning or evening, wet or dry, the snarl persists. Part of this is due to the unwieldy design of the downtown exit and entrance ramps, but the main reason is the volume of traffic, much of it commercial. I dread the drive to Dallas, which I last made on the Friday afternoon before the Texas-Oklahoma football game – surely the worst day of...

Governor emphasis on tollways, private road-builders has generated urban and rural unrest Rick Perry's political problem with transportation, to the extent that he has one, may be that he's trying to douse a fire in 2006 that won't ignite for another 10 to 20 years. His critics say, no, the problem is that Perry wants to charge us for the water. What isn't in dispute is that the Republican governor and his appointees over the past six years have turned Texas transportation on its head, moving the state from financing public roads solely with taxes to a system that would...

For decades, underground highways in Southern California were a frustrated commuter's fantasy — too costly, too hard to build and, given the wealth of land, not necessary. But Los Angeles is in its 18th year as the nation's most congested metropolis, freeways have little or no space for new lanes and traffic experts are running out of time-shaving options. So civic leaders are joining engineers to consider burrowing the longest highway tunnels in America. "Tunnels," said Wolfgang Roth, a geotechnical engineer working on one possible project in the Antelope Valley, "may finally have their day." Three massive projects are under...

Clues Sought in Series of California Highway Shootings By NICK MADIGAN Published: May 3, 2005 LOS ANGELES, May 2 - A spate of apparently random highway shootings in recent weeks has left at least four drivers dead and several more injured in Southern California and has prompted the authorities to increase undercover police patrols on the region's roadways, the busiest in the world. Advertisement Since early March, there have been at least seven shootings on highways in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties, three of them this past weekend alone. Here in Los Angeles, where most of the shootings have...

Through most of the 1960s, Gov. Pat Brown undertook the construction of a world-class freeway system in California and, by the time he left office in 1967, California had planned for and begun construction on that system. Gov. Ronald Reagan continued the construction, and improved on Brown's plan. Then, like a Suburban in a SigAlert, California road-building came to a grinding halt. In the 1970s, under the throes of the "progressive" leadership of Gov. Jerry Brown and his leftist friends in the Legislature, the state began a new course. Freeways were passé; mass transit and government land-use planning were the...

Sierra Club wants halt to freeway widening By KEN RITTER Associated Press writer LAS VEGAS -- Arturo Tapia is among the people the Sierra Club thinks could be sickened by increased pollution if a key Las Vegas freeway is widened from six to 10 lanes. Tapia, 28, a painting contractor, said he and his mother and 12-year-old sister have grown accustomed to living next to one of Nevada's busiest roads. "Always noise," he said of U.S. 95, where Tapia can see traffic whiz past a low block wall separating his back yard from the freeway. "But it's something you have...

Starting New Year's Day, if your car breaks down on a Houston freeway, expect a tow truck to show up promptly to whisk you out of the way whether you want the service or not. Houston's new towing ordinance takes effect Saturday. It is a major piece of Mayor Bill White's traffic-management plan that declares all freeways to be tow-away zones. The city has signed contracts with wrecker companies to patrol 29 freeway sections and immediately remove any stalled or wrecked cars, expanding a pilot project that's been in place on the Katy Freeway since March. White contends the policy...

SACRAMENTO - In a rare move, the nonpartisan legislative analyst yesterday recommended raising the gasoline tax to improve a state road system hurt by four years of diverting transportation funds to tighten budget gaps. Californians pay hundreds of dollars more than the average American for auto repairs and other costs due to rough roads, Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill said, adding that increased traffic congestion is harming the state's economy. She pointed to a recent study that found bad roads cost the average San Diego motorist $667 a year, far above the national average of $396. Another study revealed that congestion...