The Worst of Both Worlds: Toll Roads and Unchecked Sprawl

In a sudden fit of journalism, the CP is focused this morning less on boostering May Town Center and more on objective reporting about the feasibility of a bridge, seeming to get the perspective of every side affected by the possibility.

However, not only did reporter Nat Rau omit the question of who would pay for the maintenance and upkeep of a developer-built bridge, but he wasted space that he could have devoted to that question by offering a scenerio of further privatization of public infrastrure by wedding the Giarratarra bridge plan to the state toll road plan. That's all northwest Nashville needs: another idea for siphoning state and local tax dollars for private industry. Toll roads are an exclusive boon for toll corporations and an exacting boondoggle for taxpayers.

Global Government Sell-off: Privatizing Everything

The number of deals that governments globally are working with private companies to take control of and profits from public infrastructure has tripled from last year to this year. The latest tax money grab by corporations is the megalomaniacal proposal by Citigroup and Spanish investors to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike for 75 years. The investment group intends to make around 10 times their original investment in tolls, which the group would hike 25%.

Are we seeing TDOT's future in present Pennsylvania?

Bredesen's TDOT Welcomes Bush Transportation Chief in Support of Toll Roads

TDOT seemed happy to welcome the transportation secretary from the ever popular Bush Administration to shill for Governor Bredesen's toll road/privatization plans. The travelling medicine show designed to pull public funds to private coffers (George W. Bush's prime directive) has come to Tennessee, and our so-called Democratic administration is embracing it with open arms. Both want to raise money to pay for roads, but they want it to go into the pockets of a few very rich transportation companies who cannot be held directly responsible for their work.

Bucking the Privatization Trend in Toll Roads

New Jersey governor shuns privatization of toll roads, keeping public money in the public sector in order to pay state debts and invest in transit projects. Progressive States calls it an honest proposal that--unlike privatized toll roads in other states--does not send billions of taxpayer dollars into self-interested private tolling companies:

There is no such thing as a free lunch, despite privatization being sold that way. Companies pay lots of money for privatized highways because they then get to raise tolls themselves and keep the profit, rather than reinvesting on behalf of the public. Gov. [John] Corzine is arguing that New Jersey can raise $30 billion by keeping the increased toll money that other states like Indiana are giving away to private companies. It's not a free lunch, but at least it's not a deceptive rip-off like the highway privatization scams being promoted around the country.

There are more effective means than toll roads to fund transit projects, but my main opposition to tolling is based on the trend to sell out the taxpayers to private companies. Public tolls are better than private tolls because the money is gets invested in public projects instead of private bank accounts.

Veto-Proof Tolling-Restriction Amendment in Congress?

The racket that is tolling seems to have been momentarily turned back with an amendment added to the federal transportation and housing funding bill that would place a one-year moratorium on tolling on federal highways in Texas. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, but The Texas Observer senses that the Senate vote (88-7) signals a successful override of a Bush veto.

The Tennessee delegation made no amendments to the bill restricting tolling of federal highways here, which would seem to leave our governor free and clear to continue to move toward public-private tolling systems. I would like to see more effort made to put the same limits on tolling in Tennessee that seem to be about to be implemented in Texas.

Neighborhood Opponents of High-Speed, Multi-Lane Toll Road Force Referendum

Last week a grassroots group of neighborhood leaders in Dallas, TX were able to collect enough signatures to force plans for a controversial toll road design for an urban park to a November referendum. If approved by voters, the referendum would ban construction inside the Trinity River levee park of any road that's more than two lanes in each direction and has a speed limit of more than 35 mph. While a road through the greenspace has been part of the new park plan, the size, cost, and purpose of the road has always been disputed.

This appears to be a short-term victory for neighborhood infrastructure over fast-paced development that is reportedly $600 million over budget. The group also has a blog where they keep toll road opponents up-to-date, including late news of push-polling by proponents.

Gen Ass Moves That Much Closer to Privatizing Our Public Roadways

Yeah, they are unnecessary, but they are also the next step toward the Trans-Texas-like Trans-Tennessee Corridor. Tolls are also cover for raiding funds and for allowing our roads to rot and deteriorate. If I'm going to give my money for the upkeep of roads, I would rather send it to TDOT and have still have some control over it than I would turning it over to a private tolling industry under the lock of 50-year contracts.

The Lessons of Racketolling: If You Don't Like the Press You're Getting, Then Buy the Newspapers

In their efforts to brain-wash persuade Texans to support privatization of public roads via tolling, Australian toll road company Macquarie bought 40 local papers, many of which were critical of the public-private tolling scheme called the "Trans-Texas Corridor."

For Whom the Road Tolls

Before any more mention is made in the Governor's Office or in the Gen Ass about re-introducing toll roads back to Tennessee after nearly a century without them, our state leaders should take responsibility for the following information from yesterday's City Paper:

The federal government has cut back its road funding for Tennessee. But Tennessee did a great deal to hurt itself when it comes to road projects and the quality of life issues they can represent for average, working Tennesseans.

Put simply, the state’s road fund has been plundered to the tune of $280 million by the last two administrations in order to afford other things the state budget would not otherwise permit.

The result has been a slowing of road projects in Tennessee for some time.

The Governor and the Legislators owe it to us to reimburse the state road fund the $280 million that was robbed from it to pay for other projects.

After they've done that, they need to heed these facts about toll roads (via the Denver Post):

86 percent of new toll roads in eight states failed to meet expectations in their first full year.

By year three, 75 percent - 15 of the 20 that have been open that long - remained poor performers.

Any future racketolling scheme in Tennessee would amount to robbing taxpayers to pay for projects for which taxpayers already paid, and it would be double-dipping for projects destined to fail because private toll companies take their toll on taxpayers. Double-dipping is impolite; you take one dip and then end it.

I-40 Tolls to Fund the Trans-Tennessee Corridor?

Did you sit up and take notice like I did at the comment in today's Tennessean regarding legislators floating ideas like creating I-40 toll lanes to help fund the West Tennessee portion of the "NAFTA superhighway," which I prefer to call the Trans-Tennessee Corridor after the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor (a plan to take land, give no-bid contracts to foreign companies, and build 4,000 miles of "supertollways")? Will Tennessee be tolling today's interstate drivers in a futile effort to fund the building of tomorrow's supertollways, which will only funnel more public dollars to private interests?

Make Sure That You Read the Tolling Industry's Fine Print Before the Governor Signs Off on a Deal

Privatizing our roads by going into business with the tolling industry is fraught with unacknowledged perils in other states where the "partnership" is more than just a theory as it is now in Tennessee. According to one Texas State Senator, in whose state the tolling industry flourishes:

As the Texas Transportation Commission began negotiating contracts with private companies to build and operate new toll roads, they hit several bumps. Most companies require at least a 50-year contract to operate and collect tolls. So the decisions we make today affect taxpayers for the next half-century .... The private companies prefer to put off addressing the buy-back issue until another day. This means the private companies would be free to hire experts to determine what they think the road is worth. It does not take a genius to figure out the companies will calculate the price in a way that enriches shareholders and leaves taxpayers holding the bag.

The market demands that drive racketolling are more risky to me than the prospect of paying higher gas taxes to repair and to maintain our free public highways. And yet, our Governor is calling his overture to the tolling industry "sensible." I call it hogwash.

A Not-So-Minor Detail on Racketolling Left Out of the Tennessean

While the Tennessean referred us to a TDOT exploration of toll-road feasibility, it failed to tell us of some of the costs of TDOT's study-commissioning. Leave it instead to the Knoxville News-Sentinel (via Brian A.) to divulge the figures:

Gerald Nicely, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Transportation, is expected this week to release a study of three projects seen as potential candidates (including Nashville-Hendersonville) for tolls . . . .

"We would have a great deal of educating to do with the public and the Legislature before we would be able to enact a toll," Nicely said.

"Some people say they're already paying gas taxes, so this would be double taxation," he said.

Nicely in May 2006 commissioned a study by the engineering firm Wilbur Smith Associates to look at the feasibility of charging tolls on three potential routes. The study cost $453,000, said Julie Oaks, spokeswoman for TDOT.

$453,000 is a significant detail to leave out. It also makes me wonder if taxes or new toll roads are or will be paying the hundreds of thousands of dollars for state conducted study on privatizing our public roads.

Link

Racketolling

Two observations from this morning's Tennessean reveal the licit racket that is the toll road industry. First, a comment from a state legislator pushing for a toll connector from Sumner Co. to Davidson Co. exhibits the government's take in the racket:

[T]ransportation money expected to be lost from gas-tax revenues as people switch to more economical cars could be made up by toll money.

That is not only misleading (since tolls will never have the same direct impact as taxes), it also suggests that government is in league with corporations enabling our reliance on carbon-belching consumer goods for the sake of the bucks.

The anti-revenue mob will likely wrap their talons around that one simply because it fits their cash-cow stereotypes of "big government." In fact, the Tennessean goes back to the TN Tax Revolt's well in the same article.

Second, big corporate money becomes bigger corporate money in the tolling scheme:

One drawback of toll roads lies in the agreements with private toll road operators. The deals often carry provisions discouraging governments from improving free public roadways that could cut into toll profits.

I would not call that one drawback; I would call that one giant drawback. Toll roads do not merely siphon infrastructure revenues to pay for private luxuries. They also create legally binding contracts that destroy competition that the state might provide through public tax revenues in order to shelter their take (the dirty little myth of corporate enterprise is that it prefers competition even as it strives to eliminate competition).

The true winners in the tolling industry racket are the private companies that will take tolls away from building better highways, the state legislators who run interference for and patronize those companies, and the interest groups from both sides of the debate who get more publicity from the issue. The true losers of racketolling are regular citizens and the driving public.

Note to Governor Bredesen: Toll Roads Cost Votes

By the time toll road deals between states and private companies get off the ground, they are brought down by grassroots and other interest group opposition. So, why waste prep time putting together such an initiative? But maybe this will get your attention: in Indiana, support for the Governor's toll plan cost the Republican Party their majority in the state's House of Representatives.

Toll Roads: A Tiny Patch for a Massive Blowout

We see this morning that Governor Bredesen is flirting with the idea of toll roads in Tennessee, in spite of the fact that toll road revenues will fall far short of paying for the growing problem of our deteriorating transportation infrastructure. Tolling would only feasibly increase to 9% of highway funds over the next decade. That hardly makes the Guv's idea as "sound" and "sensible" as he claims.

The highway systems are deteriorating due to use and the inability of public funding to keep up with increased driver demand (or more accurately, load). If drivers want their well-maintained highways the real answer lies in generating higher levels of revenue:

the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, last raised 14 years ago, would have to go up at least 3 cents by 2009 and 7 cents more by 2015 just to maintain the current [national] highway system and keep pace with the fast-rising cost of roads.

We can assume that paying for Tennessee's dependence on highways would mirror the national trend.

And, quite frankly, the boon of trying to stretch the small patch of toll roads across a gaping shortage of infrastructure funding is just another means of goverment subsidizing businesses. The tolling industry has high growth potential in this time of higher transportation demands and increasing interest-group pressure to stop any and all public financing to meet those demands. This industry has its own on-line newsletter. I also wonder what kind of lobby this industry has here in Nashville on the hill.

If the Guv is seriously contemplating toll roads, he's merely showing co-dependence on the national denial of the true problem of our highways and roads: a shortage of revenues to fix our retrograde infrastructure and to match driver demands. If we want something nice, we have to pay for it. If we don't want to pay for it, then there are lots of enterprising vultures ready to swoop in and collect the proceeds from our demands without fixing the problem.