By Wylie Harris
The Touchstone
April 2005
Online at: http://www.rtis.com/touchstone/april2005/p21.html
Quick, close your books. Here's a one-question pop quiz on Texas transportation:
1. The initials "TTC" stand for
A) Too Terrible to Contemplate
B) Take the Taxpayer to the Cleaners
C) a Tale of Transnational Contractors
D) the Trans-Texas Corridor
If you answered "all of the above," odds are you won't be hired as Governor Rick Perry's press secretary any time soon. Take heart, though, you'd be a fine candidate for a Truth Telling Commission (were he ever to establish a beast so inimical to his own interests and contrary to his habits).
Amazingly enough, Governor Perry appears to have more in common with contemporary folk singer Gillian Welch than the fact that both entertain regularly in Austin. As it turns out, they both dream of highways. But, while Welch transforms her roadway reveries into hauntingly beautiful ballads, Perry -- ever the worldly sort -- grinds his asphalt fantasies into True Tales of Corruption.
What exactly is the Trans-Texas Corridor? "The concept," in TXDOT's own words, "is simple. A 4,000-mile network of corridors up to 1,200 feet wide will connect Texas, with separate lanes for passenger vehicles (three in each direction) and trucks (two in each direction). The corridor also will include six rail lines (three in each direction), one for high-speed passenger rail between cities, one for high-speed freight, and one for conventional commuter and freight. The third component of the corridor will be a 200-foot wide dedicated utility zone" [1]. The TTC isn't meant to upgrade the infrastructure of the existing interstate network. It throws up a brand-new, largely parallel transportation system, ostensibly to route long-distance traffic and hazardous materials away from major urban areas. Whether any highway system could achieve these goals at acceptable economic and ecological costs is an open question. To suggest that the TTC could possibly do so, as planned behind Texans' backs and implemented in advance of their consent, is the wildest of dreams -- and a nightmare, should it come to pass.
Governor Perry "unveiled" the plans for the TTC in 2002 [2]. Never one to hide his Aggie pedigree, Perry is matching his predecessor in office, both for the under whelming candlepower of his proposals and the dogged stubbornness with which he forces them down the public throat. Since last spring, citizens around the state have been duly convening at public meetings to try to get it through the governor's head yet again that day is not night, black is not white, and a boondoggle of a construction project is most certainly not what a revenue-strapped border state needs to snap itself out of its economic doldrums.
For starters, there's the simple question of cost. At $31 million per mile, the TTC's total cost, at a minimum, runs to a cool $150 billion [1]. That's an amount more than double the state's entire annual budget in recent years [3]. Also, this is the same governor who's been threatening to herd the legislature into special session because there's not enough money to run the school system. A pair of questions comes immediately to mind: who's going to pay for the thing -- and how?
TXDOT's reply sounds so evasive it makes a body wonder if it weren't ghostwritten by Don Rumsfeld himself: the TTC "will be financed with the support and resources of the private sector along with tolls, bonds, limited state funds and other revenue sources. Financing plans for TTC-35 are under development. Details for financing other elements of the TTC will be provided as they are available" [4, 5]. That sounds pretty close to bureaucrat-speak for, "The taxpayer will be left holding the bag -- again." Or maybe Perry's just humming another of Gillian Welch's tunes, "Everything Is Free."
But reading the fine print -- which apparently is something neither Texans, nor the people we elect, do -- shows that someone has thought quite a bit indeed about how to finance the TTC. We voters ourselves, reads the TXDOT report, approved an "innovative" plan for funding the TTC when we passed Proposition 15 back in 2001. Proposition 15 gives the state "more flexibility than it has ever had to pay for transportation projects through a variety of means" [1].
Those means include building many sections of the TTC as toll roads. Planners predict reassuringly that toll rates will be in the range of those on existing toll roads, such as the 20 cents per mile charged on Dallas' President George Bush Turnpike. But at that rate, a one-way trip from Dallas to Houston would cost $40 [6].
Toll revenues, however exorbitant, don't start coming in until people can actually drive on a road. To pay for the construction up front, Proposition 15 authorized yet another innovation, a kind of public-private partnership called "Exclusive Development Agreements." Under these agreements, a contracting firm plans and builds the road and then receives the toll revenues from its operation [1,7]. "It is important to remember the Corridor right-of-way and assets -- without exception -- will be owned by the State of Texas," Perry said [2]. Another thing that's important to remember, although the good governor's not quite so quick to point this one out, is that anyone wanting to drive on the TTC-35 will be paying their toll fees to the newly-signed contracting firm Cintra to help the company recover, for example, the $6 billion cost of the road it proposes to build between Dallas and San Antonio by 2010 and, in TXDOT's feel-good phraseology, "give" to the state [7, 8].
That moves the public discussion, such as it isn't, from the costs and who'll pay them, to the benefits and who'll get them -- or, more importantly, who won't. Governor Perry pitches the TTC as a way to make travel safer, reduce air pollution, relieve traffic congestion, and spur economic development [2]. Separating passenger from freight traffic might well make travel safer -- but separate lanes for the two types of transportation won't actually be built for years. Meanwhile, semis and compact cars will keep sharing the same space [1]. The TTC won't reduce vehicular exhaust emissions -- it will just reroute them away from urban areas.
The TTC might indeed reduce congestion -- or it might not. Paradoxically, adding more lanes sometimes increases traffic, as so many additional motorists flock to the extra space that their numbers negate any projected advantage [9]. Even if the TTC did free the flow of traffic, it still might not be the most cost-effective way to skin that cat. If upkeep of existing highways is this bad already, how much worse will it be when split between twice the mileage? SB 342, which took effect upon the passage of Proposition 15, permits TXDOT to devote 30 percent of its annual federal highway spending authority (now roughly $600 million a year) to privately-contracted toll projects [10].
As far as TTC's catalytic effects on Texas' economic development are concerned, the choice of a foreign firm as the first contractor is fitting. Equally portentous is the fact that its competitors in the bidding, Kellogg Brown & Root and Fluor, are in the top ten for reconstruction contract dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, fines paid for corporate malfeasance, and campaign contributions [11, 12] -- making Cintra suspect, if not outright guilty, by association. As if to quell any lingering doubts that local communities might still glean some slight benefit from their proximity to TTC's path, the Corridor is designated high-speed and limited-access, largely bypassing the towns and cities along its route while separating those on one side from the others [1].
One of the four factors TXDOT will weigh in selecting locations for corridor segments is their probability of generating tolls, suggesting that this could conceivably trump other ostensible factors such as congestion relief and safety [1]. In fact, Cintra and other toll concessionaires will have every incentive to make sure their TTC segments generate maximal revenue by any means necessary, including siphoning as much traffic as possible from the old interstate system. The TTC's enabling legislation gives them plenty of tools for doing just that.
The linchpin of that legislation is HB 3588, which gives the Texas Transportation Commission traditional powers of eminent domain over properties falling within the TTC right-of-way. It also extends those powers immensely, setting extremely broad criteria for condemnation and expediting the condemnation process by eliminating opportunities for appeal. Landowners can be compensated for this taking with a share of eventual toll revenues. Moreover, despite Perry's public assurances to the contrary, the state can sell land acquired in this manner to private individuals or firms, creating a perfect setting for land speculation [13]. Given the 12 % increase in statewide rural land values between 2002-3, that speculative frenzy might already be underway [14].
Rural or otherwise, property values, like traffic totals, tend to climb where the roads are. After all, one of the reasons TXDOT says widening the existing interstates is impracticable is that the market price of the land alongside them has appreciated so much since they were first built. To give the governor his due, it's worth pointing out that those higher values ought to add a nice cushion to the property tax revenues of the cities and counties in the TTC's path. But it turns out that HB 3588 nips that local economic stimulus in the bud too, specifically prohibiting local governments from taxing TTC land [13]. Of course, if Governor Perry's property tax cap proposal succeeds, the loss of local revenues from TTC would seem small by comparison [16]. But that's only the tip of the TTC asphalt-berg for the rip-off of Texas' rural areas. Other provisions of HB 3588 nullify existing local use restrictions, such as conservation easements, on lands condemned for TTC right-of-way. Publicly owned lands, with a few exceptions, can be condemned without compensation. Moreover, concessionaires can charge public utilities if their lines cross the roads and rails TTC builds across their paths -- though the concessionaires are exempted from fees for such services. The regional transportation authorities created by the TTC can also convert existing roads, paid for once already, to toll roads to secure sufficient revenue [13].
But the TTC fail won't stop at simply failing to deliver the benefits Perry promises. It will go further, robbing Texans of other resources the Governor either hasn't considered or isn't mentioning -- trivial things, mostly, like agricultural land, wildlife habitat, and even democracy itself. Texas already leads the nation in farmland loss, paving it over at 2 acres per minute [15], but apparently Perry thinks that's not fast enough. In addition to covering farmland with asphalt and concrete, the TTC would diminish wildlife habitat and limit animals' movement between the remaining isolated patches, further exacerbating Texas' already severe land fragmentation problem [17]. Ironically, the TTC will attempt to mitigate its negative environmental effects by creating a "land bank" of acres protected from development elsewhere in the state, potentially doubling the area removed from local governance and tax rolls [13].
All this makes painfully clear what the TTC is really all about. It isn't meant to help move people or attract commerce to Texas, merely to help goods pass through it. And if in the process it enriches a few politicos and business folk at taxpayer expense, well . . .what a coincidence! The TTC is like a hardware upgrade for NAFTA, whose closer economic ties between the US and Mexico have brought ten years and counting of reduced and even negative job growth, bankrupt farmers, and environmental havoc on both sides of the border [18]. Like NAFTA, the TTC propels a style of trade that has nothing to do with nurturing local economies, and everything to do with sapping their vitality.
The icing on that let-them-eat-transnational-cake is the foreign firm Cintras' successful bid for the first segment of the TTC. The choice of Cintras, which operates other transportation infrastructure in Chile and Puerto Rico [19], puts Texas' transportation future in the same league as those imposed on Latin American countries by the IMF, whose chief effects have been to funnel public wealth into a very few private hands. Here again, by a deliberate choice of economic policies that steer Texas toward banana-republic status, Perry seems to be shadowing his predecessor's moves in the presidency.
Perry's take on the Texas two-step is to plant each clodhopper squarely in a half-baked cow pie ("ONE: Property tax cap! TWO: Trans-Texas Corridor!") and then stand firm. Inevitably, he comes out smelling somewhat on the south side of a yellow rose. In this case, he's standing firmly in the crosshairs of such disparate political players as the Sierra Club to the state Republican Party, both of which publicly oppose the project [20, 21]. On the red-black-and-blue maps of the last few elections, even counties that went infrared have little sympathy for their GOP governor and his far-fetched financial follies. Local governments, already strapped for cash in the wake of federal and state cuts, are not falling for the knuckleheaded notion that a high-cost highway built by foreign contractors at no economic benefit to their communities is a good idea. CorridorWatch.org, a citizen's group created to oppose the TTC, has members in 133 counties [22].
Texas citizens may not be buying Perry's plan -- but we're sure going to pay for it. What is to be done? TXDOT has been holding, and will continue to hold, public meetings as part of its development process for various TTC segments. However, the meetings focus strictly on the location of proposed routes, not on whether the project should move forward at all. Moreover, the Texas Transportation Commission was discussing bids with contractors well before public meetings began. The entire development process for the TTC-35 route was initiated by an unsolicited bid from the Fluor Corporation in November 2002, and it hasn't become any more open or democratic since then [23]. The public meetings aren't democracy, just a sort of group therapy for those about to be paved over. This tactic is still surfing the wave of popularity it built up during the 2003 redistricting steamroll, when the GOP agenda ran headlong into massive public opposition and never so much as batted a vote.
The TTC 's 50-year time frame dwarfs what now seems like the rapidity of a decade-long interstate renovation [13]. It's more like a perpetual War on Transportation, analogous to the previous governor's perpetual War on Terror -- both part of the larger ongoing Campaign Against the Sense God Gave a Chicken. It sounds like such a bad idea it could only be a fever dream, not an actual political agenda. Surely, the governor is only airing these schemes as a smokescreen to hide some other nefarious undertaking. . . . But given redistricting's recent history, no one should feel comfortable enough to sit back and wait confidently for bad ideas to go to their deserved ends. Pipe dream or nightmare, Perry and his pals will likely not snap out of it 'til it's too late for the rest of us. There's another Gillian Welch tune Perry needs to learn. It's called, "One Monkey Don't Stop the Show." But he's not going to hear it unless Texans wake up, smell the asphalt, and Tell Truth to the Corrupt.
References
1. TXDOT 2004. Crossroads of the Americas: Trans-Texas Corridor Plan.
2. Press Release, 28 January 2002. Governor Rick Perry Unveils 'Trans Texas Corridor' Plan. http://www.governor.state.tx.us/divisions/press/pressreleases/PressRelease.2002-01-28.3252/view
3. Center for Public Policy Priorities. 2004. Losing Ground: The Texas State Budget for 2004-05. http://www.cppp.org/products/policyanalysis/losing-ground.PDF
4. For information on the Trans-Texas Corridor, TXDOT's official website (www.dot.state.tx.us/ttc/ttc_home.htm) refers visitors to another site, www.keeptexasmoving.com, for more information. Clicking on that link rewards the reader with the following disclaimer from TXDOT: "Attention! You are about to leave TXDOT Expressway (www.dot.state.tx.us). This link is to a site which the department believes may be of interest or use to users of the Site but for which TXDOT has no responsibility. TXDOT makes no effort to independently verify information on Internet sites outside of the "dot.state.tx.us" domain, nor does it attempt to exert editorial control over such information. TXDOT makes no representations or warranty of any kind as to the accuracy or any other aspect of the information contained on such Internet sites. TxDOT specifically disclaims any and all liability for any claims or damages that may result from information on Internet sites outside of the "dot.state.tx.us" domain." So, technically, some comments and information attributed to TXDOT in this article do not come from TXDOT. Rather, they come from the only source of information on the Trans-Texas Corridor to which TXDOT's website refers.
5. http://www.keeptexasmoving.com/financing/
6 Dickson, G. 2004. Firm agrees to build I-35 bypass. Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 17 December.
7. TXDOT 2004. Cintra will invest $7.2 billion for the Trans-Texas Corridor. TXDOT News, 16 December.
8. Trans-Texas Corridor Project Fact Sheet, January 2005. TTC-35 Oklahoma to Mexico/Gulf Coast Element.
9. Sipress, A. 2000. More lanes better? Not necessarily. Washington Post, 13 January, p. B01.
10. Proposition 15. Full text available online at http://corridorwatch.org/ttc/cw-prop15.htm
11. Center for Public Integrity 2003. Windfalls of War: U.S. Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. http://www.public-i.org/wow/
12. Booth, C., and Hutto, T. 2004. The Next Wave in Superhighways, or A Big, Fat Texas Boondoggle? Time, 06 December.
13. House Bill 3588. Full text available online at http://corridorwatch.org/ttc/cw-hb3588-toc.htm Annotated excerpts are posted at http://corridorwatch.org/ttc/index.htm
14. Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. 2005. Statewide Rural Land Values. http://recenter.tamu.edu/data/agp/rlttx.htm
15. Bishop, B. 2005. About that not-so-secret House report on taxes. Austin American Statesman Lasso, 03 February. http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/custom/blogs/lasso/archives/2005/02/03/about_that_notsosecret_house_report_on_taxes.html
16. American Farmland Trust. 2002. Farming on the Edge. http://farmland.org/farmingontheedge/index.htm
17. American Farmland Trust, Texas Regional Office. Going, Going, Gone? Impacts of Land Fragmentation on Texas Agriculture and Wildlife.
18. Pickard, C. and Adair, C. 2003. NAFTA: 10 years later, and only getting worse… Houston Chronicle, 31 December. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2330016
19. Press Release, 12 December 2004. Cintra to take charge of developing the Trans-Texas Corridor, in the US. http://www.ferrovial.com/ferrovialenglish/desarrollos/noticias/muestranoticia.asp?id=365
20. Kallerman, D. 2004. Update on the Trans-Texas Corridor Project: Designing Roads with a Meat Cleaver. Lone Star Sierran 40(4):12.
21. Republican Party of Texas Convention 2004. Report of the Rules Committee and Platform Committee.
22. http://corridorwatch.org/ttc/cw-news.htm
23. http://www.keeptexasmoving.com/projects/ttc35_milestones.aspx