Toll Road Bill Rolls On

May 23, 2007

by Eileen Welsome

We’re hearing conflicting rumors at the Legislature about SB 792, the toll-road measure that’s supposed to provide some oversight over private development deals with multinational corporations, such as Cintra Concesiones.

A source in the House told us this morning that Governor Ricky has succeeded in getting an amendment by state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst stripped from the bill. Amendment 13, as you will recall, would close a loophole that would allow the Trans-Texas Corridor to proceed.

But that doesn’t mean the hated network of super-corridors will actually be allowed to go forward. John Carona, the Dallas Republican who chairs the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee and has played a major role in drafting the toll-road legislation, said he’s confident that language in the bill will make it clear that TTC cannot proceed while the two-year moratorium is in effect.

“The negotiations are still going on,” said Carona. “I remain optimistic that we will reach an agreement in the next 24 hours.”

Carona said that he saw no support for a movement to override Ricky’s veto of HB 1892, which is very similar to the measure that’s still in play. Any over-ride effort, Carona cautioned, would almost certainly lead to a special session and no one wants that.

When all’s said and done, the bill’s so loaded with “carve-outs,” or road projects that are exempt from the two-year moratorium, that it seems like a shell. But a few good provisions remain. The non-compete clauses have been scaled back, the contract lengths curtailed to 50 years or less, and buy-back provisions have been added that will protect the state from paying gazillions for roads.

In the process, TxDot and its imperious chairman, Ric Williamson, have been badly mauled. Hopefully the department and its high-level operatives have learned some humility and will go out of their way to be more cooperative with the public and with local officials. And the bill itself cedes a lot of authority to local governments to decide what roads will be built.

That said, the Lege did nothing to solve the underlying problem, which is traffic congestion. So it might be worthwhile to think about that the next time you’re sitting in your car, alone, in traffic.