Toll roads take fastest route

July 28, 2007

Ray Perryman, guest column / Waco Tribune

The Texas Transportation Institute reports that motorists in the nation’s largest 75 metropolitan areas spend approximately 62 hours stuck in traffic a year — equal to around one and a half working weeks. 

How to ease the gridlock? With no appetite to increase the gasoline tax, the federal government is not likely to provide any major infusions. That leaves toll roads and public-private partnerships, which a vocal minority opposes.

The 80th Legislature gave clear indication that Texas’ transportation problems need to be fixed sooner rather than later. 

The Texas Department of Transportation is already at work discussing and planning some 87 projects with regional mobility authorities and county leaders. However, funding for most of them is still in the future. To speed up the process, a few of the most pressing projects prudently are proposed as toll projects. 

Gov. Rick Perry recently signed a compromise bill on toll roads that was in response to foes of the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC).

The law places a two-year moratorium on most privately developed toll roads in Texas.  However, it does not affect the six construction projects currently being coordinated by the Harris County Toll Road Authority, and it allows projects in the pipeline for Dallas-Fort Worth to proceed. 

The moratorium doesn’t halt the proposed TTC, but no dirt will be moved as a part of this enterprise for two years. The time will be spent for studies and expanded preparation. 

The TTC will improve efficiency, reduce transportation time and costs, help expand intrastate trade and strengthen the position of Texas as a site of corporate operations and expansions. Delaying it will cost the state’s economy millions of dollars per year. 

As for the system in place: In the absence of new revenue designated for roadway construction, it is possible that tax resources might have to be shifted from new construction to maintenance to prevent further deterioration of highways.

From 1990 to 2000, the total miles of U.S. highways remained virtually unchanged, but the total number of miles vehicles traveled jumped more than 75 percent. 

According to state transportation officials, an additional $6.3 billion in Texas is needed just in preventative maintenance.

For each $1 spent that way, the state estimates that some $4 is saved over the life of the highway.

So Texas must be flexibile. In solving traffic congestion in Texas, careful consideration should go to the social, legal, environmental, economic and political costs and benefits. No one factor should dominate the process, and no single approach is the answer.

Economist Ray Perryman is CEO of the Perryman Group. He also serves as distinguished professor of economic theory and method at the International Institute for Advanced Studies.