Part of president-elect Donald Trump’s promise to create new jobs for Americans relies on a “deficit-neutral plan” to spend $1 trillion on public works projects, including hundreds of billions for roads and rail.
But the strategy could result in something many Texans aren’t going to like: more toll roads.
“Unfortunately that’s the way I’ve read it,” said state Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, vice chair of the Texas Senate transportation committee.
There are also fears the plan could provide few new highway projects or road improvements to the state’s vast rural areas. And the lack of details in the proposal has so far made it unclear how Texas’ urban transit agencies could be affected.
Trump’s plan is already getting some opposition from his own party in Washington, D.C. In the Lone Star State, where residents have balked at a growing number of toll projects, state officials from both political parties are hoping the incoming president backs off reliance on the private sector.
“To be direct, it’s a little scary and kind of contrary to where our current leadership in Texas has been going the last couple of years,” said state Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, who chairs the Texas House transportation committee.
Under the current proposal, the $1 trillion in infrastructure investment would come not from the government, but from private companies who would receive tax incentives for borrowing funds needed for construction costs, according to Trump’s campaign and transition websites and a paper authored by two of his senior advisors.
The private firms who build the roads, though, would expect a revenue stream to cover principal, interest and operating costs. And the most common way to create a revenue stream on a road is to toll it.
“To suggest public-private partnerships and relying on tolls, we’ve already kind of maxed those out,” Pickett said.
Vocal toll road opponent Terri Hall of San Antonio is the executive director of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, a group whose members are contacting Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and asking the transition team to rethink the infrastructure plan.
She said the proposal essentially privatizes the nation’s roadways and opens a door to corruption.
“It reeks of cronyism, which Trump’s campaign promise to ‘drain the swamp’ was supposed to get rid of,” she said.
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Others, though, worry that rural areas will be left behind under the current proposal. Geoff Anderson is the president and CEO of urban planning and development nonprofit Smart Growth America. He said that private firms aren’t likely to view improving access to rural areas or rebuilding aging county roads as financially feasible or worthwhile.
“The projects that address those types of issues seldom have a revenue base,” he said.
Huffines, the Senate transportation committee vice chair, echoed Anderson’s concerns. He also said that toll roads in urban areas will geographically segregate people by income because only those Texans that can afford the added cost will live near such corridors.
“Those that can’t are going to live in those areas where they don’t have to go down toll roads,” Huffines said.
You know we are living in strange times when I find myself agreeing with Don Huffines. The story notes the failure of SH130 as a reminder of what the downside of these schemes are. As for the concerns about corruption and cronyism…yeah, there’s nothing I can say here that doesn’t put my head at risk of exploding. I don’t honestly expect much to come of this because I don’t think Trump has the attention span to push for it, and I know Paul Ryan doesn’t care about infrastructure. But if it gets a bunch of Republicans in Texas all upset, it will have accomplished at least one useful thing.
If we’re really serious about infrastructure, we’ve got plenty of existing roads, dams, bridges, gas lines, water mains, etc. that need fixing or replacing. Go work on those, and use actual tax money, not financial sleights of hand, to pay for it. This is why we pay taxes- so we can have the nice things associated with civilization.
The vast majority of road miles will remain in the public sector and reliance upon tax revenue for upkeep. As Flypusher notes, that’s mostly what the infrastructure is…existing stuff, not new stuff. What happens to the tax revenue stream as more and more vehicles become electric and stop paying the gasoline tax? As for SH 130, I use it to bypass Austin and to me it’s worth the toll to do so. I question the vast right-of-way and the unused toll booths, all needless expenses imho which have contributed to it not working out financially.