Kirk Watson's Transportation speech

Kirk Watson's Transportation speech to Opportunity Austin group
October 20, 2006

I'm looking forward to being back in public office, although we have many challenges to overcome, big issues to tackle, problems to fix. It's kind of hard to admit it, but that's probably one of the reasons I'm looking forward to this. I'm just goofy enough to want to be in the middle of the scramble as we, as a region, try to cover the distance that separates us from where we want to go.

Today, I've been asked to focus on one of the dangerous, ugly, hair-pin turns on our course – transportation. How goofy do you have to be to want to have anything to do with transportation, other than to get in a fast car and speed away from it? The problem is that no matter how fast the car is supposed to be, you're probably going to get stuck and not move.

The problems – of mobility and traffic congestion, inadequate policy, and ugly politics – also never seem to move. You all know the pain and frustration you feel when you're stuck sitting there, gridlocked in that dysfunction. Things start to move, and you feel that rush of hope for a solution, only to have to stop again.

Without question, traffic and mobility problems are going to hurt our economy and choke off the jobs we're trying so hard to create.

But more than that, mobility problems hurt our freedom. People are telling us what they want. It may not be through a vote at a ballot box, but it's a vote with their car. People want the freedom to drive, including driving alone.

They want the freedom to spend time with their families, whether it's getting home to enjoy supper together and then get down to a homework assignment, or to get to their kid's flag football game.

Our neighbors and co-workers want the freedom to get out and run a few errands at lunch time, to be able to go to an event at school in the middle of the day, or to not leave an anxious child waiting at day care because they can't get there on time.

Our partners in this excellent economy want the freedom to live in a part of this region they love – be it rural, semi-rural, small town or suburban – and still get to their jobs.

Such freedoms are lost when there aren't adequate transportation options. Our lives and quality of life are diminished.

People like to think Austin is weird, in roadways and other ways. But our problem is far from unique, even for Texas. Basically, it's a supply-and-demand issue gummed up, in part, by a bizarre coalition of some who seem to hate cars, roads, and suburbs with equal passion, and others who are so anti-tax that they freeze transportation money at 1991 levels while siphoning it off to pay for the state's other bills, all the while congratulating themselves even as the infrastructure deteriorates around them.

And far too few seem to do the hardest work — planning for the development that roads create — even though it could save precious money, not to mention time, and opportunity, and pleasure, and choice, and freedom.

Most of us are just tired and want a solution. There's only one I can see that will serve us and the people who will follow us.

Central Texas needs a comprehensive regional transportation plan that includes new roads, toll roads, rapid bus service, other effective modes of public transportation, and passenger rail.

Austin, Travis County, and all of Central Texas need a full and complete box of tools. And, we need to use every tool in that box.

But each and all of these tools must simultaneously protect and enhance our region's prosperity, treat commuters as valued constituents, and avoid lose-lose battles, reminiscent of Austin City Hall in the early and mid-1990s, where everybody – or nearly everybody – feels like they lost something.

While I think the right path is a comprehensive regional transportation plan, and would prefer to be talking about that today, we've been diverted for the past couple of years by the so-called debate about toll roads. So, if it will get us moving again, let's talk about toll roads.

To start, any toll road system must begin not with answers, but with hard questions.

What options do we have for funding the roads we want, and how fair are those alternatives to all of our citizens? How do the alternatives truly and honestly compare one tool with another? How do we ensure that our transportation system will serve its users and not simply treat them as a resource to be exploited – toll payers to be harvested? How do we create enough transparency that drivers will know their money, wherever it comes from, isn't simply filling a slush fund for road builders? How do we hold our transportation planners accountable?

I believe that answers to these questions, along with a number of traffic and financial details that remain in doubt, should be answered in a very public way. We cannot move forward without this fundamental transparency and accountability. Better late than never.

I believe such basic values could create a tool that the public could embrace. Sadly, our community has gone backward in the past couple of years. Central Texas became caught in the crossfire between some who act as though toll roads are the only possible answer to everything, and others who consider them diabolical.

We can't afford what's happening, which is a contrived war between the "toll army" and the "no-toll army". These two fight each other without even clear objectives anymore, refusing to hear each other, hunkering down into bunkers they built with inadequate figures and empty slogans, and engaging in winner-take-all politics, even though no one can really win anything and the biggest losers will be the hundreds of thousands of drivers who deserve real policy and real solutions.

Now I need to emphasize here that, for all of our troubles over the last couple of years, I don't want to lose the progress that has been made toward long-term transportation solutions in Central Texas. And for all the trouble it's caused, I'm not looking to blow up the current toll plan, necessarily. I respect the plan's authors, and I truly believe they want what's best for Central Texas.

But I also believe those who support a mechanism such as toll roads have an obligation to assure it will work.

In my view, and the view of a large segment of our constituents, toll road supporters have yet to demonstrate that their plan does more to help the region than to tax it. The very people who advocate for toll roads would not stand for it if local officials announced they were going to issue bonds and dramatically raise taxes, but would not say how much money they expected to raise, or what projects would be funded, or where those projects would be located, or when the money would be spent, or even what the tax rate would be. And yet, still, these same advocates don't understand the outrage people feel over this new tax and the lack of clear accountability for the money it raises.

Even now, amazingly, I hear some people talk about the current toll plan's "P.R. problem," as if the public would or should stop demanding a strategy, guiding principles, or basic accountability in exchange for better commercials with cute talking cars.

Yes, as people keep correctly saying, the toll plan was launched badly. But leaders frequently make their own luck, and I've come to believe that the launch was nothing more than a symptom of the failure to thoroughly evaluate, understand and debate the policy to begin with.

What we need now is not a new sales pitch. What we need, fundamentally, is a new beginning. We must seize this opportunity, even if it means walking away from any short-term gains, be they political or financial. If we can create something that will bring this region together and not rip it apart, it could create real prosperity and a better quality of life for generations of Central Texans.

How do we get back to where we need to be? And, where is that?

We need to get beyond politics and focus on policy. And – it bears repeating – that policy must be a comprehensive regional transportation plan that includes new roads, toll roads, public transportation such as rapid bus service, and passenger rail.

The policy also must assure transparency and accountability. Everyone should agree on that.

I will not support a toll plan unless there is complete financial transparency.

But that's just the start of the policy discussion that's long overdue in Central Texas. Here are a few steps we could take – or, in some cases, must take – to assure a transparent, accountable system of toll roads that will serve Central Texas drivers.

* Local officials should decide whether to keep tolling drivers once a road is paid off. If the community decides it needs that revenue to pay for new or different traffic and transportation solutions, whatever they may be, officials must be accountable when they vote on it and transparent in how they raise and spend the money. If the toll charged on one road would benefit the community by helping with another project, then that project should be specifically identified and the amount diverted to it clearly stated. And, since we need a comprehensive transportation plan, toll fees collected above and beyond the cost of building the toll road should be available to pay for other transportation tools as well as roads.

* Roads should be designed around the public's needs. Road planners should work with local officials to ensure that rights of way, entrance and exit ramps, and other design details will help the roads to serve Central Texas, and to guarantee that commuters, neighborhoods, and the entire region will achieve the fullest benefit possible. The toll roads should create truly lasting assets for the communities they run through. If a community wants to do things differently, even if it reduces profits, it deserves to be heard. No one has a monopoly on good policy.

* There should be an oversight group, made up of elected officials and accountable to the people, that reviews the revenues generated by toll roads. The information must be available to the public so people may easily determine how much money the tolls would raise, how much the roads would cost, how much the bond holders would be owed, and what other projects would benefit as new highways pay for themselves.

* Barring extraordinary circumstances, toll roads should not be sold to private or foreign corporations, but rather should be managed and owned by the taxpayers. Even under extraordinary circumstances, local officials should have to vote on whether to sell the assets, and the contract with any such corporation should be publicly disclosed.

* The agency that builds the roads and collects the tolls should have at least one elected official who can help ensure accountability and work with other transportation boards and groups. Right now, a group of political appointees decides when to build roads and how to collect tolls. These are good people. But, there's no good reason to not inject a little more democracy into the process. Accountability and elections have never scared Wall Street from financing schools and parks and libraries – even roads. You can and should trust elected leaders to build a toll road.

* Toll revenues should be used to pay back a city, a county, and the state for any gas taxes or other non-toll public money that went into a toll road. For example, if a city's taxpayers put up bond money to expand a road, and the state later decides to slap toll booths there, then the city should get it's money back and pay for other pressing needs or pay off debt.

* There must be an untolled option so that drivers who don't want to pay a toll have a choice and can use frontage roads or non-toll lanes. This way, new roads are financed only by the drivers who actually use them, not all taxpayers in the region. When done right, a toll is a more progressive "tax" that's entirely avoidable by people who can't afford it or simply don't want to pay and will plan around it. By contrast, a steep gas tax increase – one high enough to buy Central Texas out of its congestion – would have the greatest impact on working and middle-class families.

These policy objectives are a starting point. There surely are others. I think it would be a mistake to throw toll roads out of the toolbox purely because of frustration or suspicion, although I appreciate – and share – the frustration and suspicion that many people feel.

As I've said, we should view toll roads as, at best, just part of the real solution: a comprehensive, absolutely transparent transportation plan. These sorts of values will ensure Central Texans that this tool exists for their benefit.

My hope is that we will shift gears and focus on the policies and values that should be woven into any toll road system, even if it means re-drawing a map or two.

Then, and only then, can we start addressing the real problem. That’s not toll roads, folks. It’s traffic.

I didn't need to tell you that it's tough to get anywhere in this region. But, I do have to tell you it's going to get worse.

According to every reasonable demographic projection, there will be at least twice as many people in Central Texas in about 30 years as there are right now. It's extremely reasonable to expect, barring a dramatic shift that will get a whole lot of drivers out of their cars, there will be many thousands more cars and trucks on the road soon.

Where are those cars and trucks going to go?

Our existing highways are jammed, and we're running out of money to build new ones. The current pay-as-you-go system, which still clings to gas tax revenues, can't keep up with the demand for new road construction.

At the same time, road-building costs have skyrocketed – up 24 percent in 2005 alone.

And gas use will only decline as ever more people step into ever more hybrids and electric cars. We are falling further behind.

Forget 30 years from now. Heck, no need to be visionary here. Think 15 years from now. According to our state demographer, there will probably be – conservatively – another 498,000 people here. Ten years from now? 324,000 people. Five? 159,000 more people.

Folks, that's really only tomorrow. Even those of us who can't picture our grandkids can realize what we're facing if we bury our heads.

One way to process it is to consider that, in only five years, we're going to add the combined 2000 census populations of Round Rock ... Georgetown ... San Marcos ... Buda ... Bastrop ... Pflugerville ... and West Lake Hills. Another way to visualize our gridlock is to comprehend that, in a mere five years, we will have the equivalent of twice the number of people currently living in Round Rock – twice the number, two more Round Rocks – all jockeying with you, me, and the hundreds of thousands of other drivers who have stretched rush-hour into a nightmare that torments us for half the day.

Here's how I put it in a context that I can understand. When my sixth grader, Cooper, is a junior in high school, we'll have two more Round Rocks on our roads. By the time he's a junior in college, we'll have added another Williamson County!

As a region, we have to meet this challenge. We need to work to stabilize our situation and avoid further decline. And we have to do it the right way.

The fact is that there are currently more than 76 miles of toll roads under construction in Texas. Without tolling, these roads would have taken decades – literally decades – to complete. But with tolling, they will be completed in six years.

Take State Highway 130. This vital highway will cost 1 billion dollars to build. The Department of Transportation gets about 30 million dollars a year in gas taxes to build highways in Central Texas.

If they devoted every penny of that to 130 – ignoring every other transportation need in the region – it might, at the earliest, be finished sometime after Cooper turns 40, about the time DPS would be taking my driver's license away because I wouldn't be able to see.

More likely, the road simply wouldn't get built – which anybody familiar with the decades of talk about the MoKan Highway will tell you. The state would spend the money on something smaller, much less critical, but much more doable.

Instead, SH 130 will be a toll road. They broke ground in late 2003, when Cooper was in third grade. They'll finish it, all 49 miles of it, next year, when he's in seventh.

This is not a small benefit. This is the difference between prospering from our growth and choking on it. It's the difference between reduced freedom and greater enjoyment of our days and lives.

There's no such thing as a free road. There ain't no free lunch and there really ain't no freeway. We can't have an honest discussion about our future as long as people pretend that there is. Building roads costs money. Do we raise gas taxes? Do we raise property taxes? Do we raise some other piece of the sales tax?

And, let's be clear: those sources of tax dollars will have to be really raised – by a lot – to meet our needs. But, it shouldn't just be a contest, or an all-or-nothing decision, between gas taxes and tolls, property taxes and tolls, or sales taxes and tolls. Our rush to toss out tools based on our fears and prejudices is half the reason we’re in this mess to begin with.

So, we must at least consider having roads pay for their own construction costs, as we scrounge for potential tools to put into our toolbox.

It's not an option to simply hope things get miserable enough that people will get out of their cars. It seems responsible to look at a funding source that will get us some relief shortly after Cooper gets his driver's license, as opposed to waiting until he's well into his 40s.

But, first, let's all agree we have a problem. Let's seek out as many tools as we can for our comprehensive transportation plan. Let's look at everything. Let's tell warriors on all sides to put away their long memories and hard suspicions and take a fresh look at rail, rapid buses, bicycles, sidewalks, roads, and – yes – toll roads.

Numerous factors created this crisis, and solitary solutions won't solve it. As much as some of us might hate certain transportation options, we must look in good faith at the role they might play.

And, let's conduct the discussion looking for solutions. No one gets to simply be against something. If you oppose one of the tools, including a financing mechanism, be prepared to offer a solution. We can't afford, and don't have the time, to just be against things. We have to be for greater mobility and greater freedom. That requires more than criticism; it requires thought, consensus and work.

My hope is that no one will get into this intent on destroying a comprehensive plan because it has a component they just don't like. But, likewise, no one should devote themselves to saving any single part of it until that part works for the region, even if it means we miss out on the reward of the moment.

The issues at stake are far bigger even than the toll roads. I promise you, unfortunately, that sorting through them will be a tedious, contentious, and slow process.

But if we succeed – if Central Texas comes together around a shared and open vision of how future generations will live and travel – then we will have given an enormous gift to all of those who are here, and all of those who are coming.

Thank you all for all of your work and critical interest.