My comment speech at the Mobility Alternative Finance Study Steering Committee today.

To illustrate how much the committee wanted to hear from the public, there were NO mics for any of the public speakers. Many great speeches were made today, including representatives from Central Texas groups such as PODER, Fix290, Texans against Tolls and more. Here is mine. I was able to cover about 75% of it with my 3 minutes.

This 'Independent Study' study (Mobility Alternative Finance Study Steering Committee) was unanimously approved by the Austin City Council in early 2005. A March 3, 2005 city resolution promised "the study is not to be delayed". That was 20 months ago.

People for Efficient Transportation pushed for and publicly supported the idea of Brewster McCracken’s independent study, until it was hijacked last year.

The public was promised that:
• ALL the meetings would be televised
• A citizens committee would steer the study
• The community could have full opportunity to speak at every meeting.

None of these promises came to be.

• This process was NOT open, secret meetings have taken place between TxDOT, CRA and CTRMA.
• No meetings were televised
• Those who voted to toll roads we’ve already paid for were placed on what was supposed to be the citizens steering committee.

The tollers who hijacked the study allowed the tolling authority, the CTRMA - the one who proposed the Phase II toll plan, to hire URS, a contractor with a long history of inflated projections.

More on the inflated projections in a moment.

The Phase II toll plan is so unsound and experimental that it depends on the theft of our public highways. Did your study cover that simple principle?

Traditional toll roads have been brand new roads utilized as a means of raising money to pay for the whole new road. In Austin, the absurd plan calls for tolling existing highways. This includes expressways we’ve already paid for. Phase II expresslanes for 183 & 71 are 100% funded and can be easily be opened as free roads. Oak Hill at the “Y” has $76 million of our tax dollars allocated to it.

TxDot will have have an financial incentive to NOT fix the congestion of the frontage roads, as drivers will be forced onto the freeway toll road.

The freeway toll revenue can easily equal thousands of dollars a year that the average family in Austin just can’t afford to pay. There is no economic impact study, just a bunch of self serving special interests looking to steal our freeways.

These freeway tolls also create more unaccountable taxation. The bureaucratic freeway tolling authority, CTRMA has been found to give out no bid contracts to themselves and their friends.

And we are now finding out that our transportation bond dollars that were promised to be used on our roads and freeways are being diverted to toll projects.

Back to the inflated URS projections.

URS, was hired to do the numbers for this study and has one of the most disturbing records of inflating traffic forecasts, in the industry.

URS has produced inaccurate forecasts for nearly a half-dozen toll road projects in Florida. In some cases, the roads drew only half the cars. URS predicted that the Suncoast Parkway would take in $70 million in tolls in its first year of operation, and it produced only $7 million - a tenth of the projection.

Forbes, in 9/3/01, said this about URS:

"It has become painfully clear to bondholders and politicians that many of the public toll-supported projects built in the past decade, the majority blessed by URS and its ilk, have become financial albatrosses."

Standard and Poor's bond analysts, after reviewing forecasting case studies for years, have concluded

"Optimism bias remains a consistent feature of toll road traffic forecasting."

Can we agree that one of the worst boondoggles in Texas history was the Camino Colombia toll road? It was promised to be a 'generator of regional economic activity'.

URS forecasted the traffic revenue for Camino Colombia at $9 million for the first year - it produced $500k. That is about 6% of the URS forecast!

Let me simplify it. Garbage in, garbage out.

You can do all the Indepenendt Studies you want, but the simple fact is tolling roads we’ve already paid for is highway robbery. it’s wrong, and we won’t stand for it.

Read more HERE.