2019 Texas Legislature Report

[MaxConcrete]

See item 7: https://www.nctcog.org/nctcg/media/Transportation/Committees/RTC/2019/presentations-jun.pdf?ext=.pdf

The Texas Legislature completed its biennial session at the end of May. (For those not familiar, the legislature meets for 5 months in odd-numbered years.)

The main issues for the legislature were property taxes and school funding, with transportation very low on the agenda, so little or no transportation legislation was expected. Expectations were met, but there was one pleasant surprise, the extension of proposition 1 funding through 2034.

Highlights

• Propositions 1 (money from the rainy day fund) and 5 (sales tax revenue) were fully funded. Prop 1 funding is $3.9B and Prop 7 is $5B.
• TxDOT's budget for the two budget years 2020-2021 is $31.1 billion, an average of $15.55 billion per year. TxDOT's allocation is 12.4% of the overall state spending of $250.7 billion.
• All anti-toll legislation failed. This included efforts to make toll roads free after bonds are paid off, requiring voter approval of new toll roads, and banning system-wide financing.
• But there was no pro-toll legislation, and the legislature did not authorize any new public-private partnerships.
• Proposition 1 funding was extended for 10 years to 2034, which is very good news
• Bills were filed to stop or slow down the proposed high speed rail between Houston and Dallas. All bills failed.
• As mentioned in another thread, an approved bill requires TxDOT to conduct a feasibility study of extending IH 27
• Overall, it will be business as usual for TxDOT in the next two years, with the current anti-toll policies to continue

[Plutonic Panda]

I am very glad to hear about the anti-HSR bills failing. I still am skeptical this gets built as proposed, but it does and the stations are integrated with the city transit infrastructure, I bet this system is a major success story and another embarrassment for California.

As for the toll bills, I only support tolls removed for interstates. Other toll roads are fine. Perhaps a bill lowering tolls once they're paid for moving towards congestion based tolls. Are there any tolls roads where traffic is low tolls are suspended until traffic congestion started impacting the targeted LOS?

[In_Correct]

There are many highways I would like to see upgraded. At least upgrade them before 2035. So far they are being upgraded to Super 2 which is better than no upgrades.

I will use High Speed Rail when it is open. As for connecting it to the urban public transport, it would not hurt them to extend more rail lines to the High Speed Rail stations.

I do not support removing tolls ever. 2035 is a very long time to finish roads. Build them now instead.

[Chris]

I don't think that HSR ever gets built with private funding. There is no precedent for a capital intensive, privately funded high speed rail system without government subsidies. The only profitable high speed rail services are on corridors with very extensive, existing passenger rail usage. There is no passenger rail service at all between Houston and Dallas, so all passengers need to be captured from another mode and forecasted ridership figures of such projects are routinely overestimated.

Rail projects frequently suffer from problems on two sides; underestimated cost and overestimated ridership, a combination of these severely impacts the business case of such a project.