NORTH TEXAS Remonikered pike

NORTH TEXAS

Remonikered pike

Dere ain’t no Texas Turnpike Authority no more. As of Sept 1 it became the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA). The new agency has taken over the assets, liabilities and staff of the old but will get a new board with local Dallas-Fort Worth area bigwigs as well as state representation. Many legislators were set to abolish the TTA earlier in the year, merging it into the Texas Dept of Transp but north Texas repesentatives wanted a toll authority kept as a separate entity and they managed to reconstitute it as a local agency. Since the Houston area has a regional turnpike (the Harris County Toll Road Authority which took over a failed TTA venture — the Houston Ship Channel Bridge in May 94) and since the TTA now ran toll facilities exclusively in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, it made sense to rename it regionally.

The last report of the old agency (for 1996) showed toll revenues for its major facility the Dallas North Tollway of $51m, a 10% rise on 1995. Daily trips increased from 289k in 1995 to 318k. The first 16km of this pike is in its 29th year of operation. It extends from close to the fringe of the central business district due north. The first stage led off from the northwest-trending I-35E Stemmons Fwy as far as the east-west I-635 LBJ Fwy. In two further stages, opening 1987 and 1994, it was extended further north, to its present end near western Plano at State Highway 121, making it about 34km in total. The road has 2x3-lanes. Its first 12km is mostly depressed in a tightly constrained right-of-way, but from then on it has typically generous Texan frontage roads paralleling the main lanes so that instead of interchanges there are frequent slip ramps to the frontage roadways. There are 3 mainline toll plazas and a total of 20 ramp plazas, a total of 81 toll lanes.

In 1989 the Dallas North was the first major urban toll road to implement electronic tolling, a system of read-only tags dubbed TollTags from the hometown guys Amtech. By now about half of total transactions are done with e-tags. The plazas have “TollTag Only,” coin machine “Exact Change” lanes, and attended “Change Made” lanes. E-toll patrons face a posted speed limit of 30 mph in the dedicated lanes at the newest barrier plaza BP-3 (and 10mph at BP-1 & BP-2). Most motorists slow to somewhere near the posted speeds, since the lanes are 11’ curb-to-curb under old coin machine toll lane gantries.

New works: There is major interchange spaghetti 16km north at the LBJ I-635 and new works at the 27km mark where there will be an interchange with the new President George Bush (PGB) Turnpike (SH-190) that began contruction in 1996. 42km of the PGB is permitted and financed and this will constitute a major east-west peripheral route, something of a partial third beltway for Dallas (the others being Loop-12 and I-635/I-20. There is already pressure to extend the PGB both directions. With an extension of another 10km at its western end it would provide another direct link to SH-183 and Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

History of self-financing: Under its original charter the TTA was supposed to build self-financing toll roads. Indeed its first project opened way back in 1957 the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike (I-30) covered its operating expenses and repaid all its debt by 1978 and was handed over to the state to be a free road. The Dallas North Tollway reports net revenues of $27m though the auditors qualify the accounts with the warning that they do not conform with genrally accepted accounting principles (most state agencies exempt themselves from that discipline) in that there is no depreciation/amortization charge. If the replacement cost of the Dallas North were say $1 billion and the life of assets 30 years, depreciation would wipe out the reported net revenues.

Operated as a business Dallas North would probably be charging higher tolls. It costs only $1.50 to travel its full 34km in a car (and cars are 99% of its traffic), a rate which has not changed since 1982! And there is no differentiation of toll between peak hours when it is quite crowded and off-peak when roadspace is plentiful. Business-like pricing could clearly make it a profitable operation but it is unclear it is presently being run for a real profit.

The new Bush pike broke with the TTA charter in going for state and federal subsidies. The project is far from self-financing having received $285m from TxDOT and an FHWA loan of $135m. $446m of bonds were floated in a complex financing by Smith Barney and the First Southwest Co based on backing from the revenues of the existing Dallas-N pike as well as the state money. Like all fringe area highways it relies heavily on anticipated developments, and is a high financial risk exercise.

Major reconstruction of the parallel LBJ I-635 (TR#16 Jun 97 p1) to the planned 14-lanes (10-now) would seem to affect the revenue prospects of the Bush pike, but that is some years away and the terms of competition are unclear — there is talk of operating 6-lanes as HOT lanes.

First sections of the Bush are due to open end-98 and the full 42km currently committed by mid-2004. It is being built with a mix of 4 lanes and 6-lanes mostly inside frontage roads with slip lanes between. It will be tolled with a mix of ramp and mainline toll plazas, just like the Dallas North. A median with min 48’ (14.6m) avoids the cost of a median barrier and allows economical inwards widening later.

Smaller projects: In southwest Dallas Co the NTTA operates a 2km bridge over a shallow lake, the Mountain Creek Lake Bridge on SH-303. 2-lanes with 5-toll lanes at a plaza on the eastern shore, it was opened in 1979. Traffic peaked at 8.1k veh/day in 1992 and appears to be in slight decline, but the facility reports toll revenues of $1.4m, operating costs of $0.5m and bond interest of $0.4m — for a surplus.

Just off the Dallas North at Keller Springs Rd a 1.1km $30m project of 2-lanes including a 500m long toll tunnel has just started construction under Addison Municipal Airport. The tunnel being built by the top heading and bench method is scheduled to open in early 1999, this is designed to improve east-west arterial movement by eliminating a road ‘gap’ caused by the airport. Bids for the toll plaza are due late this year.

New pikes: Major new pikes are in the planning process:

• Trinity River Parkway, a new inner area relief road for I-35E and its the near-CBD interchanges of local streets with I-30 to be located just west of the Dallas CBD that could be built in conjunction with the creation of lakes and new recreational parks in the city’s present drab flood channel

• Southwest Parkway from central Fort Worth southwest in Tarrant county on the sw fringe of the twin-city region

Six more: Now somewhat out-of-territory now are six other toll projects the TTA has been involved in, three in the state capital area:

• US-183A a radial northeast of Austin

• SH-45/Loop 1, north of Austin in Williamson Co

• SH-130 an ambitious eastern bypass route and relief of overcrowded I-35 through the middle of the Tx capital

• new bridges into Mexico at the port of Brownsville, west of McAllen (Anzalduas Crossing) and Laredo Bridge No 4.

(Contact Jerry Shelton NTTA 214 522 6200)