Commission head says Trans Texas Corridor 35 proceeding despite "moratorium"

Texas law on tollroads has become as incomprehensible as the US income tax. Or US immigration law. You can devote hours to reading it, and employ professionals to interpret it, but you'll still get conflicting interpretations, the thing is such a mess of conflicting provisions, of prohibitions and exceptions, of elusive definitions, and so stuffed full of verbal padding that it tires the most indefatigable.

Until yesterday everyone, supporter and opponent alike, agreed: SB796 bars any more work on Trans Texas Corridor 35 (TTC35) using investor toll concessions.

Yesterday Ric Williamson, chair of the Texas Transportation Commission and Amadeo Saenz assistant director of TxDOT both said in a conference call with local reporters that  TTC35 is proceeding under Texas law using concessions.

"The moratorium doesn't affect TTC35," Williamson said. "I don't know what else to say."

Williamson and Saenz suggested that concessions on new segments of TTC35 can proceed because of a "CDA" or "comprehensive development agreement" signed in 2005 with Cintra/Zachry. That CDA was thoroughly non-comprehensive - extremely limited in scope. Although it was hyped as providing for investors to put up tens of billions of dollars, it in fact committed Cintra/Zachry to spend several single millions of dollars on tollroad project development work - traffic and revenue modeling, concept design, cost estimation, permitting, contract drafting - not a cent for land acquisition, detailed design or construction. It was to sort out viable early segments of the corridor after which segment CDAs or segment toll concessions would be negotiated either with Cintra/Zachry or the result of a new competitive concession procurement.

SH130 Segments 5 and 6 were one such follow-on segment toll concession (called again a CDA) coming out of the umbrella TTC35 project development CDA.

The state's lawyers apparently maintain that new segment concessions can proceed because they are not really new ones, merely an outgrowth of the 2005 project development CDA.

Williamson and Saenz said that TxDOT is proceeding to get federal NEPA approvals for TTC35 this summer and detailed alignments approved for high priority segments by the end of 2008.

Williamson said the Austin-Dallas segments could be ready for a construction CDA within two years (before summer 2009).

He did say that "we'll be very judicious" about giving lawmakers a chance to weigh in.

SB792 did provide for a study of toll concessions for the legislature due to be finished in mid-2009.

NOTE: The map at right is an old one showing early alternatives considered. The Cintra/Zachry toll concession for the segment SH130/5&6 is shown in black dashes. Other priority segments are north of Austin.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-06-29