Mr Central Texas Tollway, Bob Daigh leaving TxDOT, Sal Costello gone (PERSONNEL)

Bob Daigh Austin district engineer at TxDOT is leaving at the month's end. Daigh has been the key figure in developing a network of tollroads around the Texas capital area. In his mid-50s he's got another good career ahead of him. We haven't heard whether he has another job lined up, but given his accomplishments in the state capital there should be plenty of people with offers.

During his time Austin went from a metro area with I-35, 183, and the Loop 1 MoPac and nothing much else to a metro area with four operating tollroads and another half dozen in the works.

"The works" of course are a tumultuous bruising place, especially in a metro area that's overpopulated with politicians, opinionated policy wonks, idealists, academics, IT people, and other assorted misfits.

Four splendid tollroads and plans for several others are an impressive legacy.  Daigh was a great public servant of central Texans.

Here's his official bio from TxDOT:

Robert B. Daigh, P.E., was appointed District Engineer for the Austin District of the Texas Department of Transportation on Sept. 1, 2003. He is responsible for all state transportation, planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance projects within his 11 county district.
Daigh began his career with the Texas Department of Transportation as engineer in the Georgetown Area Office in March 1988. In January 1995, Daigh assumed the position of Austin District programming and contracts engineer. Before assuming the position of district engineer he served as deputy director and director of turnpike planning and development for the Texas Turnpike Authority.

Daigh’s accomplishments include being honored in 2003 by Texas A & M University with the Gibb Gilchrist award recognizing his outstanding service in highway engineering with TxDOT. He is responsible for development and construction of the Central Texas Turnpike Project.
He is a member of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization transportation policy board and executive committee; the Combined Transportation, Emergency and Communications Center governing board; Capital Area Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CARTPO); and also serves as director of the CARTPO Clean Air Force Board.

His contributions to the community include being state coordinator for the National Design Engineer Challenge program for high school students in 1992-1994. He was also honored with the 2005 Jack Griesenbeck Leadership in Regionalism Award from the Capital Area Council of Governments.
Daigh graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering in May 1977. He served as a consulting engineer in Houston and Austin before he began his career with TxDOT in 1988." ends official bio

Sal Costello, nasty anti-toller leaves Texas

Sal Costello who called himself The Muckraker and a major force in developing Texas anti-toll movement left Texas last year. He said he was burned out and was "retiring from activism."

Founder of the Texas Toll Party and a huge blogger, he was among the most energetic writers and campaigners against tolling.

44, and a graphic designer and marketer he said his activism had become an obsession and was playing havoc with his personal finances and his marriage. He has moved to Carbondale, a small town in southern Illinois.

We had mixed feelings about the guy. We thought he was fundamentally wrong on policy. He said in personal exchanges that he supported " the traditional toll model" in which tolls were used to pay off the original construction bonds and then with the tollroad "paid for" it was detolled. I never saw him write in favor of even that limited vision of toll financing, he was so preoccupied with his offensive against TxDOT and other tollers.

That traditional toll model is flawed because a road is never ever "paid for."

It goes on costing money for as long as vehicles pound its pavement and stress its structures, and as long as the weather degrades the materials out of which it is built, rusting the steel, eroding the concrete and cracking the asphalt - which is forever. Moreover a revenue stream of tolls from the road is a measure of demand for the services of the road and a way of discovering whether its expansion is warranted and of funding that expansion.

Costello claims credit for saving motorists "hundreds of millions of dollars" by defeating proposed tolling on for example the William Cannon/Mopac stretch of Loop 1. That's just one side of the ledger though. On the other side someone else picked up the tab not being paid on Mopac.

Costello certainly deserves credit for ferreting out some irregularities that deserved airing. He made a lot of news. He usefully pointed up discrepancies between what officials said and what they did.

At the top of their political cycle TxDOT officials sometimes exuded a smugness and triumphalism that almost begged to be debunked, and Costello was their first serious debunker.

But he was on balance a negative force. He had no positive vision of providing mobility as an alternative to that which he was trying to tear down.

And we thought he was over-the-top nasty in many of his attacks on tollers, nearly invariably attributing venal motives to those he was up against, and publicizing extraneous personal issues.

So long Sal, and best wishes in your new life.

a 2005 report on Costello:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/1140

His own bio:

"Sal Costello is the founder of People for Efficient Transportation (TexasTollParty.com). Costello is a national award winning marketing professional and designer who led the effort to successfully kill hundreds of millions of dollars worth of freeway tolls in Central Texas since 2004. The fight continues.

'The nemesis of more than one elected Central Texas politician' – The Austin Chronicle

“Costello knows this business of shuttin down toll roads” – FOX7 News" END his own bio

TOLLROADSnews 2009-04-02