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Texas has rich history of private toll concessions - HISTORY
Posted on Thu, 2007-04-19 21:57
Opponents of private toll concessions in Texas often suggest that it is a new and radical idea, that governmental ownership has been the norm. On the contrary most of the early toll facilities in Texas were charters or concessions to private operators. Government couldn't raise the money to build the facility so they granted entrepreneurs the right to collect toll revenues in return for investing their money - toll charters they were usually called then.
Names change. What were charters are being termed concessions or longterm leases or public private partnership, and in Texas the exquisitely bureaucratic phrase comprehensive development agreement. But the same principle applies. Private enterprise finds the money, gets the facility built and takes responsibility for its upkeep in return for the rights to the revenues over the term of the charter.
In Texas the most common charters were ferry services, often succeeded, as traffic grew, to chartered toll bridges.
Texas largest metro area Dallas-Ft Worth literally grew up around privately developed crossings of the Trinity River at Commerce Street in downtown Dallas. One account is Howard J Erlichman's book "Camino del Norte: How a Series of Watering Holes, Fords, and Dirt Trails Evolved into Interstate 35 in Texas," Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
James Neely Bryan (1810-1877) is counted as Dallas' first settler and the founder of the city, arriving in 1841 from Arkansas to establish a trading post. One of his first acts, after building himself a log cabin, was to establish a toll ferry service across the Trinity River to serve travelers between San Antonio and Austin and the Upper Red River area. It replaced a variety of difficult and unreliable fords. Located where Commerce Street crosses the Trinity River today, the ferry concentrated the traffic to support stores, a hotel, a post office and so forth. Bryan was the first post master of Dallas. His home served as the first court house.
But he was off to California in the gold rush in 1849. Bryan sold his Trinity River ferry service and some of his other businesses to businessman Alexander Cockrell, who in turn replaced the ferry service with the first Trinity River Bridge - a 520 foot long wooden covered bridge plus wooden plank approaches. The private toll bridge opened in 1855, cementing Dallas central position as a trading center and way station, though it got washed away in a flood.
Bryan returned to Dallas and in 1871 was a director of the Dallas Bridge Company which built the first iron bridge over the Dallas River, another private toll enterprise.
Texas first suspension bridge which spanned the Brazos River in Waco was built by a Waco Bridge Company with a charter to collect tolls for 25 years. The company had 57 shareholders who raised the $50,000 needed to build the bridge. (p131)
So it was on many other rivers - private ferry operators first, then private toll bridges.
As Erlichman describes it, the standard practice in Texas early days was to maintain local roads by a labor tax. County courts were authorized to require all males between 15 and 50 to work for six days each year on public roads or provide equivalent in cash to the county overseer. But river crossings were concessioned out or chartered by counties to private ferry or toll bridge operators. And as in other parts of the US there were private turnpikes on main routes.
Erlichman: "With the expansion of trade between the coast and the interior, calls were made to improve Texas' woeful road conditions. Counties were responsible for local roads, but longer distance highways had been ignored. As freighters and stage companies clamored for improved highways, interior towns and their inhabitants remained unmoved. Most of the proposed turnpike and bridge schemes authorized by the state were expected to be financed by private enterprise." (p95)
They had very mixed success but many of the first roads and most of the first bridges were built initially by capitalists on the basis of tolls collected from users.
TOLLROADSnews 2007-04-19
Opponents of private toll concessions in Texas often suggest that it is a new and radical idea, that governmental ownership has been the norm. On the contrary most of the early toll facilities in Texas were charters or concessions to private operators. Government couldn't raise the money to build the facility so they granted entrepreneurs the right to collect toll revenues in return for investing their money - toll charters they were usually called then.
Names change. What were charters are being termed concessions or longterm leases or public private partnership, and in Texas the exquisitely bureaucratic phrase comprehensive development agreement. But the same principle applies. Private enterprise finds the money, gets the facility built and takes responsibility for its upkeep in return for the rights to the revenues over the term of the charter.
In Texas the most common charters were ferry services, often succeeded, as traffic grew, to chartered toll bridges.
Texas largest metro area Dallas-Ft Worth literally grew up around privately developed crossings of the Trinity River at Commerce Street in downtown Dallas. One account is Howard J Erlichman's book "Camino del Norte: How a Series of Watering Holes, Fords, and Dirt Trails Evolved into Interstate 35 in Texas," Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
James Neely Bryan (1810-1877) is counted as Dallas' first settler and the founder of the city, arriving in 1841 from Arkansas to establish a trading post. One of his first acts, after building himself a log cabin, was to establish a toll ferry service across the Trinity River to serve travelers between San Antonio and Austin and the Upper Red River area. It replaced a variety of difficult and unreliable fords. Located where Commerce Street crosses the Trinity River today, the ferry concentrated the traffic to support stores, a hotel, a post office and so forth. Bryan was the first post master of Dallas. His home served as the first court house.
But he was off to California in the gold rush in 1849. Bryan sold his Trinity River ferry service and some of his other businesses to businessman Alexander Cockrell, who in turn replaced the ferry service with the first Trinity River Bridge - a 520 foot long wooden covered bridge plus wooden plank approaches. The private toll bridge opened in 1855, cementing Dallas central position as a trading center and way station, though it got washed away in a flood.
Bryan returned to Dallas and in 1871 was a director of the Dallas Bridge Company which built the first iron bridge over the Dallas River, another private toll enterprise.
Texas first suspension bridge which spanned the Brazos River in Waco was built by a Waco Bridge Company with a charter to collect tolls for 25 years. The company had 57 shareholders who raised the $50,000 needed to build the bridge. (p131)
So it was on many other rivers - private ferry operators first, then private toll bridges.
As Erlichman describes it, the standard practice in Texas early days was to maintain local roads by a labor tax. County courts were authorized to require all males between 15 and 50 to work for six days each year on public roads or provide equivalent in cash to the county overseer. But river crossings were concessioned out or chartered by counties to private ferry or toll bridge operators. And as in other parts of the US there were private turnpikes on main routes.
Erlichman: "With the expansion of trade between the coast and the interior, calls were made to improve Texas' woeful road conditions. Counties were responsible for local roads, but longer distance highways had been ignored. As freighters and stage companies clamored for improved highways, interior towns and their inhabitants remained unmoved. Most of the proposed turnpike and bridge schemes authorized by the state were expected to be financed by private enterprise." (p95)
They had very mixed success but many of the first roads and most of the first bridges were built initially by capitalists on the basis of tolls collected from users.
TOLLROADSnews 2007-04-19
