The Next Wave in Superhighways, or A Big, Fat Texas Boondoggle?

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Congress in the 1950s expressly rejected tolls as a way of financing the nation's interstate highways. But the Bush Administration, faced with an aging freeway system and a lack of money for building and maintenance, is rethinking the idea. Mary E. Peters, head of the Federal Highway Administration, has called Perry's TTC plan a "bold concept." President Bush has threatened to veto any increase in the nation's 18.4¢ gasoline tax and has expressed support for tolls on interstate highways. Other states, such as California, Missouri and Minnesota, are closely watching the Texas toll experiment.

Perry, a farm boy from West Texas who studied animal science at Texas A&M University, sees the Trans-Texas Corridor as a way to make his mark by tackling the state's growing congestion. Urban rush-hour drivers were stuck in traffic for an average of 46 hr. in 2002, nearly triple the time in 1982, according to a study conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute. Increasingly, tolls are seen as a way to reduce traffic. "We simply can't afford to build our way out of traffic congestion, so we have to better manage it," says Michael Replogle, transportation director of Environmental Defense, a nonprofit group that advocates "time-of-day tolling": tolls that would take effect during rush hours to discourage driving at peak times.

The Trans-Texas Corridor has won accolades from conservatives like Wendell Cox, transportation guru at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, who hails it as "the first serious innovative thinking in transportation in a half-century." Texas economist Ray Perryman estimates that the TTC could generate $135 billion in annual personal income for Texans and nearly 2.2 million jobs. But not everyone accepts his projection of $13 billion a year in revenues from the corridors. Kara Kockelman at the University of Texas' Center for Transportation Research warns that NAFTA-generated trade could decline and unforeseen crises, like the terrorist attacks in 2001, could affect travel. The state has had to buy back its first private toll road--promoted by a former Democratic candidate for Governor, Tony Sanchez--for $20 million.

None of that has stopped an array of private companies from trying to get a piece of the new Texas road-building boom. Sometime in December, the Texas Transportation Commission, a five-member board appointed by the Governor, will award a $24 billion contract to develop proposals for the TTC's first multimodal corridor--a 600-mile stretch from Mexico to Oklahoma needed for NAFTA trucking and rail. In the running are three consortiums, one headed by the California-based Fluor Corp., another that includes Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary and a third headed by the Spanish tollway operator Cintra. Fluor got into the game early. It submitted an unsolicited bid for work on the Trans-Texas Corridor in early 2002, before there was even an approved state plan. "Our work on SH 130 is considered the TTC's precursor," says Fluor vice president Steve Dobbs.