July 22, 2008
Texas transportation officials have been working on a plan since April to get $1 billion in highway projects going in El Paso in the next three years.
Because political disagreements over funding methods kept those project proposals from reaching Austin, they were considered by some to be decades off or lost altogether.
The plan, which the El Paso City Council approved this morning, calls for local contributions of $216 million in coming years through tolled highways and the diversion of city and possibly county tax dollars from future development along a completed Loop 375.
The plan was unveiled Monday in the Paso del Norte Group’s conference room for members of the Borderland Mobility Coalition by Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton, Mayor John Cook and Harold Hahn, chairman of the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority. [View a map of the plan and list of projects via the links below the story.]
“The bottom line is we’ll end up putting down $1 billion worth of transportation mobility projects that would probably have taken 25 or 30 years to complete,” said Hahn, president of the Rocky Mountain Mortgage Co.
But, Houghton said, the plan will have to be approved at several levels by start of the state’s fiscal year Sept. 1.
It will require the approvals by City Council, the regional mobility authority, the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Transportation Policy Board on Friday and the Texas Transportation Commission at its Aug. 26 meeting in Austin.
City Council will have to agree to the establishment of a transportation reinvestment zone, never before used in Texas, that would generate an estimated $65 million in diverted taxes from new commercial and residential development.
“What will also happen is this will spur development for commercial projects along these corridors, that haven’t been built yet,” Cook said. “That’s the argument that I have to convince the council makes sense.”
He said the El Paso County Commissioners Court may also be called upon to create a road utility district, which would operate summarily to the city’s transportation reinvestment zone.
The utility district could generate as much as $40 million in property tax revenues that would be diverted for transportation projects outside the city.
And the regional mobility authority, in order to draw down $151 million in advanced funds from the state, would have to agree to charge tolls on two new lanes in the middle of the Cesar Chavez Border Highway, two new lanes completing the loop from Downtown to Sunland Park Drive and four new lanes connecting a realigned Schuster to I-10 and West Paisano.
In addition, the MPO’s Transportation Policy Board, whose members are familiar with the proposed plan, must accept the projects at its meeting Friday.
“That has to fall in place,” Houghton said, referring to the MPO, which has opposed the use of road tolls by the regional mobility authority.
Those agreements, Houghton said, would result in the dedication of hundreds of millions of dollars by the state – money El Paso has stood to lose because of its resistance to state policy requiring heavy contributions by communities to future transportation projects.
If the approvals do fall in place, he said, construction work could begin by the end of December using expedited design-and-build contracts.
“This is very historic,” Cook said, “because we’re digging into pots of (state) money and dedicated sources of revenue we’ve never seen before.
“When these projects are done, we’ll no longer have the distinction of being the only major city in Texas without an outer loop. That’s been one of the major criticisms of our transportation infrastructure. We’re wholly reliant on I-10 for moving goods, services and passengers.”
Included in the plan are millions for highway beautification and $27 million from the state that would be matched with federal funds to advance the establishment of a bus rapid transit system corridor on North Mesa to Doniphan and on Montana.
Supporting the financing and construction projects is state Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, whom the Transportation Advisory Board is expected to elect as its new chairman on Friday, succeeding Cook.
Pickett vigorously opposed the establishment of the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority several years ago along with the state’s new policy of requiring communities to finance their highway projects with toll roads because the state contended it no longer had the money to do so.
In the last session of the legislature, Pickett’s amendment to the transportation bill allowed the establishment of transportation reinvestment zones.
El Paso is now poised to become the first city in Texas to use that legislation.
Pickett said it wasn’t the use of toll roads he opposed before so much as the extent to which the state intended to lean on local communities to pay for the kinds of highway projects the state traditionally financed.
“If we had taken their plan two years ago, we would have had these onerous tolls and no money to do anything,” he said Monday.
Houghton said the transportation commission recognized this spring that El Paso, Fort Worth and Austin had fallen behind in highway appropriations because political differences over controversial funding issues in those communities kept them from coming forward with new projects.
As a result, they stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars headed for other cities that were more aggressive.
Starting in April, highway officials and planners from around the state began working with El Paso leaders and the MPO to come up with a plan to put El Paso’s delayed projects at the top of the state’s priority list.
“We’re behind, way behind,” Houghton said. “Now we’ve got to move fast. Fast.”
If El Paso moves quickly, he said, a secondary list of transportation projects could be approved using non-traditional financing means as well.
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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605