In light of a financial crisis caused by the coronavirus and falling energy prices, and with transportation needs already above the state budget, the El Paso region’s economic and community leaders called on lawmakers on Monday to provide innovative sources of funding for the construction and improvement of highways and bridges in Texas explore.
El Paso Chamber officials joined the Texas Association of Business (TAB) to launch Keep Texas Moving in El Paso, a coalition to support innovative infrastructure investments in Texas to drive economic recovery, job creation and a better transportation system build up while taxpayer money remains available for other essential spending priorities.
“The El Paso Chamber and our newly formed Mobility Coalition agree 100% that it is time for Texas to be open to private investment and other instruments to fund the roads and bridges it needs,” said David Jerome of El Paso Chamber.
“El Paso is a critical trading and commercial hub in North America as it is the 10th largest inland port and 20,000 trucks travel our I-10 every day. Heads of state should re-approve public-private partnership investments, allowing local tenants to find innovative ways to improve transportation finance and stimulate the necessary economic recovery. “
Due to COVID-19 and depressed energy prices, all of the Texas Department of Transportation’s (TxDOT) major sources of funding, including oil settlement taxes, vehicle sales taxes, and gasoline tax revenues, are currently suffering.
Texas Comptroller Hegar recently announced an expected budget gap of nearly $ 5 billion when lawmakers meet in January 2021.
The pandemic has hit tax revenues hard across the board, particularly TxDOT and transportation revenues, including automobile sales and oil and gas severance taxes. The severance pay taxes on oil and gas flowing into TxDOT’s State Highway Fund are likely to cut by nearly half in the near future, the comptroller said.
“El Paso residents and business leaders know that transportation improvements are critical to the safety, economic opportunity and quality of life of our state, stimulate employment growth and accelerate our economic recovery from the COVID and energy crises that continue to devastate our entire economy “said Aaron Cox, senior vice president of the Texas Association of Business.
“So it is time for Texas to revisit the private sector, public-private partnerships, and solutions like optional toll lanes to address the grave funding bottleneck in our state’s transportation system.”
“Allowing private investment to develop major highways would offset lost state revenue and could allow available Texan taxpayers’ money to be spent in other critical areas such as Medicaid, public safety and public education,” Cox continued.
Texas voters support this effort. TAB released the results of a Morning Consult public opinion poll of 502 Texas voters that found:
- 84% of Texas voters believe it is very or somewhat important for Texas leaders to look at infrastructure over the next year. Texans rely more on state or local governments (42%) than the federal government (22%) to manage infrastructure.
- If you know about transportation problems:
- 72% of Texas voters support public-private partnerships to fund highway and other infrastructure projects.
- 71% of voters said a key benefit of a public-private partnership is that it enables drivers to get to their destinations faster by paying a toll.
- 82% of voters agree that using public-private partnerships frees up public funds for other government programs. and
- 94% said the most important result of public-private partnerships is increasing local jobs.
The survey was conducted from June 1st to 5th, 2020 by Morning Consult, a global data intelligence company, for TAB and has an error rate of ± 4%.
Although TxDOT is not currently eligible to use private funding, Texas lawmakers have used these funding sources in the past, including the recession in the early 2000s and the 2008 financial crisis, to drive the roads in Texas at little or no cost to taxpayers in Texas to improve.
Prior to 2017, the state empowered the private sector to design, build, manage and maintain new highways worth billions of dollars, create new jobs, and reduce traffic for hundreds of thousands of Texan motorists across the state.
Texas’s growth and need for better infrastructure are well documented. According to demographic data and census data:
- Texas will grow by 12 million people over the next 20 years, from 29 million today to more than 40 million by 2040. Our economy is expected to double by 2050.
- More than 1,000 new people and hundreds of vehicles are brought onto our roads in Texas every day.
- According to the 2019 US Census, about half of the 15 fastest growing cities were in Texas.
Aaron Cox of TAB noted that those in charge in Texas have done everything in the past few years to identify and implement new transportation resources. However, needs still exceed funds available, Cox said, noting that the current 10-year state transportation budget would have to nearly double by 2050 to keep up with population projections.
According to recent reports from Texas:
- Road congestion is now at its worst since the Texas A&M Transportation Institute began tracking congestion in its Urban Mobility Report in the early 1980s.
- The Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s 2019 ranking of the most congested roads in Texas reveals a well-known topic: the traffic jam caused by growth is getting worse every year. Woodall Rodgers Freeway in Dallas is one of the most heavily blocked roads in the state.
“TAB’s Keep Texas Moving Coalition is about repairing Texas roads and creating jobs while harnessing the power of the private sector to fund the necessary transportation improvements,” concluded Cox.
For more information, see Keep Texas Moving.
