DALLAS - Transportation planners would face additional barriers to funding options under five Texas Senate bills that seek to limit the use of tolling in the state.
The five bills introduced by Sen. Bob Hall, R-Rockwall, and Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, join nine bills in the House that seek ways to limit or end the use of tolling. While Kolkhorst is from Central Texas, Hall is from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where much of the anti-toll fervor is strongest.
Hall's Senate Bill 1045 would give the Texas Department of Transportation the authority to use a design-build contract for a section of Interstate 635 in Dallas only if the project does not include tolls. An existing section of I-635 recently completed includes managed toll lanes.
Hall and Kolkhorst filed identical bills that require traffic and revenue studies forecasting toll revenues be made public. Currently, those studies are allowed to remain secret. The bills are SB 939 and SB 1046.
Kolkhorst also filed SB 937 that prohibits TxDOT from tolling existing free lanes and downgrading free lanes to frontage roads and SB 938 that allows landowners to repurchase their property taken for toll projects if the toll entity doesn't use that land for the public use that was intended.
The new legislation comes as anti-tolling organizations plan a rally at the Capitol March 23. Three members of the House from Collin County who introduced anti-toll measures are part of an organized push called "Toll-Free Texas."
Advocates of tolling as a more efficient way of financing highway projects are wary of the latest campaign.
"Because the stakes in this conflict are so great, I hope the P3 community and the public-sector toll agencies in Texas will realize their common interest in defending managed lanes, toll financing, and delegation of the details of project selection and management to transportation professionals, rather than their politicization," Robert Poole, director of transportation policy for the Reason Foundation, wrote in a report this week.
"Increased use of tolling, especially on the limited-access portion of the highway system, is an important step in the larger transition to mileage-based user fees," Poole said.
