Texas Transit Association

Adding tolls or managed toll lanes to existing state highways is an idea that is gaining support, since the Texas Department of Transportation passed rules allowing regions to charge tolls on state highways to raise money for other road projects.

A recent Dallas Morning News analysis, however, suggests that more tolls will never have the funding power of pay-at-the-pump gasoline taxes. Gasoline taxes haven’t been raised in a decade in Texas, and state leaders don’t fancy the idea of raising the current 20-cents-a-gallon tax statewide.
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Previous proposals to bring high-speed rail to Texas were more or less top-down efforts meant as much to sell trains and rail cars as to move people around the state.

But the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corp. is different. It brings together elected officials along possible rail corridors, and it emphasizes the movement of people.
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The American Public Transportation Association (”APTA”:http://www.apta.com) reports that House leaders have been discussing the size of a TEA 21 reauthorization bill that could be marked up by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee as early as next week. Discussions ranged from $270 billion to $330 billion for a six year bill, as they continue to negotiate with the White House over the veto threat. With the February 29 deadline fast approaching, the House and Senate are considering the passage of a short-term extension of TEA 21 for two months.

When voters statewide agreed in 2000 to go into debt to pay for traffic relief, state leaders repeatedly said the money would be spent on highway projects they otherwise couldn’t afford.

Now the state’s lead transportation agency is leaning heavily toward spending money from the Texas Mobility Fund on different traffic remedies: toll roads and commuter trains.
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Evidently, based on internal company conversations, Fort Motor Company is poised to drop its production of natural gas and propane vehicles beginning with the 2005 product line. The decision will effect its Crown Victorias, vans, pickups and cut-away vehicles. Ford is expected to shift its focus to electric/gasoline hybrids i the short term and hydrogen over the longer term.

BAF Technologies in Dallas plans to continue to convert select Ford vehicles to propane and natural gas.

Federal funds to be allocated by TxDOT to each small urbanized area. The pdf document available here for Download file