Saturday, 18 December 2004

Big doings in Texas

On Thursday, the Texas Transportation Commission announced a private contract to build a 316-mile toll road parallel to the congested I-35 corridor. Spanish toll road builder and operator Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte will pay the $6 billion construction cost and an additional $1.2 billion in concession fees to the state of Texas for improvements to other highways; in exchange, Cintra will collect tolls on the route for 50 years.

In North America, Cintra is one of the investment partners in the 407 ETR bypass of Toronto and recently made an agreement to operate the Chicago Skyway toll road (a section of I-90 connecting downtown Chicago to the Indiana Toll Road) for the next 99 years. TxDOT has an overview of the statewide Trans Texas Corridor plan; more details on this particular project are here and here if you can read Spanish.

# By Chris Lawrence @ 1:55 am CST [Permalink] « (0)
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Tag: Transportation
 

5 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.
[Permalink] 1. David S Andersen wrote @ Sat, 18 Dec 2004, 3:41 pm CST:

Why does it cost 19 million per mile to build a highway? Perhaps this is a reasonable number, but on it’s face, it sounds ridiculous.

 
[Permalink] 2. CGHill wrote @ Sat, 18 Dec 2004, 8:52 pm CST:

This isn’t actually part of the fabled I-69, is it?

 
[Permalink] 3. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Sat, 18 Dec 2004, 9:18 pm CST:

CGHill: No, but Texas is considering building its part of I-69 the same way.

David: My recollection is that $10 million/mile is pretty typical for a four-lane, rural Interstate highway today, so the estimate does seem high. But then again, it’s Cintras’ money, not the state’s, and it might be worth extra money to build it faster than a state DOT would normally.

 
[Permalink] 4. Robert Prather wrote @ Sat, 18 Dec 2004, 11:26 pm CST:

Great catch, Chris. The more road privatization, the better. After living in the Chicago area, I’m well aware of the value of time, and the amount that is wasted due to sitting in traffic. Congestion charges and / or privatization are long overdue.

 
[Permalink] 5. David S Andersen wrote @ Sat, 18 Dec 2004, 11:56 pm CST:

Frankly, even 10 million sounds unbelievable. I need to find some information on the costs and educate myself. As to the privatization – absolutely!

 
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Signifying Nothing formerly featured the stylings of Brock Sides, a left-leaning philosopher turned network administrator currently residing in Memphis, Tennessee who now blogs at Battlepanda, and Robert Prather, a libertarian-leaning conservative economist and occasional contributor at OTB.

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