The Collin County Observer™

Dueling gets serious between 2 tollway authorities

March 23, 2010
Rodger Jones / Editorial Writer
The Dallas Morning News / Transportation Blog

We see at Bill Baumbach's Collin County Observer site that the competition is heating up between the North Texas Tollway Authority and the upstart Collin County Tollway Authority.

The NTTA already held hearings twice this month on the future extension of the Dallas North Tollway into northern Collin County. So yesterday, members of the county's commissioner's court -- who double as members of their own tollway authority -- voted unanimously to hold their own hearings on the future of the DNT.

County Judge Keith Self has been pushing this real hard from the beginning, drawing the anger of Sen. John Carona, chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. Carona has been trying to ensure a regional approach to planning and funding of major roadways, and Self has gotten himself in hot water before with the senator. This latest decision for the duplicate public meetings is no different. Carona sent me the following statement this afternoon:

"Once again, Collin County elected officials are thumbing their noses at regionalism as they futilely attempt to seize control of the latest Dallas Tollway extension. It's a short-sighted move surely to incur the wrath of most North Texas leaders. Judge Self has been cautioned previously against this type of predatory behavior and appears eager for yet another bruising by his neighbors."

I talked this over with Commissioner Joe Jaynes, who is key in this debate. He is also a member of the policy-making Regional Transportation Commission and has a good handle on North Texas' planning and financial challenges for large road projects.

Jaynes does not apologize for the vote by county commissioners, doubling as the upstart local toll authority. He said the NTTA is financially strapped from taking on so many different projects in recent years, most recently the SH 161 roadway and, probably, the Southwest Parkway-Chisolm Trail in Tarrant and Parker counties.

NTTA, he says, cannot offer a firm timetable for developing a new alignment for the DNT north of Celina or even for laying down main lanes where the alignment is already set between US 380 and Celina. Until the county gets some kind of assurances from the NTTA, commissioners have a responsibility to push the projects through their own toll authority.

He said since funding for major transportation projects sometimes appears suddenly -- think of the infusion of $250m in stimulus money and how it helped out the D/FW Connector -- the new tollway segments need to be as ready as possible.

"We need all the tools we can get," Jaynes said, echoing the thoughts of Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey, who supports a separate Dallas County tolling agency.

Jaynes said he backs the concept of "primacy," meaning that NTTA should be the default, go-to tolling agency for the region.

"NTTA should have primacy -- but within reason," Jaynes said. "We should have guidelines in place" on timetables that make sense, he said.

Who should set those rules? "The state, or the region," Jaynes said.

As for the idea that the dueling, duplicative public meetings will be awfully and needlessly confusing to the public, Jaynes did not dispute that.

"We may hear that NTTA is on the right track," he said. But the real test is when and whether that agency will commit to spend the money for engineering and construction.

As for Sen. Carona's anger at the duplication, Jaynes said, "I don't know Sen. Carona that well, and I doubt he'd be able to pick me out of a crowd." He said Carona is acknowledged as a leader in transportation, "and I'd like to develop a good working relationship with him."

Update from Sherita Coffelt, spokeswoman for NTTA, on the Collin County toll authority's vote:

"This could be confusing to the citizens, in a situation where the NTTA is conducting a parallel process. Someone might go to a Collin County public meeting and think that they're going to an NTTA public meeting. .... If they provided a comment, it wouldn't be taken into account as part of our planning process."

I asked about the notion that Collin County could push its planning entirely on a parallel track and disregard the NTTA's work. Coffelt said, "That's just not in the public interest. You'd be doing a disservice."

And about the complaint that the NTTA is not advancing the roadway quickly enough, she said, "We have been advancing the roadway, as evidenced by the fact that we have been holding public meetings."

And what about the complaint that the NTTA can't afford to do the work now? The road would not attract the traffic needed to finance construction at present, she said.

"The road is not feasible right now," she said. "The road doesn't get more feasible based on the agency that's building it."

And the time frame? "There's not a firm time frame. I've heard rough estimates between five and 10 years. ... We know the growth will be there in the future."

Link to this post on the Dallas Morning News' Transportation Blog....