Quote:
Originally Posted by Novacek
Not even close, CTRMA budgets are available online.
https://www.mobilityauthority.com/up...u%2021-004.pdf
(and of course, most of that "administrative costs" still exist for "free" highways. It's just in TxDot's $5B annual budget black hole).
So you'd prefer to instead not build the highway for decades while saving up enough money to build it? At which point construction costs have increased so much it costs as much as the interest payments would have been?
At current interest rates it would make no sense not to debt fund as much as you need. Even if you had cash on hand.
So you'd prefer the even greater suburban subsidy of gas taxes (taking money from miles driven on purely local urban roads not on highways) or general funds (taking money from those that don't even drive)?
The urban sections are also much more expensive to construct and maintain. The mopac toll lanes ended up being expensive enough. Just wait until they start (in 15-20 years or so) talking about expanding them again with depressed lanes like I35.
That expense still exists if you need to pay for huge highways serving sprawl with another funding mechanism. A massively increased gas tax would hit that $25k salary too.
Or now you want to massively subsidize those suburbs? |
The CTRMA budget for the year has total toll/fee revenue at $119 million. This is a depressed value and will probably jump.
Bottom up approach toll costs listed
Total Processing and Collection Expense $6,291,000
Total Toll Operations Expense $6,538,900
Depreciation of Toll Equipment Dep Expense - Toll Equipment $4,000,000
Toll Consultants (I think you could justify some of the general consultants to add to this list too but I didn't)
GEC-Toll Ops Support $800,000
GEC-Technology Support $741,461
Traffic and Revenue Consultant $150,000
So total costs from a ~$119 million budget that are specific to supporting tolls is ~$18.5 million. That's without digging into any Salary and Benefits, Administrative costs (I grabbed some GEC from here for above), or communications.
Top down approach to costs give a total budget of $51 million of which only $7.2 million is spent on Operations and Maintenance
Total Roadway Operations and Maintenance $7,222,220
The true toll based costs is somewhere between the $18.5 million and $43.8 million.
I stand by my statement of 30% of toll revenue going towards toll processing and administrative support for tolls. I previously looked at this for NTTA which is a beast on a whole different level and that's where I got 30%. CTRMA may be closer to 20% to 30%. On $119 million in revenue there is $51 million for expenses and $42 million on top of that for just covering the accrued interest. Not a whole lot left over for principal payments. Obviously revenue will climb a bit back in when traffic is normal. The impending opening of the rest of 183 south will help on the revenue side as well. Still that debt is going to sit for a while.
As far as how to not to place a debt burden and still finance infrastructure projects in the long term I support raising taxes on corporations in and those earning more than $250,000 a year at the federal level. Short term tax increases may not be the best for right now so more debt. Stops this race to the bottom on taxes across the country without regressive things like gas or sales taxes.