In recent months, Texas has seen big job and economic development announcements from legendary employers like Charles Schwab, Amazon, Oracle, Hewlett Packard and Tesla. Texas families have seen a rapid recovery in the housing market. As the Texas A&M Real Estate Center recently noted, unlike the last recession, the housing market may end up the economic hero of 2020.
The Texas economy will come out of the pandemic stronger, and more committed to Texas’ pro-job, pro-growth landscape.
But our state’s growth comes with real challenges. The Covid downturn is leaving a deep mark on Texas in the form of reduced revenues for our state and local governments. Revenues needed to help pay for schools, health care, law enforcement and transportation infrastructure.
With Texas lawmakers back in Austin for the latest legislative session, they should consider proven, yet innovative ways to address the budget shortfall and competing demands for state and federal dollars, including for sorely needed highway and infrastructure projects, which are critical for growth.
Texas can meet the roadway needs of our growing population, stimulate economic growth, and drive job creation, all while saving taxpayer dollars. That’s the very essence and impetus behind the Texas Association of Business’ Keep Texas Moving effort, a coalition of small and large businesses, chambers of commerce, truckers, commuters, and local leaders advocating for solutions to improve the most gridlocked Texas roads.
No Texan is surprised that traffic congestion is at its worst level since the Texas A&M Transportation Institute began tracking traffic congestion in its Urban Mobility Report in the early 1980s.
TTI’s latest ranking of gridlocked roadways, released earlier this month, puts the stretch of I-35 from U.S. 290 to State Highway 71 through Central Austin as the most congested highway in the state. During peak traffic times, TTI estimates that it takes nearly three to five times longer to travel on that stretch of I-35 than during free flowing traffic. Houston’s West Loop, Southwest and Eastex Freeways and Dallas’ Woodall Rodgers Freeway round out the Transportation Institute’s most gridlocked highways in Texas. And, as the Urban Mobility Report notes, congestion is only getting worse in our state.
Texas leaders and TxDOT have gone above and beyond to identify and implement new transportation resources in recent years. However, the need is still outstripping available funding. In fact, the current 10-year state transportation budget would potentially need to double by 2050 to keep pace with population projections.
Covid-19 and depressed energy prices have hammered all of the primary sources for highway infrastructure investment in Texas, including oil severance taxes, motor vehicle sales taxes, and gasoline tax revenues.
2021 is the right time for policymakers to authorize a limited number of new public-private partnerships, financed by optional toll lanes, which have been successfully used in the recent past here in Texas and around the nation to build needed roadways faster and at significant savings to state taxpayers. When Texas policymakers embraced this approach during the recession in the early 2000s and the 2008 financial crisis, the result was billions of dollars’ worth of new highway construction, thousands of new jobs, and travel alternatives for hundreds of thousands of Texas motorists.
We should do it again. Now is the time to re-embrace innovative solutions to improve, upgrade and expand Texas highways and bridges. Importantly, using private investment for highway development in highly congested areas would allow more of our tax dollars to be spent on other needed roadways in smaller communities, rural areas and the energy sector.
Vaccine development, space travel and critical infrastructure all benefit mightily from partnerships between business and government. If we’re going to keep Texas moving, we should harness the power of the private sector to create jobs, build needed roads faster and give Texas drivers more choices in their daily commute.