Over the past six months, the Austin Chamber and its Take on Traffic initiative, which is made up of concerned citizens and local business leaders, have been working with Texas lawmakers to address the region’s transportation issues.

Earlier this month, four funding options were possible as a way to help create a comprehensive regional transportation plan that includes new roads, new lanes on existing roads, new rapid bus service, and new passenger rail service. These funding options were to increase Sales, Property, and State gas taxes as well as User Fees like tolls and bus fares.

Now, with the Session over, the outlook is much different and options are limited.

The Legislature did not increase the gas tax or increase the sales tax to help fund transportation improvement projects.

“We can cross those off our list as funding sources,” said Gary Farmer, Chairman of Take On Traffic, during a Wednesday morning press conference. “That leaves us with raising our property tax or tolling new roads and new lanes on existing roads and increasing fares.”

For tolling to be a viable option in our community, transparency and accountability are necessary. Legislators passed legislation that now requires:

• Greater involvement of elected officials in the development of proposed transportation projects, which puts greater decision-making power in the hands of people who answer directly to the public.
• An outside consultant to help evaluate the value of the projects. Before projects are approved, we will now know what the toll rates will be and what could be funded by future project revenues.
• A two-year moratorium placed on leasing roads to private companies. This will allow the state to take a much closer look at toll-road privatization.
• Maintain policies that tolling will only be on new lanes on existing roads and on new roads unless there is a vote by county officials.

“Today we call on our local elected officials to take up where the Legislature left off and keep building transparency and accountability into our transportation planning system wherever they can,” said Paul Saldana, Chairman of the Board, Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Improving regional mobility is a long-term priority of Opportunity Austin, the Chamber’s five-year initiative to create 72,000 new jobs by 2008. More information can be found at www.takeontraffic.com