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Texas
Related: About this forumThe Struggles of The Fastest Highway in America
image by formulanone//Flickr, via creative commons license
Since opening to the public in 2012, the 41-mile stretch of Texas State Highway 130 from Austin to Seguin seemingly served its original purpose: helping drivers avoid nightmarish Interstate 35 congestion. In addition to its dizzying speed limitthe fastest in the U.S. at 85 mphthe public-private partnership tollway always seems to be empty. Thats good news for the few drivers who bail on the stop-and-go of the interstate, butuntil very recentlyits been a problem for the troubled highway.
Ground broke on SH 130 in 2003, and three years later, the first stretch of the highway opened to the public. Initially, the route only served suburban commuters in Georgetown and Round Rock, but by 2012, the highway stretched all the way to San Antonio. Its a useful way to navigate between the two citiesespecially during one of Austins many special events, when it can take two-and-a-half hours to travel the 79 miles between each citys downtown. At 85 mph, however, the open stretch of SH 130 can usually be traversed in an hour and forty-five minutes.
Thats real utility, but the bottom line for SH 130and the investors who paid for the southern sectionis if its worth it. Thats not just an abstract question. The tolls for traveling on SH 130 are a real issue that has kept the long-haul truckers it was expected to attract from using it. A 2015 study from Texas A&M found that only 14 percent of the traffic on the road came from long-distance drivers looking to avoid I-35, and of that, only 1 percent of the traffic were the eighteen-wheelers it was intended for. Trucks looking to pay by mail while using SH 130 would pay as much as $32.07 each way for the trip, and the cost wasnt always entirely clear to drivers. A Reddit thread from 2014 detailed the experience of a trucker who missed the less-than-prominent signage, then became outraged over the $40 he paid for taking the toll road on a trip to Dallas from McAllen and back.
So SH 130 wasnt just an empty highwayit was a broke one. In 2013, the SH 130 Concession Company, the private company (jointly owned at the time by Spanish private infrastructure company Cintra and San Antonios Zachry American Infrastructure) that operated the southern section of the toll road saw its credit rating downgraded from B1 to Caa3the junk status offered by Moodysindicating the strong likelihood that the company would end up defaulting on its $1.1 billion in debt. That same year, state Representative Paul Workman proposed buying out the companys 50-year contract to operate the road at a cost of $3 billion, half of which would be paid by the federal government. That would have resolved the toll problem, but it potentially could have created another: Texas taxpayers were sold SH 130 on the promise that they wouldnt be the ones paying for it. Ultimately, the bill went nowhere.
Read more: http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/struggles-fastest-highway-america/
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