Stop Bad Road Privatization

Texas has been struggling to plug ever-widening holes in the state’s transportation budget while also working to meet growing demand for improved transportation infrastructure and repair. Enter global private infrastructure companies and the investment banks that back them. Touting the benefits of public-private partnerships, these companies seek deals for privatized roads on which they would charge and collect escalating tolls on motorists for decades to come.

Many Texans are skeptical of road privatization and state officials should approach the deals with great caution. While road privatization offers a hard-to-resist “quick fix” for state budget and transportation challenges, the deals are often short-term budget gimmicks that place the public interest in jeopardy.

PUBLIC INTEREST PRINCIPLES

Should Texas move forward with any future road building projects that use private investment, state officials must insist on specific protections for the public to ensure that the needs of people come before any other special interest or investment entity. TexPIRG is pressing public officials to uphold six basic principles to protect the public interest:

1. Retain public control over transportation planning and management.
2. Ensure that the public receives fair long-term value for assets. Just because a state or locality faces dire fiscal straits, they shouldn’t sell public assets at a discount.
3. No deals longer than 30 years should be made because lawmakers cannot reasonably anticipate our transportation needs or assess the value of toll roads beyond a few decades.
4. Require state-of-the-art safety and maintenance standards that will increase over time.
5. Complete transparency and accountability must be maintained so that the public knows the complete terms of specific proposed deals — and lawmakers must vote on them.
6. No budget gimmicks. If governments do sign these deals, the money must be used to address other long-term transportation needs.

TexPIRG will continue to build public opposition, apply public pressure, mobilize coalitions of stakeholders, and educate public officials until Texas’ roadways are safe from bad road privatization deals.