Spanish toll operator Cintra, which filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, citing $1.7 million in debt. Cintra is the owner of SH 130, Texas’ first foreign-owned toll road, which has the highest speed limit in the nation.
The toll road runs 91 miles from Austin to Seguin, and was first built in 2012. It has the highest speed limit in the nation at 85mph.
The road was built using controversial contracts called public private partnerships (P3s) that have ushered in the new railroad robber barons of our time — private toll companies operating state-sanctioned monopolies and charging Texans a premium to drive.
The contract included a “non-compete agreement prohibiting the expansion of free routes in the entire counties of Caldwell and Guadalupe”. Cintra has also been accused of bribing the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) in order to increase the toll road’s speed limit to 85 MPH, while decreasing the speed limit on nearby U.S. 183 from 65 MPH to 55 MPH, in an attempt to both entice and force desperate drivers to pay tolls.
Thus one can see the obvious opportunities for graft and corruption in public private partnerships. The citizens of Georgetown need to be constantly alert to stop any such arrangements between Georgetown and private companies. There have been discussions at the city to use these types of contracts to further development in Georgetown.
The fate of SH 130 will now fall under the leadership of Gov. Greg Abbott, who has made strides to eliminate toll roads completely in Texas. House Transportation Committee Chair Joe Pickett strongly pushed removing tolls from the state-operated northern segments of SH 130 in order to immediately get some traffic relief on I-35 through downtown Austin. This bankruptcy filing may give the legislature the needed push to eliminate toll roads through-out the state.
Saw this coming years ago. PPPs are and will continue to be a sore point in our state. Whenever the government picks winners and losers, we all lose. Take a gander at all the green energy companies the federal government gave money to. Most of them are gone or nearly gone. They took our tax dollars with them.
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