COMMISSION MEMBERS:

Ric Williamson, Chairman
John W. Johnson
Hope Andrade
Ted Houghton, Jr.

STAFF:

Michael W. Behrens, P.E., Executive Director
Steve Simmons, Deputy Executive Director
Richard Monroe, General Counsel
Roger Polson, Executive Assistant to the Deputy Executive Director
Dee Hernandez, Chief Minute Clerk

PROCEEDINGS

MR. WILLIAMSON: Good morning. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, bah-humbug, that should cover everybody. It is 9:18 a.m., and I would like to call the December 2005 meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission to order.

It is a pleasure to have each and every one of you here with us this morning. Thank you for making the long or short drive to attend our meeting.

Please note for the record that public notice of this meeting, containing all items on the agenda, was filed with the Office of Secretary of State at 1:07 p.m. on December 7, 2005.

Before we begin today's meeting, as we always do, please join with me in taking a moment to pull out your cell phone, your BlackBerry, your personal pager, your two-way radio, your Nextel, whatever you carry that might go off in this meeting and disrupt us, and place that device on either the vibrate, silent, or off mode. Thank you very much.

It is our custom to open with comments from the commission, and as always, we will open with Commissioner Houghton from the far western reach of our great state. Ted?

MR. HOUGHTON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and happy holidays to all of you. The best to all of your families. This is a great time of year and I hope we have some fun today in this commission meeting. We've got a lot of things on the agenda. Again, welcome.

MS. ANDRADE: Good morning. I'd also like to welcome everyone. Thank you for coming to our December meeting. We've got an interesting agenda and a couple of discussion items that I think will be interesting. But I also would like to wish you safe and happy holidays. Thank you.

MR. JOHNSON: Well, when you bat third in the lineup, you see a lot of the same pitches. It's great to see so many familiar faces here. One would think that the December meeting would be sparsely attended but it's great to see so many friends and people who work so hard on transportation issues which are so integral to the quality of life in this state.

I want to echo what my colleagues have said. This is a very special season and I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas and of course, a safe, safe holiday.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you, Ted, Hope, and John.

Please let me take a moment to remind everyone if you wish to address the commission during today's meeting we ask that you fill out a speaker's card. You can find the card on the registration table out in the lobby to most of your right.

If you're going to comment on an agenda item, something that's posted, we ask that you fill out a yellow card, such as the one in my hand, and indicate the agenda item upon which you wish to speak. If you don't want to comment on the specific agenda but you wish to make a comment during the open comment period which is at the end of the meeting, we ask that you fill out the blue card, such as the one in my left hand.

Regardless of the color of the card, we ask that you try to limit your remarks to three minutes unless you are a sitting member of the legislature, in which case you may take as long as you wish.

The first item on the agenda today is the approval of the minutes of the November meeting of the commission. Do I have a motion?

MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.

MS. ANDRADE: Second.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: We're going to continue today's agenda with a discussion item, and I guess this would be the sobriety checkpoint discussion item, Mike?

MR. BEHRENS: Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON: And I think we're going to have some special guests, we're going to perhaps discuss safety barriers as well as the sobriety checkpoint matter, and a great TxDOT employee, Carlos Lopez, is going to lead us in this discussion item. Carlos? Otherwise known as Concrete Barrier Carlos.

MR. LOPEZ: Or Cable.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Or Cable.

MR. LOPEZ: Good morning, commissioners. My name is Carlos Lopez and I'm director of TxDOT's Traffic Operations Division, and thanks for putting this discussion item on the agenda.

Commissioners, we have a problem in Texas: too many people die in alcohol-related traffic crashes. In fact, over the last five years, we've averaged a little under 1,800 people dying in these type of accidents. That's about half of all the people that die on Texas roadways. Around the country, about 40 percent of people die in alcohol-related traffic crashes, so we're above that particular average.

And if you think about it, that 1,800 number is like wiping out a town like Hudson Oaks or Magnolia or Somerset or Tornillo every year off the map. That's the amount of people that are in those towns.

But we have a plan in place and we've had a plan in place that we've tried to improve and tweak every year, and in a state that's growing like Texas, I'd venture to say that if we hadn't had this plan in place, that number would be a lot higher than it is today.

Over the last three years, we've averaged about $23 million in STEP grants to local PDs, sheriffs and DPS. This translates into almost half a million extra man hours of enforcement over and above what the PDs do on their normal budgets.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Carlos, for the purpose of enlightening our audience, a STEP grant is a transfer of dollars from the state's transportation construction fund to law enforcement labor costs. Is that correct?

MR. LOPEZ: About half of that $23 million is. That's been done by rider that's gone to DPS directly from Fund 6. The other half comes from monies provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, so it's federal dollars.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So that's one of the instances where transportation revenue collected from the citizens is used for something other than construction or maintenance of the state's transportation assets.

MR. LOPEZ: Without a doubt.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you.

MR. LOPEZ: We've also tried to maintain a very strong media presence over the years with ad campaigns such as the hard-hitting Jackie Saburido story that reminds people that not everybody that's a victim of a DWI crash dies, or our "Photos in About an Hour" campaign at Spring Break that reminds youth that it's not a cool thing to spend your Spring Break in jail, or our annual "Santa is Coming to Town, Please Don't Hit Him" campaign.

We remind school kids about the dangers of drinking and driving by funding "Shattered Dreams" programs that graphically recreate what the consequences are of a DWI crash. We also fund Project Celebration events which promote alcohol-free events at proms or graduations.

We have developed an online DWI reporting system for law enforcement that cuts about in half the time it requires to process paperwork when an officer does a DWI arrest.

We have set a very lofty goal of reducing our alcohol-related fatality rate by 15 percent by the year 2010. Now, to make that happen, we're going to need every tool available at our disposal. However, there is one tool that is not in the Texas toolbox, and that's the ability to do sobriety checkpoints, and that's literally where an officer stops someone on the road, does some brief questioning, and looks for evidence of DWI.

With me here today is Georgia Chakiris. She's the regional administrator of NHTSA South Central Region based out of Fort Worth. She's going to come up and talk a little bit about sobriety checkpoints and their use throughout the country. Georgia?

MS. CHAKIRIS: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission.

I'm very pleased to be here this morning to answer the question: Why sobriety checkpoints? The answer is simple: they are a proven effective method for reducing impaired driving and they save lives.

There have been evaluations in many locations across the country, and the Center for Disease Control has reviewed and submitted a report that shows that on average we reduce the incidence of impaired driving crashes and fatalities by 18 to 24 percent by implementing sobriety checkpoints.

That could translate in Texas, if we use the preliminary 2004 fatality numbers in Texas, to a savings of over 400 lives if we implemented and used sobriety checkpoints statewide in the state. That is a big difference.

Studies and research shows that an individual can drive over the legal limit over 88 times before being caught and arrested. That means that you and I and our families and our friends are at great risk every single day of passing an impaired motorist along the way.

Far too many people die and many, many more are injured in ways that the Jackie Saburido campaign amply conveys. We really need the most effective and the most highly visible enforcement program available. That's why we need to be able to provide law enforcement all those effective tools.

Sobriety checkpoints work because they deter people from drinking and driving. The whole idea is not necessarily to go out and arrest people, it's to convince them that there is a great risk of being arrested, so they need to decide ahead of time, before they get behind the wheel, not to drink and drive, to reduce the amount that they consume or find alternate transportation. That is the whole purpose for doing sobriety checkpoints.

Now, that doesn't mean that it's not an effective enforcement tool. A recent example in New Mexico, they did super blitz weekend, and in one weekend the city of Albuquerque arrested 103 people through sobriety checkpoints alone.

That goes to show you there are a large number of folks out there who are over the legal limit, driving impaired, and sobriety checkpoints are an effective tool for addressing that.

People that choose to drive impaired must believe there is a strong likelihood that they'll be arrested, and in that way we can help them modify their behavior.

I'd be remiss, though, if I didn't mention the potential that this may also have for underage drinking and underage impaired driving. And while we don't have separate studies on those issues, those are going on right now, and we feel that there is some real possibility for addressing those issues when you have the tool for sobriety checkpoints.

There's considerable support for the use of sobriety checkpoints from a number of organizations. Of course, law enforcement organizations like the International Organization of Chiefs of Police, the Texas Municipal Police Association, and the National Sheriffs Administration all support the use of sobriety checkpoints.

Government agencies, and I mentioned the Center for Disease Control, the National Transportation Safety Board has come out in favor of sobriety checkpoints, and of course, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But it's not only government and enforcement agencies, it's also the private sector: Nationwide Insurance, the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, Citizens Against Drug and Impaired Driving, SADD, that's Students Against Destructive Decisions, and of course, MADD.

But most importantly, the public supports sobriety checkpoints. A 2004 Gallop Poll shows that 93 percent of the public believe impaired driving to be a major threat to their safety, and 75 percent believe that we need to do more enforcement, stricter enforcement.

And I believe that that 2004 survey confirms surveys that were actually conducted here in Texas in Arlington and El Paso some years ago. In Arlington the voter poll showed that 74 percent favored authorizing sobriety checkpoints, and in El Paso 83 percent of the voters indicated that they were willing to tolerate what they felt might be a minor inconvenience of checkpoints to get drunk drivers off the road. And by the way, for most individuals going through a sobriety checkpoint, the delay is less time than a traffic signal.

As Carlos pointed out, TxDOT provides a lot of money, considerable funding to law enforcement to address impaired driving. It makes sense to provide the most effective tools to get the most benefit from the limited dollars and the limited law enforcement personnel available, and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about this, and Carlos is going to come back up and talk to you about some of the operational aspects.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard comments from the presenter. Do you have questions? Ted?

MR. HOUGHTON: Yes. In the rank, what do we rank amongst the 50 states, not in raw numbers, but in percentages.

MS. CHAKIRIS: Well, in percent, Texas is number five. As I had just mentioned earlier to some folks, New Mexico for years had always been number one in the percentage of alcohol-involved fatal crashes. They implemented massive sobriety checkpoint blitzes across the state, and while they still have a severe impaired-driving problem, they have dropped to number 18.

Texas was much higher, and we have been doing a lot of high visibility enforcement programs in Texas, but if we're going to push the numbers down further, we have got to be able to utilize all the tools available, and to move Texas down lower on that list of percentages, we need to be able to use sobriety checkpoints.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members? I have a couple of questions. How many states out of the 50 have sobriety checkpoints?

MS. CHAKIRIS: Forty states allow checkpoints.

MR. WILLIAMSON: And we're one of the ten that do not.

MS. CHAKIRIS: That's correct.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Are the other nine primarily in the South, primarily urban states, primarily in the Midwest, or is there any pattern?

MS. CHAKIRIS: They're spread out. There's some in the Midwest. Texas is really kind of by themselves.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So the Northwest and the industrial upper Midwest and us.

MS. CHAKIRIS: Yes.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Mr. Behrens, I note all of those states that have a heavy German population.

(General laughter.)

MS. CHAKIRIS: Because of the size of population of Texas, unfortunately, we may not have the highest percentage of alcohol-involved crashes but we do have the highest number of legally impaired fatalities, number-wise. And so reducing fatalities in Texas really impacts the fatality rate in the entire country of course

makes us particularly interested in impacting Texas. But as a representative of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, I'm interested in saving lives and reducing injuries, but I'm also a resident of Texas, so I'm interested in doing something about it here too.

MR. WILLIAMSON: You're an articulate spokesperson.

MS. CHAKIRIS: Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members?

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, thank you very much.

MR. LOPEZ: Commissioners, being the traffic guy, I was kind of curious whether setting up a checkpoint causes a mobility and safety issue in itself, so we made a few calls around the country and we found that maybe California had the best examples of the guidelines that are in place and how they conducted them.

What we found out is, like Georgia said, they advertise them in advance that they're going to have checkpoints in a general area, and then as the time comes closer, they'll actually advertise where they're going to have it, so it's pretty open to the public.

They typically will most always do it on arterials, never on freeways, and locate it next to a parking lot or something where they can have the mobile intoxiliser so they can do their secondary screenings so that they get those folks out of the way of the roadway.

The officer will quickly come to the car, take a quick look, see if there's any open containers or anything like that, ask a question "How are you doing?" and based on the response or non-response, look for evidence of DWI. All that typically takes about 30 seconds to accomplish.

Another officer is always looking at the queue of the cars, like Georgia mentioned, and seeing how long it is, how long it takes that last car to get through that checkpoint. If they have a three-minute goal, for example, then they'll start going to some preset number of every other car, every third car to actually check so that they can keep that queue moving. And they always have the option that if it just gets so bad, they'll just shut it down and go on.

It can last anywhere from four to six hours, and as you might expect, they're typically done in the evening hours.

I talked to a law enforcement guy in California, his name was Spike and he really likes all this checkpoint stuff, and I asked him to give me an example of the busiest road that you know of that you've ever seen a checkpoint conducted on, and he gave me the example of Sunrise Boulevard in Sacramento on the eastern side of town. And I went and did some searches on traffic counts, and it's a six-lane arterial and it's got about 50,000 cars a day on that road. That compares pretty favorably to FM 1960 in Houston between State Highway 249 and IH 45, compares very favorably to Parmer Lane here in town between MoPac and I-35, and those roads carry a lot of traffic.

I think if checkpoints ever came along in this state, it would behoove TxDOT to go look at one of these in operation and see if we ought to adopt those California guidelines or maybe customize them for Texas type of circumstances so we can get that out to law enforcement, something they could possibly use.

So in closing, I'd just like to leave the commission with one question to ponder, and that's if this bill gets filed again -- and it probably will -- should the Texas Transportation Commission weigh in on the matter.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Don't close yet. I don't want to catch you off guard, Carlos, but I am curious, do you or does anybody in the audience that you're aware of know how much we spend each year now on what we consider to be safety matters of any kind, things designed to save people's lives?

MR. LOPEZ: On the engineering and the human factor side?

MR. WILLIAMSON: Yes, everywhere, throughout the department.

MR. LOPEZ: Throughout the department. Well, on the human factor side, our annual program, somewhere in the $40 million range. And on the engineering side, we just did $600 million in safety bonds last year, we have an annual HES program that's going to grow because of SAFETEA-LU up to maybe the $100 million range a year, and then all the inherent safety features in all the projects that we do, it's literally in the billions of dollars.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, my purpose in asking the question, and perhaps should the commission decide to take action on this in the next few months, we need to be prepared to demonstrate to our bosses across the street that there's a cost associated with safety and a benefit associated with it, and we need to try to relate, for example, the projected lives saved in our safety barrier program and the cost per life to the projected lives saved and the cost per life saved for sobriety checkpoints. We need to be prepared with that data.

MR. LOPEZ: We can develop that figure.

MR. WILLIAMSON: We'll talk a moment, for the audience's benefit on why we're even discussing this, and it may become a little bit more clear.

I noticed, Hope, you moved. Did you have something for Carlos?

MS. ANDRADE: Well, I had a question. Carlos, we've never done sobriety checkpoints in Texas?

MR. LOPEZ: Not that I'm aware of.

MS. ANDRADE: I could have sworn in the '60s, when I was growing up, we did, or at least they told me that.

MR. LOPEZ: Well, at dinner last night Georgia was telling me that we have done some kind of checkpoints and I think they like would check for licenses, but they weren't called sobriety checkpoints.

MS. ANDRADE: And I have to tell you that it really worked because we were scared and it kept us from doing that -- not that I would ever do it, of course.

You know, I'm all for safety, as you know, and so I certainly would be interested in researching ths further, but like the chairman says, I know it's going to cost us money too, but we have a responsibility to the families of Texas to keep safety on the roads.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Mr. Monroe, did you have some information to share with us?

MR. MONROE: Yes, sir. Richard Monroe, general counsel for the department.

I wanted to respond to Commissioner Andrade. Your memory is not failing you. Unfortunately -- well, strike that. There are two sides to the question. There is a privacy issue here involved as well, and what the Texas courts have said is if this is going to be done, the legislature needs to specifically authorize it; otherwise, we will not uphold convictions based on sobriety checkpoints.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So in all likelihood, there have been some kind of checkpoints in the past, the question was would convictions that were tested be upheld.

MR. MONROE: No, sir, they were not upheld. Of course, I didn't get trapped in one like the commissioner did.

(General laughter.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, members, any other questions? Carlos won't leave us on this matter forever, but any questions at this point? We have a couple of witnesses.

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, Carlos, if you'll take a seat for just a moment. Bill, you and Chuck no doubt know each other. Which order do you want to go in, or do you care?

MR. HURLEY: Mr. Chairman, I'm Chuck Hurley. I

am honored to be the chief executive officer of MADD. Our national headquarters has been in Irving, Texas for more than 20 years, and it won't surprise you we really support checkpoints for three reasons.

At MADD we don't know how to solve tsunamis, we don't know how to solve hurricanes, we do know what to do about drunk driving, and sobriety checkpoints are one of the single best proven ways of reducing drunk driving, deterring drunk driving, as the commissioner indicated, that has been proven all across this country, all around the world.

I don't want to repeat what others have said so well, but the science is about a 22 percent reduction, and that Texas could reduce its drunk driving fatalities and its very severe injuries, not necessarily overnight but very quickly with a proven method of a countermeasure like that.

The second reason is the most frequent word you hear at checkpoints -- and I've been at checkpoints in about 15 states -- the most frequent word you hear at checkpoints is thank you. The public supports this, they know that this protects their families, they know that this allows them to get home safely.

Yes, there are some people who draw the privacy issues to this on public roads which have been paid for by public dollars, but time after time that has not been upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court, and we are very hopeful that you would side with the public on this one.

The third reason is that MADD last year served 31,000 victim families with grief counseling, with financial counseling, with court counseling. We expect to serve more than that this year, and that, sadly, is only about 10 percent of the victims we should serve.

The best way to serve victims is really to turn off the spiggot. We know how to reduce drunk driving. Other states have a much better record, frankly, than our state, and we think that Texas really should be a model in this area, following the data, following the public support, and we very strongly urge your consideration of this proven method.

I've spent about 30 years of my life working on highway safety issues, was 21 years at the National Safety Council, seven years at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety which does a lot of the research in these areas. There's no question about the data, and legally it has been upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court a number of times.

So I would be pleased to answer any questions you might have on experience in other states or other countries. Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members?

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Chuck, thank you. Okay, Bill.

MR. LEWIS: Thank you. I'm Bill Lewis from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It's really a pleasure to be here today. I do appreciate your attention to this important issue.

Just to keep it very brief, I want to amplify on some of the things that you've heard today, and that is that Texas is the worst state for drunk driving in the nation, and we're not a little bit worse, we're a lot worse. We have about two-thirds the population of California but we kill more people here in drunk driving crashes than does California. California has got more roads, more drivers, more vehicles, more people, but we kill more people here in drunk driving fatalities than they kill in California.

The purpose of sobriety checkpoints is not arrest people or to punish people for drunk driving. The back of my business card says MADD's mission is to stop drunk driving, among some other things, but MADD's mission is to stop drunk driving, it doesn't say a syllable about arresting drunk drivers, nothing about punishing drunk drivers; MADD's mission is to stop drunk driving. That's what checkpoints are good at.

The traditional way to measure the effectiveness of a law enforcement action is by the number of arrests that are made. If you're going to do a drug bust, the more drug dealers you arrest, the better the operation was. That is not true for sobriety checkpoints. You gauge the success of sobriety checkpoints by the body count, and when you do sobriety checkpoints, the body count comes down.

We think the body count will come down by something like 400 people here in Texas if we start running an aggressive, well publicized sobriety checkpoint program. That's no small potatoes. That puts us back in line with where we need to be -- I'm not phrasing that properly, but it puts Texas where it ought to be as far as drunk driving fatalities where alcohol is a factor which, of course, would be every drunk driving crash.

The other point I want to make is there are some Texas-specific polls that shows that public supports [stopping] drunk driving. This is a poll that we paid for, along with, believe it or not, some of the enlightened elements of the alcoholic beverage industry about six years ago that showed wide support for sobriety checkpoints. And just in the last legislative session, the Texas poll showed similar results, showed, again, about two-thirds favor checkpoints, about one-third are opposed to them.

What impressed me is that this support goes across ethnic lines. The support for Hispanics for sobriety checkpoints was 76 percent for, the Anglo support was 66 percent, African-American support 62 percent for sobriety checkpoints.

MR. WILLIAMSON: What was the Germanic support?

MR. LEWIS: We try to be as politically correct as we can and not get into that. I don't know what the Germanic support was; I'm sure they're for it.

(General laughter.)

MR. LEWIS: The points I want to make are that Texas needs checkpoints because we're killing people in drunk driving crashes. Texas supports checkpoints. There are a few members that are in the legislature that are in a position to stop sobriety checkpoints. Unfortunately, that has been the case for the last ten years or so. And we would welcome the commissioners' support and we will be happy to work with you in the coming session to do whatever we need to. If it takes legislation, then let's do legislation; if it takes another court case, then let's do another court case; whatever it takes, let's just get the drunks off the road.

I'll be happy to try to answer your questions.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the presenter. Do you have questions or comments directed to Bill? John?

MR. JOHNSON: Bill, the poll that you took is how old?

MR. LEWIS: This poll is six years old.

MR. JOHNSON: It's one year?

MR. LEWIS: No. Six years. I'll leave another one here for you also. This is a Texas poll. We didn't get to write the question on this poll as we did on this one.  

MR. JOHNSON: Well, the thing I like about this question is it's very specific, it does not mince words in terms of what the issue is.

MR. LEWIS: And I'll leave this with you. And actually, I know that he who asks the question gets to make the poll come out the way they want it to, but we did try to be honest in the way we asked the question. And we did this in a session when we were trying to pass some other legislation. Checkpoints were, as usual, among our top legislative priorities, but we knew that chances were not good. So we mostly really did want to find out was the support there, where we'd be able to look a legislator straight in the eye and say, Sure, you're going to get the calls on the talk shows, you're going to get the angry letters to the editor, but you need to know that most people do support them, and we can do that. That was the purpose of that poll.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Other questions, members? Hope?

MS. ANDRADE: I have a question, but I think it's for Carlos. Carlos, if we were fortunate enough to have the legislation to do this, would that mean that it would be up to the communities to decide to do it? Once the state said yes, then it would be up to the communities?

MR. LOPEZ: Yes, Commissioner. In most places, in fact, I think all of them, it's a permissive law.

MS. ANDRADE: It would be their choice. We're not forcing it but they have that choice.

MR. LOPEZ: Right.

MS. ANDRADE: Then second, you announce sobriety checkpoints? Does that work for them to know where it's going to be?

MR. LOPEZ: I think it takes some of the sting off of that locally because you're not hiding anything. You go out there and tell people where it's going to be and you still get caught, whose fault is that?

MS. ANDRADE: Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I think it's inevitable, Carlos, that if the legislature chooses to adopt sobriety checkpoints formally, that we would end up financing a lot of them through our STEP program.

MR. LOPEZ: Right.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So I do want to narrow in on that projected dollar per life saved to give some basis for the legislature in considering our support.

MR. LOPEZ: Okay.

MR. WILLIAMSON: The other thing I would like for you to do is contact the Department of Insurance, see if they will give us a dependable letter on the probable impact on automobile insurance rates if sobriety checkpoints were adopted in the state. And we have interaction with all the insurance companies through our Motor Vehicle Division, it might not be a bad idea for us to contact some of the major insurance companies. They're not going to want to say definitely we'll lower the rates, but they might have a general comment on the insurance rates across the state if that particular legislation was to be adopted.

MR. LOPEZ: Good point. All right.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Any other questions for Carlos on this discussion item?

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, we want to again thank all three of the presenters for spending time with us this morning to discuss this matter and Carlos for putting it together.

I think it would be instructive of the audience and for those who watch us electronically to understand why we have these discussion items on these particular topics. The Texas Department of Transportation is a little bit of a unique state agency in state government.

We are specifically instructed to produce a set of proposed changes, recommended changes to the statutes of our state which will improve or enhance the transportation system of our state and within the transportation system we have five very clear goals. All of our money is directed towards either reducing congestion, improving economic opportunity, preserving our asset value, improving the air quality of the state, and most important for this discussion item, a resulting increase in the safety for the motoring public.

So our interest in sobriety checkpoints is in the arena of increasing the safety of our transportation system. And we have been asked by those interested in this topic to consider adopting this as part of our legislative recommendation, and that's something we take very seriously around here. If we put it on our legislative recommendations, that means we're going to spend the time necessary to advance the idea so we don't do it without a lot of thought and a lot of public input. That's why we have these public discussion items to air these things out.

Thank you for a good presentation, Carlos.

Mike, I'm going to return it to you. We've got a couple of things to do on the agenda.

MR. LOPEZ: Thank you, commissioners.

MR. WILLIAMSON: And then we're going to move to the next discussion item.

MR. BEHRENS: Thank you, Chairman. We'll move to agenda item number 3 which is our Aviation item for the month of December, and this minute order would recommend funding for airport improvement projects throughout the state. Dave Fulton.

MR. FULTON: Thank you, Mike. For the record, my name is Dave Fulton, director of the Aviation Division.

This minute order contains a request for grant funding approval for nine airport improvement projects. The total estimated cost of all the requests, as shown on the attached Exhibit A, is approximately $10.2 million: approximately $8.8 million federal, and $1.4 million local funding.

A public hearing was held on November 10 of this year and no comments were received. We would recommend approval of this minute order.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the staff recommendation and explanation of our great Aviation director. We do have one witness. Would you care to listen to the witness first? Okay, Joseph Esch, I see you out there again. You're wearing out a path between Austin and Sugar Land on these airport deals. Are you opposing one again?

MR. ESCH: No, not opposing one at all. Mr. Chairman, members of the commission.

My name is Joseph Esch; I'm executive director for Business Intergovernmental Relations for the City of Sugar Land, and I have a simple message: Thank you. It's very simple, I want to say thank you to the commission for your continued support of the Sugar Land Regional Airport.

The support this commission body has given for the Sugar Land Regional Airport and that of Mr. Fulton and his staff over the years is the driving factor for the success of the Sugar Land Regional Airport. We look at it not only as the development of the airport but it continues the opportunity for us to grow our business sector, and is a critical component to our community.

We look forward to a continued opportunity to have a partnership with the state and look forward to opportunities to come back in front of you. So very simply. Thank you for your time today.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members?

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, you're certainly welcome. We appreciate your taking the time to come up here and talk with us. We understand the legislature expects a first class transportation system, whether it's in the air, on the water, or on asphalt and concrete, or steel, it doesn't matter.

MR. ESCH: Wonderful job. Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you.

Do you have questions, members, or comments?

MR. HOUGHTON: I have one.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Please.

MR. HOUGHTON: In my travels, Dave, I've picked up a compliment directed towards you of your fine job that the Aviation does, and specifically singled you out as being topnotch, first class. That's the good news. The bad news is I can't remember who told me that.

(General laughter.)

MR. HOUGHTON: I know I've been to many cities but they said that Dave Fulton and your Aviation Division -- I think it was down in Brazoria, I'm pretty sure it was.

MR. WILLIAMSON: It was his cousin.

MR. FULTON: Really, I'm blessed to work with some very fine people who make my job pretty easy. That's the bottom line.

MR. HOUGHTON: Well, there was a compliment directed to you and I wanted to share it with you. And when I remember who said it, I'll call you.

MR. FULTON: Thank you.

MR. JOHNSON: Dave, did your alma mater beat its in-state rival in football this year?

MR. FULTON: I believe they did. One of the brighter days in our history there, I think.

MR. WILLIAMSON: This isn't another Vanderbilt thing, is it?

MR. JOHNSON: I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that the answer might incriminate me.

(General laughter.)

MR. HOUGHTON: First time in how many years?

MR. FULTON: Since '75, I think.

MR. WILLIAMSON: A long time.

MR. FULTON: Twenty-five or thirty years, I think.

MR. WILLIAMSON: What's your pleasure, members?

MR. HOUGHTON: So moved.

MR. JOHNSON: Second.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries. Thank you.

MR. FULTON: Thank you.

MR. BEHRENS: Agenda item number 4 is our Public Transportation minute orders. They'll be presented by Eric Gleason. Both of these minute orders relate to funding for transit projects. Eric?

MR. GLEASON: Good morning. Item 4(a), the minute order before you, awards $60,000 of Federal 5313 state planning and research funds to the Concho Valley Rural Transit District to study and recommend potential service and organizational coordination opportunities between the rural provider, Concho Valley RTD, and the urban provider, San Angelo Street Railroad Company, when co-located in a proposed multimodal transit terminal in downtown San Angelo.

Both the City of San Angelo and CVRTD desire to explore the possibility of combining their public transportation providers to ensure seamless coordinated transportation in the area and to realize efficiencies to increase ridership.

This project is a very specific look at operational and organizational challenges associated with a high degree of coordination between the two operating agencies. As such, its objectives are consistent with the more general effort to develop a regional service coordination plan under the guidance of the regional study group organized by Commissioner Andrade.

The idea to co-locate the two agencies in a new multimodal facility and take a hard look at the benefits of increased coordination has the potential to create opportunities, to improve public transportation access to jobs, healthcare, retail and other destinations in the San Angelo area.

The extent to which these efficiencies resulting from coordination can be turned into additional service coverage or improved service quality, transit ridership should increase and contribute to some reduction in traffic volumes and improved air quality.

Coordination or consolidation of administrative, operational and maintenance functions will increase utilization of facilities, increasing their value to the community and the state.

And finally, co-location of the two operating systems will increase emergency response coordination in the event of natural disaster or some other security situation.

I have here today in the audience Rob Stephens from the Concho Valley Council of Governments. He's here today to address any additional questions you might have on the project. He's signed in to speak on this topic. Also attending are Walter McCullough, San Angelo District engineer, and Jeffrey Sutton, the executive director of the Concho Valley Council of Governments.

And we recommend your approval of this minute order. Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, we have one witness. Would you prefer to hear the witness first?

Eric, can you kind of stand by so we can ask some questions?

Robert Stephens?

MR. STEPHENS: Good morning. My name is Robert Stephens and I'm here representing the Concho Valley region, the rural transit district and the COG. I'd like to thank you today for allowing me to address this issue to you, and thank you for your past and continued support, and of course, the leadership of the staff and the commission with some plan initiatives and helping our communities better the quality of life. We appreciate that very much.

Our 13-county area in West Texas is responsible for doing some regional service planning as well as service delivery, and we take that responsibility very seriously.

Over the last year we completed a study on an interregional multimodal facility for the Concho Valley region and the city of San Angelo, and over that past year we focused on the question: How can the terminal better assist our regional providers, the urban provider and the rural provider, as well as private carriers to provide better service and to expand and help do this more efficiently?

In addition to what we found to the cost efficiencies that would be realized from the duplicated capital investments being eliminated with this shared usage of a facility, we believe we have identified additional opportunities for coordination among carriers that we believe will ultimately lead to improved passenger mobility and improved use of shared resources.

By examining these service provision elements through a continuation continuum of both the small urban and the rural provider, the benefits that we anticipate as a result of taking advantage of some of these identified coordination opportunities include:

An increased total funding available by integrating these different funding streams that each of these entities receive now, allowing a wider scope of

funding for a wider population to address service needs;

Improved operational efficiency by looking at sharing dispatch reservations, scheduling and other operational orientation tasks;

Leveraging personnel, sharing some professional expertise and transferring some technologies between the two entities and the operations;

Decreased overhead costs by bringing together duplicate positions and functions;

And more service options for both rural and small urban client populations by trying to jell separate demand response systems that will effectively and ultimately support and feed a fixed route system in our city.

Today we graciously ask for your support to further explore these opportunities with this study and to improve transportation services in our region, and we thank you for your support.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard the witnesses's remarks. Do you have questions or comments?

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: I do want to be sure the commission is clear, you are merging two separate public transit agencies.

MR. STEPHENS: Yes.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, I can't tell you how pleased we are and how eager I think we're going to be to help do that, because that was precisely the goal the governor set for us several years ago when he instructed us to begin to invest more in the public transit systems. He believes that greater efficiency means greater effectiveness, and the best way to get efficiency and effectiveness in the transportation system is to incent people to do things that you want done. And I think we're going to be very happy to do this and happy to do whatever else we need to do to help you.

I know it's not without pain because they've gone through it in my home county, and it's a little tough, people get kind of upset and patterns change, but more people are being served by that combined transit agency in my home county now than were being served before by the two, so efficiency does equal effectiveness.

Thank you very much.

MR. STEPHENS: Thank you, sir.

MS. ANDRADE: Mr. Chairman, I have a comment. I also would like to congratulate you. I'm very proud, this is great, I think you're ahead of the game, and I'm looking forward to hearing how it works.

MR. STEPHENS: Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you for your support.

MS. ANDRADE: Thank you very much.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Eric, anything further to add?

MR. GLEASON: Nothing.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, you've heard Eric's presentation and you've heard Eric's recommendation.

MS. ANDRADE: So moved.

MR. HOUGHTON: Second.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries. Thank you.

MR. GLEASON: Item 4(b), transportation development credit award.

This minute order approves the use of transportation development credits, formerly known as toll credits, in the amount of $1,387,067 for various public transportation projects funded with grants which were subject to lapse if not applied for by the end of fiscal year 2006.

There are six transit systems, three rural systems and three small urban systems, which have projects that fit this criteria. Of these projects, two facility

projects are funded from grants which do lapse at different intervals, both this fiscal year and next, and these respective grants have been grouped together in this minute order to ensure financial stability for the entire project.

Projects fall into one of two categories: either vehicle replacement or facility construction or renovation. These applications are common to previous applications approved for use of transportation development credits by the commission, and project recipients are listed in Exhibit A.

Vehicle replacement projects replace aging, unreliable, costly to maintain members of fleets with new alternatively-fueled, lower maintenance and more fuel efficient vehicles, reducing overall operating costs and improving air quality and the quality of service to the customer.

Construction of new, state of the art facilities that house management, operations and maintenance functions provides opportunities for increased efficiencies through design and upgrade of outdated systems and facilities. These efficiencies can contribute to lower operating costs and increased resources to expand service or improve service quality.

We recommend your approval. Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Members, there are no witnesses on this matter. You've heard the presentation and the recommendation. Are there questions of Eric on this matter?

MR. JOHNSON: I just have an opinion. I think this is an excellent use of these credits, these are very worthwhile recipients.

MR. GLEASON: Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: And we are preserving a transfer from our federal apportionment that we would lose back to other non-donor states, and since we're kind of focused on not losing our donor state money, we also think it's a good efficiency move as well.

Do I have a motion?

MR. JOHNSON: So moved.

MS. ANDRADE: Second.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: All opposed, no.

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: Motion carries.

Thank you, Eric. How are you adjusting, buddy?

MR. GLEASON: Oh, I'm having a great time.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I hear you're doing a great job over there.

MR. GLEASON: Well, thank you, appreciate that.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Everybody says you're moving us along.

MR. GLEASON: A lot of good people work for me, I have a lot of very committed providers in the state to making the system better.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Very good. Thank you, sir.

MR. GLEASON: Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Just so you kind of know the schedule for the morning, we have probably one of our more significant discussion items coming up next. That is a discussion item concerning metropolitan planning organizations, regional mobility authorities and the whole kind of notion of how we continue to regionalize transportation planning and execution in the state.

We have today in the audience a member of the legislature who is here on another matter and who is on a schedule which will be disrupted if I hold to my original intention to act on his local area matter. It is my intention to ask Representative Phillips to share with us his viewpoint on matters of the agenda in the next few minutes and then take a ten-minute break before we start the discussion item on regionalization.

Mr. Phillips, I assume you're still in the audience. While he's on his way up here, let me take a moment to remind those who watch our doings, the public discussion place on the agenda is designed specifically to permit the commission members to dialogue publicly and to dialogue with the public on matters that we consider to be of importance to the transportation world or in some cases on matters that are causing concern or strife in our communities. We sought to create this as a method to sort of have a free flow of information and exchange of ideas that the public could witness and know was documented.

And so in that context, the public discussion item is very important to this commission in its deliberations. That's why we choose to not rush these things and we would feel rushed trying to get Mr. Phillips where he needs to go.

So Mr. Phillips, I understand you have a comment on at least one of the agenda items today.

MR. PHILLIPS: I do. Mr. Chairman and commissioners, it's great to be with you this holiday season, as you all commented, and thank you for your hard work around the state. I know you're traveling, you're being involved, you're trying to take what the legislature has done and trying to put it on the road, so to speak -- no pun intended.

And I appreciate you and the staff at TxDOT and their hard work. Whether it's Dave dealing with air issues at airports, I could just name them, that those of us in the legislature that have constituent concerns have to deal with, whether it's at the local area with the district engineer or the assistant district engineer, on up, it's always a pleasure to work with professionals. Even if we don't always agree and don't always get the result that we want and we're not to get that access to that right of way because it's not the best thing for the safety of the public. So thank you for your hard work.

And I'm going to talk about my local area, but before discussion number 5 and you discuss that, this is exciting that you're dialoguing with community leaders across the state to coordinate between RMAs and MPOs and regional and county toll authorities. That's legislation that we had last session, if you remember, to look at those things, and we developed, I think, some good relationships and some good entries into discussions on the future of our state mobility issues.

And so I applaud your willingness, and those in the audience -- I see my good friends from Collin County and other places around the state here -- willing to come forward and present new ideas and present bold ideas, because for us to succeed as a state, we're going to have to grab the tail of this transportation dilemma and take care of it. So thank you for doing that.

Let me talk real briefly about item number 9. I appreciate your consideration for this pass-through project for Grayson County. It was a little over a year ago, maybe more -- in fact, were there just three of you here at that time; I'm trying to remember.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I think so.

MR. PHILLIPS: There were just three of you, so we've had two added. And we came and presented and you challenged us to look at some different ways of doing our transportation and dealing with this. I think two years before that our county had come before you and said we want to do this or we want you to pay for it up front and that was the traditional method, and there was a challenge put forth by the dais to go back and look at this and look at some other options.

And since that time we've developed a regional mobility authority in Grayson County which has helped tremendously with this project, and those members that have served on that and our chairman, and I believe you'll hear from the chairman of that today, Jerdy Gary. They've done a super job shepherding this project through, along with the county commissioners and county judge, and we've done this in a collaborative effort, and we've appreciated our neighbors from the south and NTTA and other organizations that have talked with us and helped us see where we were going to be.

And I would say that Amadeo Saenz is a very tough negotiator and he is taking care of the state and the state's money and making sure that these are good investments for the state.

That's all I'm going to say about that item and just say I certainly would request strong consideration for approving that item, and give the balance of my time -- which I've probably already passed -- to any questions or any comments you'd like me to make.

MR. WILLIAMSON: This is the man on the item concerning the Grayson County pass-through toll proposal. It's not up before you yet but you certainly are welcome to ask the member questions or have comments directed towards him.

MR. JOHNSON: I just have an observation. Representative Phillips, it's great to have you here. I know it's not an easy trip, especially in a non legislative session time, but it is good to see you again and nice to have you here.

MR. PHILLIPS: Thank you. You know, I was looking through this agenda item, and it's exciting to see, and being new in the legislature I've got to be involved in some exciting stuff, and to see the State Infrastructure Bank issue on there which was a bill I was involved with, that's exciting to see the rail facilities issue which is something we've worked hard at, and the partnership, to see the RMA issues there, the regional mobility authorities. That's exciting to me to come over here.

We're out of legislative season and it's good to be gone and we spend enough time here, but it's great to come back and see the hard work that we've all worked together drafting legislation, like I said, put on the road.

MR. JOHNSON: A lot of that is the fruits of your labor, and we're grateful.

MR. PHILLIPS: Thank you for that.

MR. HOUGHTON: I just wanted to echo that too, Representative Phillips. Thank you very much. And I don't have any sympathy for you traveling three hours when I have to do on the other end of the state of Texas, so it's nice to have you come down here.

MR. PHILLIPS: Well, I've got no comments to say about that other than it's great to see El Paso firmly involved in the state and what's going on, and I think you've certainly helped bring in all of that part of Texas into some great decisions here.

MR. HOUGHTON: Well, thank you for your efforts on these things, and we look forward to dialoguing with your community leaders shortly.

MR. PHILLIPS: Thank you for the consideration.

MS. ANDRADE: I just want to add to that. You know, I've seen you here several times now since I've been on the commission, and it's just great to have you here, and thank you for everything that you do for the state of Texas.

MR. PHILLIPS: Thank you. Same to you.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I think it's probable everybody in this room knows that you are a warrior for the road and air and rail system in this state, but in case anybody is watching or in case this is going to be rebroadcast in a campaign ad, let me just say once again you're one of the very best transportation members in the legislature, and we are deeply grateful for the time and attention you pay to the needs of the citizens of this state.

MR. PHILLIPS: Thank you very much.

MR. HOUGHTON: Commissioner Johnson, would he qualify as one of your water-walkers in transportation?

MR. JOHNSON: He's at the top of the list.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Indeed. We'll take it up here in a little bit, and I'm sure I don't know of anything that wouldn't make you feel happy about the day's events.

MR. PHILLIPS: Good. Thank you very much.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, we're going to take no longer than 14, no less than 10, and at 10:30 we will be back from a little short recess. Thank you.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)

MR. WILLIAMSON: If you'll take your seats, please, we're going to return to our agenda. The next thing on our agenda is our discussion item on basically regionalization in the state, and some have asked me why -- this is going to be lengthy, and I don't want to scare you, I don't think it's going to be all morning -- but some have asked me why I didn't put that on sixth and put the report from the corridor committee on fifth so they could be on their way, and I appreciate your interest in being on your way, but as must be painfully obvious to those who watch the transportation world by now, I set the agenda in a way to be sure that people I think need to hear things have to sit down and listen to them.

And I learned that from my second grade teacher grandmother and fourth grade teacher mother that if you want kids to pay attention, you put the things they're interested in at the last so that they get to hear everything.

And so that's, for one of you, why I elect to put the agenda in the way because I think that the corridor volunteers will benefit from listening to the give and take between various parts of the state and the commission on regionalization because the corridor is intimately dependent upon the notion of regionalizing decision making and ultimately operation of regional transportation systems. There's a link between it that long term will make a lot of sense for the state's economic health.

So having said that, Mike, I return to you and the agenda, please.

MR. BEHRENS: Well, we can just go ahead and move into agenda item 5, and Amadeo Saenz will make that presentation. Amadeo?

MR. SAENZ: Good morning, commissioners, Mr. Behrens, Roger. For the record, Amadeo Saenz, assistant executive director for Engineering Operations.

Item number 5 is a discussion item to talk about coordination with regional mobility authorities, regional turnpike authorities, county toll road authorities in the development and coordination of projects within their areas.

I've got a couple of presenters that will be helping me, but I'll start by taking us back into time and kind of through the planning process, and really we started making the move to the way that we're working today when the commission revamped the Unified Transportation Program.

And when we revamped the Unified Transportation Program, we made it much smaller in the number of categories that you had to work with, so you made the categories bigger and more flexible, but also it was a big change that we started changing from the decision making at the state level for those big mobility projects where the commission was making those selections to now asking the regions, through the MPOs, to identify those projects and then you would, in essence, approve their plan.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Coby, do you have a sufficient number of copies of the "I Have A Plan" document to hand out to the audience, or can you get that? Do you mind doing that for me, please? It might be helpful to the audience to see the document that we work off of.

I'm sorry, Amadeo. Go ahead.

MR. SAENZ: No problem.

So we made those changes, we brought in working groups from all across the state at the different levels for the different funding categories, and they identified, and one of the things that we heard, and the commission took that change, is it was very hard for the regions to plan their transportation programs because they didn't know what project the commission was going to select from year to year.

So the commission heard that loud and clear and we made the changes, and so from now on we identified the percentage of funding that would go, for example, to the eight larger metropolitan areas in the state for the next 20 years, 30 years, and then we asked them to put together their plan.  We then further expanded that by asking those eight metro areas to put together their metropolitan mobility plan, and that was a plan that was started from a needs-based plan to identify what are the transportation needs, look at them across on a multimodal basis for the next 30 years, identify what your needs are.

The eight areas identified those needs. They then applied the resources that were given to them based on the formulas and allocations that were derived to identify how much they could do with the traditional funding levels. What was left, of course, was the gap.

At the same time, we got House Bill 3588 and we got House Bill 2702 and we got new tools, and we asked them to leverage their resources to identify how they could take the resources that they were given through the mobility fund, through the traditional funding, through the tools of 3588, to come up with a way to leverage and build more transportation projects.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, stop.

MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON: I want to be sure we all understand the executive version of what you just said. Prior to the governor taking office, the Unified Transportation Plan reflected every project that could conceivably be built in a ten-year period.

MR. SAENZ: Ten-year period, yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Not every project that could be financed but could be built if the money was available.

MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON: And the commission sat in wisdom and decided from month to month and year to year physically which projects would be moved from dreamland to reality, except subject to changes in the funding if disasters occurred.

MR. SAENZ: That's correct.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So the governor has us change that entire system with the help of work groups formed at the regional level to first make the UTP much simpler for people to understand, and then eliminate on a regional basis those projects in that UTP that couldn't be financed with what was known about the world at that time and just focus on the projects that could. And the regions made

those decisions, this body did not.

MR. SAENZ: That's correct.

MR. WILLIAMSON: And then turned around and said now identify the gap in revenue between what is known to be and what you have chosen and what you wish could happen or what we know is important and we can't fund, and that gap is what you refer to.

MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir. And we asked them to look at that gap, and of course, the first gap that they identified was the gap based on traditional road funding, how much were they getting from Fund 6. If the Houston area was getting 25 percent of the metropolitan mobility funds, they would say okay, I've got 25 percent of a billion dollars, and that's what they used over that period of time.

We also asked them to leverage their dollars by applying some of the new tools, applying the use of the mobility fund, apply the use of the pass-through tolling, apply the use of toll roads, and the areas came forth and put together a plan that incorporated all those new tools and the gap was able to be lowered. They didn't fill it all because the needs were far more than what the tools could generate, but it started and it got us closer, and what we'll do is these toll roads will then in the future start generating additional revenues. So as they go through, and now they're in the process of updating those plans, to take that second tier of revenue that comes from those toll roads to apply to, in essence, lessen the gap or shorten the gap. So those plans are being done there.

The other thing that the commission did that was very important and it was also part of House Bill 2702, it identified surplus revenue and what could be done with surplus revenue. And something that the commission did that was very important, and it was done through a minute order, the commission said that if an area chose to toll themselves, the revenue that was there after they paid their operation and maintenance and their debt service would remain in the area.

House Bill 2702 went further and identified how surplus revenues had to be used for transportation projects or air quality projects and within a region for concessions and for surplus revenue on toll roads within the district or districts where the project was.

So those are there in place, but what it does, it allows the people that if they move forward and they choose to use these toll tools, and then eventually as they create surplus revenue, those revenues stay in the area so they can put more assets on the ground. The MPOs went through, they developed their plans, they identified their toll projects, and they identified some toll projects that would be developed under different mechanisms that are available through tolling.

And what I wanted to do right now is I wanted to ask Michael Morris and Bill Hale to provide us kind of their approach to the plan and what they were able to accomplish.

MR. WILLIAMSON: But before they come up, I want to ask a few more questions of you, please.

MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Going back to when the UTP was done the old way, for example, if widening State Highway 121 from Tarrant County to Collin County made its way to the ten-year plan, and if it were identified by this body for funding, what amount of money would that have been in the late '90s, mid '90s, approximate? And this is a discussion item, this is not testimony.

MR. SAENZ: About $500 million. I just looked at Dallas County and Collin County in the last ten years of how much money had been spent for mobility corridors and also commission Strategic Priority projects, and Dallas County got about $1.2 billion worth of projects. Some of the key projects were like the High Five major corridor.

MR. WILLIAMSON: And I may want to ask about those in a moment, Amadeo, but I want to kind of fix on

one thing that we all know about. So if the commission had said in the UTP the Dallas and Fort Worth district engineers and the MPO have approved State Highway 121 to be constructed and if this body, if we had acted to say okay, move forward, we would have been committing about $500 million to pay for that project.

MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Now, where would that $500 million have come from? Would that have come from the gas taxes collected in Collin and Dallas and Tarrant and Denton counties?

MR. SAENZ: As well as the rest of the state.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Well, okay. I asked the question would it have come from the gas taxes collected in Collin, Dallas, Tarrant and Denton, would that $500 million come from those gas taxes?

MR. SAENZ: Yes.

MR. WILLIAMSON: And would any of that $500 million have been provided by gas taxes paid by people, for example, in San Antonio?

MR. SAENZ: Yes, and that's why I said the rest of the state.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So the answer to the first question is no, the $500 million would not have come from the gas taxes paid by those four counties.

MR. BEHRENS: It's yes, but it's only a portion of it.

MR. SAENZ: A portion of the $500 million.

MR. WILLIAMSON: It would have come from gas taxes paid by everyone in the state.

MR. SAENZ: Yes.

MR. WILLIAMSON: San Juan down in the Valley?

MR. SAENZ: That's correct.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Amarillo up in the Panhandle?

MR. SAENZ: Right.

MR. WILLIAMSON: El Paso out in West Texas?

MR. SAENZ: It comes from the common pool of gasoline tax revenue that the department has.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So when the commission at that time advanced funding for State Highway 121, it advanced funding from the common pool of gas taxes into which everyone pays.

MR. SAENZ: Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So you're telling me that people in Houston pay gas taxes to build roads in Dallas?

MR. SAENZ: That's correct.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Are the roads in Dallas built to the same standards as the roads that are built in Houston?

MR. SAENZ: All roads in the state of Texas are

built to the standards that we have, so they all should be built to the same standards.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Sounds almost like Robin Hood for highways.

MR. SAENZ: Could be. I guess another example is the border program that was put in place by the commission. When that border program identified $1.8 billion for the border, we wound up having to take money from the big metropolitan areas to be able to address those needs on the border. Because the common pool of money has only so much, the projects that we have to do are much more, so you have to take from Peter to give to Paul.

MR. WILLIAMSON: So basically we have used Robin Hood to build every highway in the state.

MR. SAENZ: That's pretty much right.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Not only is it not an unusual situation, it is in fact the way the state has always built its highways.

MR. SAENZ: That was the practice.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Okay, continue.

MR. SAENZ: What I'm going to do now is I'm going to ask Michael Morris and Bill Hale to go through their presentation of how they developed the metropolitan mobility plan in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and how they went through this gap analysis and such and so forth, and then I'll come back.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you.

Coby, did you get those pieces of paper?

MR. BEHRENS: I think they're working on it.

MR. WILLIAMSON: Five minutes?

MR. MORRIS: Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, it's nice to see you again. It's nice to see you on a topic that's very dear to our heart in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. I'm often in front of you promoting some of the statewide initiatives you have me working on.

You have a handout of the graphics at your place, if you want a paper copy. You also have a summary of the regional rail initiatives within the region. I was told you may be asking us a question about where we are on regional rail. It's very nice of you to always be able to present a balanced approach to what we try to do in the region.

This is a very positive day for us in Dallas-Fort Worth. We have gotten the message, we have the tools. Dallas-Fort Worth region has been working on toll roads since 1993. Your Texas metropolitan mobility plan, your allocation of formula funds to the region, all those things have been put into place for today's presentation.

We have 20 projects in our region that have a toll component. We have both stand-alone toll roads and tolled managed lanes as part of our air quality initiative. Today's presentation is now to take the last step in what is the appropriate toll road institutional mechanism to get it built in each of these particular corridors.

In our region we divide our toll roads into five categories of toll projects, and before I do that, let me give you a quick update on how the planets have to align in order to build any transportation project in a non-attainment area.

You first have to have the project in the metropolitan transportation plan of a particular region. In a non-attainment area you have to do air quality conformity or you stage that plan to the appropriate time frame and demonstrate to the public its air quality baselines in meeting the state implementation plan goals.

You have to have the implementing agency environmentally clear the project, of which most of the ones we're focused on are done; some of them are being reevaluated because we're building them as toll roads which is key to our presentation.

I'm here to say thank you to your staff and this commission action from the fall where you took the regional transportation council's recommendations, your interest in Strategic Priority funding for the Funnel Project. We have been able to fully fund all of the projects that you see on this particular list. Now, four of them are staged construction where we don't have money to build the whole project, but most of the monies that are delivered in these projects is a partnership between gas tax supported money and $6 billion worth of revenues that are coming from toll facilities.

We are at the luxury now to be at the last step which is the institutional mechanism. If TxDOT is going to build a toll road, what institutional mechanism are they going to use; which toll roads are best built by the North Texas Tollway Authority; should we use a CDA or your toll road division or some other mechanism to do that. And I'd like to walk you through that process today.

Our tolled projects, either stand-alone toll roads or managed lanes, fall into five categories. The first is called vertical integration with additional funding support. What I mean by that is vertical, you're going to see us stacking revenue sources or leveraging from a particular project on top of each other. When you have shifted from a gas tax supported situation with decisions in Austin to a regional decision, I'll show you in a couple of projects, I'll show you from 30,000 feet, the Dallas District engineer will show you specifically the projects we negotiated in that vertical integration process.

You have other stand-alone toll road projects with minimal funding support, so the expectation can't be you can stack the blocks this high. And we're going through a process right now to determine which ones should be TxDOT-initiated, through our CDA process, or should be integrated into the next category which we call horizontal integration.

Horizontal integration is the ability to take an existing toll authority -- in our case, the North Texas Tollway Authority -- who has a good bond rating, who has system toll benefits, can leverage their money or cross-collateralize their money to more than one particular project. What you've got to make sure you do in this business is don't cherry pick the best toll road projects and have then as stand-alone toll projects and you don't have enough revenue to be able to systematize the toll revenue to build all the transportation projects in the whole corridor.

So the first two are individual corridors, third is system, and I'll show you some examples of that.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, most of our reconstruction of projects have managed lanes, there are express lanes in the middle. There are tolled HOV-users who will have a discount or some incentive to car pool in our non-attainment area; excess capacity will be sold to single-occupant vehicle travel.

And then the last one, somewhat innovative, is to integrate a regional project with your intercity Trans-Texas Corridor, and you know our region has come before you that says that we think the best way to develop the Trans-Texas Corridor near Dallas-Fort Worth is to integrate it into the regional transportation system. So we call that regional and intercity project integration where you're killing two birds with one stone by integrating that into the same particular facility.

So if you wanted to talk to us about a toll road, each of our toll roads will fall into one of these five buckets. Now let me share with you the merits on each one.

Vertical integration with additional funding support. It's nice to be under the bright lights today because two years ago we were in a pretty dark corner here. We had a Texas Transportation Commission who recently funded 121 in Denton County and 161 in Dallas County with gas tax monies. You set up a situation where we had to then knock on their door and say well, the good news is the commission has funded you with gas tax, the bad news is we think they made a mistake and you should consider a toll road.

We encouraged that your TxDOT Minute Order 109519 be done which gave us permission as a staff, through your districts, to knock on their door and try to convince those two communities a toll road would be a better option.

It was also a dark day because we had to knock on their door and convince them yes, the good news is -- I know there's still champagne bottles on the floor -- you've got gas tax money for your freeway, but we're going to suggest to you it's not the best way to build transportation in your part of the world. We had to come up with a phrase, the phrase we came up with was "Near Neighbor/Near Time Frame"; it's right here, right now, that philosophy; we'll show you a map that instead of getting this one gas tax supported roadway, we'll show you a system of transportation improvements in your near neighbor built at the same time frame as part of that particular process. And your district engineer Bill Hale will show you that.

This category of funds applies to 121 in Denton and 161 in Dallas County. We strongly suggest comprehensive development agreements as your best private sector structure to do it. After dozens of meetings, Mr. Brown, we have convinced two communities to move forward aggressively, and today is a happy day.

Let me show you at 30,000 feet the mechanics of the funding under the "Near Neighbor/Near Time Frame" proposal. Mr. Chairman, you had asked how much in 121 from, I think you said, basically the airport all the way up to Collin County is roughly $500 million; $230- of it or so was in Denton county. So I'm showing you the 121 project in Denton County where you had originally funded somewhere around $230 million.

The strategy in place -- and the timing is critical -- we took that $230 million, continued to put that project to construction, we hope you will use a comprehensive development agreement and sell that asset through a private sector representing your interests in that particular corridor. That will produce toll bonds. That toll project is so positive it will actually create more revenue than the construction cost of the particular project. Those funds will stay in that community in a "Near Neighbor/Near Time Frame".

Denton County also passed local bond program funds that they wish to put into this party with regard to integrating. $57 million of county funds in Denton County are going to fund Interstate 35 and NAFTA Corridor as part of this partnership program.

We had already had some Surface Transportation funds from the MPO; working with Bill Hale to get this over the hump, we used some Category 2 funding; remember that toll project produces excess revenue over time which gets you up to $900 million. Continuing the leveraging process, some of the additional projects we're going to build have managed lanes on them that also produce toll, so you've a secondary and tertiary benefit of the managed lanes that are going to be on the NAFTA Corridor.

Instead of a $230 million project of which you would have got that gas tax supported roadway, we think there's a billion dollars of transportation funds that will stay in the general vicinity of Denton County to build other transportation projects. You don't have that in a lot of places. You have it in 121 in Denton and 161 in Dallas.

Most of our projects aren't blessed where you already canonized a project with gas tax money, so we have to go through a process -- which we're going through now -- to determine the best way to build that project. Collin County's 121 is an example, State Highway 360 in Tarrant County, 121 in Tarrant County. We have lots of toll roads that are going through this process.

The option is go ahead, in this case, using TxDOT's instruments as a comprehensive development agreement -- and I use the term near neighbor now because there is no "Near Neighbor/Near Time Frame" -- you would have to produce excess revenue over time to help a project, there is no bonding capacity to help other transportation projects immediately. Or we use this North Texas Tollway Authority notion of system toll financing and take the advantage and credits of our toll authority.

We've got to remember the importance of toll system financing or the leveraging of monies across projects because we already are collecting toll revenues from existing toll roads of which they are producing revenue. Similar to a CDA bringing funds to a particular project, this is a case where our own toll authority can bring funds to a particular project.

The key part is, in my opinion as a staff, there's equity issues that the funds return to the areas in which people are putting tolls into the project, and there's a needs focus. Our region is $55 billion short if you add up our capacity and our infrastructure -- and I've sat at this podium and gave you that presentation representing the Texas Metropolitan Mobility MPOs from across the state -- and it's critical that we leverage projects to meet this financial crisis that we all know exists.

The third category of projects is the horizontal. This is where we work with the North Texas Tollway Authority, it uses system toll financing. In this case North Texas Tollway Authority would be the lead. There still needs to be, in the opinion of staff -- and these items will be going to our MPO board in the next two months -- some vertical programming. What we mean by that is excess revenue is generated from these toll roads to go back to those particular communities to build more transportation.

Now, it's going to be hard to systematize tolls on five corridors all at the same time. We're looking at staged construction of these particular corridors. Do we have to build both bridges over Ray Hubbard right now, or can we put the traffic on one side, combining the traffic on one bridge? If in fact excess revenue is generated on the project, we may wish the North Texas Tollway Authority to have first dibs on that money to build the other half of the bridge as part of that particular process, so you don't generate revenue for other transportation projects without completing the main toll road project to begin with.

And we're calling it the "Regional 5"; there's five of those projects considered in this category: 121 in Collin County; in Denton County is the Lake Lewisville bridge; in Dallas County it's the George Bush extension between 78 and 30 and the Trinity project in downtown; and the fifth is the Southwest Parkway in Fort Worth that goes from downtown to Cleburne. I'll lay out a schedule of which we will resolve those questions, I think, in the next 60 days.

Managed lanes, this is a major part of our air quality initiative, this is part of our management plan, this is part of homeland security, this is part of emergency preparedness, to take control of the freeways in case of an emergency to move traffic in a particular direction. A lot of these facilities may be reversible, for example. It's a critical part of our air quality delivery system.

This is where our transit partners come in and help manage the operation of those occupancy levels. Clearly we need a streamlined capability to deliver CDAs -- and I'll talk about the 820/183 project in a moment -- but we think all of our managed express lanes will be using TxDOT's tools to implement the financing of those particular projects.

I can't leave here without taking 12 seconds and at least reminding us of the Trans-Texas Corridor recommendations within our region which is a Trans-Texas Corridor that comes up in the middle, uses our State Highway 360 toll road, and integrates the loop system planned for a future generation within the region to the same Trans-Texas Corridor elements that you're trying to do where you combine the intercity and the within-region facility integrated into the same corridor, developing economies of scale with that particular concept.

Let me finish with schedule; this is where I think we are. State Highway 161 and 121 -- those are two examples in our first bucket of vertically integrated projects -- we're working with your staff to get CDAs up and running on those particular corridors as quickly as possible. Let me underscore them as quickly as possible because both of those projects are under construction. If those CDAs and environmental clearances don't happen in a timely fashion, that 121 facility will be ready to be opened for traffic, our policy is we will not convert a free lane to a toll lane, and we will lose that leveraging that I showed you in that particular graphic. We're not too late yet but we're working close, and your staff very much understands the time sensitivity of that particular issue.

With regard to the second and third category, do you go ahead and build an additional facility as a stand-alone toll road or do you integrate it into the NTTA system -- of which we hope to at least get five -- here's the process that we're going through.

We're here today to answer your particular questions on where the region is in making those decisions. The North Texas Tollway Authority we hope will take action implementing a similar schedule to reach a resolution of these topics. We will go to our regional transportation council, our MPO board, in January and brief them with regard to the mechanics of this toll road delivery institutional structure question.

We anticipate that the North Texas Tollway Authority, the local governments and TxDOT can reach agreement on excess revenue to be returned to these particular corridors, at least in the Collin County area, in the near term. We go back to the February MPO meeting and send to you the institutional structure recommended for the 121 corridor in the Collin County area.

So 121 in Denton, we think that ship has left port and we're in the CDA process. The 121 toll road project in Collin County, the boxes and goods are being put on the docks, that ship should be leaving in the next 60 days.

The managed lanes we think are recommendations you'll get from the MPO directly to your organization with regard to comprehensive development agreements. We're in the middle of discussions and I know you're in a procurement process, so I can't probably add a lot, but

I'll answer any questions you want

Maybe moving toward TxDOT-solicited CDAs is a more timely procurement process than responding to unsolicited CDAs of which you do not have a common presentation from each of those presenters to do that particular evaluation. And remember, it's easy for me to say because I don't know any of the specifics, I'm not involved in the procurement process, but I know it would be very difficult to compare limits are different or items are different in an evaluation.

I think the toll situation in Dallas-Fort Worth, since we've worked on it since '93 and we may be unique in this, we have matured our recommendations to the point that I think we know enough about the particular projects that we can just solicit the private sector interest, and I think they, frankly, could use the benefit of knowing exactly what we're asking than sending smoke signals up and saying does it look something like this.

And then remember, your process, you're underway, the region is waiting patiently, hopefully with a consensus position, that the Trans-Texas Corridor in our region is consistent with the earlier presentations that you had.

Mr. Chairman, maybe in the interest of time I'll come back and answer your questions. Bill is going to show you some of the specifics that took us from the dark side to the light side as we work with these communities on leveraging these particular projects, and I'll be more than happy to respond to your quest