Sen. Hutchison outlines transportation platform

Focuses on TxDOT reforms

Steve Hawley, Jan 05, 10.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is challenging incumbent Rick Perry in the March 2 gubernatorial primaries, has released her transportation platform, according to the Texas Tribune. Houston Tomorrow will also report on the transportation platforms of the other candidates as they become available.

The Tribune notes, “[Hutchison] spends the majority of paper in this policy release talking about reforms to the Texas Department of Transportation. TxDOT has come under fire in recent years as the agency has tried to implement the unpopular Trans-Texas Corridor (a Perry idea).” In August, Hutchison called TxDOT “the most arrogant, unaccountable state agency in the history of Texas.”

Her platform includes protecting private property from eminent domain, protecting state property from private developers, restructuring the Texas Transportation Commission by expanding it to nine members and giving it a “corporate structure,” and increasing TxDOT’s transparency and accountability. She also wants to stop so-called “diversions” from TxDOT. Under the current state constitution, 25 percent of transportation revenues are directed toward other purposes.

Hutchison also notes that Texas needs a better multi-modal transportation network, particularly in the “Texas Triangle” - the area between Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio - which will soon hold 75 percent of the state’s population. According to her campaign paper:

The Texas Triangle is the heart of the state’s economy, which is why congestion in the triangle represents Texas’s foremost transportation challenge, and affects the rest of the state’s future as well. What’s more, NAFTA and globalization are dramatically increasing the volume of freight traffic, particularly on the I-35 corridor. Our economy is diversifying, to include more high-tech and service industries, in addition to our traditional fossil fuels, manufacturing, and agricultural interests. These trends dictate a need for greater capacity along existing highways, but also for alternate types of transportation integrated into a statewide network, to include airports, waterways & ports, high-speed rail, freight corridors, and the intermodal connectors to link them all together.

She also notes, “Because of the distances and population densities involved, the area within the ‘Texas Triangle’ of Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston and San Antonio is ideal for a system of high-speed and commuter rail.”

The Dallas Morning News Transportation Blog says that many of Hutchison’s positions are similar to Perry’s, but that the two biggest differences are their stances toward the Texas Transportation Commission, which governs TxDOT, and rail infrastructure. The blog notes that Hutchison is highly critical of the Texas Transportation Commission and that she is a staunch supporter of rail and transit projects. Hutchison was one of the featured speakers at the Houston light rail groundbreaking ceremony in July.

Additional coverage can be found at the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, News 8 Austin, and the San Angelo Standard-Times.

TexPIRG has released a report critical of the platform, saying that Senator Hutchison “calls for some good reforms in her transportation proposal,” but that “her plan falls short in protecting taxpayers and fails to offer a method for financing the state’s transportation system other than continuing to privatize roads and pushing the use of private toll road arrangements called public-private partnerships (PPPs) which are fraught with risk for taxpayers.”

Hutchison’s transportation platform: Putting Texas Transportation Back on the Road to Success (pdf, 87 kb)