Local transportation organizations are gearing up for the Nov. 3 election with Proposition 7 on the ballot, which could add billions to mobility funding statewide beginning in 2018. Alan Clark is the director of transportation planning for the Houston-Galveston Area Council and has more than 30 years of transportation experience with the agency. Clark also worked as a transportation planner with the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County and as a traffic-engineering consultant. Jeff Collins, a board member for the Transportation Advocacy Group, has more than 35 years of engineering experience and is the vice president of the public infrastructure division for LJA Engineering. Collins has worked on several projects in the Greater Houston area, including the direct connectors at Hwy. 290 and the Grand Parkway, and at Hwy. 242 and I-45.

Why should voters approve Proposition 7? What will it mean for statewide transportation funding?

Clark: As a [member of a] government-based organization, I’m not here to advise anyone to vote a certain way. There’s three Rs I would tell everyone [as to] why we do this: Repair what we’ve got, remove the bottlenecks and reduce accidents. If we could do those three things with this money, then we can agree that some part of your daily experience will be better. I would also say it’s important to remember what this is not. It’s not a new tax. This is taking some of that fantastic growth the state is experiencing and saying we need to invest it back into one of the things that got us here: our highways. Collins: It was calculated that the state needs an additional $5 billion a year in order to maintain congestion [levels]. The Legislature first took action with Prop. 1, which was passed two legislative sessions ago and took oil and gas severance tax money and diverted [it] to transportation. The first year that was $1.7 billion, but because of the [lower] price of oil and gas, that’s [now] supposed to bring in $1.2 billion. So we’ve already lost $500 million. The last legislative session they made a great [effort] to get rid of diversions. They said, ‘Why get more money if the money going into transportation is getting diverted?’ So they addressed that. That was around $600 million. But they knew they needed to take that next step, and that was Prop. 7. Different things were debated, but it was decided [to take] general tax revenue—money that’s going into the general sales tax—and dedicate some of that to transportation. If Prop. 7 passes, it’ll take $2.5 billion and put it into state roads. So again, we’re inching up on that $5 billion line. So that’s really the biggest chunk that we’ve done in the past four years. That’s why it’s vitally important. I think one thing that drove us to do that is the people voted in favor of Prop 1. If you get 80 percent of the people to vote ‘yes’ on anything or ‘no’ on anything, then that’s an indicator. So we really have to get this thing passed.

What are some possible funding sources for the unfunded segments of the Grand Parkway in the southern part of the Greater Houston area? What is the latest timeline for segments B and C?

Clark: In a general way, the Grand Parkway is seen as a system. As a consequence, the state believes the revenue generated on that system should stay dedicated to it until the entire project is completed. So I think the first place that will be looked at is the revenue generated on that facility itself. Will that be sufficient to develop the facility when needed? That’s another question. We periodically take a look at what’s happening in our counties. We update our projections of current and future travel. A lot of that is used to project how much revenue and how much potential debt to be incurred there. I expect what will happen is areas that continue to develop will see those pieces implemented in logical sections. So we might see from I-45 to Alvin, maybe even to Hwy. 6, implemented sooner than say from Hwy. 288 over to [Hwy.] 59. I think those investments will probably be driven by the timing of growth in those areas. The important thing is completing the environmental work but [being] able to preserve the right of way needed.

Is raising the statewide and federal gas tax a feasible option to funding transportation? If so, why aren’t the state Legislature and Congress seriously considering doing this?

Collins: If you look at it from a common sense standpoint, what makes more sense than user pay? If you want to drive a big truck, you’ll be paying more. If you want to drive an electric vehicle, you’ll be paying less. That makes sense. But I think politically that has gotten zero traction on the state level, and it’s being debated nationally. [You] may be aware there’s a presidential election coming up, so you probably won’t see any discussion on anything that’s going to raise taxes from any party. We ought to be glad we’re sitting here in Houston, Texas, and our economy is growing and something like Prop. 7 can afford us to move money from general sales revenue to transportation. Clark: Right now, there’s just no political support for it. Someone told me, ‘The quickest way to become an unelected official is to vote for a tax increase, especially in Texas.’ I’m not sure there’s not truth to that. In some ways I don’t think that we have as much everyday support for this issue as one would think, given the water cooler conversations about how hard it was to get to work today and what some traffic delay caused. So the public is apparently not connecting the possible revenue that might be gathered to the solutions that they want. To me, that’s a real problem for us to make sure we’re communicating how—if we had the money—that investment would be used. It’s one of the reasons that our local transportation policy council is putting together its first 10-year, project-based plan. The state has had one for a while, but we really haven’t had one locally where we said, ‘This is what we’re going to fund next, and here’s how we’re going to pay for it.’