Toll Lanes, Etc. Draining $$$ from Urban Projects?

[jaxlongtimer]

Read these tidbits recently in the Times Union:

Mandarin's express lanes opened in May 2019 and had been under construction since 2014 at a price tag of $89 million.

The I-295 West Beltway express lanes saw 1.867 million vehicles using them in 2020. The heaviest usage was in the first three months: 243,569 in January, 249,355 in February and 191,056 in March, before the numbers dropped as the CIVID-19 pandemic began.

...on I-295, the managed lanes are currently only tolled during peak hours between 6 and 10 a.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays."

development continues on the planned First Coast Expressway that will ultimately span 46 miles across parts of Duval, Clay and St. Johns counties. Toll collection started in July 2019 on the first phase of that expressway from New World Avenue to Blanding Boulevard and just north of Argyle Boulevard.

And one more is coming soon: a $139.9 million project begun in 2016 to add toll lanes on I-295 from Florida 9B to Butler Boulevard. Ray said drivers should see those lanes done this year or early 2022.

Jacksonville's list of all proposed Capital Improvement Plan projects citywide contains 352 updated and/or new projects at $2.3 billion for the next five years and beyond. And 153 of them are designated as "Roads/Infrastructure/Transportation" projects "dedicated to expanding and widening roads; interchanges, overpasses and intersection improvements; and also includes road resurfacing, sidewalks/bike paths, as well as landscaping/tree planting along road improvement projects."

https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/traffic/2021/12/02/fdot-no-plans-scrap-express-toll-lanes-295-jacksonville/8656959002/

Doing a back of the napkin analysis of the above:

At 50 cents a driver, the state is maximally collecting $933,500 from 1.867 million vehicles a year on the Mandarin I-295 lanes.  That is an ROI of only 1%/year.  And, this assumes there are no continuing annual operating or maintenance expenses and that every car pays the higher tolls.  In reality, many , if not most of those vehicles are paying lower tolls (system uses demand pricing) or none at all (because they travel the lanes during the majority free hours).  That brings the ROI down to, potentially, next to nothing.

That's such a "great investment" that we are now spending another $139.9 million to add more lanes around I-295 to Butler Blvd.  No sane business person would spend money like this.

Add the $1.8 billion dollars to build the tolled First Coast Express/Outer Beltway.  And, the $400+ million to build out the pie-in-the-sky Skyway/U2C project.  And, the near $50 million to tear down the Hart Bridge ramps for Khan.

The minimal total of the above 5 wasteful projects approaches $2.5 billion.

Meanwhile, we have no significant dollars to invest in legitimate and proven urban crumbling drainage, sidewalks, roads and mass transit.

To put this in perspective, the City's $2.3 billion 5 year commitment for infrastructure over the entire City averages a mere $6.5 million or so per project.  Only 153 are for roads equating to an average total of about $1 billion.  Divided by 5 years, that is $200 million a year.

Bottom line:  There are plenty of dollars for truly useful, needed and quality-of-life improvement projects.  It's just that they are majority devoted to elected officials' pet projects or for the benefit of their developer friends.  Hence, the general citizenry and underrepresented urban core suffers accordingly. 

This lack of proper prioritization should be a front page scandal.

[jaxoNOLE]

Ironically, wasn't the magic of express lanes supposed to be the enabling of public-private partnerships, so that the construction cost would be subsidized by the private contractor? I think that's where your ROI argument really comes into focus.

For FDOT-owned projects, I don't think financial ROI is a great metric to assess project success. Pro-infrastructure arguments often focus on the opportunity costs of congestion and increased maintenance costs, so the 1% hard ROI looks ambiguously better when you throw in "improved transit times" and all those other soft knock-on economic justifications. Mass transit can and often does have abysmal financial ROI figures, but that doesn't necessarily make it a loser for the community either.

As far as prioritization...yeah, U2C says it all.

[jaxlongtimer]

Ironically, wasn't the magic of express lanes supposed to be the enabling of public-private partnerships, so that the construction cost would be subsidized by the private contractor? I think that's where your ROI argument really comes into focus.

For FDOT-owned projects, I don't think financial ROI is a great metric to assess project success. Pro-infrastructure arguments often focus on the opportunity costs of congestion and increased maintenance costs, so the 1% hard ROI looks ambiguously better when you throw in "improved transit times" and all those other soft knock-on economic justifications. Mass transit can and often does have abysmal financial ROI figures, but that doesn't necessarily make it a loser for the community either.

As far as prioritization...yeah, U2C says it all.

^In the case of toll lanes, if improved transit times had so much value, the "customers" would be using them more and paying for them more.  You can bet that the projections (typically, pumped up by prostituting consultants) for use of these lanes is likely way higher than what reality is - even accounting for any COVID impacts. 

Re: your reference to private partners:  FDOT bid out the outer beltway to global private companies in the toll road business and, after studies, not one bid on it due to lack of an ROI, if any, that made sense.  So... FDOT decided they would do it and hope for the best.  Just plain special interest silliness at taxpayer expense.

The real point of my post is about prioritization.  In the private sector, you may have a number of projects with positive, even great ROI's.  But, with limited resources, one usually skims off the top ROI's since not all can be accomplished at once.  Likewise, our infrastructure dollars should be similarly evaluated.  Note, ROI can include the "value" of intangibles such as public safety, society good, etc. 

We all know, based on numerous examples, such as I posted, that this process is not adhered to.  It's clear that our public officials judge ROI based on their own self interests, not the publics.  Hence, my conclusion that our prioritization process is clearly corrupt and, thus, scandalous.

[Charles Hunter]

You are correct that politics plays more of a role than ROI for Interstate widening projects. The two toll-lane projects on I-295 - Buckman Bridge to I-95 and SR 9B to JTB - were approved, designed, and bid when the Governor (Scott) required all Interstate expansion projects to use toll lanes as the first option. It was possible to get free lanes approved, but that would have put FDOT at odds with the Governor. The next Governor (Desantis) does not like toll lanes. Therefore, several Interstate expansion projects that were considered as toll lanes under Scott* are now on the books as free lanes; I-95 from International Golf Parkway to Atlantic Boulevard (divided into several smaller pieces for contract and scheduling purposes), and I-295 from JTB to the south end of the Dames Point Bridge, to name two. Even the I-10 widening between I-295/Lane Ave. and Stockton Street was looked at for toll lanes during the Scott years.

And, jaxlongtimer there is an ongoing maintenance cost of the toll operation - maintaining the cameras and sensors used to charge users, the cost of collecting the toll (although with pre-paid toll accounts, this is significantly less than the old toll booth days), and maintaining those divider sticks between the toll and free lanes.  It can be debated whether normal roadway maintenance on the toll lanes should be charged to the toll operation or just part of the maintenance of the adjacent free lanes.

The North Florida Transportation Planning Organization's (NFTPO's) 5-year Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) has two projects identified as   "Express Toll Operations", one for each piece of I-295, to cover the operating cost of the toll lanes
Buckman Bridge to I-95 - $1.07 million, or an average of $214,000 per year
SR 9B to JTB - $2.75 million, or an average of $550,000 per year
https://northfloridatpo.com/planning/tip (using the top one listed: "Approved TIP FY 2021/22 - 2025/26 corrected 9/13/21" [pdf] pages A-18 and A-20)