Hi, We’re TxDOT, And We Can Justify All $86 Billion We Say We Think We Need

$86 billion dollars is a whole lotta meetings of the Texas Transportation Commission at the Hooters over on West Riverside.

And, for all of the justification that TxDot has been able to provide for their $86 billion, that may well be the purpose of the money they say they need.

This $86 billion funding gap first came about last July when TxDOT claimed there was an $86 billion “funding gap” between transportation needs and available transportation funding (must be that huge 88 lane superhighway they’re going to build through Dime Box they haven’t told anyone about).

According to an audit by the State Auditor’s Office, that $86 billion gap included:

* $8.6 billion in costs for metropolitan regions that should not have been included because (1) there were additional costs outside of the agreed-upon cost elements or (2) a mathematical error was made. Excluding these costs reduces the amount of the reported funding gap to $77.4 billion (a 10 percent reduction).

* Undocumented costs, including:
– $27.92 billion in undocumented costs for metropolitan regions.
– $9 billion in undocumented costs for urban regions.

The state auditor’s office also slammed the fact that someone forgot to include any supporting documentation to, uh, you know…support the claim that there is an $86 billion gap:

The accuracy of the estimated costs for metropolitan and urban regions cannot be determined because of the lack of supporting documentation.

The methodology the Department used to calculate the amount of the funding gap provides a general assessment of the statewide need for additional mobility funding; however, it may not be reliable for making policy or funding decisions. To calculate the funding gap, the Department collaborated with the eight largest metropolitan planning organizations to obtain cost estimates, and it used those estimates to determine the funding gap for metropolitan regions. The Department provided some guidance to the metropolitan planning organizations. The data the Department used were cost estimates that were self-reported by the metropolitan planning organizations. The cost for urban regions was estimated by the Department based on broad and generalized assumptions. For the estimated costs in rural regions, the Department relied on cost estimates for the Texas Trunk System (a project developed in 1990 to connect the rural regions of the state with a statewide system).

I guess someone forgot to throw in some project estimates or something.