Uncertainty about the Path of a Dallas Company’s Toll Road Worries Property Owners
“At some point next year, a Dallas-based toll company may get permission from the Texas Department of Transportation to build the only toll road in Texas that is totally supported by private finance. The exact route is something that the Texas Turnpike Corp. is still figuring out, but rural property owners who might be in the way are worried, because the TTC, though private, is legally able to use eminent domain.
“The law gives Texas Turnpike Corp. the ability to negotiate and ultimately pay a fair market price for property that is for public use,” the company says in a recent presentation. Though a 1991 state law bans the creation of private toll companies, the TTC was formed shortly before it went into effect, allowing the TTC to retain the special power of kicking people off their own land if a project promises to be really awesome for the rest of the public.
On the plus side, the TTC says that it’s at least still subject to Senate Bill 18, the law Governor Rick Perry signed in 2011 that is supposed to make eminent domain more difficult and costly for government agencies trying to take land.
The North Texas Council of Governments has determined that we need another tollway — everywhere! — but specifically in this case in an area they identified as the Blacklands Corridor. The Texas Turnpike Corp. wants to step up and be the company to build that proposed tollway. NTCOG says that the TTC is the only private developer willing to take on the project so far.”
Silverstein, Amy. Dallas Observer 10 September 2014.