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The Harris County Toll Road Authority plans to take a three-week pause in construction on the new Houston Ship Channel Bridge along the Sam Houston Tollway so engineers can agree on a solution to a possible design flaw found nearly 20 months into the project. The $1 billion bridge — the costliest infrastructure project in the county’s history — was designed by the Dallas office of FIGG Bridge Group. The company, based in Florida, came under scrutiny when its Tallahassee office designed a pedestrian bridge that collapsed in February 2018 at Florida International University, killing six. FIGG and its consultants...

Texas lawmakers have gone from championing to criticizing toll roads, a shift that some Houston-area leaders worry has gone too far and could limit coming projects. "Without toll roads and that funding, I don't know what we are going to do," said Montgomery County Judge Craig Doyal, citing the need for new roadways in rapidly growing parts of the Houston area. The concern, voiced at a Dec. 15 meeting of the Houston-Galveston Area Council's Transportation Policy Council - the region's transportation planning group - was shared in response to decisions by the Texas Transportation Commission. A day earlier, the commission...

HOUSTON - The teachers at Spring Forest Middle School asked KHOU 11's Verify team whether Beltway 8 has been paid off and if the tolls will ever go away in the foreseeable future. "Why do we still pay for toll roads?" wondered 7th grade teacher Rebecca Mustachio. "To be honest, I thought we would be done paying for toll roads." We are not even close to paying the bill for those roads, according to Roxana Sibrian of the Harris County Toll Road Authority. In a statement emailed to KHOU, the authority says it will be paying off construction debt until...

County commissioners reaffirmed their stance against the Trans-Texas Corridor, and they took another step toward keeping county government transparent when they met Tuesday. First up on the court's agenda, commissioners heard a presentation by Connie Fogle on behalf of the newly formed Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission. According to Fogle, the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies to coordinate with local commissions to "ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level." "Critical in the code is the word 'coordinate,'" she said. "This does not mean the commission has to cooperate. The intent is to...

With all the madness in the world, I meditated Tuesday on two matters of great gratitude. One is that through vigilance and good fortune we have, so far, gone six years without another major attack on U.S. soil. The other is that I wasn't one of the Texas officials who was forced to attend a workshop in Austin in which PR flacks would try (under a $20,000 contract) to teach me techniques for selling Gov. Perry's massive toll road boondoggle. It was a small part of a $7 million to $9 million campaign that will include feel-good ads pushing Perry's...

A bill that places a two-year moratorium on private toll road agreements in Texas was signed by Gov. Rick Perry on Monday. The bill, Senate Bill 792, was pushed by opponents of the Trans Texas Corridor, which is a proposed set of privately-funded toll roads throughout Texas. The final version of the bill represents a compromise between opponents of the TTC and Perry, its main backer. Specifically, the bill prevents the Texas Department of Transportation from entering what are called comprehensive development agreements, or CDAs, which are contracts for private companies to build and profit from toll roads in Texas....

But compromise doesn't affect six projects slated for Harris County AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry on Monday signed legislation that slows down his ambitious plans for building toll roads but does not halt them completely. Perry and the Legislature got into a stare-down last month when lawmakers sent him a bill that put serious restrictions on building toll roads in Texas and constrained policy set by the Texas Transportation Commission, which is run by the governor's appointees. Perry said he would veto the bill and threatened to call a special legislative session if lawmakers did not send him compromise legislation....

The future of an interstate planned to run through Victoria appears murkier than ever. Harris County, a key point along the proposed Interstate 69 route, pulled out of the I-69 Alliance in mid-May. In an article in the May 15 Houston Chronicle, Bill Murphy and Rad Sallee wrote that Harris County pulled out of the I-69 Alliance after county commissioners decided too much was spent annually in membership costs. The county hopes that a bill in legislation right now is passed, because it would give them access to build a toll road as part of the Trans-Texas Corridor parallel to...

Those persuasion skills were key to Ms. Kolkhorst marshaling support for a partial two-year moratorium on private toll roads. The bill could get lawmakers' final blessing today. The Brenham Republican has emerged as a central figure in the Legislature's efforts to slow down the privatization of Texas roads. She has persuaded nearly all of her 149 House colleagues to back the moratorium, which excludes most North Texas toll projects. Ms. Kolkhorst, 42, has parlayed a blend of persistence, fearlessness, smarts and country charm into a more visible role in Austin. In addition to leading the toll road freeze, she has...

House, Senate passage seem likely The careening vehicle that has been this legislative session's toll road overhaul appeared to pull into the garage about 4:35 p.m. Thursday. At that moment, Republican state Sen. Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, after spending several moments huddling on the floor with Sen. Tommy Williams, sponsor of Senate Bill 792, affixed his signature to a compromise version of the bill, and the two shook hands. "We've got a deal now," Williams, R-The Woodlands, said about an hour later. "This is really going to move transportation issues forward, particularly in large metropolitan areas." The deal was among...

Toll road compromise reached By Ben Wear | Monday, May 14, 2007, 08:10 AM Lawmakers, representatives from the Texas Department of Transportation and others have reached agreement on major toll road legislation that will be laid out this morning in a meeting of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. But there could be a backlash. Many legislators had said this session that what they didn’t want was to be presented with a large “agreed-upon” transportation bill late in the session with little or no time to absorb it. That’s exactly what they’re getting, however. The bill, in this instance,...

Waco - Governor Rick Perry should sign a bill that would establish a two-year moratorium on the controversial Trans Texas Corridor (TTC), according to the board of directors of the state's largest farm organization. A letter requesting the governor's approval of House Bill 1892, signed by the 14 members of the Texas Farm Bureau board, including TFB President Kenneth Dierschke, urges a moratorium on the use of private equity comprehensive development agreements, including the TTC. The letter was delivered to Governor Perry today. It said in part, "We believe the moratorium envisioned in HB 1892 will give all Texans the...

Mike Krusee looked tired. The Republican state representative from Williamson County, interviewed at his Capitol office last week, for 10 days or so had been fighting what some people call the creeping crud, a debilitating mixture of cold, flu and allergy symptoms hitting many Central Texans this spring. But Krusee, for much longer than 10 days, has also been fighting the creeping realization among legislators that over the past two sessions, they might have granted Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Department of Transportation too much power to create toll roads. For the first time in his three sessions as...

Every day I can look out the window of my office in downtown Austin and watch traffic creep along Interstate 35, half a mile away. The time of day doesn’t seem to matter, nor does the weather: morning or evening, wet or dry, the snarl persists. Part of this is due to the unwieldy design of the downtown exit and entrance ramps, but the main reason is the volume of traffic, much of it commercial. I dread the drive to Dallas, which I last made on the Friday afternoon before the Texas-Oklahoma football game – surely the worst day of...