Posted on 03/07/2006 9:27:08 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Rural Texas on edge as state prepares to reveal general route of TTC-35
MALONE — On this particular morning, fog has Texas 171 socked in for the whole 15 miles east from Hillsboro to this tiny German farm town. While you can tell that the winter-bare black loam is mostly flat moving toward the invisible horizon, you can only guess what might lie beyond.
Barger Geltmeier and Benny Mynar and their fellow Hill County farmers have a pretty good idea, however, what might be forming out in the fog near Austin and heading their way, and they don't much like it: the Trans-Texas Corridor.
"Ninety percent of the comments you hear about it are negative," says Geltmeier, who lives here and farms about 48 acres a few miles to the east. The rumor mill in Hill County has it that the Texas Department of Transportation, which has a broad canvas on which to paint the future path of the toll road alternative to Interstate 35, is looking at running what will be called TTC-35 right over FM 308 and on past Malone. The agency in a few weeks will announce the tentative 10-mile-wide swath that eventually, after a couple of years of more detailed study, will yield a specific route.
What makes TTC-35 unique is the tremendous freedom that the state has in deciding where it goes. Unlike virtually every major highway built by the state Transportation Department in its almost 90-year history, this one has no definite point A and point B at each end. Just "somewhere in Oklahoma near I-35" to "somewhere along the Rio Grande." It could go east of I-35, perhaps near Malone, or west of I-35 where the road might skirt, for instance, President Bush's ranch near Crawford. The road could hug I-35 — probably so, according to the state's top transportation official — or stray out 10 to 20 miles into the frontier.
The state, after stirring myriad environmental, sociological, economic, engineering and political factors into a pot and tossing in a heaping helping of public comment, will decide.
The most likely path of the road, however, is east of I-35 from near San Antonio to east of Dallas, which just happens to contain some of the most fertile farmland in the state, according to the American Farmland Trust, an advocacy group that works for the preservation of farmland against development pressures. And that has cafes buzzing from Bartlett to Malone.
Geltmeier serves on the City Council of Malone, home to 278 people, the Frogbranch Saloon and the Wild West Steakhouse Saloon II, where Geltmeier, Mynar and some friends usually have their morning coffee. The toll road, its sponsors say, will de-congest I-35, helping everyone who drives the state's main vein and boosting the Texas economy by easing the movement of goods. But in Malone, all they see is a stretch of state-owned right of way up to 1,200 feet wide eating up rich cotton and sorghum land, dead-ending county roads they use every day and bifurcating acreage.
So, if nine out of 10 of Geltmeier's neighbors hate the proposed road, brainchild of GOP Gov. Rick Perry, who are the other 10 percent who like it?
"Those that are voting Republican," Geltmeier says.
After the fog lifts later in the morning and after some research, it is obvious why this part of Hill County would be a road builder's dream: gently rolling country, with few creeks, utilities or other obstructions, and, compared with subdivided rural tracts found near Texas cities, relatively few landowners to haggle with over right of way. And land costs are low, at least according to the Hill County Appraisal District; the market value is less than $1,000 an acre.
Contrast that with the money set aside for buying right of way along Texas 130, the toll road rising east of Austin: More than $100,000 an acre. Given those figures, it makes sense when state transportation officials say they can build a brand-new road in the sticks cheaper than they can expand I-35.
The big question, however, is just which sticks will give way to concrete.
Factoring in obstacles
Unfurl a detailed map of Texas on a table, and it doesn't take long to figure out where an I-35 twin shouldn't go.
"There are some environmental constraints you can see from 30,000 feet," says Doug Booher, environmental manager for the turnpike division of the state Transportation Department and the guy shepherding the TTC-35 federal approval process. He has a 4,000-page report, still confidential, currently under review by the Federal Highway Administration. That "Tier I draft environmental impact statement" contains the 10-mile-wide recommended swath everyone is waiting to see.
So what does a Texas map tell you?
Stay away from towns, of course, even the tiny ones. West of I-35 between San Antonio and Austin is probably a bad idea, what with all those hills and environmental concerns about the Edwards Aquifer. You'd certainly want to miss the enormous expanse of Fort Hood west of Belton; Waco Lake west of Waco and Tradinghouse Creek Reservoir about six miles east of Waco; Whitney Lake and Aquilla Lake west of Hillsboro; and Navarro Mills Lake northeast of Malone. And, in the real world, ranchland northwest of Crawford is probably off-limits.
"I imagine Bush told Perry, 'You keep your (butt) on the east side of I-35,' " says Mynar, who farms land near West.
And then there's Texas 130, the Central Texas toll road due to open next year that almost surely will be connected to TTC-35. It's east of I-35.
But even with those arguments in favor of a path east of I-35, you still don't have an answer to the question on everyone's mind: How close do you put the road to the interstate?
"The vast majority of people in Hill County want it to follow I-35 as closely as possible," says Kenneth Davis, the Hill County judge. "We don't want ghost towns made out of places like Hillsboro," which now depends on the businesses that slowly grew up along I-35 after it bypassed the city in the early 1960s.
Making a difference
The reality, state officials say, is that TTC-35 will take no more than 15 percent of I-35's cars and trucks, given that it will cost at least 10 cents a mile to drive on TTC-35 and I-35 will remain free. And with that traffic volume growing quickly, those Hillsboro interstate service stations and hotels will not lack for business. But Davis and his neighbors have other reasons for wanting TTC-35 within three miles of the interstate, not out near Malone.
"When you get from Bynum to Malone, that is premium land," Davis said. "Why cover up more of that good production land when they don't have to?"
It's that kind of detail, well known to the people who live in the Blackland Prairie east of I-35, that Booher says he wants to hear. And despite suspicions that some small corps of people in suits is making all the decisions about where to put the road, Booher says the local folks can make a difference.
"The worst thing that can happen from my perspective is if the public doesn't comment," Booher says. "I love piles of public comment."
What people have had to say — the state has gotten about 4,000 comments and held almost 120 public meetings on TTC-35, with more to come — may or may not have made a difference. But the put-it-near-the-interstate crowd should be reassured by what Perry's best transportation buddy has to say.
Ric Williamson, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission and the state's No. 1 salesman for the Trans-Texas Corridor, says that even he doesn't know what's in Booher's opus on TTC-35. But when he talks about where the road might be, you pay attention.
"I think it will be pretty close to I-35," Williamson says. "But not for economic reasons. There's a reason I-35 was built there. It's flat, the river flows are containable. The soils are stable. It's not underlain by shale and sand and gravel that shifts. The closer you are to the perfect spot, the better off you are."
Excerpt:
Two Texas Projects
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) announced in mid-January that it will be launching two new projects over the next three to four months.
An initial request for qualifications from TxDOT is expected in March for the TTC-69, or trans-Texas corridor/I- 69 project. TTC-69 will be part of a 1,600 mile national highway system connecting Canada, the United States and Mexico. The section comprising TTC-69 would extend approximately 650 miles from Texarkana and Shreveport (along the Texas border with Arkansas and Louisiana) to Mexico. TxDOT indicated that it is looking for a long-term strategic partner for this corridor, and the state’s standardized "comprehensive development agreement" for the project is likely to be similar to the agreement signed with Cintra-Zachry in connection with the I-35 corridor — meaning a pre-development agreement that gives rise to a number of additional procurements as the full scope of the corridor is nailed down. Texas expects to have the comprehensive development agreement negotiated and executed by the end of 2007.
The second project TxDOT announced is a procurement for SH161 that is expected to be initiated in May 2006. The SH161 project would be an extension of SH161 west of Dallas from SH183 north of Dallas to I-20 south of Dallas through the cities of Irving and Grand Prairie. The right-of-way for this project has already been acquired and environmental approval has been secured, but is being updated to incorporate tolling. An unsolicited proposal for this project was received in August 2005.
TxDOT has created a public master schedule of all comprehensive development agreement projects and will update each project’s status as it progresses.
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
The other white meat.
Thanks for the ping!
You're welcome. :-)
400 billion dollar booddoggle.
Please explain how this is pork, since not only 100% of the road's construction and maintenance costs will be paid by a private firm (who will recoup the cost via tolls), but $1.2 billion will be paid to the state by the firm for the franchise rights. The state will spend less than $50 million in initial studies and related costs. So the next cost to taxpayers is -$1.15 billion, meaning the state makes a $1.15 billion dollar profit on a $50 million investment.
About as accurate a statement as "Bush lied, people died".
BTTT
Funny how in this case the best thing that the government can do is: as little as possible.
If there's one thing I despise, it's 45 mph on an interstate. I remember driving through Indianapolis and discovering, to my unpleasant surprise, that the speed limit on I-70 was 50!
Amen. Texas corruption at its finest.
Who pays the tolls, the tooth fairy?
Paying for roads at toll booths is a bad way to fund roads. The public pays for them one way or another, and handing a virtual monopoy for travel between city A and city B to a private company is a bad idea.
Private toll roads were the norm in Colonial America. We got rid of them for a reason.
I certainly hope that TTC-35 will take more than 15 per cent of the traffic off of I-35. I've read about how much of a b*tch that road is.
Only when youngsters drive 90mph on the weekends trying to get to Galveston to get drunk.
Didn't exactly see that there. Just sounds like they have some money for a road with no specific objective in the first place.
The only people who pay for a toll road are those who CHOSE to use it and pay the price. You can always chose to use the pre-existing free roads, that may be longer or slower or more crowded, but they are free. So anyone who doesn't want to pay the toll doesn't pay for the road. And your claim of a 'virtual monopoly for travel between city A and B' is nonsense. Did you even bother to read the article? I-35 will remain free, and there are several other free route options in that corridor. How do you travel from A to B right now, because those routes will still exist and won't be tolled. Only the new routes will be tolled, or new mainlanes that don't exist right now. But if you want to legally drive at 85mph, you'll have to pay a toll.
Hardly oppressive to have choices.
Anybody that thinks this "Winged Pig" will be a straight shot do not know how things work in Texas. Every medium sized community who has a strong Chamber of Commerce will be very supportive to get TTC close to their communities.
"Economic Development" is the "E Card" they will be playing.
Kinda like the "Race Card" or the "For the Children Card."
Once someone plays the Card all sane arguments are out the window.
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