I-69 Meeting Held in Lufkin

KTRE-TV ^ | September 15, 2006 | Ramonica R. Jones

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

The Alliance for I-69 Texas met in East Texas Friday. The board of directors hosted its monthly meeting in Lufkin. Progress on the project is moving along.

In a few years, the interstate will become an international trade corridor directly connecting Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The first phase of the project will begin at the end of the year.

Anne Culver, executive director for Alliance for I-69 Texas, said, "You'll start to greatly see exactly the shape of the Trans Texas Corridor I-69 and then there will be another set of environmental studies done about a year after that. At that point, construction will begin where construction is necessary for the corridor to come to interstate standards."

Since the alliance was organized, Congress has designated Interstate 69 as a high priority corridor and has dedicated more than $50 million to the development of I-69 in Texas.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

[upchuck]

Highway to Hell.

[1rudeboy]

Cute. Is that what you wear on your sandwich-board?

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

bump.

[deport]

Get 'R Done

[BobL]

...and meanwhile US-59 will be left to rot in place for the next 50 years, a victim of Perry's secret agreements that prohibit upgrading of parallel highways.

That will be the true Rick Perry legacy for Texas, and it explains why he's now in the low 30s as far as re-elect numbers are concerned.

Thanks Rick.

[deport]

...and meanwhile US-59 will be left to rot in place for the next 50 years,

---

Why?..... Isn't 59 being redesignated from Lufkin south to the border and a part of the I69 route?

[BobL]

...ok, for you picky guys. Technically, the non-compete clauses that are almost certainly in these agreements are modeled after what was done for State Highway 91 in California, where toll lanes were added down the center of a congested freeway, by a private company - in exchange for being allowed to charge "market rates", which varied with time of day, and day of the week, going almost to $1.00 per mile at peak times.

Yes, California could upgrade parallel highways, but only if they provided that private company compensation for any lost revenue - meaning that upgrades to parallel highways became so expensive that they simply wouldn't be done.

That is a better explanation of a non-compete clause.

[BobL]

I doubt it - but I don't know. I've heard that I-69 was to roughly parallel US-59. I would be surprised if they re-designated the part of US-59 through Houston, as one would think the intent is to keep the trucks out of the cities (especially one with such high pollution levels), but I don't know.

[deport]

From their web site:

Since the Alliance was organized, Congress has designated I-69 as a high priority corridor and has dedicated more then $50 million to the development of I-69 in Texas. Federal statute identifies the general location of I-69 in Texas as U.S. 59 from Texarkana to Laredo and two legs into the lower Rio Grande Valley along U.S. 77 from Victoria to Brownsville and U.S. 281 from George West to Progreso.

I hope like hell they would bypass downtown Houston. I think I remember one possibility as being on the NW side but not sure.

[BobL]

"general location...as U.S. 59"

I don't know either, but even given the wide center medians in much of the route, they will not be able to get anything like the 800-1200 feet corridors that the TTC is supposed to be. That's why I suspect that they'll cut a new route.

[Ben Ficklin]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhah Bob, that is what is known as "Responsive Pricing"

Transportation Demand Management

[Ainast]

I wonder how this is going to affect lufkins growth... We've been boomin over the years.

just got a brand new sams and theater, yep...

[BobL]

I certainly know what it is.

It's when some entity - government, private company, or private foreign company (as we now do in Texas) - with monopoly protection decides how to price a toll road for maximum revenue - and to hell with the public.

This entity decides whether it makes more sense to jack up the cost of driving (i.e., increase tolls to extreme levels) - thereby lessening congestion for the same amount of capacity. Or whether to add simply add capacity, and thus not be able to increase prices. So far, every decision that I've seen on SH-91 in California has been the first of the two options - for obvious reasons, I may add.

This system may turn you on, but I don't have pockets as deep as you evidently do, and therefore I prefer to pay a gas tax that averages (for my 25 MPG vehicles) about 2 cents per mile (state and federal combined), and I would support paying up to another 2 cents per mile (i.e., another 50 cents per gallon) in order to have sufficient freeway capacity, so that EVERYBODY that needs to can afford to drive.

The 12.5 cents per mile now charged for the old toll roads in the Houston area, the 20 to 30 cents per mile now charged for toll roads (both privately and publicly operated) in Denver and Toronto, and the up-to 85 cents per mile being charged on SH-91 ( 10 miles - http://www.91expresslanes.com/tollschedules.asp ) are what bothers me - but I guess not everyone, particularly when there is an embattled Republican governor up for re-election.

[BobL]

"I wonder how this is going to affect lufkins growth..."

Kiss your boom days goodbye. If I-69 were to have been a freeway, you would have continued to grow like crazy. Now, with the existing US-59 about to be locked down in a non-compete clause with Cintra (or whatever private company gets the contract), and the toll road being so expensive that the few regular people that do use it wanting the shakedown to end as quickly as possible and therefore never exiting until absolutely necessary - you will now become, as the Dems like to say: "Flyover Country". [a bit of a run-on sentence, but you get the point]

...and the people who own land in these corridors agree with me, otherwise they wouldn't be screaming down the doors against this plan at every public meeting they can get to.

But the governor sits in Austin, apparently oblivious to this uprising, while his poll numbers sink to what is now just a 5-point load over (Democrat) Chris Bell.

[1rudeboy]

"locked down?" Sounds sinister. So folks won't be able to use one road, and won't use the other because it's too expensive?

[BobL]

Locked down is a strong word - it basically means the road is still there (like the Roman Viaducts), it's just that it will never be expanded, even as Lufkin grows, due to the non-compete clause. Thus, it will get heavily congested and only be useful for local travel.

That's what's really ticked me off about Perry - he can have every foreign company in the world that he wants come here and build toll roads - but it's these non-compete clauses that essentially lock-down the capacity of existing roads that irks me (and believe me, no private company is dumb enough to sign this type of contract without an iron-clad non-compete clause).

It's really no different, well maybe worse since we're talking 50+ years, than politicians that sign union contracts with huge pension provisions. The politicians can leave office fat, dumb, and happy - but years later the citizens have to live with the mess that they made in signing these open-ended contracts.