Posted on 12/12/2001 10:03:52 AM PST by Buffalo Bob
When President Clinton lifted the 55-mph nationwide speed limit in 1995, the legal speed on some Houston area highways soared to 70 mph. Get ready to put on the brakes.
If the Texas Transportation Commission votes Thursday in Austin to implement its part of a new air quality plan for Harris County and seven adjoining counties, maximum posted speeds throughout the area will return to 55 mph early next year.
With commission approval, the reduced speed limits would become law on a given stretch of road as soon as the signs are changed to reflect them, said Janelle Gbur, local spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation.
With commission approval, Gbur said, sign replacement will probably begin in late January and be completed by May 1 -- a deadline in Texas' clean air plan to address the Houston area's smog problem, one of the most severe in the nation.
In October, the federal Environmental Protection Agency approved the plan, which also calls for cutting some industrial emissions 90 percent by 2007, among other measures.
Gbur said sign replacement would be coordinated in an effort to prevent frequent changes in the posted limit along a route.
The eight affected counties where ozone levels exceed federal air quality standards are Harris, Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston, Montgomery, Waller, Chambers and Liberty. The last two lie in the transportation department's Beaumont district.
The commission today will also consider:
Gbur said studies indicate that tolls would be necessary to finance such a bridge, estimated to cost about $200 million and generate too little initial traffic to qualify for priority funding. It would replace the state-operated Bolivar ferries, but not necessarily at the same site, she said.
The idea is to reduce the number of ramps where traffic entering or leaving the freeway causes weaving and congestion in the main freeway lanes.
The three-member panel voted in June to build most future freeways without the usual frontage roads, an institution in Texas but few other states. Instead, the state would help local governments improve nearby streets.
Existing frontage roads, and those now planned -- in the Katy Freeway widening project, for instance -- would not be affected.
Stupid question, here...but, where are the Texas politicians on this matter?
How is it a *commission* of unelected bureacrats are able to force this upon the entire state's citizens?
Where's all that Texan spirit so many of us non-Texans are continually carpet-bombed by?
...I'm glad I'm here & they're there is all I can say.
Texas politicians can't do a thing about it, because if Houston doesn't meet these targets imposed by law, it loses all highway funds among other things.
This is a federal bureaucracy problem.
In addition, some cities and counties see this as a revenue enhancer, since many will simply just speed. For example, look at I-45 coming south out of Dallas. 60 mph within the city, yet it gets south of I-20 and drops to 55mph, even though it was just expanded to 6 lanes, there is rarely congestion since it was expanded, and almost zero suburbs south of I-20. No reason at all to lower the speed limit once you've left town. But there are always cops swarming that road writing tickets. And that's the reason.
I think it is all about making Texas look bad when Bush was running for president against Gore. They claimed we had worse pollution here than in LA. I used to live in LA - this is much cleaner air here - in LA the air was BROWN most of the year! It is almost always clear here, seldom smoggy, almost never! Most of the particulants in the air come from grass fires and not from cars!
COUNTER PRODUCTIVE IS RIGHT. It is all about collecting the SPEEDING TICKET fines! You should see the two pages of SIPS/new regulations they are putting on us. I was hoping Bush would throw them all out!!!!
We plan to get a really nice radar detector for our Porsche for Xmas. Did you ever try to drive Porsche 55 MPH???? You step on the gas and that darn thing goes 100 MPH!!!! Yeee Hawww Off to radio shack to look at radar detectors!!!
Barb in Texas
Of course, I'm sure you're absolutely correct; so my anger's not directed towards you, OK?
However...
Just LOOK at the things I hilited.
Try to address why it is that nearly everything the Bent1 did was & is permanent & unretractable; under the threat of depriving some government cash handout!!
While on the other hand OUR side is left to whistle Dixie while government-funded universities teach COMMUNIST, antiAmerican garbage, PDs (in certain Leftist enclaves) DEFY our AG & his JD...to name just TWO instances?
And all we're being told is, "There's nothing we can do because..." yadayadayada?
See the contradictions, here; because there're many.
"This is a federal bureaucracy problem."
To you, maybe.
To me; it's a people problem & people can fix this.
IF they wanted to?
Damn this makes me want to spit rivets into sheet steel!
...ever get the *feeling* they're just yankin' our chain, at their discretion?
It's a problem of legislation which has already been passed in such things as the Clean Air Act. If the EPA won't enforce that law, you can be damn sure that the Sierra Club will sue them in front of some pinko Federal judge who will then issue his own draconian remedy and give the current administration a bloody nose in the process.
The real problem is the existing legislation that passed years ago, and the fact that we don't have anything anywhere near a majority who could repeal it now.
Not only more time but there will be a higher concentration of cars and a higher concentration of exhaust fumes.
The best thing Houston can do to clean up their air is to vote all the left-wing democrats out of office.
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