NY Times on Grand Parkway

Almost certain to cause sprawl

Steve Hawley, Mar 23, 09.

Segment E of the Grand Parkway, which is scheduled to receive $181 million in stimulus funding, will promote urban sprawl and threaten the Katy Prairie, according to a front-page New York Times article.

The article notes, “A new master-planned community called Bridgeland is rising on the prairie along the proposed site of the road; once completed, the development is expected to have 21,000 new homes on 11,400 acres. Other developers are eagerly awaiting the new road so they can start building on their empty land, too.”

It continues, “Though the road is welcomed by developers, it is bemoaned by transportation advocates who lament that it will lead people to settle far away from the main centers of employment — locking more people into long commutes. ‘They should be spending the money where the people are,’ said Robin Holzer, the chairwoman of the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition, a Houston-based advocacy group, who added that the money would have been better spent on transit or on alleviating congestion on roads through more developed areas.”

The article notes that transportation stimulus projects are decided at the state level, stating, “The road exemplifies an unintended effect of the stimulus law: an administration that opposes suburban sprawl is giving money to states for projects that are almost certain to exacerbate it.” Segment E was unanimously approved by the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Transportation Policy Council on February 27, the Texas Transportation Commission on March 5, and the Harris County commissioners on March 10. The county commissioners also authorized $9.8 million in engineering contracts at that meeting, with another $11.9 million on tomorrow’s agenda.

According to the Times:

[Roger Hord, president of the West Houston Association and a Grand Parkway proponent,] said that an existing leg of the Grand Parkway, just to the south of the proposed leg, would give a sense of what the new stretch of the Grand Parkway might look like when it is done. The existing stretch is lined with strip malls and gas stations and drug stores and a huge 7,600-acre residential development called Cinco Ranch that is popular with families. It feels a world away from the landscape of fields, ranches and prairie to the north — land that nature lovers have been patiently working for years to conserve.

The Sierra Club filed a lawsuit against the project on March 9, claiming the federal environmental reviews were inadequate.
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