Opponents speak out against Grand Parkway

Comments promote alternatives

Steve Hawley, Feb 25, 09.

A number of people spoke out against the Grand Parkway in front of the Harris County commissioners on Tuesday, providing wide-ranging comments. The Citizens’ Transportation Coalition has provided audio of the public comments and the ensuing discussion. The public comments occur during the first 35 minutes, and the commissioners’ debate begins about one hour into the recording.

Mary Anne Piacentini, executive director of the Katy Prairie Conservancy, accompanied by the conservancy’s land manager, Wesley Newman, noted, “Although the Segment E FEIS [Final Environmental Impact Statement] notes the importance of the Katy Prairie, it does not define or commit to a definite mitigation proposal which would adequately compensate for its impacts. Fragmentation of this diverse landscape will be accelerated by the completion of this project.” She continued, “Mitigation should take into account the range of all ecosystems which will be lost to the Grand Parkway, including wetland, farmland, rangeland, forest and riparian land,” and “should follow the stated intent of the FEIS, which repeatedly refers to the intrinsic value of the Katy Prairie.” Chris Olavson, a Grand Parkway Association board member, later insisted that the project would include environmental mitigation efforts. However, after the meeting Piacentini noted that the right-of-way would consume 664 acres, and that another 2,000 acres would be affected by secondary impacts. She said the proposed mitigation efforts would not be enough to compensate for these primary and secondary effects.

Robin Holzer, chair of the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition (CTC), said that the agenda item as written was misleading, urging the commissioners to table the item for two weeks. She also commented, “As recently as yesterday, the lead engineer for the county, Mr. [Art] Storey, described US 290 as the biggest transportation problem in Harris County. ... Every day, literally hundreds of thousands of people are sitting in traffic on 290, and they need alternatives. They need things like commuter rail, or maybe the Hempstead Managed Lanes. But instead, you’re talking about this segment of the Grand Parkway that is so far out it cuts across a largely uninhabited part of the county, and it’s not going to bring relief to any but a handful of people out there.” She also noted, “TxDOT’s Houston engineer told me yesterday the only reason this project is on the radar is because of the appearance of federal stimulus money right now, that they are proposing to go after almost $400 million of our federal stimulus money to help contribute to this project and make it happen. I would argue that that stimulus needs to help real people today, not hypothetical, speculative people out across the prairie.”

Jay Blazek Crossley of Houston Tomorrow noted, “[the] 14,553 people [in far northwestern Harris County] make up 0.4% of the population of Harris County. ... If these people are like the rest of Houstonians, we expect 6,983 of them to have jobs and 489 of them to work downtown. So if the reason for building this freeway is to shorten these people’s commutes, then that is coming in at a cost of about $1 million each.” He continued, “[The Houston-Galveston Area Council’s 2035 population] projections assume that you will build the Grand Parkway, and cannot be used to justify this project.”

Yvonne Tallent, a 30-year resident of northwestern Harris County and a member of United to Save our Spring, said, “In public meeting after public meeting, hundreds of tax-paying citizens of Segment F have voiced their opposition to the Grand Parkway, voicing their concerns about pollution, flooding, disruption of local traffic routes with resulting congestion, sprawl, and cost, as well as displacement of families.” She continued, “These protests have been ignored to push through a 30-year-old, developer driven, antiquated boondoggle project that is a massive waste of taxpayer dollars and that now threatens one of our area’s greatest natural resources – the Katy Prairie.” She noted that, between last year’s record gas prices and the current recession, “We have all had to rethink where we live and how we travel to and from work. With gas prices bound to escalate to record levels again, do we really believe we can afford to travel toll roads 10 to 30 miles to work every day?” Instead of building the Grand Parkway, she said the county should “[spend] these dollars instead on upgrading existing thoroughfares that connect to freeways and existing toll roads” and synchronize traffic lights in the area.

Jon Boyd of CTC echoed Holzer’s comments, saying, “We need to make sure we’re building transportation infrastructure where the people are.” He added, “What we do now as far as transportation will have a lot to do with where [new residents] decide they’re going to live. He suggested “[building] more roads for local trips ... to take pressure off our highways.” He concluded by arguing against leapfrog development, saying, “We have a lot of [existing] land to develop. Once we start building the Grand Parkway, existing neighborhoods will get bypassed, where we have an opportunity right now to reinvest in some existing neighborhoods.”

Barry Klein, a Harris County resident, disputed the notion that more roads reduce congestion, noting, “People have a certain amount of tolerance for travel, even an appetite for travel, and they manage [to adapt] to keep their travel times tolerable…. What’s unfortunate is that the county doesn’t know or doesn’t use this information to help the public understand traffic.” (Peter Newman made similar comments in January, noting that commuters adapt to keep their travel times around half an hour in each direction and that studies have shown that new roads do nothing to relieve congestion.)

After the initial public comments, Olavson, backed by David Gornet, the executive director of the Grand Parkway Association, defended Segment E. Olavson said that Segment E has undergone a long environmental process, and said, “If it’s going to be built, regardless of if it’s the county or TxDOT, it’ll be as a toll road, and it will be the users who pay for it, not taxpayers. … They are free to choose to use it or not to use it.” He concluded, “Growth is not inside 610, in the Montrose area, growth is out there in the suburbs. And the growth in traffic is suburb-to-suburb, and not to downtown. That’s where the growth pattern has been for the last ten years, and it’s going to continue to be like that unless there is a policy by the city and the county to restrict development in the suburban areas.”

Following Olavson’s comments, Ed Brown of CTC said, “290 is much more important than the Grand Parkway. We’re talking about a development, a roadway for Bridgeland, for other developers in that area, that are building fairly low-density housing. That’s not going to help the influx of people that we expect to come to Houston. So you’re building this thing for special interests. You’re not doing what tax dollars should do, and that’s help the majority of people.” He also added, “You’re building in an area that floods. You’ve already raised 12,000 acres three or four feet. You’ve built a berm around that entire thing which will affect the floodplain. … We have a problem with water in this area, and you’re making it worse. Please look at alternatives.”

Steve Hawley of Houston Tomorrow said, “In regards to whether or not tax money is being used for [the Grand Parkway] ... my understanding is that the reason [the market valuation] is being waived in the first place is because the preliminary financial analysis shows that it’s revenue-negative over a 50-year period, meaning that the toll revenue is not going to pay for the entirety of the project. So the taxpayers will not pay for all of it, but one way or another it’s a subsidized project. If we are going to be subsidizing this, I think we should be subsidizing projects that encourage density and encourage efficiency.” Art Storey, executive director of the Harris County Public Infrastructure Department, later said that Segments E and F are toll-viable, but agreed that “the whole [180-mile] highway is a loser.”

Carol Caul of CTC concluded the public comments, saying, “It’s our understanding, particularly after listening to your preliminary budget conversation, that neither TxDOT nor the county currently has the funds for the 290/Hempstead construction. So, TxDOT is seeking stimulus funds for the Segment E project, and it’s our position that if stimulus funds are to be sought, that they could be better spent reconstructing 290 interchanges or any other aspect of 290 that will be more helpful to many more people.”

Several local news outlets provided coverage of the controversy:

Houston Chronicle: “Commissioners OK new Grand Parkway segment, but fate of project if it’s deemed financially unviable could delay the work” (February 24, 2009)
KPRC Channel 2: “Grand Parkway gets green light” (February 24, 2009)
ABC Channel 13: “Commissioners approve Grand Parkway expansion” (February 24, 2009)
Houston Chronicle: “Grand Parkway segment set to get green light” (February 23, 2009)

In other Grand Parkway news, Fort Bend County commissioners voted 3-2 to approve the market valuation waiver agreement following a heated debate yesterday, according to FortBendNow.com. Commissioners Andy Meyers and Richard Morrisson opposed the waiver, fearing that it might obligate the county to make a future payment of $100 million or more. County Judge Bob Hebert, who voted for the waiver, said that a full market valuation study would have taken two or more years to complete.

Harris County commissioners approved the waiver agreement two weeks ago. If all seven counties working on the Grand Parkway approve the agreement, the Harris County Toll Road Authority will have six months to decide whether or not to pursue the project at the local level. After that deadline, the Texas Department of Transportation could choose to build the project on its own.