Parkway could move to front burner

TxDOT may take over

David Crossley, Jan 10, 11.

Harris Country Commissioners Court will consider on Tuesday issuing a challenge to the state to start building a Grand Parkway segment in western Harris County by the end of year and to reimburse the county for the millions it has already spent on the project, according to a story in the Houston Chronicle:

Harris County took control of the project about 15 months ago in the belief that the Texas Department of Transportation did not have the money to build it, and that the county could come to an agreement with the state over how toll collections would be used.

Things have changed since then. First, County Judge Ed Emmett said, the Texas Transportation Commission has notified him informally that it expects to have $425 million available for the project this year.

Second, the county has not come to an agreement with the state on the use of toll revenues. The state has insisted that all toll revenue collected on the Parkway (also known as State Highway 99) needs to be spent on the Parkway itself.

The county wants to keep all the money collected on Harris County segments of the road in the county to pay for drainage projects, connector roads and other necessities the Parkway creates.

The story notes that TxDOT, in spite of repeated assertions that money is getting tight, may have found $425 million for the Parkway project. Last year, TxDOT’s James Koch said “about 2012, there are zero dollars for new projects.” Everything will go to maintenance, and “even at that our system is going to deteriorate.”

New Greater Houston Partnership chairman Larry Kellner, former CEO of Continental Airlines, told the Chronicle last week that “We’ve got to get the Grand Parkway under construction.” Kellner now works for a real estate company whose “primary focus is real estate - suburban office, industrial.”

In recent years, the major focus has been on Segment E of the Parkway, which would go across about 15 miles of nearly vacant Katy Prairie to connect I-10 to Highwy 290. TxDOT and others have testified that the purpose is to “open new land for development.” But insiders say there has been a recent shift to a focus on Segment G, which would connect I-45 to Highway 59. The Chronicle story notes that Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes said “it is his understanding that ExxonMobil’s consideration of land it owns near the Woodlands as a possible North American headquarters is contingent upon completion of the Harris County segments of the Parkway.” Exxon currently offices largely in the Greenspoint District and has sparked rumors it will build a vast new sub-urban campus further north on I-45.

The Chronicle noted some criticism:

The advocacy group Citizens Transportation Coalition continues to oppose the Parkway, regardless of its builder, on the grounds that it is unnecessary and will exact environmental damage on the area.

Coalition Chairwoman Robin Holzer said she was pleased to hear Emmett raise the prospect of more attention to the Hempstead Tollway.

“We need the county to build transportation options for people in the 290 corridor between 610 and Cypress long before they waste any more money in the Katy Prairie,” she said. “Segment E of the Grand Parkway is entirely about subsidizing access for a handful of suburban home builders.”

The Grand Parkway is a decades-old project designed to “open areas for development,” according to a TxDOT official, and to “get out in front of growth,” according to several local elected officials. It had been essentially stymied until stimulus money from the American Recovery and Investment Act became available. Segment E, the next section to be built, and the hoped-for development along it would destroy nearly half of the remaining Katy Prairie, a sensitive area that provides natural services and wildlife habitat. Based on the amount of development along the existing piece of the Parkway, the whole Parkway project and its ensuing development would displace some 1,100 square miles of Big Thicket, Piney Woods, Columbia Bottomlands, Prairie Systems, and Bayou Wilderness. There has been no public discussion about this policy of converting a large swath of those ecosystems to sub-urban development, nor has there been public discussion of using public funds to subsidize certain kinds of development.

The Katy Prairie Conservancy has published some negative comments about the proposed plan for Segment E of the Grand Parkway and invited supporters to comment in like fashion.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) formally opposed the proposed Grand Parkway Segment E wetlands permit, according to the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition. Both agencies submitted comments to the US Army Corps of Engineers, which is considering the wetlands permit application.

Commentary
The Grand Parkway takes another inevitable step forward
Is the Grand Parkway out of sync with community values?

Comments

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:

The transformation of some of the nation’s best farmland and wildlife habitat into tract homes and big box stores is happening right in front of my eyes. I live on a farm about three miles west of the recently-completed section of the “Grand Parkway” south of I-10, and rapidly accelerating development of this area must be unmatched for its lack of sustainability and transit options. Ft. Bend County, in particular, appears to have cast its lot on a pyramid scheme that depends on tolls and additional tax base to fund its commitments to the previous waves of unsustainable development.

Posted on Jan 11, 11 at 10:22 am

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:

I agree with Frank—this is a shame. 425 million dollars. Nearly 1/2 a billion dollars. Farms, dairies and ranches to be replaced with what…poorly constructed houses and retail built to lousy codes. And who will pay for the infrastructure to support all the new development? What about the flight of good paying jobs to shiny new suburban office parks and new schools? Instead, why not use the money to rebuilding the existing schools and retrofit the existing offices for energy efficiency? Let’s rebuild the lousy surface streets to make them bike and pedestian accessible and initiate Bus Rapid Transit.

Doesn’t it bother someone that Exxon wants to move out of Harris county? What’s the economic impact of that one move?

Other unanswered questions…Where will the electricity come from to turn on all the new lights around Houston? Will it be 100% wind to create local jobs? Where will the fuel come from to accomodate the increase in vehicle-miles travelled?

Houston should be fighting this tooth and nail. Houston should be securing it’s future like Madison, WI and buy up the development rights of it’s fringe; not pawn it off in little 1/4 acre lots with 2-3 car garages. This Grand Parkway will become a great noose around Houston, sucking out life and vitality from the city, distancing it from resources, and imposing new burdens.

Posted on Jan 11, 11 at 11:31 pm

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:

If TxDOT (and not merely some private-sector surrogate) is indeed now publicly stating that the purpose and objective of ANY highway project is to “open new land for development”, this is a complete about-face from the longstanding official position proclaimed since inception of NEPA requirements to perform comprehensive environmental assessments and formal EIS documentation in the early 1970’s. Previously, the THD/TxDOT mantra in every metropolitan area of Texas was always that “highways don’t induce land-use change” and was frequently accompanied by various sorts of disingenuous “chicken and egg” characterizations and statements about “spreading the traffic around” as part of a deliberate and concerted propaganda campaign to avoid any acknowledgment of or responsibility for the effects on development patterns (i.e., suburban sprawl).

Given this endemic practice and its resulting outcome in all major (and some minor) metropolitan areas of Texas since WW2, the principal beneficiaries clearly have been those directly involved in commercial and large-scale residential land development (and like SH 130 in Central Texas and the Bush Parkway in DFW, Houston’s “Grand Parkway” is no exception). In turn, those development-related beneficiaries (both individual persons and institutions) have contributed exceedingly large amounts of funding into the key local and statewide political contests in which favored recipients (and most often the eventual officeholders) could appoint or confirm members of the Highway/Transportation Commission, or local representatives which could oversee and influence Legislative activities involving financial allocation toward the highway system in their particular geographic areas of interest.

The mandate of legitimate “due process” as enshrined in the US Constitution/Bill of Rights has been deliberately and repeatedly violated for so many decades by the thoroughly corrupted nature of this institutional environment associated with transportation planning and construction decisions at such high levels, I’ve concluded that Texas is among the most corrupt entities across the entire planet because those in positions of power and authority have made (and continue to make) every effort possible to sustain, maintain and repair such a fraudulent enterprise through deception and active propaganda campaigns. (How can “due process” be legitimate when the sponsoring governmental entities deliberately engage in deception and publicly assert false information?) I’ve worked as a professional transportation engineer here in my home state, many other parts of the US, China, Central Asia and East Africa over the past 35+ years, and regrettably, that’s not an assertion I make lightly or without a sufficient basis of experience.

Posted on Jan 14, 11 at 12:57 pm

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) said:

” Kellner now works for a real estate company whose “primary focus is real estate - suburban office, industrial.” “....What Real Estate Company??? Whose bribing (I mean financing) what entities? Who is behind Kellner? Where is the TRANSPARENCY? What are the ties between the real estate company and the road contractors?

Posted on Jan 16, 11 at 5:24 pm

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