TX-130 TX-45 Loop-1 EXt US-183A Zachry-HNTB propose Austin-San Antonio pike

TX-130

Zachry-HNTB propose Austin-San Antonio pike

They’ll be needing some archeologists and good TV talking heads down in Austin TX if plans for a TX-130 pike are to be realized. The talking heads will be needed to argue the case for the highway against an articulate enviro lobby. The archeologists? Quite a bit of the likely alignment east of Austin, the state capital, tracks famous El Camino Real, an 18th century Spanish road that went from Monterrey to San Antonio then northeast along TX-21 to Nacogdoches in far eastern TX. Texas historian Steve Hardin told us the Spanish “King’s way” reeks of early history. Actually the proposed new road has also been called the MoKan because it coincides for much of its length with the abandoned Missouri-Kansas rail line.

. Road & Bridge Builders Inc, a parternship of construction firm H B Zachry and the national engineering group HNTB has proposed to the Texas Turnpike Authority Division (TTAD) of TXDOT a “partnership” to build the new road. RBB has a concession going back to 1991 on the project, but the concession was not acted upon, and its legal status is uncertain. Since 1997 the TTAD/TXDOT has had the power to oversee and participate in new turnpike proposals in the state.

RBB released press materials and formally put a general proposal of a partnership to the TTAD mid-Feb but would not talk further. The press materials simply propose a toll road between Georgetown north of Austin on I-35 and Seguin northeast of San Antonio on I-10, a route 10km to 20km east of I-35 for most of its 140km length. The route known as state highway-130 (TX-130) has been in the alignment selection and environmental review process for several years, and appears to be 12 to 24 months from completion.

Conversion of the abandoned Bergstrom Air Force Base in the southeast of Austin into the city’s main airport, a project costing $1b is well under way. Parts of TX-130 could generate a lot of airport traffic when it opens.

Pete Davis exec-dir of TTAD told us he has no concrete proposals from RBB but will be pursuing discussions with them over the next few months to work up ideas. The state has decided TX-130 will be a toll project. Davis says he is interested in proposals from other parties on the TX-130 project, and indeed on other projects, especially in the Austin area, which he says is in serious need of highway upgrades for which tax dollars are not available. TTAD was only established late 1997 and still has to document a set of procedures under which investor proposals for toll projects will be reviewed by the state.

Rationale for TX-130 is that I-35 is heavily overcrowded and too expensive and difficult to widen much further. Most of the 130km between San Antonio (pop1.5m) and Austin (pop 0.9m) is 2x3-lanes — running 70k to 100k veh/day and through some of Austin it is 2x4-lanes and running 170k to 200k veh/day. Several km through the center of Austin is already doubledeck highway 4-lanes atop another 4. There is a program underway to reduce interchange-generated congestion by improving merge/diverge sections and ramps, but there is no support for any further widening through the middle of the Austin area. Rather there is considerable support for the TX-130 as a parallel relief route in the flat plains along the eastern fringe of the city’s built-up area. There are two TX-130 plans, each starting at TX-195 near Georgetown at the northern end, skirting the eastern fringe of Round Rock and Austin to near Bergstrom airfield, but the first version heads back west to rejoin I-35 just south of the Austin city line. This is a 95km Austin bypass, estimated cost $665m as a mostly 2x2-lane highway.

The second version, instead of heading west to rejoin I-35 continues south parallel with I-35 and joins I-10 at Seguin for a total 140km and probably a cost of over $900m. RBB proposes building the more ambitious second version which effectively provides a duplicate highway to I-35 right from San Antonio halfway to Hillsboro in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where it splits into I-35E and I-35W.

In either case the route selection and preliminary design process envisages a massive route with a reservation varying between 160m (526’) in rural sections to 128m (420’) in urban sections, providing main lanes separated by 30m (100’) for future rail/HOV or road widening and space for 3-lane frontage roads each side plus scenic easements. (There might be room too for an El Camino Real historic corridor!)

Pete Davis of TTAD says the more ambitious plan has a more regional flavor offering relief to San Marcos, New Braunfels and San Antonio whereas the first is seen as an Austin relief road. However he says that when it comes to financing the project, it may turn out most feasible to do it in stages. And he concedes, a first stage could be the shorter Austin bypass version.

South of Austin I-35 can cope for some more years, and widening to 2x4-lanes is possible. The case for the shorter version seems most compelling because of the greater congestion in Austin and the likely greater timesavings and lower cost. A preliminary financing analysis by Rauscher Pierce Refsnes for the TTAN (Aug 97) suggested the short version would generate enough revenue to support 54% of the total project cost (based on 7% bonds), and presumably the longer version offering no increase in time savings but being more expensive would be even further from self-financing.

Major booster of the project is a Greater Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council. Spokesman Ross Milloy says the longer project to Seguin will be needed because of the rapid growth of the whole region, which is one of the major centers of computer research and manufacturing outside northern California. Austin, he says, is the major present traffic bottleneck on I-35 but the whole section will quickly clog without relief.

I-35 is currently a major NAFTA Corridor linking Mexico via Monterrey to Laredo, then via San Antonio and Austin to the US interstate system in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, from where interstate highways go to the mid-Atlantic seaboard and to the mid-west and Canada. Truck traffic has been growing by double digit annual percentage numbers. 10,000 trucks/day travel in the rural stretches of I-35 between San Antonio and Austin, a measure of long distance truck traffic. One idea would be to develop TX-130 as the long distance freight corridor, discouraging through-trucks from using I-35.

I-69: Longterm there may be relief from a 1,700km mega-NAFTA project variously known as Corridor 18/20 and I-69, proposed for Detroit-Toledo-Indianapolis-Evansville-Memphis-Shreveport-Houston-Laredo (TRnl#1 Mar 96 p1). The last leg of this I-69 in TX would roughly follow US-59 100km closer to the Gulf coast than the San Antonio-Austin area. But that project has been put in considerable jeopardy by state politicians who do not want the highway adapted to the special needs of longdistance trucks — its major potential paying customers. I-69 also faces huge wetlands environmental obstacles in eastern TX and the Mississippi valley, not to speak of the $7b cost. So Laredo-San-Antonio-Austin-Dallas/Fort Worth seems secure as the major NAFTA-way for some time.

Local Austin pikes: Pete Davis of TTAD says TX-130 looks to be the most spectacular project for his new agency but he suspects other smaller toll roads in the Austin area may be easier to finance., and may therefore get into construction quicker. Studies have been done by the TTA of a small network of local toll roads in northern Austin. These include:

• TX-45 a 24km northern peripheral

• Loop-1 Extension 7km

• TX-183A a 28km northwest radial

The three form a new high standard highway network in the growing northern part of Austin in Williamson Co. The three roads are costed at $159m as all 2x2-lanes but if TX-183A is built initally as 1x2-lanes total cost is $125m. On these modest capital costs the $125m project is profitable right off, according to a Preliminary Financial Analysis and highly profitable after several years. The $159m version also is quite quickly profitable.

TX-45 and Loop-1 extension are in study and public consultation. They are being considered as one project called “The Big T” after their shape. Or their Texan scale? The alternates being presented involve 300’, 400’ and 500’ rights-of-way, all having 2x3-lanes to start but space for median HOV/HOT lanes.or rail. The wider versions have 4x3 lanes (frontage roads.plus main lanes.) Draft MIS/EIS is scheduled for end-98.

A leading politician in the area, the mayor of Round Rock, Charlie Culpepper last year came out in strong support of toll roads. He said the proposed roads are “vital “to improving traffic in Williamson County.

"The quickest way to get relief is with toll roads," he said.

The toll roads also have support from the local metro plan organization, the Austin Transp Study. Their chirman Sen Gonzalo Barrientos formally wrote the TTAD: “It is desirable that all toll roads int he Austin metro area be considered as a connected unified system. We request that the completed toll road studies be expanded to eliminate two discontinuities...” (Contact David Kopp TX-130 Office TTAD/TXDOT 512 936 0981)

NOTE: The old Texas Turnpike Authority (TTA) no longer exists. Its assets , notably the Dallas North Toll Road, and the Pres G Bush pike were transferred to the new North Texas Tollway Authority, now a Dallas-Fort Worth regional toll outfit. The new statewide agency at work in Austin is the Texas Turnpike Division of the state Dept of Transp. To complicate things further, TTAD has its own board of directors, separate from the department so exec-dir Pete Davis could in theory get contrary instructions from his board and from the department of which he is a division head. Texas politicians are rumored to have devised this arrangement.