TEXAS Turnpike Authority Keen on Toll Express Lane

TEXAS

Turnpike Authority Keen on Toll Express Lane

Pete Winstead the chairman of the Texas Turnpike Authority (TTA) says he is keen to get the new statewide agency involved in toll express lanes and says that I-635 in Dallas (the LBJ Freeway) is a likely first. In an interview with TRnl Winstead said that planned toll express or HOT lanes could involve some kind of investor/concessionaire partnership with the TTA. He doesn’t want the statewide toll agency to develop a large staff and operational involvement, so operations will probably be competitively bid out to operations contractors or concessionaires.

Matt McGregor TXDOT project manager for I-635 told us he expects some major “thinktank-type” brainstorming sessions with consultants, the TTA (a division of TXDOT) and the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) – which runs HOV lanes – in the spring when consultants’ traffic and revenue numbers and further engineering estimates are available. He says the major drawback to concessions and investors could be the time and expense of drawing up legal agreements. His thinking of the HOT lanes is evolving toward the project being “mobility driven with a revenue bonus.” This means the HOT lanes will not be expected to pay for themselves.

All tolling will have to involve remote collection, McGregor says, as there is no plan to build any toll collection facilities on the roadway itself. He thinks the closest analog may be Toronto’s 407-ETR with multiple entries and exit points and toll registration by electronic transponders and license plate readers. Like 407-ETR the HOT lanes of I-635 will be 2x2 and 2x3 lanes on the mainline.

I-635 reconstruction is one of the nation’s largest highway projects in the design pipeline at about $1.7b and one of the most innovative in that all the add-on to the existing 2x4 general purpose lanes will be HOT lanes roadway, much of the extra laneage in structure, either double-deck or in tunnel.

As an interim measure I-635 has a pair of concurrent flow buffered HOV lanes alongside the 2x4 unrestricted lanes. The HOVLs run about 1200 veh/hr in the peak, representing perhaps 25% of the capacity of the HOT lanes but a percentage which might grow significantly with the development of a network. The overall roadway has flows of 240k veh/day.

The project extends over 20mi (33km) east-west across the north of the Dallas area circling slightly. I-635 together with I-20 in the south and I-35E/TX-12 (or Loop 12) to the west form something of a beltway approx 10mi (16km) out from the CBD. I-635 involves total rebuild under traffic and will produce over 200 lane-mi (350 lane-km) of 4 roadway (dual-dual) urban motorway plus Texan style frontage roads and three towering 4 and 5-level interchanges (ICs) for direct connections HOT/HOV as well as all the mainline fwy-fwy movements. The biggest of these I-635/US-75 (Central Fwy) represents about $190m and breaks ground shortly, about 3 years ahead of the first I-635 mainline work.

If McGregor’s thinking is embraced on other nearby projects there will be an extensive HOV/HOT lanes network in the region. US-75 is planned to have a reversible HOV lane in its median north of I-635. To the west HOV/HOT are almost certain to be adopted in the I-35E/Loop-12 planning which is a couple of years behind I-635, but already showing alternatives with multiple roadway sections, some with reversible and reconfigurable arrangements (see p14). US-183 and I-30 radials heading west to Fort Worth could get widened with toll express lanes, McGregor says.

Preliminary estimates on the I-635 mainline show that $70m to $100 could be saved by avoiding structure and purchasing extra adjoining land for the 14-laner. But McGregor says the extra time needed to negotiate, and likely opposition from residents, causes him to favor a doubledeck road. Tunneling consultants are working up estimates of the cost of bored tunnel which would reduce the disruption to existing traffic, as compared to doubledeck structure. Dallas is underlaid by chalk, an excellent medium for tunneling. Both the Addison Airport road tunnel (see TRnl #35 Jan 99 p1) and the Dallas light rail have provided experience for estimating the costs of road tunneling in the area.

The regional toll authority, the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) runs the Dallas North Toll Road which bisects the I-635 and has the Geo Bush Turnpike (TX-190) under construction as an outer beltway further out than the I-635.

McGregor and Winstead both say current thinking is that the NTTA has “plenty on its plate” and that any HOT lanes network will be better handled outside it. (Contacts Pete Winstead 512 370 2801, Matt McGregor 972 437 0101)