State Highway 36 in Fort Bend County could be clogged with up to 2,000 additional 18-wheelers each day in as little as six years, county officials said Thursday.
Yet despite the inevitable huge increase in truck traffic on the two-lane road, state and federal funding to widen the highway appears to have evaporated.
The increase in truck traffic will come as the result of two major expansions. One is at the Panama Canal, where construction of a third set of locks is expected to be finished by 2014 or 2015. The other is at Port Freeport in Brazoria County, which is adding a new container terminal to handle the increased shipping the canal project will spur.
Meanwhile, officials with the Texas Department of Transportation reportedly have been spreading word that, because of a lack of federal funding, the department has shrunk its construction budget for Fiscal Year 2008 by more than $1 billion.
No Money Available
While county officials are unsure specifically what impact TxDOT’s slimmer budget will have, a proposed public-private venture to widen Highway 36 to four lanes from Brazoria County to at least U.S. 59 now appears to be all but dead.
“In my opinion there is no money at this time for this project,” Fort Bend County Judge Bob Hebert said Thursday.
Hebert and Fort Bend County’s commissioners traveled to Port Freeport on Thursday to hear from port officials about the facility’s expansion plans.
They were told that once the port’s new terminal begins operating at full capacity, it will bring in 800,000 shipping containers per year. Some 40% of the containers would be moved from the port to destinations around the country via rail, leaving 60% to be delivered by 18-wheeler, Hebert said.
That means 480,000 new truckloads of freight will be shipped out of Port Freeport per year. Both Hebert and Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers said port officials estimate 80% of the new truck traffic will head for destinations to the north or west. In both cases, those trucks likely would travel on State Highway 36.
2,000 Trucks
That works out to 1,052 trucks per day, seven days a week, traveling on the highway, which runs through Rosenberg and north to Interstate 59. But Hebert said the port is expanding beyond just the addition of the new terminal, and both he and Meyers said it’s possible as many as 2,000 more trucks could start traveling the highway by the time the Panama Canal is widened.
While six or seven years might seem a long way off, it doesn’t leave much time for a major road expansion.
“If I started a road today, I couldn’t get it finished until 2014,” Meyers said.
With no current funding, expanding a road takes even longer.
In August, Commissioners Court members adopted a memorandum of understanding between Fort Bend and Brazoria counties, governing joint development of a Highway 36 expansion with the “input and assistance” of Zachry American Infrastructure of San Antonio.
Private-public Partnership Fizzles
Under terms of the memorandum, the two counties were to negotiate an agreement to co-sponsor the TxDOT project. The agreement says Fort Bend’s funding responsibility for the project would be “limited to 10% of the right-of-way costs in Fort bend County and certain utility relocation costs.”
Brazoria County began considering the plan in late 2006, and commissioners there approved of an expansion to Highway 36 from Freeport to West Columbia. Zachry has tentatively agreed to widen the road itself, and maintain the expanded highway for 35 years.
In return, the company was to receive a “pass-through” or “shadow toll” – which Hebert described last year as reimbursement of an unknown amount of money to Zachry from TxDOT, based on how much traffic increases on Highway 36 as a result of adding two lanes.
Now, however, the deal appears moot.
“According to the information I’ve got, TxDOT has no money, and I know Zachry isn’t going to enter into any agreement without money,” Meyers said.
Funded Or Not?
Hebert and Fort Bend County Commissioner James Patterson both indicated the inevitable truck traffic from Port Freeport could be partially mitigated by a TxDOT project to extend Spur 10 from U.S. 59 to State Highway 36 near Pleak.
That would allow port traffic heading west to exit Highway 36 before arriving at the increasingly congested interchange of 36 and 59.
However, although the Spur 10 extension supposedly has been funded, Patterson said the TxDOT budget cutbacks mean not even that project is a sure thing.
“It’s still on the list as a funded project,” Patterson said. “If you were a betting person, the odds are it’s probably going to stay there. But if you were betting your life – I wouldn’t do it.”
For his part, Meyers worries that as Highway 36 becomes clogged with tractor-trailer rigs, truck drivers will seek less-crowded routes and begin traveling on Fort Bend County’s farm-to-market roads, such as F.M 362.
Driving The Back Roads
“They’re going to find the path of least resistance,” Meyers said. “That’s always been my concern.
“If you think the people of Bridlewood Estates are unhappy about Section C of the Grand Parkway, wait till a bunch of trucks start coming up through there to get to 59.”
With no state or federal money in sight, and with the specter of many trucks on the horizon, Hebert said the county’s short-term goal “is to keep it on TxDOT’s radar,” possibly until the 2009 Texas Legislature when, county officials hope, their state counterparts will take action to fix the transportation funding problems plaguing Texas.
“We cannot not build roads, and you cannot build toll roads everywhere,” Hebert said. “The voters will reload the Legislature or do what they have to do to make that stop.”
