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Houston: Grand Parkway segment B, construction starts in 2026

Started by MaxConcrete, January 22, 2017, 12:04:28 AM

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MaxConcrete

Well, I think the alignment of this section is totally absurd, not to mention extremely inefficient for travel and also expensive due to the extra length. But it looks like this will be the alignment, if and when it is actually built.



This link is subscription-only, so I added some excerpts
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/Southern-segment-of-Grand-Parkway-environmentally-10871686.php

Southern segment of Grand Parkway environmentally cleared
By Dug Begley, Houston Chronicle
January 20, 2017 Updated: January 21, 2017 7:37pm

The Grand Parkway between Texas 288 and Interstate 45 has an officially permitted route, though that's just one step in what could be years of study and planning for another portion of the controversial and costly third ring around Houston.

A record of decision — signaling the end of the long environmental process — was announced Wednesday by the Texas Department of Transportation. Federal officials cleared the project Nov. 30, which is important because anything built after that date would not be eligible for noise abatement paid for by the state.

The route for Segment B starts at Texas 288 near County Road 60 in Brazoria County. The tollway, planned for two lanes in each direction, then swings south to parallel the South Texas Water Co. Canal before joining with Texas 35. The tollway will then mirror Texas 35 northeast, swinging with the highway around Alvin, then break from the highway and head east to connect with I-45 south of League City.

According to officials, the 28.6-mile tollway will require 1,072 acres of new right of way, displacing 13 businesses and 17 residences.

TxDOT estimates the segment to cost $1.2 billion as of July 2016, though cost would be determined by a number of factors, notably when construction begins. Tentatively, officials during the environmental process projected the lanes to be open to traffic in 2035.
www.DFWFreeways.com
www.HoustonFreeways.com


Chris

The stack interchanges (14 direct connectors in all) amount to a quarter of the entire construction cost.

The toll road itself has a price tag of $ 922 million, or $ 32 million per mile, which doesn't sound extremely expensive.

http://txdot.gov/inside-txdot/get-involved/about/hearings-meetings/houston/sh99-grandparkway-noa.html

compdude787

Boy, that road sure zigzags all over the place! Even the existing section of the Grand Parkway is much more direct in its routing.

Bobby5280

Severely crooked and overly long freeways appear to be the new normal with highway building in the United States. Any visions of a big picture view are being replaced by all sorts of legal and political obstructionism. Top to it off, we're quickly making stuff like this prohibitively expensive. At this rate we'll soon not be able to wipe our bottoms without filing an Environmental Impact Statement and spending huge sums of money on special toilet paper.

DNAguy

The increased traffic between 45 and Alvin/ Freeport that this will induce + the development that the toll lanes on 288 will induce makes me think that traffic on 35 south of Alvin is going to get pretty darn salty.

I also think as Alvin gets more developed because of the earlier two projects I mentioned, that the TX35 tollway into (At least the Beltway) Houston gets built following the RR tracks... don't know if it makes its way to Spur 5 at UH though.

TXtoNJ

The one good thing about this route is that it lends itself to a new bridge at San Luis Pass. This would be useful for hurricane evacuation efforts.

Bobby5280

My guess is they're trying to avoid crossing a large area in the Chocolate Bayou directly East of the TX-288 & FM-60 interchange. Perhaps the area is particularly flood prone and expensive to cross. Or maybe it's environmentally sensitive. So they're going to zig-zag the route clear down to meet where TX-35 crosses the Chocolate Bayou and upgrade that existing crossing. Maybe there is less property along TX-35 to buy and remove than running the toll road parallel to FM-1462.

chays

Just saw this:
TxDOT considers removing Grand Parkway segments from 10-year development plan

QuoteTxDOT's draft 2020 Unified Transportation Program will guide what transportation projects it develops over the next decade. The draft includes removal of toll road projects, including the $1.28 billion segments B-D of the Grand Parkway.


https://communityimpact.com/houston/clear-lake-league-city-nassau-bay/top-stories/2019/07/22/txdot-considers-removing-grand-parkway-segments-from-10-year-development-plan/

roadman65

The only toll road I have ever seen that charges to use a flyover.   Basically the bridges over the connecting road at interchanges are tolled so in essence the interchange bridges are toll bridges.

Drove from I-10 to I-69 and remember stopping for the lights as the toll parts just basically was a way to bypass the signals.  After the lights, you would reenter the freeway until the next interchange where you had the choice to stay on the freeway to pay the toll, or exit and cross the connector and get back on.

Silly if you ask me the way its done on that part.

They can wait 50 years to complete, but with the rate of development going on it won't take long for the demand to have it.
Every day is a winding road, you just got to get used to it.

Sheryl Crowe

MaxConcrete

Quote from: roadman65 on July 23, 2019, 09:27:40 PM
Silly if you ask me the way its done on that part.

Yes, I agree. But that section with the tolls on the bridges is a product of TxDOT's period of toll hegemony, roughly 2000-2014, and the legacy of that period includes numerous instances of silliness, for example toll ramps on SH121 and IH35E in North Dallas.

Thankfully the era of toll road hegemony is over, and TxDOT is now anti-toll. As chays notes in the prior post, TxDOT is in the process of removing the final remaining toll projects from its 10-year plan, including the south section of the Grand Parkway. But local toll road agencies will still build some long-planned toll roads. In fact, the Fort Bend County Toll Road Authority built the bridges on the Grand Parkway between IH-69 and IH-10.
www.DFWFreeways.com
www.HoustonFreeways.com

roadman65

I also noticed that SH 146 is to be part of SH 99 when some more of the Grand Parkway is completed.  I imagine that SH 146, which is already a free freeway, will not be tolled as all they would have to do is just change the signs over.  Its not an interstate designation so upgrades would not be in order there, so it can function as is.

Heck SH 1604 in San Antonio is a beltway and it is not even freeway in all parts. Some of it is arterial and has stop lights on it like at I-10 on the east side of the city.
Every day is a winding road, you just got to get used to it.

Sheryl Crowe

Bobby5280

With TxDOT going anti-toll, won't some of their projects languish as a result? There's a lot of different projects on the books that aren't finished yet. Take I-35E in North Dallas for instance. I can't stand the current configuration of I-35E from the North edge of Dallas going up through Lewisville and to Denton. The narrow lanes SUCK. They're scary to use in heavy traffic or speed demon traffic when things aren't jammed. The highway was supposed to go through another big widening phase to add another pair of express toll lanes and get all the lanes adjusted out to proper 12' widths. Now I wonder if that and lots of other projects are going to be seriously delayed or even cancelled.

Fuel taxes these days don't go far at all at funding highway projects. The cost inflation for planning and construction is one thing. Then there's the nonsense going on in places like Oklahoma where the extra money from the first fuel tax hike in over 25 years went mostly to fund teacher pay raises (since Oklahoma has ranked near dead last in the nation on teacher pay). OK's fuel tax needed to be raised a good bit for the roads. The teachers deserved to get paid better as well. But that money has to be raised using other approaches. This state is still moving backwards.

MaxConcrete

A state Senator is saying that sections B and C of the Grand Parkway will be restored to the TxDOT 10-year plan. The reporter in the video is dressed for the occasion with a high-visibility vest.

https://www.click2houston.com/news/senator-says-grand-parkway-funding-will-not-be-cut
www.DFWFreeways.com
www.HoustonFreeways.com

rte66man

#13
Quote from: MaxConcrete on August 02, 2019, 09:20:45 PM
A state Senator is saying that sections B and C of the Grand Parkway will be restored to the TxDOT 10-year plan. The reporter in the video is dressed for the occasion with a high-visibility vest.

https://www.click2houston.com/news/senator-says-grand-parkway-funding-will-not-be-cut

Does he have the stroke to get that to happen or is he mouthing off to impress some constituents?
When you come to a fork in the road... TAKE IT.

                                                               -Yogi Berra

MaxConcrete

#14
The TxDOT Commission voted on the UTP today. The video is not online yet, but according to the presentation the four toll projects which were slated to be dropped from the plan have been retained.

see page 13
http://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot/commission/2019/0829/6-presentation.pdf

News report
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/Grand-Parkway-stays-put-in-TxDOT-s-10-year-road-14399676.php?utm_campaign=CMS%20Sharing%20Tools%20(Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral


Of course this is no assurance the projects will be built, but planning and pre-construction activities will continue.
www.DFWFreeways.com
www.HoustonFreeways.com

The Ghostbuster

I think the real fun will begin once they decide what to do to construct segment A.

thisdj78

Quote from: The Ghostbuster on August 30, 2019, 05:08:59 PM
I think the real fun will begin once they decide what to do to construct segment A.

Agreed....how and where would they run that segment? I don't see much ROW through Dickinson.

Henry

The only thing I don't like is that ridiculous dip to the south; what could possibly be in the way of a normal straight path? (development and/or environmentally sensitive areas, perhaps)
Go Cubs Go! Go Cubs Go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today!

thisdj78

Quote from: Henry on August 30, 2019, 10:41:31 PM
The only thing I don't like is that ridiculous dip to the south; what could possibly be in the way of a normal straight path? (development and/or environmentally sensitive areas, perhaps)

Here's text from the environmental study for Segment B:

ABSTRACT: The proposed State Highway (SH) 99 (Grand Parkway) Segment B would include the construction of an approximately 28.6-mile alignment, on new location, from SH 288 to Interstate Highway (IH) 45 South through Brazoria and Galveston Counties. The proposed SH 99 Segment B would be constructed as a four-lane, controlled-access tollway facility, consisting of two lanes in each direction within a 400-foot-wide right-of-way (ROW) and auxiliary lanes between on-ramps and off-ramps where appropriate. The social, economic, and environmental impacts of the proposed SH 99 Segment B are evaluated for resources such as land use, farmland, social, economics, air quality, noise, wetlands, floodplains, water quality, biology, cultural, parklands, hazardous/regulated materials, and visual aesthetics. The Preferred Build Alternative for the proposed SH 99 Segment B (Preferred Alternative) as analyzed in the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) is comprised of minor alignment adjustments made to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) Recommended Alternative that were made after the August 2012 Public Hearing. The Preferred Alternative was chosen as the Alternative Alignment that would best fulfill the need for and purpose of the transportation improvements, while also minimizing impacts to social, economic, and environmental resources. The Preferred Alternative would require new ROW (approximately 1,072 acres), the adjustment of utility lines, and the filling of aquatic resources, including jurisdictional wetlands. Thirteen business and 17 residential displacements would occur. Archeological resources and non-archeological historic-age resources are still under review at the present time. No threatened or endangered species would be impacted. A total of 31 noise receiver locations would experience noise impacts from the Preferred Alternative.

MaxConcrete

I just watched the video of Thursday's TxDOT commission meeting. There was around 2 hours of comment, mostly from public and elected officials. Houston interests made a huge showing in favor of the project, not only urging its inclusion in the 10-year plan (which was already known) but also urging TxDOT to expedite the project and have it all under construction no later than 2024.

With the very strong political support from Houston, I'm thinking the project could be accelerated. Since it will be tolled, funding is not really an issue, assuming the traffic and revenue studies determine it will be feasible.

www.DFWFreeways.com
www.HoustonFreeways.com

thisdj78

I was driving through Dickinson tonight and I noticed they closed down a gas station and bank that coincidentally are in the path of Segment B. Are these closures a sign that they are buying up ROW for the segment?


thisdj78

Anyone know if they are in fact starting the Segment B ROW acquisition?

bluecountry

So, in all likelihood, will all segments of 99 be built, and if so, will 99 be a complete loop?
-What will happen to SH 146?  Will that be co-signed with 99, or re-signed as 99, or will 99 'end' at 146?

CoreySamson

Quote from: bluecountry on August 04, 2020, 03:24:36 PM
So, in all likelihood, will all segments of 99 be built, and if so, will 99 be a complete loop?
-What will happen to SH 146?  Will that be co-signed with 99, or re-signed as 99, or will 99 'end' at 146?

I think that segment A will never get built. It's just too unfeasible. I think segments B and C will get built considering how northern Brazoria County is booming, but 99 won't be a complete loop.

146 will probably get widened in Kemah eventually, but nothing else.
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MaxConcrete

Quote from: CoreySamson on August 04, 2020, 04:44:23 PM
Quote from: bluecountry on August 04, 2020, 03:24:36 PM
So, in all likelihood, will all segments of 99 be built, and if so, will 99 be a complete loop?
-What will happen to SH 146?  Will that be co-signed with 99, or re-signed as 99, or will 99 'end' at 146?

I think that segment A will never get built. It's just too unfeasible. I think segments B and C will get built considering how northern Brazoria County is booming, but 99 won't be a complete loop.

146 will probably get widened in Kemah eventually, but nothing else.

Construction is in progress to upgrade SH 146 to a freeway through Seabrook and Kemah, including a new bridge over the Clear Lake channel. There are plans to extend the freeway to south of SH 96. Going further south past SH 96, it is planned to be a 6 lane divided highway.

I don't know what the chances of are of Grand Parkway section A being built. As for sections B and C, last year TxDOT attempted to delete them from the 10-year plan (the UTP), and there was an outpouring of support in favor of the project, so TxDOT restored them to the plan. Strangely, sections B and C are absent from the 2021 draft UTP. I don't know if that means the project is delayed/suspended, or if work is continuing behind the scenes. Since the project has always been planned to be tolled, and any budget reductions at TxDOT should not threaten the project.
www.DFWFreeways.com
www.HoustonFreeways.com



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