Texas Department of Transportation Commission Meeting

Irving Arts Center
3333 N. MacArthur Blvd.
Irving, Texas

9:00 a.m. Thursday, January 25, 2001

COMMISSION MEMBERS:

JOHN W. JOHNSON, Chair
ROBERT L. NICHOLS
DAVID M. LANEY

STAFF:

CHARLES W. HEALD, Executive Director
KIRBY PICKETT, Asst. Executive Director
MIKE BEHRENS, Asst. Executive Director, Engineering Operations
RICHARD MONROE, General Counsel

PROCEEDINGS

MR. JOHNSON: Good morning. It is 9:10 a.m. and this meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission is called to order. Welcome to our January 25 meeting in Irving, Texas, and it is a pleasure to visit your city and to have you join us.

Let me note for the record that public notice of this meeting, containing all items of the agenda, was filed with the Office of the Secretary of State at 10:23 a.m. on January 17.

As some of you may know, it is the commission's practice to hold some of our meetings outside of Austin at different locations around the state. The commission benefits from having these meetings outside of Austin; it acquaints us with the interests, challenges and people of the various regions of this great state. I'm sure by the time our visit is over we will be better informed about the needs and challenges of this area, and we hope that our meeting will give you a sense of how we conduct business at least in the transportation end of state government.

We will begin by hearing from local officials this morning, but first a housekeeping note. If anyone in our audience wants to address the commission, please make sure to fill out a card at the registration table in the lobby. If you want to comment on an item on the agenda, please fill out a yellow card, and if it is not an agenda item, we will take your comments at the end of the meeting, and for that purpose we would ask that you fill out a blue card.

Before we get into our regular agenda, I would like to express the commission's thanks to the many people who have gone and taken extraordinary steps to make this a very pleasurable and hospitable stay. It commenced with the reception hosted yesterday by the fine people of the City Council of Irving; last night our district, the Dallas District, hosted a barbecue which was not only delicious but very enjoyable; and then this morning our good friends at Good Roads and the Irving Chamber of Commerce were nice enough to host a breakfast. And to each of these groups and to everyone here, we're most appreciative of, one, your hospitality, but secondly and probably more importantly, your support of what we do.

Before we get started, I'd like to ask my colleagues on the commission if they have any comments that they would like to make. Robert?

MR. NICHOLS: First of all, I'd like to thank the City of Irving for hosting this; we appreciate the hospitality, we did enjoy the reception last night, had a great chance to visit with people in an informal atmosphere, and the breakfast this morning. At about 5:30 yesterday we left to go to our district office which is on the east side of town, and those of us who were in the van referred to it as the "congestion tour" of the area about 5:30, and that was real enjoyable.

I know many of you are here for specific items on the presentation this morning, and for those of you who have come a long way to talk about other items, we appreciate the effort that you make to try to present your views. Other than that, thank you very much.

MR. JOHNSON: David?

MR. LANEY: Just a quick word, Johnny. This is likely to be my last or next to last meeting of the commission, and it's nice to have come full circle after six years of this kind of activity and have a meeting here in the North Texas area. Hopefully, it's informative for you all and it's great also to see a lot of folks I've worked with over the last number of years so closely on so many different projects, and hopefully with occasional success. Anyway, we look forward to the meeting, glad you all are here, and we are delighted to be in North Texas.

MR. JOHNSON: David, I think that shows sometimes it takes six years to learn a few things.

MR. LANEY: It does.

(General laughter.)

MR. JOHNSON: We're delighted to be here. As I mentioned at breakfast, it's nice that after six years you finally get a home game.

I would like to pay a special welcome to Tom Dunning who is here. Tom is a former member of this commission; he served in, I think, '85 and '86, he said, and it's wonderful when we go out to the various parts of the state to meet people who have served in this capacity and to share some of their experiences with some of the experiences that we've had and it's very meaningful. And so, Tom, thank you very much for being here.

MR. LANEY: It's worth mentioning that Tom served at a time when we didn't have any roads in Texas; he didn't have much to do.

(General laughter.)

MR. JOHNSON: I would like to take a minute to introduce some of our administration who are here today. Wes Heald, to my left, is our executive director. And also with us is Kirby Pickett who is the deputy executive director, and Mike Behrens, the assistant executive director for engineering operations. I cannot tell you the extraordinary amount of work that these gentlemen put in and the results that they achieve, and they are great to work with.

We'll be hearing from quite a few people this morning so probably it's best to get started. I would like to call on the good mayor of the city of Irving, Mr. Joe Putnam, if he would come forward and lead part of the meeting. Mr. Mayor, welcome.

MAYOR PUTNAM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the commission, it is indeed a distinct honor and privilege for the City of Irving to be able to play host at this meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission, and the city council and I and City Manager Steve McCullough and our fine staff and all the citizens of Irving want to bid you a very warm and sincere welcome to the city of Irving.

Somewhat like ancient Rome, all roads seem to lead to Irving, and so it's somewhat fitting and appropriate, I think, that the commission would choose Irving as a place to hold this meeting. I think per square mile, the commission, TxDOT probably has as many projects planned and under way in the city of Irving as any place in the state of Texas. And I will tell you that spirit of cooperation and the history of cooperation between the City of Irving and TxDOT and the Texas Highway Department goes back many, many years, and I would relate to you a little story I think that indicates that that perhaps you're not familiar with.

Almost 50 years ago, Texas Highway 183 was a two-lane road that I traveled over as a child and the Texas Highway Department at that time entertained the plans to widen it to what it is today, and this was almost 50 years ago. At that time the county was unable to participate in the right of way so the project was somewhat stuck, and we had a mayor then, a young man 29 or 30 or 31 years old, a homebuilder named C.B. Hardy.

C.B. was young but he understood and had the vision to realize that good roads and transportation were important, so he made an agreement with the county that the City of Irving would front the money for 183 right of way in exchange for which the county would build some bridges in Irving later on. And that was done. The state got the right of way, 183 was built, and we got three bridges over Delaware Creek, one of which is now being maintained on Irving Boulevard by the Texas Highway Department.

And that record of cooperation has extended to today. In the 25 years that I've been associated with the City of Irving, we've seen cooperation on the Beltline Road interchange and all the projects that we have under way today, and I can assure you that the City of Irving continues to be in step with TxDOT in the projects that we have today, 183 and Loop 12 and 114 and particularly 161 which our neighbor to the south, Grand Prairie, shares an equal interest in.

And we look forward to a continued close relationship with you and of course your fine staff, and our city manager and city council for years has had a warm relationship with the district office which we enjoy today with Jay Nelson and your wonderful people. So again let me tell you how great an honor it is for us to be able to welcome you to the city of Irving.

And I have the pleasure at this time of introducing to you a gentleman that I've known for 25 years, a very close personal friend. We knew each other and met each other when we were both younger and more energetic than we are today, and certainly ambitious. He's now the county judge of the County of Dallas, I think a recognized expert on transportation, in my view, and I think that view is shared by many. Lee Jackson has forgotten more about transportation than I'll ever know, and so it's my great pleasure to introduce to you now the county judge of Dallas County, my good friend, Mr. Lee Jackson.

(Applause.)

JUDGE JACKSON: Thank you, Joe. I was glad to see I still had enough energy to get up those steps there after that introduction.

(General laughter.)

JUDGE JACKSON: Thanks to the commission, your executive director, and the City of Irving for hosting this.

It's been my experience over the years that when people point fingers in government, whether they know it or not, they're subconsciously directing attention away from their own shortcomings. A lot of times they're frustrated that something is not happening, and they probably know it some part of their minds that it's their own fault.

In the mid 1980s, shortly after I became county judge in Dallas, the Dallas Chamber of Commerce commissioned a study that, I think without saying so, was designed to prove that our transportation problems in this area were Austin's fault. And when the study came back, it was somewhat surprising and disconcerting to find that, in fact, at that time the greater Dallas area had done fairly well in state funding and that our problems were much more complex.

We had a number of projects that were tied up in local controversies, litigation, right of way acquisition problems, coordination problems between multiple layers of government, and that it certainly wasn't as simple an issue as just getting more state funding. So we set out to make sure that in our partnership we could represent ourselves to you as strong, legitimate partners doing our share and holding up our end of the bargain in improving mobility for our residents.

We've improved our metropolitan planning organization to the point where we think we have one of the nation's best, serving the greater Dallas and Fort Worth areas, that does a fine job in the planning function, and then we set out to fill in the other gaps. We had some needs in advocacy and coordination, and in 1990 we created the Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition which now has five counties and 27 cities on the eastern side of this metropolitan area, designed specifically to supplement the great planning work done by our Regional Transportation Council.

We promote regional mobility and not just in general ways but in very specific ways through project monitoring, working with local agencies and with your agency to make sure there aren't quiet bottlenecks that cause delays of months and years on these projects without bringing them to the attention of policy leaders.

We also helped establish the North Texas Tollway Authority with your cooperation, something that was of great concern to local governments as they looked to put in place an agency that could be dynamic and responsive locally and work on the many tollway projects that we knew were ready for moving forward with local support.

We've taken on the role of advocating intelligent transportation system improvements. With your assistance, with federal grant assistance, and with the cooperation of all the local governments, we've been working on things like coordinated freeway management so that we can do a better job, and we show our residents that we're doing a better job of managing the facilities that we already have in place, not just hoping that some day they'll all be doubled or tripled in size. We've got to show that we're using them as intelligently as possible as part of a comprehensive regional ITS program.

We've stepped into the air quality issue because air quality and transportation are intertwined in many ways, and we've gotten local governments involved and participating in the development of a state implementation plan and demonstrating transportation conformity so that we can continue to move forward, and we're committed to help you and other air quality advocates in the legislative process to defend that.

We want to be your partners, not only in projects, but in advocacy, because we know there are many needs and we want to help both in Austin and in Washington as advocates for reasonable and balanced comprehensive transportation improvement programs and that's our commitment.

We're very pleased with the progress we've made in this region but you well know, before you came here today and before you took that congestion tour, that our needs are not that different really from the other parts of the state. In some areas urban congestion may be the most critical problem, in some areas there are specific bottlenecks, and in some areas it's farm-to-market roads.

In every case there's a tie-in to economic development and continued growth for the state, and we have to find ways where all the regions of the state feel like they share in your progress and that you can help everyone deal with whatever the specific needs of their region are, and our commitment to you is that we want to be your partner in that way.

I want to now introduce my western colleague, Commissioner Glen Whitley of Tarrant County who is also a member of the Regional Transportation Council and is the chairman of the Western Mobility Coalition representing those cities and counties, and a very dynamic and effective county commissioner. Glen.

(Applause.)

MR. WHITLEY: Thanks, Lee.

I too want to thank you for coming to the North Texas area to hold this meeting and get an opportunity to see kind of what's going on up here. I know, Commissioner Laney, that you live in this area and so you're very much aware of what's happening here.

The Western Mobility Coalition is in its infant stages. We started a couple of years ago. Again it's an effort to bring the cities in the Fort Worth District and also bringing Denton County and some of the other surrounding counties together to monitor projects, to understand common goals and common needs, and at the same time to maintain the cooperation and cooperative spirit that we have built through the Regional Transportation Council.

I think, again, it speaks very highly of this area, the Regional Transportation Council and the leaders that we have there that have been able to continue to maintain that cooperative spirit among so many who have so many different needs, and so we're very excited about that and the continuing growth of that area.

I guess one of the things that I want to stress is that we want to help you and I think, as Lee just mentioned, the problems that we have are not different from the problems that you see in Houston and you see in the other urban counties or in the other metropolitan areas, or out in the rural areas that are following the economic development. And I think the thing that we have really tried to do this year, and what our particular western coalition is going to pledge to you to do, is that we realize that there's a need to bring attention to the need for resources, for funds, and at the same time to allow you to continue, once those funds are located and are brought in, to be able to look at the overall state and divide that out.

And so one of the things that I really want to stress is that our goal is to be here to help and provide you any assistance we can in finding additional funds and trying to get additional funds brought into the TxDOT system, and then support you in your efforts to try to look at the state as a whole and to be able to designate and disburse those funds in a fair manner.

At this point in time, it's going to be my pleasure to introduce Dan Petty, who is the current president of the North Texas Commission, and ask him to come forward.

(Applause.)

MR. PETTY: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members, Mr. Heald, ladies and gentlemen. I am Dan Petty, president of the North Texas Commission, and on behalf of the Dallas-Fort Worth Partners in Mobility Coalition, I would also like to welcome you to the North Texas region.

Let me take just a moment to tell you about our Partners in Mobility Coalition because we think it is unique and perhaps a useful model for other regions to consider. It was formed in 1995 as an alliance of five entities with a strong interest in improving mobility in our growing North Texas region. The entities were: the Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition, Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, Dallas Chamber of Commerce, North Central Texas Council of Governments, and the North Texas Commission. As Commissioner Whitley mentioned, a couple of years ago the Western Metroplex Coalition was formed and is now affiliated with the Partners in Mobility Coalition.

The coalition has two primary objectives: one, to increase the amount of funding available to the state of Texas for investment in transportation infrastructure; and two, to increase the amount of funding available to the North Texas region for investment in transportation infrastructure.

We are an advocacy organization; we think the key to success is in educating all Texans as to the need for increased investment in transportation infrastructure by forming a clear message and delivering the message in a unified manner.

Our coalition has appeared before you in Austin each year for the past six years, and we are scheduled to do so again this March 29. Our Dallas and Fort Worth mayors, and Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant County judges and our MPO chairman generally make the presentation on behalf of our partners. The purpose is to update you on the North Texas region's mobility needs and the accomplishments and to offer assistance to you and TxDOT in advocating your legislative program both in Austin and in Washington.

We stood side by side with you in supporting STEP 21 Coalition and in advocating a fairer return of federal motor fuel tax dollars during the development of TEA 21, and we will be with you again during the upcoming rewrite of the Federal Surface Transportation Program.

We've also worked hard in Austin during each of the last three legislative sessions to focus our state leaders' attention on the transportation infrastructure and to encourage the legislature to appropriate more funds for meeting transportation needs. We, of course, are doing it again this session.

Also, at former Chairman Laney's suggestion, and in conjunction with the Greater Houston Partnership and others, we formed the statewide Texas Transportation Funding Coalition in 1997. This coalition brings together the MPOs and business organizations from the major metro areas throughout the state to develop a focused statewide advocacy program for transportation and to carry it out strategically and cohesively.

As with our Dallas-Fort Worth Partners in Mobility Coalition, we believe that a broad-based public-private statewide collaborative effort is important to compete for scarce resources.

We look forward to working with you during this 77th Texas Legislative Session, and again sincerely thank you for choosing the North Texas region for your monthly meeting, and we will enthusiastically welcome you back as often as your schedule permits.

It is my pleasure at this time to introduce the Honorable Kenneth Barr, mayor of Fort Worth. Mayor Barr has been a leader not only for the city of Fort Worth but our region, at the state level and the national level in transportation. Mr. Barr.

(Applause.)

MAYOR BARR: Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, and Mr. Heald, welcome to North Texas and welcome to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. We're honored, as everyone has told you, that you're here; we thank you for coming. I also want to thank the City of Irving for hosting this event, and not only that, to express appreciation for Irving's leadership on transportation issues both here in the region and on a statewide basis. Irving, and Linda Harper-Brown especially, have really stepped forward and they are making a difference.

You know, the Fort Worth-Dallas Metroplex is a large complex region. We've got about 5 million people that live here; that's a population that's greater than the population, I understand, of 38 of the states. We represent about 25 percent of the population and about 30 percent of the economic output.

This is an area, like cities and metropolitan areas across the nation, where we're seeing the growth in jobs and the growth in the tax base, and along with that growth in jobs comes some enormous challenges from a transportation standpoint.

I said this is a complex region. I assure you the politics and the competing interests here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as you know, are very, very difficult. One of the things we've done is to create the Partners in Mobility organization to help pull us together as a region on transportation issues, and it is a great success story. The competition is great but now the success of partnering together is great.

As examples of this --

(Off the record because of siren and announcement to leave the building.)

MR. JOHNSON: I believe that we should show that there was an unscheduled recess that occurred at approximately 9:30 a.m. and that we're reconvening at 9:57 a.m.

MR. McCULLOUGH: Mr. Chairman, members of the commission and Mr. Heald, welcome back to the Irving Arts Center, and everyone in the audience. I'd like to take just a moment to explain the situation that we just went through. My name is Steve McCullough; I have the honor of serving as city manager here for the City of Irving.

This was not a false alarm -- we've had those at our Texas Transportation Summits -- but we had a worker replacing a heat exchanger on a unit on the roof. It started smoking and the system did work, and that's what set off the alarm. Everything is fine; everything is working now. And approximately at the same time, we had a report of a gas leak at MacArthur High School which is just up the street. So many of you who saw the fire trucks going past here, that hopefully will explain that. And we did have a fire truck at the back of the building, so we did have good response.

So this was a good test of our system today and it worked. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you still have a productive meeting here in the city of Irving. Thank you.

MR. JOHNSON: Steve, thank you for that explanation.

(Applause.)

MR. JOHNSON: Mayor Barr, the stage is yours again.

MAYOR BARR: Mr. Chairman, I'm impressed with the way the Irving City Council members sent the city manager to deliver the message.

(General laughter.)

MAYOR BARR: I didn't know my comment about the Fort Worth-Dallas Metroplex was so inflammatory.

I was commenting on the way the people here in the Metroplex had pulled together and worked together in Partners in Mobility undertaking. In Fort Worth we've enjoyed the support of this group and all of these people as we've worked with Dallas to bring the Trinity Railway Express commuter line between these two cities together. It's now running to Richland Hills and in about eight or nine months will be coming into downtown Fort Worth. We're excited about it, the population is excited about it, and it's going to be a major step forward in getting people off our highways and into alternative transportation.

We're also very proud of the partnership of the Partners of Mobility for supporting our partnership with TxDOT, with the North Texas Tollway Authority, and the Regional Transportation Council on building State Highway 121 as a tollway project. This has been a very, very difficult project to move forward. Any time you build a major roadway in a developed city, it is difficult and challenging.

That has been the case, but as we previously reported to the commission, we now have gone through an extensive process in our community and I feel very good about the support of the community for the project, and I can't say enough about the cooperation that we've gotten from Steve Simmons, the district engineer, and his staff and Jerry Hebert and the folks at NTTA. We really appreciate their willingness to work with us through these challenging public processes that have gotten us to this point.

It's been my privilege over the last six or seven years to travel to Austin with Partners in Mobility several times to make appearances before the commission. And when I go there, I go representing Fort Worth but also representing the interests of this entire region because I know the region is behind us on our projects, and I'm proud to work with and for and on behalf of the City of Fort Worth and proud to be a part of this regional team.

We appreciate what the commission has done over the years in working with us and that by our pulling together here and prioritizing our projects, we hope it has made it easier for the commission. I offer you my support, the City of Fort Worth's support, in fact, the support of all of us during this upcoming legislative session, or the session we're in, on transportation funding, and our support as you go forward to fight battles in Washington on transportation-related items.

Thank you very much. It's my privilege to introduce to you Barbara Mallory Caraway, a member of the Dallas City Council. Thank you.

(Applause.)

MS. CARAWAY: Good morning to Chairman Johnson and to, of course, our local -- that we claim our local member, Mr. Laney, and to the mayor and city council of Irving, and to everyone who has come here today. We are pleased that you have come to our region.

Sometimes when residents or citizens come before the city council, they usually request for extra time and that takes the majority of the council to approve that, so I'm just surprised that Mayor Barr had to resort to that type of tactic to get additional time to make his point. He's a real show-stopper, we have to say.

(General laughter.)

MS. CARAWAY: I have been very pleased to be a part of the Partners in Mobility, not only as a city council member, but also representing the citizens of Dallas because in that capacity I also served on the Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition, along with the RTC.

Those commissions, as well as those efforts, are very important because as partners we have an opportunity to not only hear what our staff has to say -- and we rely heavily on the staff recommendations and sometimes as policy makers, we agree to disagree or just disagree with some of their recommendations -- we also have an opportunity to hear what other policy makers have to say about what we're doing in our region. So, therefore, we're not making decisions in a vacuum and that has been very, very beneficial to our efforts to bring a cohesive effort to make sure that our efforts here in the North Texas area is not only heard in our region but in Austin and across the state.

It's also been my pleasure to be made more aware of just how challenging it is because sometimes we have our efforts that we want and we want them, but we have to take into consideration exactly how it's going to impact the other areas and make a concerted effort to work with our partners to make sure that everyone gets their fair share.

During our break, Chairman Johnson and Mr. Carroll Robinson and I were talking about the fact that we have as a state tried to come together, not only here but to not fight against each other but to work together for the benefit of our state to make sure that we get our fair share of dollars in the region as well as from the state, so that is very, very important to us.

We have, for the City of Dallas, faced many challenges and we've had your help to make sure that we can address many of those. I'd like to particularly thank you and to Chairman Laney for providing discretionary funding for the Woodall-Rogers Extension, which is very, very important to our city and to the area because we know that transportation is not just our area. We have people who come from outside of our city and leave cities to make sure that they can work, play and do business in our area.

We'd also like to thank you for your assistance with the expedition of the LBJ-Central exchange in that area. You have also helped us with our STEP projects, and here of late controversial, particularly with the RTC, because we voted not to fund these particular projects as transportation efforts but the Flight Museum. We also want to thank you particularly, Chairman Laney, for our Mockingbird Street project and your support of our signature bridges. That is going to be very important for the city of Dallas as well as what we can do in the region.

So I think that by our mere presence here today that we not only want to make your job easier but we want to help you make our job easier because we all serve one common interest and that's the constituents that we represent, the taxpayers' interests and making sure that they have a better quality of life.

And in that respect, I'd like to introduce our next speaker who has been a leader in this area. I always commend Judge Jackson for his knowledge and expertise in transportation, but Linda Harper-Brown, city council member from Irving is on his heels because she has established an organization and worked with many people in our region, council members included, to make sure that we are at the forefront of transportation issues. So at this time, I present to you council member Linda Harper-Brown.

(Applause.)

MS. HARPER-BROWN: Well, on behalf of TEX-21, I too would like to welcome you to the city of Irving, the birthplace of TEX-21. It was at the Transportation Summit in the summer of 1999 that the TEX-21 idea was formed. The idea to unite local officials from the entire state to improve transportation has grown into a statewide grassroots coalition that you're familiar with.

TEX-21 has held 12 statewide meetings and countless regional briefings over the past year and a half. Local officials from all across Texas collectively have sat at a table and discussed the transportation challenges that are facing our state. The result of all these meetings is 21 resolutions that have been incorporated into bills and filed with the legislature. Several bills have already been filed and several more will be filed this very week.

All of the traveling around the state and all of the meetings over the past year and a half are only a prelude. Now is the legislative session when changes can be made, and I want to emphasize that. The amount of work that we have done can come to a conclusion and we can see some valuable changes made in this legislative session -- it can happen.

Next Tuesday, January 30, is our first TEX-21 legislative day. We are gathering en masse in Austin to visit all 181 legislative offices and hold a joint press conference with Senator Shapiro where the TEX-21 legislative package will be unveiled. We have tentatively scheduled two more TEX-21 legislative days this spring to bring home the changes that will improve transportation across Texas.

We would like to thank you for the cooperation that you as an agency has shown us throughout this process. The very provision of expert speakers at many of our meetings was very helpful to us, and the TxDOT executive staff agreeing to meet quarterly with the TEX-21 NAFTA Corridor Committee will force new working relationships that will energize the statewide planning process. As chair of TEX-21, I look forward to continuing to work with TxDOT long into the future.

Now I want to introduce someone that you are all familiar with, and I have to tell you that, you know, we finally get the Transportation Commission to come and meet in the Metroplex, and wouldn't you just know it, Houston would try to find a way to steal the show, and they did that by sending, of course, the TEX-21 co-chair and Houston city council member who cannot be topped, Carroll Robinson.

(Applause.)

MR. ROBINSON: Chairman Johnson, Commissioners Laney and Nichols, I didn't pull the alarm. I want to make that clear, Mayor Barr.

(General laughter.)

MR. ROBINSON: I'm here today in my, as I describe it, nonprovincial role as a co-chair for the TEX-21 statewide coalition.

As you know, we are a group of locally elected officials, city managers, business leaders, transportation planners, and other interested parties and stakeholders who have spent the last two years working to build a statewide coalition focused on increasing transportation funding, mitigating the diversion of Fund 6 gas tax revenues, improving highway safety and incident management, and increasing innovations in transportation construction project delivery, trade corridor improvements, environmental protection, and TxDOT reforms, streamlining the salary structure to ensure that we can maintain the qualified and talented people that constitute the hard workers and the underground front line doers of what TxDOT is charged with doing: making real transportation mobility in our state.

Mr. Chairman, I want to commend you and your colleagues and the entire TxDOT staff for your continued willingness to travel our state to continuously obtain firsthand knowledge of the transportation needs of each region of the state of Texas. A comprehensive statewide understanding of how the pieces fit together to constitute a coherent whole is essential to the responsibilities you have and the duty you discharge in your decision-making on funding requests that exceed current resources.

Members of the TEX-21 Coalition have put aside our provincial interests in individual transportation projects and have worked together to ensure that Texas highways are the best in our nation and that we have one of the most forward and innovative highway transportation systems, but we've also maintained a commitment to a broader, multimodal vision and course of action for Texas transportation.

Chairman Johnson, we would like to specifically thank you for your efforts to ensure that the general public understands TxDOT's goals in a common sense and meaningful manner. Commissioner Nichols -- as I describe you, the prop man -- we want to thank you for being willing to travel the state and spread the gospel of the need for additional resources for ensuring that we maintain a reasonable level of mobility in this state as we move into the 21st Century.

And Commissioner Laney, we're sad to hear that you're leaving the commission because you've been a voice of reason for statewide transportation funding from the Metroplex to San Antonio, down to the Valley, across Austin and Central Texas, Houston, the Golden Triangle, the Border communities, East Texas, West Texas, El Paso, and the good old Panhandle. Hopefully your voice will remain a voice of reason, though you may no longer sit on the commission.

Like all of you and all the members here in the audience today, the TEX-21 Coalition knows that transportation and mobility are health care, economic development, public safety, environmental protection, growth, and overall quality of life issues for all Texans, and all of our efforts are starting to bear fruit.

Governor Perry, in his message to the legislature on the state of the State made transportation his second highest priority, second only to education. Senator Shapiro, chair of the Senate State Affairs Committee, and Representative Clyde Alexander, chair of the House Committee on Transportation, have also committed themselves to making sure that the issues we've all discussed across the state this past year will get a fair and even-handed hearing during the course of this legislative session.

Much can be said about the needs of the North Texas area, but as important, as all of the speakers before me have said, we continue to remain committed to the idea that most important among all of our individual needs are the resources to get the job done and to do so in a coordinated and working relationship that is in the best interest of the entire state of Texas.

So on behalf of myself, the folks down in provincial Houston, and the good folks here in North Texas and across the rest of the state, thank you for all you do. And at this time, one of the other founders and co-chair of the TEX-21 Coalition, Jack Miller, former mayor of Denton, will come to bring you remarks.

(Applause.)

MR. MILLER: Thank you, Carroll. Carroll said he's our token out-of-towner, but we're delighted to have him here from Houston.

I would like to thank you for having the meeting today. It happens to be my 48th wedding anniversary, and so nice to have you here to celebrate this. What I was thinking of, as I was driving down here today, was that when my wife and I started on our honeymoon 48 years ago, driving on Highway 77 from Denton to Dallas, a two-lane highway, that it didn't take us any longer then to get to Dallas than it does today.

(General laughter.)

MR. MILLER: Commissioner Laney, being a former something is quite okay. If you will enjoy your past service, as you're able to live it in the future, as I am doing, you'll think it's quite okay. But thank you very much for your service, and former is quite okay.

I'm also a former chairman of the Regional Transportation Council here in North Texas and I'm one of the chairs of TEX-21, and it's because of my involvement in transportation as a mayor that is one of the few things that I continue to do as public service as a former mayor, so as a citizen, I would like to cite TEX-21 as an example of the North Texas commitment to work with TxDOT and with our legislature. As Linda Harper-Brown indicated, TEX-21 was started by North Texas as a way to improve transportation in the state of Texas but for all Texans.

How successful this legislative session is for transportation obviously remains to be seen, but whatever happens, TEX-21 is and will be involved. TEX-21 has provided the vehicle to educate local officials and get them involved in transportation, to enable them to hear from one another that transportation is not just a North Texas issue or a Houston issue, it's not just an urban issue, it is a Texas issue. What affects people on the Border affects people in the Panhandle and East Texas and West Texas, and so we've come together with this statewide transportation context, as obviously TxDOT has to do; so TEX-21, just like TxDOT, looks at this in terms of its total picture.

Some of the benefits of TEX-21 that will continue beyond the legislative session, for example, are some of the innovative ideas that continue to come from North Texas and other parts of our state. The work of TEX-21 and others has helped create an attitude of hope for transportation. We were told by legislators as recently as a year and a half ago that transportation was not even on their radar screen; now at least it's on the radar screen and that offers hope.

We have a governor who lists transportation as one of his top priorities for our state. This is encouraging. My hope is that the entire state, everybody, citizens, legislature will build on this and do whatever we have to do and that what happens in this session will not be the end but will be the beginning. We in TEX-21 are committed to continuing the effort until the needs are met and we look forward to partnering with TxDOT to accomplish this.

I have been retired from public service now for seven months, and as I said, they've been great. But I remain active, as I said also, in this one area of transportation. And as long as I am able to do it physically and mentally, I will continue to be involved in transportation. And I do it because I truly believe that the quality of life for our children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren depend on it.

I think you will find this level of passion displayed throughout North Texas and throughout the state of Texas, and it is this passion that we believe will help us to find the answers and to solve the transportation challenges for our great state. We have other transportation challenges, including public transportation, and we're solving some of those in our area thanks to people like our next speaker, Roger Snoble, president and executive director of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System.

(Applause.)

MR. SNOBLE: Thank you, Mayor, Mr. Chairman, commissioners, Mr. Heald, and welcome to the DART system. We're really pleased that you're here, and we suspect that yesterday on your trip to see the congestion that we have here, you didn't have an opportunity to see all the tools that we have, so I'll help with a few photographs.

Answering the transportation needs of North Texas takes a lot more than a successful rail system, it takes great highways and arterials plus a toolbox of public transit alternatives, each specifically tailored to the mobility challenge at hand. Like the group setting new statewide standards for measuring transportation success, we at DART are mindful that we are in the business of moving people, not just cars.

In just four years we've used this philosophy to nearly double system-wide ridership to a record 94.7 million passengers, and next year we expect more than 100 million passengers. Currently we're joining with local and regional partners to update our long-range transit system plan and through interagency cooperation, we hope to make meaningful contributions to the new statewide transportation plan.

Through 2013, the DART plan calls for one of the nation's largest bus service expansion and improvement programs: 115 miles of light and commuter rail, 110 miles of HOV lanes developed in partnership with the state, plus rideshare, transportation demand management, and intelligent transportation initiatives. Currently we're in the midst of more than doubling our 20-mile light rail starter system with extensions to Richardson and Garland opening next year and to Plano in 2003.

Simultaneously, we're joining with the Fort Worth "T" to link our two cities with commuter rail, replacing our 800-bus fleet with natural gas and clean diesel vehicles by pursuing a zero emission initiative, revamping paired transit services, growing our rideshare program, and in partnership with TxDOT we're phasing in new HOV lanes on I-35 and US 67 between downtown Dallas and I-20.

DART and TxDOT's joint investment in $60 million in the regional principal arterial street system has been so popular that Dallas and Collin counties are now participating in more than 30 capacity-adding projects worth more than $90 million, and together with the Dallas and Fort Worth districts of TxDOT, the "T" in Fort Worth, the North Texas Tollway Authority, the North Central Texas Council of Governments, DFW Airport, and the Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition, we're helping launch a comprehensive intelligent transportation system for North Texas.

All of this comes at a time when the public demand for transportation services and programs are at an all-time high. That was evident when this past August the voters across the DART service area overwhelmingly approved $2.9 billion of long-term financing to advance rail expansion, new bus purchases, and HOV lane development. The measure passed by a whopping 3-to-1 margin, or 77 percent.

Transportation is always the biggest part of the planning puzzle because it affects everyone. And a big measure of the DART's success is its ability to help revitalize our inner cities, to attract major corporation relocations and to spur new multi-use developments that reduce vehicular travel. To date our $860 million light rail starter system has generated nearly $1 billion in new development, new rail stations. That's more than a dollar-for-dollar return on the public's investment in just four years.

Rail has been the unifying element in the revitalization of downtown Dallas and a catalyst for new multi-use districts that include employment centers, shopping, entertainment, and public transit services, all within walking distances of home. Land use planning that capitalizes on the public transit investment is leading the way for the future of North Texas.

In Richardson a rail station will be the centerpiece of a 500-acre expansion of the Telecom Corridor, and in Plano an urban transit village is taking shape next to a future downtown station. And just last week, Las Colinas developers here in Irving unveiled forward-thinking plans for a 600-acre town center situated around a light rail line that will be jointly funded by DART and the City of Irving.

Transit and quality of life issues are becoming completely interrelated, and with each new bus route, rail station, HOV lane, DART is providing transportation choices, generating smarter growth that reduces traffic congestion and helping to steer our region out of traffic jams and into a bold new future.

Now it's my pleasure to introduce to you another active partner in regional public transit initiatives, J.R. Kimball, chairman of the Fort Worth Transit Authority, better known as the "T".

(Applause.)

MR. KIMBALL: Thank you, Roger, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners Laney and Nichols, and Mr. Heald. Let me add my appreciation to you for having your meeting here and to again thank Irving for hosting this meeting. It really is the best way for us to show you the exciting transportation system that we're building in this region.

The "T" and TxDOT are partners in a number of mobility-enhancing projects. The first one that comes to mind is the Trinity Railway Express. Our ridership is averaging more than 4,200 each week day, about double that during special events, and on Saturdays about half that. We're so far ahead of projections that we're expanding our parking lots now to accommodate those automobiles that are no longer congesting our freeways.

TxDOT, under the leadership of Wes Heald when he was in Fort Worth, and continuing under the leadership of Steve Simmons now, has partnered in a number of key ways. The most visible is a $4.8 million bridge for TRE over downtown Fort Worth ramps to I-30 that is being partially funded and constructed by a TxDOT contract. It's this kind of partnership and relationship that will ensure mobility for the region as we move forward.

But of course there's more to come. In the next few years, we hope to partner with TxDOT on specific projects that will eliminate grade crossings and improve safety along the TRE line between Dallas and Fort Worth. We also hope to work with you as we expand TRE into southwest Fort Worth, northeast Tarrant County, and into Arlington, all this part of the congestion solution for that fast-growing region to the west of where we are today.

We at the "T" appreciate your leadership and assistance; we look forward to our continued partnership. And now I will introduce Mr. Jerry Hiebert, executive director of the North Texas Tollway Authority.

(Applause.)

MR. HIEBERT: Good morning. I want to take just a moment to tell you a little bit about some of the toll initiatives that are taking place within the region. The North Texas Tollway Authority serves four counties in North Texas: Dallas, Denton, Collin and Tarrant counties. Presently we have completed and are operating the 22-mile Dallas North Tollway, the Mountain Creek Lake Bridge, and the Addison Airport Toll Tunnel.

With the great assistance of TxDOT, we are in the midst of constructing the President George Bush Turnpike which is the next outer loop around Dallas. Of the planned 30-mile route, we presently have 15 miles of that tollway open to traffic, another ten miles is presently under construction and is planned to open in various stages over the next year.

TxDOT has been a partner in planning not only the President George Bush Turnpike but other facilities within the region. For instance, the Trinity Parkway -- which Barbara Mallory Caraway mentioned earlier -- is a proposed eight-mile reliever route south of downtown that ultimately will assist TxDOT in the reconstruction of I-30 through the downtown Dallas area.

Steve Simmons and his staff have been tremendous partners in the valuation of the Southwest Parkway, or 121, in Tarrant County, and as I think you heard Mayor Barr say, we are moving ahead quickly now with that project.

TxDOT has also been instrumental in helping us with environmental evaluations of the proposed eastern extension of the Bush turnpike from Highway 78 down to Interstate 30, and also has been working with us as a region to evaluate the toll potential of a portion of State Highway 121 in Collin County.

If you see a theme developing from this, it is clearly that the North Texas Tollway Authority and TxDOT have to work very closely together and we do have excellent working relationships with your local staffs. In fact, it's clear that without the assistance of Jay Nelson and his staff locally, we probably wouldn't be on schedule with the completion of the Bush turnpike because they're managing the construction of the interchanges of the Bush Turnpike with Interstate 35E as well as Interstate 635.

And so we really appreciate that cooperation and we'd like to recognize that there are a couple of legislative issues that I know are on your agenda that are important to the NTTA and the region as well.

First, we certainly support within the whole region the concept of amending both the law and the state constitution that would allow TxDOT to contribute to the construction of toll roads. We think that's an important addition to our tool kit to help us be more effective to address mobility.

Second, we know you're very active in seeking legislation that would allow use of the design-build process, hopefully to bring projects more quickly to the traveling public, and we really support and would ask for your assistance in making sure that that legislation includes the ability for regional toll authorities to use design-build, as well as TxDOT and the TTA.

In conclusion, we believe that toll facilities and certainly the integration of statewide and regional electronic toll collection systems are going to be important tools for all of us to use as we address mobility in the future, and we're certainly ready and willing to work with you to make sure that those things happen.

Now I'd like to introduce Mr. Tom Dunning who is the chairman of the DFW Airport Board.

(Applause.)

MR. DUNNING: Good morning, and thanks for giving us an opportunity to be here, especially the DFW Board, and I chair the DFW Board. But before I get started, I'd like to say, Chairman Johnson, it's been almost 15 years since I sat in one of those three chairs and I think this is the first time that I've been back in front of the Highway Commission -- I know the name has changed, excuse me -- is it Transportation Commission now?

MR. JOHNSON: You know, we have a very active alumni group.

(General laughter.)

MR. DUNNING: You know, I've seen it, but the thing I find is that the older -- or people who served for a long time, like myself, or were there for a long time, I think we all still refer to it as the Texas Highway Commission.

Anyway, I'd also like to comment on David Laney before I get started on my remarks, and I can't think of a better commissioner or a better chairman than David Laney. He is, as you know, one of our leading citizens here and he has just done a superb job.

I told David a short time ago, I said, David, what's nice is you will be receiving calls for the next 20 years asking can you help me on this, can you help me on that. And what I have done for the last six years is just say, You know, you need to call David Laney; he knows so much more than I know and he's really the one in power, and they don't know me from somebody off the street. So David, you have 20 more years of getting calls but you may not get calls answered.

Anyway, if I could just take about two minutes to tell you a little bit about DFW Airport. David certainly knows this, but we have 18,000-plus acres; we fly 60 million passengers a year, over 800,000 operations -- that's flights taking off and landing -- and we're currently looking, probably by 2010, we anticipate having 85- to 90 million passengers. We have gridlock at DFW today; it's known as gate gridlock, taxi area gridlock.

So what are we doing about it? We have a $2.5 billion budget which has been approved, capital program which has been approved by both the cities of Fort Worth and Dallas, the two cities which own the airport. We're going to spend a billion dollars plus on a new international terminal which we think is the whole future for this North Texas area; we're going to add 23 gates.

We're also building a new people mover system, and this is what we were criticized about in the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago is that our current people mover system is much like the dirt roads that you mentioned earlier, David; that's about what it's like. This new one will run every two minutes and will go in both directions.

We're also adding an eighth runway, we're adding aprons; to the areas around the terminals we're adding extensions. All of this will help to reduce air gridlock around DFW, ground gridlock, the taxi area, and the gate area.

But our problem is this: it's the gridlock or the congestion we have today which will soon be gridlock coming into the entrances of DFW, both the north and south. So we're asking you for your advice, your help and your support on what we can do to have new feeders or new entrances into DFW, whether it's off of LBJ, 161, 183 or 114. So we will be coming back to you in the future and we hope that you'll work with us.

Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity. Now I would like to ask Mr. Jeff Fegan, who is the CEO of DFW Airport, and I will say the finest CEO of any airport in the country, to come up here. Thank you again.

(Applause.)

MR. FEGAN: Members of the commission, I also want to express our deep appreciation for holding this meeting in North Texas, and certainly want to express our appreciation to the City of Irving as well. Both Linda Harper-Brown and Steve McCullough and many people in the city have really been front and center when it comes to transportation issues, and their support for the whole regional mobility, as well as for DFW Airport, has certainly been appreciated.

I also want to thank our chair, Tom Dunning, who was, again, formerly on the commission and is certainly knowledgeable about roadway issues but is now very knowledgeable about air transportation issues, and he certainly brings a lot to the table, from our standpoint.

As Tom was mentioning, though, we do have a tremendous success story at DFW. We're 27 years old now and we have grown to be the third busiest airport in the world in terms of aircraft operations. We're actually fifth in the world in terms of passengers, but half of all the air cargo in the state of Texas goes through DFW Airport. We're blessed with 18,000 acres of land which gives us a tremendous opportunity to grow, and again, regional access to the airport is one of the most critical issues that we face.

In addition to the projects that Tom described in our capital development plan, we're also working very hard and have recognized the need for rail transportation links into DFW Airport. To that end, in 1998 the airport board of directors adopted a resolution urging local transportation agencies to expedite passenger rail service to DFW Airport, and this resolution recognized that passenger rail service would significantly contribute to the region's efforts to address growth while improving air quality. In addition, the resolution recognized the fact that rail service will be crucial to accommodating the growth of the airport.

We've actually seen some of the rail service begin. There's the new Trinity River Express line just to the south of the airport with a stop at Center Port, and the airport initiated bus service from that station into the terminal area as well as to all the employment centers on the airport.

We are currently working right now, and are just ready to initiate a study with the DART, the "T" and the North Central Texas Council of Governments to once again look at all the rail alternatives and explore those alternatives in great detail. Those alternatives include not only use of the TRE but also a new line from DART running along 114 as well as the use of the Cotton Belt Line both to the east and to the west. We do believe that rail service to the airport is something that will be very, very important for our future if we want to continue to grow.

We also want to just thank you for all the support and all the help that you have given us on a number of roadway projects around the airport. We are 18,000 acres in size, we are surrounded by many very important highways in North Texas -- certainly 183, 161, 114, 121, 635 and 360 all either go around the airport or through the airport in some fashion -- and continued improvement of this roadway system will certainly be essential for us to continue to grow and continue to be the economic engine that we have served over the last 27 years.

And finally, being a large land mass, there are also some traffic patterns who want to go through the airport, and to the extent that we can help identify right of way, identify routes through the airport to help regional mobility, DFW Airport stands ready to assist the commission. Again, thank you very much, and it's my pleasure at this time to introduce Michael Morris, the director of transportation for the North Central Texas Council of Governments.

(Applause.)

MR. MORRIS: Judge Harris and I were talking this morning and he said, Michael, I don't know which is more difficult: all of us working together to solve the statewide transportation funding problem, or you being able to hold your comments to three minutes.

(General laughter.)

MR. MORRIS: As an overview, at least in my opinion, the Dallas-Fort Worth region over the last ten years has built more and more diverse transportation than any metropolitan area in North America, and we are very appreciative of your role in being able to deliver that transportation system, as well as our partners within the region: our two transportation authorities, the North Texas Tollway Authority, and of course DFW International Airport.

Members of the commission, I have five quick items to share with you that I think would be important in your visit. First is with regard to legislative support. We have 32 elected officials on the Regional Transportation Council that are ready to go to Austin or Washington to help bring greater funding to the State of Texas, and I hope you would call on us if you need that support.

One example of that, working through our Partners in Mobility, we have developed a new postcard system to support what I call the five-plus-three program: the five funding initiatives that we have with this legislative session -- of which you know most of those -- the three operational improvements is to try to encourage design-build, technology dealing with red-light running, and trying to reduce the number of overweight trucks on the statewide system.

Those cards will be printed and in a common format across the state of Texas you will see grassroots efforts to send those cards to the legislators in Texas so they can see a common message that transportation is in fact serious. And you have an example of the five financial items, but you'll start seeing those cards sent in to the legislative program, and we're taking this campaign throughout the state to encourage other chambers and others to have people send these postcards directly to their legislators.

The second thing to bring to your attention is the Regional Transportation Council has approved the projects for the RTC Commission partnership program. We have pledged $113 million in Surface Transportation Program funds for National Highway System funds on our freeway system. We've also pledged $33 million towards the discretionary program, Strategic Priority Program that you have. This is almost $150 million for a dozen projects within our region.

I really want to take time to thank Mr. Luedecke, our two district engineers, and Wes Heald for all the support they've given us over the years in that program. This is the sixth year for that particular program.

With regard to the Olympics, we've just finished a two-year planning effort and I would like to again thank the staffs of the district who have helped us a great deal prioritize what is now the transportation needs for the next 12 years in our region. So we have a vision over 25 years, we have a vision for 12 years, and the region is focused on bringing the development of those multimodal transportation projects to the region over the next 12 years.

The fourth item is air quality and conformity. I'm proud to stand before you that over the last 20 years of service the Dallas-Fort Worth region has maintained all of its air quality objectives, and as you know, very difficult to build transportation without a strong air quality initiative. We pledge our staff to go anywhere in the state of Texas to help you ensure you can build transportation projects throughout this great state.

And the fifth and final thing is through an effort we just completed where we funded low level aerial photography, we have taken a 100 percent survey of the freeway system in our regional. Through this survey we've been able to detailed model map locations of which we argue -- often with limited finances we can't wait 15 or 20 years to get to some of our transportation corridors -- through a bottleneck program we can more strategically go in and maybe address those bottlenecks on a short-term basis.

Those five items I think bring you up to date on what I think are five policy success stories in our particular region, and with great pleasure I'd like to introduce the comedian of that story this morning, Judge Harris from Collin County, to give you our air quality accomplishments.

(Applause.)

JUDGE HARRIS: Well, I've been called a lot of things, but I don't know that I was called a comedian, but part of that conversation you didn't hear was that I agreed to make up some of Michael's time by taking less time here than I do in the barber's chair.

(General laughter.)

JUDGE HARRIS: It took a little time to soak in but it did. Thank you.

First, I'd like to thank the Transportation Commission for your assistance in partnering with us, as well as Houston and a number of areas in the state of Texas, in what I think is the dread discussion and implementation of reducing the speed limit by five miles an hour. It's not an easy decision because you have to look at safety, obviously, before you can make that move, but it has proved to be an absolute mandatory part of our North Texas now approved state implementation plan, and we appreciate that.

Secondly, your assistance in working with us and local government in the congestion mitigation construction, as well as your own department's efforts in going to alternative fuels and doing some other measures which will help us attain the national clean air standards.

We would hope that you would work with us on a state level. There is a group called the Texas Clean Air Working Group which has been meeting, representing about 37 counties in either nonattainment or near nonattainment which account for 67 percent of the state's population and 74 percent of the state's jobs, that have put forward a legislative agenda with the first priority being to maintain the state implementation plans, and the second, a range of incentives to assist both business as well as private individuals in reducing their emissions, whether it's the factory or indeed vehicles, and certainly the construction industry is, I hope, at the forefront of some of those efforts.

Tim Kellahar of the Fort Worth Chamber has led that effort and Senator Brown and Representative Chisholm are going to be carrying bills that will reflect a lot of these pieces, and we look forward to doing that.

Again, we appreciate it and hope you come back. Thank you. Oh, I forgot my last duty: to present Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Herbert Gears, City of Irving. Deputy Mayor.

MAYOR PRO TEM GEARS: I reminded everybody to not forget to introduce the next speaker. I forgot to remind.

I do want to thank you, Judge Harris, and to Chairman Johnson, former Chairman Laney, Member Nichols, Mr. Heald and TxDOT staff, the City of Irving is certainly very honored that we could host today's very important event.

In preparing our local presentation for you today, we thought it very important to illustrate that in order to find solutions to our mobility problems in Irving and in North Texas and in the entire state, in fact, that partnerships and cooperation will be the keys to success. You've heard several presentations here and comments that exhibit a commitment by many to work together and to work with you to advance our common goals of moving people and goods quickly, safely and efficiently.

At your table is a resolution passed by the Irving City Council that's just a small token of our appreciation for the hard work and passion each of you have given to transportation. It also represents our gratitude for two dedicated district engineers in Steve Simmons and Jay Nelson whose top-notch staffs continue to provide innovative solutions with limited resources by working with our regional transportation partners.

As we all move forward into this the 21st Century, our focus must remain clear and our partnerships must continue to grow. In North Texas you can see that we will continue to be a partner with the commission and department, whether in front of the legislature in Austin or going up to Congress in Washington, D.C. It will take a joint and unified effort to provide the resources necessary to meet the ever-increasing transportation demands of our Lone Star State.

On behalf of the City of Irving, I'll take just a moment to recognize our very dear friend, David Laney, a man who personifies persistence and advocacy, a man who played no small role in helping to elevate transportation to one of the top priorities in our state. Chairman Laney, you've made a difference for all of us and we thank you, and we wish you the best in your future endeavors.

I know, and my last comment, that everyone has marked their calendars for August 15 through the 17th where we will welcome you all back again in our city in Irving for the fourth annual Texas Transportation Summit. We look forward to seeing all of you again. Chairman Johnson, that concludes our presentation for today. Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. JOHNSON: Mayor Pro Tem Gears, thank you so very much for those words, and on behalf of the commission, we are grateful also for the resolution that you passed at council in our honor and on our behalf, and I would second exactly your words on the efforts and the results that David Laney has achieved while he has served on this commission.

Throughout the addresses this morning, the names of Steve Simmons and Jay Nelson came up. These are two extraordinarily capable district engineers. Steve has our Fort Worth District, and Jay, of course, the Dallas District, and if you throw the Houston District in, between the three of them they comprise about 45 percent of the state's population, and probably along that line, in terms of the number of jobs, et cetera. As I mentioned, these gentlemen do an extraordinary job and we're grateful for what they do.

Unfortunately, I'm going to turn the stage over to Jay Nelson, but Steve, since you're here and I know some of your fellow workers from the Fort Worth District are here, I wanted to say how proud we are of you, and unfortunately, this is one to a customer, stage appearances, and Jay Nelson has the stage and he's going to give us an overview of the Dallas District activities.

Jay, thank you so much for one, your efforts last night, on your entire staff. Your hospitality was without peer, and we're grateful that you're here today.

MR. NELSON: Thank you so much, Chairman Johnson. It's a pleasure to be here.

I spoke with Mike Behrens earlier and he said that my evaluation is based on how long all these presentations last, so I'd just like to say amen and move on.

(General laughter.)

MR. NELSON: It's a pleasure to have the commission here and the administration visiting the Dallas District, particularly the city of Irving. I know that the leaders and the staff of Irving have spent many hours in planning this and it's been a fantastic event. I thank the city for their efforts. The congestion tour was not planned; it was a happening, and those things do happen.

This is not the first TxDOT Commission meeting that's been held in the Dallas District. The first one had a lot less activity and fanfare; the first meeting was actually the meeting which effected the change from the State Department of Highways and Public Transportation to TxDOT and was held at SMU. Mr. Dedman, Mr. Stoker joined Mr. Oliver in that transition meeting, and we have another picture and there are some really nice-looking, slim gentlemen with a lot of hair in the back row. Mark Ball is one that's the second from the right, myself in the middle, and James Huffman on the left; it was the very first meeting.

With all the attention being given to the State Comptroller's performance review, it seemed an appropriate time to present a performance review of the Dallas District, and I won't burden the commission with citing the tremendous impact on transportation by the continued growth of the North Texas area because you're well aware of that growth, I will instead take a look at the performance of some of our individuals and our groups.

This is a collective picture of our courtesy patrol group and some other people. The Dallas District courtesy patrol made almost 43,000 assists last year, helping people out on the highway; almost 3,600 were traffic control assistance given to police officers and others in crash areas. By being there and being able to address the flat tire, the mechanical and other incidents that take place, as well as the accidents, it kept our freeways moving efficiently.

We have a joint effort to expand this. With our limited FTEs in TxDOT, we've been faced with the decision on whether to put more people in helping the efficiency of the roadways out on the highway, or more people in the design and construction and maintenance efforts of our more core functions, and we have set up a transition where the TxDOT courtesy control is going to be transformed into a regional courtesy patrol led by Dallas County and joined with the NTTA and DART and operating an expanded service of this nature, and it will free up FTEs for us in some of the more conventional fields of TxDOT.

Our maintenance sections have had some outstanding performance also. In the routine work they cover over almost 10,000 miles, lane miles, serving 54 million or so vehicle miles per day. The snow and ice storms during the Christmas and New Year's holidays forced the crews out in the family times and some uncomfortable periods for them, but they kept the roads passable for the traveling public. Our crews did respond, and they're also subjected to a few hazards that most of would choose not to be or not even to see at times.

That was an accident that took place on Interstate 45, and Wes, actually the one prior to this one took place when we were meeting in Austin on the 11th.

Our construction inspectors are administering 152 construction projects now and the value of those projects is $883 million. Our average for the last year has been over $1 billion and we have a little lull prior to the High Five interchange going on to construction. But I wish you'd note on the slide our construction engineering cost has been 3.9 percent. We have 200 inspectors in the field, construction engineers and inspectors, and they're supplemented by contracts with testing firms and survey companies, but this remains primarily a TxDOT construction management.

I spoke with an FHWA official recently in Dallas -- last Tuesday, by the way -- and I'd like to offer this comparison between TxDOT and the Florida DOT. He had just come from Florida which has substantial integration of the private sector into construction management. Their construction management costs, according to this official, have been about 16 to 17 percent, and if you apply those percentages to the Dallas work, construction management costs would total $141 million at 16 percent versus $35 million at 3.9 percent.

If you applied those similar percentages to the $3 billion annual construction program, that produces a difference of almost $500 million. So it's easy to see which program seems to put the dollars under the tires rather than in management.

Continuing the review with individuals in mind -- and Bob, if you'll go on to the next slide -- I would like to highlight some of the employees whose outstanding work has been recognized far beyond the limits of the Dallas boundaries. The total maintenance contract which has been initiated in the Waco and Dallas districts has received a Trailblazer Award from the American Association of Highway and Transportation Officials, and a Making a Difference Award from the Texas Quality Initiative and the National Quality Initiative.

Gary Charlton is our director of maintenance and David Lott, the East Dallas project engineer, is running that project, and they're shown holding the awards.

The completion of North Central Expressway was nine months early, had an under-budget finish on it, and it was a tremendous partnering effort by Paul Williams of the area office, Granite Construction, the City of Dallas, utility companies, and Cliff Franklin I think is here today and played a big role in that. And that project was recognized as the top project in the country in 1999 with a National Quality Initiative Award. The project also received the AGC Marvin Black Partnering Award and a National Value Engineering Award.

The design of North Central -- which was done primarily with the use of private firms -- was recognized with a 2000 CEC Engineering Excellence Award.

I think our slides are out of order, but let me talk a little bit about the High Five -- that seems like the appropriate thing to look at now.

MR. JOHNSON: You don't think this is Mayor Barr's payback, do you?

(General laughter.)

MR. NELSON: I don't know. You know, when we had the alarms go off, some of this visit has been sort of surrealistic anyway. I mean, things have been so wonderful and so nice. I thought it was Steve McCullough's way of signaling there was going to be a weenie roast in the parking lot or something.

One of our biggest challenges coming up is the High Five. The High Five is a nickname that we gave to the interchange in the north Dallas area so we would not have to say Interstate Highway 635 and US 75, or we wouldn't have to say LBJ Freeway and North Central Expressway, so we named it the High Five, and it is at the crossing of North Central and LBJ, and we're going to reconstruct the entire interchange while maintaining traffic in that limited amount of right of way that we have.

Larry Tegtmeyer is the area engineer -- Larry is here today, I'm not sure where Larry is -- who, along with his assistant Pete Garza, has taken on the huge task of this reconstruction, and this will be a 200-plus million dollar project that will far exceed the largest project ever let in the state, and working with project engineer Joe Jancuska -- I don't know if Joe is here today; I don't think he is. I didn't see him -- the district staff, CTR and HMTB, our consultant on this project, we'll have several innovations -- we're going to have lane rentals on this.

We've written a lane rental spec to help maintain the mobility through the project during construction; we're limiting the daytime work an extreme amount; and we'll have record incentive and disincentive payments to the contractors. This project is scheduled for an April letting. And I'll talk about the next thing whichever slide pops up. We'll see what happens.

(General laughter.)

MR. NELSON: There we go. There's a picture of Larry and Don Holzberg from Dallas County. The clicker broke; we have the Oz man in back flipping the screens behind the curtain.

Let me talk about Jim Hunt. This is back to some of our individuals who have received awards. Jim Hunt is our director of construction, the winner of the 2000 Gib Gilchrist Award for his innovations and approach to construction.

And Jim, I don't know if the man is real macho but he's always saying that we need to build better, faster, cheaper and easier, and as director of construction, he keeps that at the forefront and we have several things that we're instituting now that are innovative in Jim's office and the Dallas District because of his persistence. We have some nondestructive testing methods that we're using now to determine strengths on structures and pavements in order to open them up faster to traffic.

Mark Ball is on the next slide. Mark Ball has been recognized for his creative approach to problem solving. Mark was part of the brain trust behind creating the Precious Cargo program that was directed at improving the communication between the department and school districts, improving the safety of schoolchildren everywhere. This program has been awarded an AASHTO President's Award, it's been recognized by WASHTO, the Western Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and by the National Quality Institute, and it has been adopted all over the state and different parts of the nation.

Tony Okafor is our district bridge engineer in the Dallas District. Tony has been selected to receive a special recognition award by the Black Engineer of the Year awards panel on behalf of the Council of Engineering Deans in historically black colleges and universities. This award is given to candidates whose qualifications and performance place them in the ranks of the nation's highest achievers in technology. Tony is the only person that's been recognized from the transportation field in this area.

Buz Elsom, a former winner of the Dewitt C. Greer Award, has been recognized by Denton County and by many other officials for his accomplishments as the area engineer in Denton County which I've told him many times it's probably the toughest area engineer job in the state with the combination he has of old FM roads and the tremendous growth that's taking place.

Bill Lovil is our area engineer in Collin County. Bill has been in Collin County as area engineer for 21 years and he faces many of the same challenges that Buz faces in Denton County. These two gentlemen are persistent in seeing that the problems that pop up get solved, and they're great leaders for the Dallas District.

Anne Polk -- as we move to one of the areas that's not quite remembered as the traditional areas in TxDOT -- Anne Polk works in our public transportation area and she was awarded the Texas Transit Association Public Transportation Coordinator of the Year Award at this year's annual meeting.

Terry Sams, the director of transportation operations for the district, another Dewitt C. Greer winner, is leading our Dallas office in ITS. Our ITS website has been established as DFWtraffic.org, and along with the Fort Worth District we put that in place, where the public can view the traffic conditions through our TxDOT cameras before leaving the home or the office. Terry also has been elected as president of ITS Texas for the coming year. There's some examples of some shots.

Of course, everyone that's noted here today understands that awards are given to individuals but it's the support of the TxDOT family that allows that extra level of achievement. The commission, as evidenced by the innovative funding approach that you've accepted for the High Five interchange, has allowed us innovation, allowed us to make some great accomplishments. We thank you for that.

We put a lot of stress on the divisions. Sometimes I'm not the most liked district engineer in the state because I ask a lot of things of the commission and they've responded. We've got a tremendous support group. They question a lot of the things that happen, but I know that's their job, and sometimes because they question it keeps me out of trouble, and I appreciate all these divisions.

Transportation Planning, Al Luedecke, the innovative financing issue has happened because of Al Luedecke and his staff. Robert Wilson and the Design bunch have been very cooperative with us, especially in the High Five interchange because we've had some 4,000 plan sheets in that project and that's quite a bit to review in a short period of time. Thomas Bohuslav and the Construction Division have helped us on some of our new special provisions and our scheduling.

The Right of Way Division, of course, has been very supportive in trying to accelerate and trying to do some new things in this project such as set up a staging area for the contractor. And of course, Administration, Wes Heald and Kirby Pickett and Mike Behrens, have given us great direction, guidance and support.

And lastly, in concluding, I know that with the people that stepped up here today, you can see the excitement transportation brings to this area. There's no better people to work with than this group. They just don't talk; they act. And they put their money on the table. Truly this group is the backbone that you saw today that provides the structure for the success that we see in this area.

I appreciate the time that you've allowed to me today and I want to thank you and especially thank Mr. Laney for his leadership the past six years. It's been a pleasure, and for the sake of transportation, you must stay involved. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

MR. JOHNSON: Jay, thank you so very much for that very informative presentation.

Before we move into the regularly scheduled, or the more mundane housekeeping matters that come before the commission, we will take a five-minute recess and hopefully we'll keep it very brief so we can move through the regular part of our meeting.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)

MR. JOHNSON: We will reconvene the meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission and we will commence with the approval of the minutes from our commission briefing and meeting in December. Is there a motion to that effect?

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you.

Wes Heald, I will turn the meeting over to you for the rest of our agenda items. Thank you.

MR. HEALD: Thank you. I know the time is important here but I wanted to explain the reason that Steven wasn't made a part of the program. It's been three years now and he's still going around telling everybody he's trying to straighten up the mess the former district engineer left here.

(General laughter.)

MR. HEALD: Item 2, Aviation, Dave Fulton, director of the Aviation Division, will present that.

MR. FULTON: Thank you, Wes, commissioners. For the record, my name is David Fulton, the director of the TxDOT Aviation Division.

Item 2 is a minute order containing a request for funding approval for 24 planning projects and four construction projects at airports across the state. All the planning projects are programmed to be funded with federal and local funding; of the four construction projects, three are tentatively planned to be funded with state and local funding, with one being planned for federal and local funding.

The total estimated cost of all the projects, as shown in the Exhibit A attachment, is approximately $6 million; of that, approximately $2.4 million federal, $3 million state, and $600,000 in local funding.

A public hearing was held on January 8 of this year and no comments were received. We would recommend approval of this minute order and would be happy to attempt to answer any questions you might have.

MR. JOHNSON: Are there any questions?

MR. NICHOLS: I so move.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. David, thank you.

MR. HEALD: Agenda Item 3, Administrative Rules, and we have two minute orders of rules for proposed adoption for your consideration, starting with Item 3(a)(1) under Management, Larry Zatopek. This has to do with our fleet management program.

MR. ZATOPEK: Thank you. For the record, my name is Larry Zatopek, director of the General Services Division.

House Bill 3125 of the 76th Legislature required the General Services Commission and the Council on Competitive Government to develop a plan for improving the administration and operation of the state's vehicle fleet; they have recently adopted that plan. The legislation also requires state agencies to adopt rules consistent with the plan relating to the assignment and use of agency vehicles.

The minute order before you proposes the adoption of new Section 1.6 concerning restrictions on assignments of vehicles. We recommend approval.

MR. NICHOLS: So move.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you, Larry.

MR. HEALD: The next item, being 3(a)(2), Doris Howdeshell, the director of the Travel Division, will present this to you.

MS. HOWDESHELL: Good morning, commissioners. For the record, as Wes said, my name is Doris Howdeshell, director of the Travel Division of the Department of Transportation.

The minute order before you today proposes the repeal of Chapter 23.40 through 23.47 concerning the memorandum of understanding with the Texas Department of Commerce and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and it simultaneously proposes a new 23.40 concerning the memorandum of understanding with the Texas Department of Economic Development, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the Texas Historical Commission.

This MOU is actually required by Government Code 481.02(a) which requires the Texas Department of Economic Development to enter into an MOU with TxDOT and Parks and Wildlife. Further, Rider 29 of TxDOT's appropriation for Fiscal Years 2000 and 2001 requires TxDOT, Texas Parks and Wildlife, the Texas Department of Economic Development, the Texas Historical Commission and the Commission on the Arts to enter into an MOU.

The significant difference between this new MOU and the MOU that is being repealed is there are two new agencies added to the MOU. It also requires an annual briefing of the executive directors of all five agencies, and in that briefing of those executive directors, we will be providing them with a summary or an overview of the efforts of the five agencies. And we recommend adoption of this minute order.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Doris.

MR. HEALD: The next item is 3(b)(1), (2), and (3). The first two, and these are rules for final adoption, will be presented by Jerry Dike, director of our Vehicle Title Registration Division.

MR. DIKE: Thank you, Wes, commission members. My name is Jerry Dike, director of Vehicle Titles and Registration Division.

Item 3(1) is a minute order adopting amendments to Section 17.2, 17.3, and 17.8 concerning motor vehicle certificates of title which would allow the department to require verifiable proof of identity with applications for certified copies of original titles. It also updates language and corrects some references and cross-references. We did receive comments from two sources and we believe they've been adequately and appropriately addressed. We recommend approval of that minute order.

Would you like for me to continue with the second?

MR. JOHNSON: Yes, sir.

MR. DIKE: Thank you, commissioner. Item 3(b)(2) is a minute adopting amendments to Section 17.51 which concerns our registration reciprocity agreements with other jurisdictions and there have been recent changes to the international registration plan which include implementing of an Audit Netting program. It also streamlines unnecessary information and eliminates some redundant language. No comments were received on this, and we recommend approval of both minute orders.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. JOHNSON: There's a motion. Is there a second?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. JOHNSON: How about a second?

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you, Jerry.

MR. HEALD: Margot Massey, director of our Public Transportation Division will present the last minute order for final adoption, being 3(b)(3).

MS. MASSEY: Good morning. I'm Margot Massey of the Public Transportation Division.

We have for final adoption a rather voluminous rewrite of Chapter 31 dealing with public transportation, much of which was housekeeping, cosmetic changes, updating language. We did have a public hearing on October 30 and received two comments at that hearing and we received eight written comments which have been addressed in Exhibit H to the order.

Also, as you're aware, the Public Transportation Advisory Committee has responsibilities relative to rule-making. They met again on December 15 and asked that I report these comments to you regarding Section 31.48 on project oversight. They have suggested a five-day reporting threshold, being the same as the circumstances which trigger drug and alcohol tests which we believe is an appropriate comment, and as we implement these rules, we will certainly take that into consideration.

Their second comment was relative to Section 31.44 on procurement requirements, suggesting that we allow sub-recipients to self-certify procurement standards rather than submitting documents to TxDOT. Again, I can assure you that our division and the district offices are not interested in collecting unnecessary documents so we will certainly do our absolute best to minimize that and yet stay in compliance with all the federal and state regulations.

With that said, we recommend approval of these final rules.

MR. JOHNSON: Margot, a question: how do those suggestions incorporate into this issue? I mean, do they become part and parcel or are they suggested recommendations on how they should be implemented?

MS. MASSEY: In the case of the Public Transportation Advisory Committee, we reviewed the comments and considered if it was necessary to make changes in the proposed final rules based on those comments. We believe we have flexibility with the existing language to implement and take those into consideration in the implementation of those. In previous situations, they have actually commented and suggested changes in the rule language which we have disposed of one way or the other.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. Any other questions? Is there a motion?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you, Margot.

MR. HEALD: The last item under Agenda Item 3, that being (c), our general counsel Richard Monroe.

MR. MONROE: Good morning, commissioners. For the record, my name is Richard Monroe; I'm the general counsel for the Texas Department of Transportation.

This continues our rule review procedure which is called for by both the Appropriations Act and the Texas Government Code. The following chapters in Title 43 of the Texas Administrative Code were appropriately published for comment: Chapter 1, Chapter 3, Chapter 4. There were no comments. The reasons for these rules continue to exist; therefore, I would recommend that you approve this minute order which would file the rules for re-adoption.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you, Richard.

MR. HEALD: Item 4, approve environmental speed limits, Carlos Lopez, director of the Traffic Operations Division will be the presenter, and I would remind you we have one speaker signed up.

MR. LOPEZ: Good morning, commissioners. My name is Carlos Lopez; I'm director of the Traffic Operations Division.

The minute order before you establishes environmental speed limits in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. In June of last year, we amended our existing procedures to allow reductions to existing speed limits on the state highway system in nonattainment areas for air quality purposes. The proposed speed limits have been proposed by TNRCC as part of the Dallas-Fort Worth area's overall air quality plan.

In general, speed limits will be reduced to 65 miles per hour on existing 70-mile-an-hour roadways and to 60 miles per hour on existing 65-mile-an-hour roadways. The speed limits would be implemented in nine counties within this region. Upon passage of this minute order, the new speed limit signs will begin to be erected by the Dallas and Fort Worth districts; this process should be completed by September of this year. We recommend approval of this minute order.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Carlos. I understand Mr. Jim Turner would like to speak on this item. Mr. Turner, welcome. In the spirit of time, we encourage our speakers to maintain a three-minute limit, so if you would please observe that, we'd be appreciative.

MR. TURNER: Okay. I'll try to keep my speed down here. Thank you for this opportunity to speak before you today.

I'm asking you on behalf of Metroplex and Houston motorists to reconsider the environmental speed limit plan. You're being asked to alter speed limits based on theoretical assumptions that ignore actual driving habits and recent history.

The TNRCC asks you to try this out and they'll review it later to see if it works, but you can save money by looking at real data. In 1995, when we essentially reversed this when all speed limits on all roads covered by this plan were as low or lower than they will be under this plan, if they cannot show a significant increase in pollution then, how can you expect pollution to drop as a result now?

Demand to know: was air quality better then and did it worsen by the amount shown in TNRCC's models in 1996 when limits were raised? Did drivers speed up by at least five miles per hour? Also, five miles per hour may not be so burdensome in the Metroplex, but double nickels is really going to hurt Houston, and I assume here too eventually.

Don't artificially low and ever-changing speed limits cause motorists to lose respect for speed limits? Your agency said that in 1996. You raised speed limits to what people were actually driving. Since people were not obeying the reduced speeds to save themselves gas and money, what makes anyone think that people in surrounding rural counties will in order to clean Dallas and Fort Worth's air.

As far as I know, this is not being done in any other state, even though federal air quality standards apply to all. Apparently 49 other states have found other less burdensome ways to address their air quality problems. By burdensome I mean, for example, that one must deal with an emissions inspection test but once a year but artificially low speed limits and the ensuing speed traps must be dealt with every day. Even California, the nation's environmental leader, which has much higher air quality standards, has rejected this idea. Instead, they require cleaner new cars.

Models may show that cars moving slower produce less pollution if all cars slow down, but consider a study done at Chrysler that on the surface showed a 100 percent increase in emissions by increasing speeds from 55 to 65, but the actual increase was from .001 to .002 grams per mile compared to the EPA standards of one-quarter of a gram per mile. In other words, dust on the balance is compared to acceleration, say from zero to 40.

Why don't we instead time traffic signals to minimize accelerations rather than maximizing through speed? Why don't we urge the cities to evaluate stop signs for replacement with yield signs in less busy and less dangerous intersections, add left turn on green at minor intersections and protected right turn arrows at major ones?

If you insist on going forward with this, please consider just patching the existing signs with the new numbers, as you did in 1974, so that they can easily be undone when this is proven again not to work, or else why don't you paint all the new signs with a green background so that the rest of the country driving through will know why 55 is still alive only in Texas and understand they need to slow down.

I might also point out that it was Dallas and Houston city leaders that most opposed raising speed limits back in 1996. Thank you for your time.

MR. JOHNSON: Mr. Turner, thank you for your comments.

I think it's important to note that this is part of a comprehensive plan to address the environmental issue and it's a recommendation of the TNRCC, and Mr. Turner, I think you make some excellent points about traffic management, but nonetheless, TNRCC has recommended this as part of their comprehensive plan to deal with this matter.

Is there a motion to approve?

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. JOHNSON: Is there a second?

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Carlos.

MR. HEALD: The next item is under Transportation Planning, being number 5, and Al Luedecke is the star with five minute orders for your consideration.

MR. LUEDECKE: I believe we have deferred 5(a), have we not, Wes?

MR. HEALD: That's correct, deferred 5(a).

MR. LUEDECKE: Under 5(b)brings a minute order that authorizes the annual state and federal bank balance allocation programs as part of the 2002 Unified Transportation Program. A minute order passed last December approved a project selection process and also approved the formulas to be used in the allocation programs you have before you today. The staff recommended program funding amounts that were then used to calculate the program amounts in each category for each district or program.

Since Fiscal Year 2005 will be the second year of the next surface transportation legislation, allocations here are based on estimated future revenues. We recommend approval of this minute order.

MR. JOHNSON: Do we want to lump all the transportation planning together, or deal with them one at a time?

MR. NICHOLS: Either way.

MR. JOHNSON: Let's lump them all together, Al.

MR. LUEDECKE: All right, sir.

Item 5(c), the Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century set aside the discretionary funds under Sections 1118 and 1119 for the National Corridor Planning and Development Program and the Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program. Section 1118 is for coordinating planning and design and construction of corridors of national significance, economic growth, and international and interregional trade. Section 1119 is for projects to improve the safety and movements of people and goods at or across the border between the United States and Canada and the border between the United States and Mexico.

The minute order presented for your consideration today authorizes the Fiscal Year 2001 Border/Corridor Discretionary Program for a total of $10,047,905 as approved by the Federal Highway Administration. These funds will be used specifically for the development of projects listed in Exhibit A to the minute order, and we recommend your approval of this minute order.

Item 5(d). Last spring the Public Transportation Division identified a considerable number of small urbanized buses and rural transit vehicles as having reached or exceeded established useful life for these types of vehicles, since deterioration in the condition of a transit fleet may compromise the ability of the transit operators to provide safe, effective, and efficient services to the public.

Although we've been successful in securing $4 million in Federal Section 5309 discretionary funds for rural transit vehicle replacement, additional funds are needed for the small urbanized system. TEA-21 gives us the flexibility to use federal funds for a wide variety of transportation needs. Flexible federal funding matched with toll revenue credits or local funding may be used to purchase transit vehicles for rural and small urbanized systems.

The minute order we bring to you today authorizes the department to program $5 million annually in flexible federal funds for Fiscal Years 2001 through 2004 for the purchase of replacement vehicles for rural and small urbanized transit systems. This annual investment, when combined with the federal transit discretionary awards, may be used to establish a reasonable threshold of fleet replacement. Staff recommends your approval of this minute order.

MR. JOHNSON: Al, I think we have a question on this.

MR. LUEDECKE: Yes, sir.

MR. NICHOLS: Yes, I had e-mailed some questions in earlier this past week and received some responses I think both from you and from Margot, and I still am not real clear on a couple of those items. Obviously, the federal discretionary money is supportive of doing what we need to do to pull down and match it with toll credit -- you know, we're supportive of using that to match it.

On this $5 million per year, what we're talking about doing is committing a four-year program, five per year, a total of $20 million.

MR. LUEDECKE: Yes, sir.

MR. NICHOLS: And this is out of our surface transportation fund?

MR. LUEDECKE: Yes, sir.

MR. NICHOLS: What normally in the past had been used on highways?

MR. LUEDECKE: These are flexible funds identified in TEA-21 as those funds that make up the shortfall on like donor states, for example, that come with no attachment to use in the conventional sense of STP funds, surface transportation funds.

MR. NICHOLS: Have we expended funds for replacement of these vehicles in the past?

MR. LUEDECKE: No, sir. I think one of the primary reasons is that the matching fund required for the state match could not be used because we're constitutionally dedicated to putting the state funds on the highway system; the toll credits is what made this particular approach possible, because the toll credits will allow us to not have to use state funds to match the federal funds.

MR. NICHOLS: Okay. So this would be the first year, and it's not only this year but it's the next three that we're talking about using the toll credits to match those could-be construction funds.

MR. LUEDECKE: Yes. Well, also there could be some local match too, but essentially it's the state match.

MR. NICHOLS: And we have not been paying for some of this vehicle replacement out of these funds in the past?

MR. LUEDECKE: No, sir, we haven't.

MR. NICHOLS: The transit operators, as I understand it, have lost some significant funds this year?

MR. LUEDECKE: I would probably have to defer to Margot Massey on that.

MR. NICHOLS: She's coming up; I saw her heading this way.

MS. MASSEY: I think what we're facing is, as Al Luedecke said, Senator Hutchinson has been very aggressive and energetic in obtaining federal transit discretionary funding for this purpose but we are falling further and further behind and it has become a tremendous safety issue. As identified in the cover sheet of the minute order, we have over -- close to 650 vehicles that need to be replaced today out of our total fleet, and it will become a hazard if we don't start addressing this in a systematic way.

I feel like we've been very aggressive, again with Senator Hutchinson's help, in fully exploiting available federal transit dollars which led me to seek out other resources, and an obvious one is the flexible federal funding which can be used for either highway or transit projects. And my opinion -- which is certainly shared by the transit industry -- is we have got to start biting off bigger chunks of this replacement problem or we are going to get into more desperate straits.

MR. JOHNSON: The 5309 funds, $4 million, is that over the period, the four-year period, or is that annually?

MS. MASSEY: No. That's a single year.

MR. JOHNSON: Just one year.

MS. MASSEY: Yes, sir, and that's roughly the amount we've received consistently in the past four years through Senator Hutchinson's efforts, so we've stayed pretty stable at that level.

MR. NICHOLS: Okay. So we have been using these funds or similar funding in the last four years.

MS. MASSEY: The significance here is we're talking about using flexible federal funds for the first time, funds that could be used for either highway or transit projects. And I don't mean to minimize the significance of that, but we have used other discretionary federal funds that are not flexible; they are purely transit funds, so we have been applying funds toward the replacement issue but we are seeking a new source of federal funds to increase our investment in this area.

MR. JOHNSON: Do any of these vehicles go into private fleets or are they all public transit?

MS. MASSEY: They're all public.

MR. JOHNSON: Any other questions, Robert?

MR. NICHOLS: No.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Margot.

MR. LUEDECKE: Finally we come to Item 5(e). This minute order provides for the appointment of a new member to the Grand Parkway Association Board of Directors. Under Section 15.85, Title 43, Texas Administrative Code, the board may nominate a replacement director for a vacancy on the board. The four-year term of Mr. Roger L. Galatas will expire on February 26, 2001 and he has chosen not to seek reappointment and resigned on November 8, 2000.

In accordance with Section 15.85, the board has nominated Mr. Edward Poole as a candidate for the term on the board and has submitted the prescribed documentation for commission review. Based upon the review and consideration of all relevant information as documented and filed with the commission, it appears that the nominee is fully eligible and qualified to serve as a member on the board.

Mr. Poole was recommended for this appointment through the board of directors of the Grand Parkway Association for a term to expire on January 25, 2007. Your approval of this candidate is recommended.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions or comments relative to Items (b), (c), (d) or (e) in Section 5?

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: A motion and a second. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Al, thank you very much.

MR. LUEDECKE: Thank you.

MR. HEALD: Commissioners, we're recommending two SIB loans for your consideration, and James Bass, our finance director will recommend these to you.

MR. BASS: Good morning. For the record, I'm James Bass, director of TxDOT's Finance Division.

Item 6(a) seeks your final approval of a loan to the City of Linden in the amount of $210,126 to fund the relocation of utilities and the city's share of right of way acquisition costs made necessary by the expansion and reconstruction of US 59. The city has requested an interest rate of 4.0 percent with an eight-year payback period, and staff recommends your approval.

MR. JOHNSON: Are there any questions?

MR. NICHOLS: So moved.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries.

MR. BASS: Item 6(b) would amend the provisions of a previous minute order you approved in October of 2000. This previous minute order granted approval of Denton County's request to borrow $10 million to fund PS&E work on State Highway 121. This SIB assistance would be provided through the purchase of tax-exempt notes and Denton County wishes to issue taxable notes in order to invest the proceeds of the financial assistance and earn interest.

The state is exempt from federal tax that is generally owed on interest on taxable notes, and since the department intends to retain the notes until maturity, it is not necessary for the county to issue tax-exempt notes. This proposed minute order would allow Denton County to issue taxable notes to be purchased by the State Infrastructure Bank, and staff recommends your approval.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. JOHNSON: Is there a second?

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you, James.

MR. HEALD: Item number 7, Contracts, award or rejection of certain contracts for your consideration, and Elizabeth Boswell will represent the Construction Division.

MS. BOSWELL: Good morning. My name is Elizabeth Boswell; I currently serve as the Construction Section Director within the Construction Division. I'm here today representing Mr. Thomas Bohuslav, our division director.

With regard to Item 7(1), authorization of this minute order will provide for the award or rejection of highway maintenance contracts let on January 3 and 4, 2001 whose engineers' estimated costs are $300,000 or more. Staff recommends award of all projects as shown in Exhibit A.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions or observations?

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. NICHOLS: Observation.

MR. JOHNSON: Was that a motion?

MR. LANEY: That was a motion.

MR. NICHOLS: I'll second it, but I did want to comment on an observation, and I think we've noticed for the last several months a good number of bidding, number of people bidding, and it looks like our cost on these are under by 10 percent?

MS. BOSWELL: Yes.

MR. JOHNSON: Good trend. There's a motion and a second. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you, Elizabeth.

MS. BOSWELL: With regard to Item 7(2), authorization of this minute order will provide for the award or rejection of building contracts let on December 5 and 6, 2000 and highway construction contracts let on January 3 and 4, 2001 as shown in Exhibit A. Award or rejection of the building contracts listed on Exhibit A was deferred to the January 25, 2001 commission meeting in order to allow for notice by publication as required by the Texas Transportation Code.

Staff recommends award of all contracts as shown in Exhibit A.

MR. JOHNSON: Commissioners, I have a speaker that's signed up to address this item. Mr. Jack Ratliff has signed up to speak on one of the parts of this issue. Welcome, Mr. Ratliff.

MR. RATLIFF: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here to represent the City of Blanco and the Blanco citizens group, the Blanco Assembly, which is 500 people in Blanco County concerned about planning and safety in the county.

The little town of Blanco's heart is a group of buildings in a two-block area that includes the bank, the post office, a drug store, and two of the most popular restaurants, along with a butcher shop. That area is immediately adjoining the Blanco River and is served by two streets, Chandler Street and 4th Street which are both small-town streets.

This proposed bridge would go over the Blanco River, would increase the size of the present bridge by something like, I think, 20 feet in width and 12 feet in height, and we are concerned would create, because of its designed speed, high-speed vehicles coming over the bridge and into this very sensitive downtown area. This is the place, like many little towns have, where people stand out in the street and talk about the rain; they go back and forth across the street, to the post office, the restaurant, and so on.

In addition to the safety concern which is also augmented by the fact that this is where schoolchildren -- they use this bridge to go to and from school; it's their only path to the grade and to the high school -- in addition to the safety concerns which are significant, there's also a concern about its incompatibility with the community. The present bridge goes down, there's a nice view up the Blanco River, there are a couple of dams up there. Part of the charm of this rural community has to do with a bridge that's appropriate to the community.

The proposed bridge does not fit in with that community feeling, and furthermore, the Blanco community has formed a planning group which has for the last year or so been studying ways to make this a walkable community connecting various parts of the community with the schools, providing walkways up and down the Blanco River, and making it a cohesive and useful community.

We have a grant from the National Parks Service and have been working closely with them on this planning; we have two urban planners who have worked with us. All of those people think this bridge is incompatible with the plans for the town. In addition, we have consulted informally with at least three engineers who don't have access to all the specifications but tell us that from what they can see, this looks like an over-designed, overkill bridge.

We have explored this with the district engineer at several meetings, the last one in the presence of a staff member from Senator Wentworth's office, and the response has been: We understand your concerns but we're not going to change the bridge.

Now, the design did not involve the community when it was being conceived; it was presented as a fait accompli at some point and they said, Well, this is the bridge that we're going to build. TxDOT has made some cosmetic concessions but won't talk about changing the bridge.

Senator Wentworth's office agreed with us that it would be a good idea to postpone this contract until the community can have meaningful input into the design of the bridge. It is possible that we won't be able to do anything but what's already been done, but we have, in discussing this with the district engineer, found that TxDOT did not consider some alternatives which would satisfy their requirements but would be less massive and less intrusive, one of which would be a metal bridge.

We won't know whether that's feasible until we have the opportunity -- which so far we have not -- to be involved in this planning process and to consult with our engineers and urban planners. So it is our concern that if this contract is let, it's done and that bridge is permanent. It's our request that the commission consider postponing the letting of this contract until we can have enough involvement to see whether there's a reasonable alternative design.

We feel that this is a delay only, big, ugly and unsafe is permanent.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you.

MR. RATLIFF: By the way, no one wants to hazard anyone's safety. This bridge has been there for the last 20 years; it has no load restrictions on it at this point. If there are problems with the under-structure of the bridge, then nobody involved in these communications wants to see that be a problem, and the TxDOT people told me that at this point they don't have any reason to think it's unsafe structurally but that they would check that, and if it is, of course, everybody will want to see that addressed.

Thank you very much, and I'll be glad to respond to any questions if you have any.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. Any observations or questions?

MR. LANEY: I've got some questions of our staff if we've got somebody who knows the bridge issue.

MR. JOHNSON: Mike would probably have to address this, Mike Behrens.

MR. RATLIFF: Thank you very much.

MR. LANEY: Mike, is there any emergency situation that requires immediate letting with respect to safety or structural integrity or anything like that?

MR. BEHRENS: None that would be imminent. I can tell you the bridge has been inspected under water every six months to see what the normal flow of the water has been doing to the foundation. There is some voids underneath one of the footings in the bridge and the district has been monitoring that.

MR. LANEY: But it's okay at the moment?

MR. BEHRENS: At the moment. Of course, any time you'd have flooding conditions, we'd inspect it immediately.

MR. LANEY: I understand. There is a need for a replacement of this bridge. I don't think anyone will disagree with that; my only question is timing, and it sounds like all we've been asked to do is to take one step back and listen to the community a little bit and explore a couple of alternatives which may or may not be viable. I have no idea. Is there any -- I'll ask the same question from a different angle -- any jeopardy at all by delaying this for a couple of months?

MR. BEHRENS: Not that I've been made aware of.

MR. NICHOLS: Is there any penalties or problems related to the contractor who was the low bidder in the process? What is the procedure on that?

MR. BEHRENS: The commission could go forward with a conditional award based on asking us for further information on this matter.

MR. NICHOLS: So you could issue a conditional award: he would be the contractor if it was going to be built that way.

MR. BEHRENS: Yes, sir.

MR. LANEY: And what would the condition be, Mike, if we decided to go a different route; we just cancel the contract or not proceed with the contract?

MR. BEHRENS: That would be one alternative, yes.

MR. LANEY: One way or the other, whether it's a conditional award or whether we just sort of step off the track for a little bit and let the city's input be heard, one way or the other, I think we ought to at least listen and make sure that we've looked at the alternatives. But I think we need to make it very clear to our staff as well as the city, the bridge needs to be replaced.

It sounds like we do have a bridge design that would work. It sounds like there may be an aesthetic issue that the community has some concerns with. It may be able to allow us to modify our current design to make it work, maybe not, but I think it would be worth giving them an ear that they sound like they'd like to hear.

MR. HEALD: Commissioners, if I could say one thing -- and, Mike, I may be putting you on the spot -- but isn't their request to lower the bridge, which would significantly change the design of the structure?

MR. BEHRENS: There have been numerous items that have been brought forward, nothing -- we've heard lowering, we've heard narrowing, we've heard further shortening the curve in the bridge, and things like that, but I think we'd be looking from the community to see what specifically their concerns are.

MR. LANEY: May I ask Mr. Ratliff a question? Mike, don't go far, if you don't mind.

Are there a variety of opinions, a whole bunch of different opinions as to what needs to be done? Is it all over the map or is there a pretty clear consensus as to the particulars that are concerned?

MR. RATLIFF: I wouldn't say there's any consensus. I think it's pretty clear that you can't use this present structure and simply modify it or lower it because -- and without getting too far into it, I'm not an engineer; I know what I've heard -- because of the nature of the structure, the concrete structure, if you meet the FEMA requirements of getting it up high enough and if you get it as massive as it is with a concrete bridge, the TxDOT argument is it has got to be the way it is because otherwise, you'll create a FEMA back up of the water.

What we've heard from others and what TxDOT pretty much concedes to us is that they did not really investigate alternate designs, one of which would be a metal bridge which would not involve a massive intrusion into the water and which would allow greater flow.

I've submitted a statement because I wasn't sure I'd get to talk to you, and I mentioned this in that statement. There's also some possibility, though there's no guarantee, that if this involves additional cost -- and I understand that metal costs more than concrete -- that there might be special grants that would help us to do this consistent with this National Parks planning and the kind of urban planning we're doing.

To be candid, I don't think there's any clear alternative design. We just don't feel like we've had an opportunity to find out enough about what TxDOT is dealing with to allow us to get some engineering help to look at that.

By the way, the people we've talked to, the district engineer has indicated, without trying to do the design, that if one did this with a metal design, the bridge probably could be lowered. Narrower is another issue because the TxDOT engineer is very concerned that there be ten-foot shoulders and ten-foot escape lanes on the side. I don't know that we would resist that if we could get a sidewalk on both sides that would be safe. Right now it doesn't even join up so that a cyclist or a wheelchair can have a way to go.

But if you could see the area, if the bridge could be lowered, even though it's widened, the approach would signal that there's a town up there because you go down into this dip, there's a natural slowing event, and then you come back up out of it and you can see what's ahead.

What is proposed raises the bridge so high that we are concerned it's going to just look like another stretch of highway with this big curve, wide roads. The design criteria for it I think is 40 miles an hour and the traffic is going to be immediately in this sensitive area.

But we don't have a specific design to propose because we just don't feel like we've had an opportunity to develop that.

MR. LANEY: Thank you. Just at least a guess, with respect to the notion of a metal bridge, part of our charge is to make the money that we spend on structures like this last. Metal will be more expensive, likely, and it will require a lot more maintenance and won't last as long, so there is some concern probably in that respect too, although aesthetically it might be a lot more attractive. It depends on whether the city would be willing to pick up maintenance and other issues like that.

On the other hand, my only suggestion, Mr. Chairman, would be one way or the other to incorporate an opportunity for the city to feel like they've been heard a little bit more than apparently they feel at the moment, whatever the outcome. And if the conditional contract or conditional award is the right approach, I'm comfortable with that; if postponing it is a better approach, I'm comfortable with that, either way.

MR. JOHNSON: Robert, what did you have?

MR. NICHOLS: Yes, I had a couple of comments or questions. In the last 24 hours or 48 hours, we've received a lot of faxes and letters from citizens in Blanco requesting that we move forward with construction of that bridge. Because of some of the disagreements, it appears, I called and talked to the mayor yesterday and she had indicated -- one of the questions I wanted to make sure was addressed was whether or not the TxDOT area office had been working closely with the town or the city over the last several years, and she assured me that they basically had in a very cooperative manner but not necessarily all the citizenry was involved and all of a sudden now the citizens have taken a much greater interest in the bridge.

MR. RATLIFF: Well, there are a couple of things I'd like to say about that. I'm aware of one of the things you may have received -- because I heard about it just before I left -- was there was some concern about whether some other design would accommodate school buses but we've since clarified that with the school people and there's no question about that.

As far as the community input, the TxDOT people have been very courteous. I've been to a meeting in the district engineer's office. We've had a meeting; they've addressed the city council; we've had a meeting there with Senator Wentworth's office, and they've listened, and in fact, they've done some cosmetic changes. It's just that they're unyielding about this bridge that they want to put in and we don't feel that they've explored the alternatives.

It is true, also, that the Blanco Citizens Assembly was founded about, I guess, a year and a half ago, and that's when a lot of the citizenry became active in this so that in the early stages of this bridge -- I wasn't there at the time -- there may well have been no negative reaction when it was first presented.

I will say that one of the complaints about the way it was presented is there was a city council meeting and somebody showed up with engineer's drawings. There was no sketch of the bridge, there was not a lot of layman's information about what it was, and there was the feeling that, you know, at that point we didn't really understand the impact of this. It was only after we had our city planner and our National Parks Service people look at these plans that we understood the implications.

So in part, this is not so much complaint about TxDOT; in part, this complaint or this problem may have arisen from the fact that citizen involvement and citizen sophistication was a little slow to develop.

MR. NICHOLS: I guess I have a question for Mike. Mike, we've got basically two or three options here: one is conditional award, make some condition related to acceptance by the city or city council of Blanco or something.

MR. BEHRENS: I think we could make a conditional award from the direction of the commission that would have staff go look at the information and to work with the city to see what concerns that they have and delve into the matter further.

MR. NICHOLS: For what period of time, conditional on what period of time?

MR. BEHRENS: We wouldn't have to put any time period on it.

MR. JOHNSON: I think we'd be best to put a time period on it. I hate to see these things start creating a life of their own and get extended, and I think it's best for all interests to create a time, whether it's 30 days or 60 days.

MR. BEHRENS: I think 60 days would be all right.

MR. JOHNSON: Sixty days would be good?

MR. BEHRENS: I would like to point out to the commission that, of course, as you know, our bridge program is primarily funded under the Federal Bridge Program. And these standards that we use to design our bridges, as we did this bridge, fits the federal standards, fits the FEMA standards. And other considerations would probably prohibit federal funds for any other type of design, so then we'd be looking at state funding which we know is limited, and there may be other options that we'd have to look at which would probably delay any kind of construction.

MR. NICHOLS: I'm concerned here because we did advance the project; they have worked with the city -- even though the citizenry interests may have changed; we advertised for bids; we have contractors who have put work and effort into the preparation of those bids, and they have quotes and things from vendors that have limited time things as far as unit cost and stuff, so that bid is not going to be good forever. We've got a limited period of time in which to accept it and move forward or cancel it and back up and punt.

MR. BEHRENS: That's correct, and of course, this bridge was initiated, the design and the work on it, in September '96, and of course, the district has been moving forward from that point, and as was mentioned, has worked with the city and folks there in Blanco.

MR. JOHNSON: Well, I would suggest that what we do is award this contract conditionally based upon a 60-day period that the area engineer, district engineer, and our staff commence a dialogue with the residents of Blanco to hear their concerns and see if there's a way that as many of their concerns can be met as possible, given all the circumstances.

MR. RATLIFF: Mr. Chairman, could I address that?

MR. JOHNSON: Yes, sir.

MR. RATLIFF: We are a citizens group. We're without funding; we do have some friends, but we've had some difficulty in getting the specifics of the bridge design. I don't think anybody has done that deliberately; it's just been hard through the communication to get this information. I'm very concerned that we couldn't come up with a realistic alternative in 60 days. Is there any possibility that you could make that 90 days?

MR. JOHNSON: Well, I just hate, you know, for these things to string out. I don't want to short-circuit your ability to have constructive dialogue from your standpoint, and if we get critical on the end, we'll extend the time, but please don't consider that a license to let this thing tarry because I don't think that's in anybody's best interests.

MR. RATLIFF: Well, we won't, and we appreciate whatever time.

MR. JOHNSON: And as Mike has pointed out, there are a lot of moving parts between the federal funding and FEMA, and these things are not easy. As he mentioned, this thing started in 1996 and it's coming before the commission in early 2001, so it's a time-consuming process.

MR. RATLIFF: I understand. I would say that we have discussed in detail with them what the FEMA requirements for the bridge are and that's where it emerged that an alternative design would possibly still meet the FEMA requirements for the flood problems -- not actually FEMA but the insurance group. But in any event, thank you very much for whatever time you give us on that.

MR. JOHNSON: Mike, will that work? I don't want to put us in such a position that we have a condition that we can't live with.

MR. BEHRENS: I think that I would recommend that we would stay with the 60 days, and I think our area engineer --

MR. JOHNSON: Conditional award of the contract, a 60-day period to have a dialogue with the residents.

MR. BEHRENS: Yes, sir.

MR. NICHOLS: I'll second that.

MR. JOHNSON: David, is that okay?

MR. LANEY: That's fine with me.

MR. JOHNSON: There's a motion and a second to that effect. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Ratliff; thank you, Mike.

MS. BOSWELL: Commissioners, did that signify a vote on the remaining?

MR. JOHNSON: I think we probably ought to take the remainder as a separate parcel; that's just that one contract. So if there's a motion to accept the other.

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries. Elizabeth, thank you.

MS. BOSWELL: Thank you.

MR. JOHNSON: The next item, since Mike is handy, Contract Claims. We've got two claims for your consideration.

MR. BEHRENS: We have two minute orders, commissioners. For the record, my name is Mike Behrens of Engineering Operations.

We have two minute orders for claim settlements. The first is for a project in the San Angelo District, RMC 6044-53-001, the contractor being Rocks-R-Us Luxury Landscape that performed some guardrail work in the district. They submitted a claim of $54,015 for additional compensation for some work that was extra, and when the committee met on November 29, 2000, we heard the issues and offered the contractor a settlement of $17,500. By letter on December 12, 2000, the contractor accepted that settlement offer.

Our second claim was in Travis County and the contractor was McGoldrick Construction, a building contract at our Riverside Annex, contract BC-RA-3/479RAB3015, and this was for some roofing work where some lightning protection systems were put in place. The claim was in the amount of $26,836; we met and heard the claim and we offered a settlement of $7,000 to the contractor. It was accepted by the contractor on December 21, 2000.

We recommend the approval of both minute orders.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions?

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. JOHNSON: There's a motion.

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: And second. I'll just make the observation that any company named Rocks-R-Us can't be all bad.

(General laughter.)

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries.

MR. HEALD: Item number 8, Routine Minute Orders, I will go through these with you and we can handle them all under one motion. I believe there's one that we're going to defer before I forget it; 8(b)(2) in Denton County will be deferred.

Starting with 8(a) Speed Zones, establish or alter regulatory and construction speed zones on various sections in the state.

And I'll just go unless you stop me. 8(b) Highway Designations. 8(b)(1), again this is in Denton County, designate the former location of State Highway 114 as Business 114 because of the loop or bypass that we built around Denton.

8(b)(3), this minute order redesignates FM 495, an urban road, from FM 1423 west to La Homa Road as State Highway 495 and extends 495 from La Homa Road west to Abram Road and south to US 83.

8(b)(4) in Hidalgo County, this minute order redesignates FM 2894 from FM 2221 south to FM 1924 as State Highway 364 and extends 364 from 1924 to Mile 1 North Road; it also designates a segment of FM 495 an urban road.

8(c) Right of Way Disposition, Purchase and Lease. The minute order provides for the release of a .49 acre surplus drainage easement in exchange for a needed .69 acre drainage easement, and there was an appraisal performed on this for the trade.

8(c)(2) in Comal County, the minute order provides for the sale of a .125 acre tract of surplus right of way land, and there was an appraisal performed on that.

8(c)(3) Gray County, the minute order provides for the sale of a .16 acre surplus right of way easement, and there again, there was an appraisal done for that.

8(c)(4) Scurry County, provides for the sale of a .643 acre tract of surplus right of way, there again, based on an appraisal.

8(c)(5) in Taylor County, consider the sale of a maintenance site and improvements to the City of Merkel based on the appraisal of $14,566 value of the land and $1,434 as the value of the improvements for a total value of $16,000, and the city council has a resolution to buy that property.

MR. JOHNSON: Wes, I have a question I think you might not know the answer to. Two of these transactions dollar-wise are very small, one is $39, one is $342, and it occurs to me that the cost of the appraisal is more than the value of the land that's being transferred. Who pays for the appraisal?

MR. HEALD: We pay for the appraisal.

MR. JOHNSON: So we're actually losing money, it sounds like, less land and less money is a bad combination.

MR. HEALD: That's correct, and it's kind of an embarrassment to bring this to the commission for your consideration, but I understand that's the way we have to do that.

MR. JOHNSON: Is it possible that we have a requirement that in transactions of a certain size that the purchaser pay for the appraisal?

MR. HEALD: Richard, are you here, Richard Monroe? Could you address that?

MR. JOHNSON: I think we're getting into minutia here.

MR. MONROE: This is the sort of thing that happens when you have a law which applies to the department and concerns all sales of property -- it's got to fit everything. As to the question why we ask for an appraisal, it is to establish a value of the land so that the commission will discharge its responsibility in getting value for the taxpayer.

As for whether or not we could ask for the other party to pay for the appraisal, we certainly could. Convenience-wise, it might just be a cost we want to eat, but that's not really my area.

MR. NICHOLS: I remember several years ago we had considered making a request to change some of that to set a limit of $10,000 or $25,000 under which we don't have to go through all the steps. Is that a statutory change or a constitutional change?

MR. MONROE: That would have to be done by statute.

MR. JOHNSON: Wes, thank you, and Richard, thank you.

MR. BEHRENS: Let me see if I can clarify it. When we're talking about surplus property, say we have a widened portion of highway right of way, and through the years it's been recognized that we don't need a portion of it and we deem it surplus, and we have, say an adjacent property owner comes forward to ask us can I acquire that property. If they initiate it, they pay the cost of the surveying and of the appraisal and then also whatever value has been established, they pay that; if it's something that we initiate within the department, then we pay for that.

MR. JOHNSON: Thank you.

MR. LANEY: Is there any other member of our senior management team that could help elaborate this point?

(General laughter.)

MR. HEALD: We've got Kirby Pickett, I guess.

MR. MONROE: You notice he never volunteers.

MR. HEALD: Thanks for straightening me out, Mike.

We're back to 8(d) Donations to the Department, in Bexar County, Loop 1604 we have a donation of a drainage easement and some property.

8(e) Building Improvements, approve the renovation of the Texas Travel Information Center in Gainesville.

8(f) Eminent Domain Proceedings, request for eminent domain proceedings on noncontrolled and controlled access highways, and there's a list for your consideration.

In Val Verde County -- this is a little bit different here -- US 277 at the Edwards County line, consider the condemnation of a 425.330 acre tract of land to be acquired as a conservation easement due to mitigation requirements. In other words, that's a condemnation due to mitigation.

And Mr. Chairman, that completes the routine minute orders.

MR. JOHNSON: Any questions about the routine minute orders? There being none, we'll accept a motion for approval.

MR. NICHOLS: I so move.

MR. LANEY: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: All in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. JOHNSON: Motion carries.

We're not calling for an executive session today. Under open comment period, I have one speaker signed up. Under open comments, Mr. Tom Palmer has requested to speak. He's the manager of economic development for the City of Mesquite and would like to discuss Mesquite's concern at Town East Boulevard and US 80. Mr. Palmer, welcome.

MR. PALMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission. I am Tom Palmer, manager of economic development for the City of Mesquite, the home of the Dallas District office, and we're pleased to have the Dallas District office in Mesquite, and you visited there last night. I hope you found our city and the accommodations to your liking. We appreciate the work that you do.

I want to bring to your attention a particular item at Town East Boulevard and US 80 Samuel intersection and inform the commission of some of the parameters of what's going on in that area. We have worked with the Dallas District office in a very cooperative spirit together with the city and the Dallas District office, but I just want to take this opportunity to inform the commission of the success that we've had and how that is impacting this particular project.

We have a six-lane thoroughfare on the north side of US 80 and on the south side of US 80 that serves our industrial park, an industrial park that is one of the largest ones on the east side of Dallas County. It is home to the Union Pacific intermodal facility which is one of the largest in the entire country. It actually does more lifts and ranks in the top ten in terms of lifts in the entire country.

That facility expanded a number of years ago, approximately three years ago, and UPS -- which is United Parcel Service -- is bringing in additional trains to utilize that facility; therefore, the truck traffic has increased. The bridge at US 80 Town East Boulevard is a four-lane bridge. We would like to request that bridge to be upgraded rather than rehabbed, and I'm not technical on the language of the various pools of funds that are available for that project, but we have increased the truck traffic dramatically in that area.

Along with success comes opportunities and additional challenges. Hillwood Investment Properties is building over 2 million square feet of industrial projects, all of which will use that intersection. Those projects will come on line -- in fact, one of the first 400,000 square foot buildings comes on line this month, the first of February. The rest of that property comes on line in 2001, spring and summer delivery. That is a growing area and we have an inadequate structure.

The City of Mesquite passed the economic development sales tax 4(b) and we crafted in the state law a ballot provision for transportation that will benefit economic development projects. We've partnered; the board is very supportive of the partnership with TxDOT and we would like to continue that partnership. That is a growing area, we need help.

The Dallas District is working very hard with us to find solutions. I wanted to take this opportunity to bring it to the commission's attention since you were in the Metroplex, and we appreciate that.

Let me close with making a comment on your staff that you have in the Dallas District. Matt McGregor I think has already left. We have the LBJ project; that is a wonderful project; we're excited that we may be the first project to be constructed on the LBJ project, the Mesquite section. The staff has been wonderful to work with; Jay Nelson, district engineer, is a great district engineer; we appreciate his staff and his efforts.

But I do want to raise that as an opportunity that we have because of the success that the Metroplex has for business. With that, I'll close my comments. Thank you, members.

MR. JOHNSON: Mr. Palmer, thank you. As you know, all these issues require a great deal of scrutiny and study by the department, and I can assure you that particular intersection and area is probably, if it is as you describe, undergoing a thorough study right now, but I appreciate your coming forward and mentioning that and also the words that you had to say about the district personnel. They indeed do an extraordinary job.

Is there any other business that needs to come before the commission? If there is none, I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

MR. LANEY: So moved.

MR. NICHOLS: Second.

MR. JOHNSON: There's a motion and a second, and for the record, it is 12:21 p.m., and we will stand adjourned. Thank you all.

(Whereupon, at 12:21 p.m., the meeting was concluded.)

C E R T I F I C A T E

MEETING OF: Texas Transportation Commission
LOCATION: Irving, Texas
DATE: January 25, 2001

I do hereby certify that the foregoing pages, numbers 1 through 118, inclusive, are the true, accurate, and complete transcript prepared from the verbal recording made by electronic recording by Joe Gillis before the Texas Department of Transportation.

                        1/30/01
(Transcriber) (Date)

On the Record Reporting, Inc.
3307 Northland, Suite 315
Austin, Texas 78731