Planning board members miffed at stalled road projects

08/27/2007

Patrick Driscoll / Express-News

City Councilwoman Diane Cibrian got testy when she heard about the latest highway projects getting axed.

County Commissioner Lyle Larson carped about vital projects falling by the wayside.

And Texas Department of Transportation officials spread the blame on why $57 million worth of work to widen three local highways must be scuttled in fiscal year 2008. It's two-thirds of what was planned.

Cash doesn't flow like it used to, not with inflation for construction materials and workers skyrocketing 73 percent over the past five years, TxDOT officials on Monday told the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which allocates federal gas tax funds in San Antonio.

"Inflation is just eating our lunch," said David Casteel of TxDOT, who along with Cibrian and Larson is a member of the 19-member planning board.

TxDOT officials are paranoid about letting existing roads and bridges deteriorate further, and to keep up they will have to slash $965 million from congestion relief projects statewide and pour it into maintenance work.

San Antonio's share of cuts will delay three projects:

• $38 million to add lanes on Interstate 10 from Huebner Road to Loop 1604.

• $10 million to widen Loop 1604 to four lanes from FM 78 to Lower Seguin Road.

• $9 million to widen FM 3009 to four lanes from Interstate 35 to Nacogdoches Road.

"I'm deeply concerned," Cibrian said. "Development is coming from absolutely everywhere. We cannot sustain this kind of traffic."

She demanded to know why work on I-10 hadn't already started and why the project was targeted in the cutbacks.

TxDOT engineer Clay Smith said a 2005 lawsuit to stop construction of toll lanes on U.S. 281 had inadvertently forced the state to redo environmental studies for several area roadways. The new I-10 lanes would link to both tolled and free ramps at Loop 1604.

Now the $38 million price tag tops the $29 million that TxDOT will have next year for widening local highways, he said.

Larson, still miffed about TxDOT killing a plan several years ago for three miles of freeway and a non-toll overpass on U.S. 281 and replacing it with a proposed tollway, warned the board not to let the newest cuts slip into oblivion. "These have to roll over and be pushed prior to any other project," he said.

When the board heard from the public, toll critic Terri Hall of San Antonio Toll Party blasted Smith for blaming the lawsuit on delaying projects.

She said TxDOT stalled U.S. 281 work years before the lawsuit so the freeway plan could be converted to a tollway. "It is simply because TxDOT wants to tax-toll us for the rest of our lives out there."