The separate plans John Crew and John Horn had for harnessing North Texas’ expected explosive growth seemed to converge perfectly when the two men’s paths crossed more than two years ago.
Crew had visions of using private investors’ money to build a toll road on existing right of way that ran east from Collin to Hunt counties. As Hunt County judge, Horn had visions of spurring economic development in his county by better connecting it to the booming populations of Collin, Rockwall and Dallas counties.
But the controversial toll road that grew out of their complementary plans is expected to be omitted Thursday from a long-term planning document that will go before the Regional Transportation Council. That exclusion effectively kills — at least for now — a project that Texas Turnpike Corp. has already spent $5 million developing.
“We’re dormant,” Crew said of the project. “There’s no reason for me to spend any more money unless people want it.”
Horn, who also sits on the RTC, which will vote Thursday on the plan dubbed Mobility 2035, is taking the procedural death blow in stride.
“I don’t harbor any animosity,” Horn said. “We’ve got to continue to forge ahead.”
Fierce opposition
North Central Texas Council of Governments staffers, who execute the RTC’s policies, originally recommended including the project in the long-term plan. But they reversed their push under fierce opposition from residents and city councils between Garland and Greenville.
The Texas Department of Transportation included the project in its long-term plan to track agency expenses of overseeing development. But a TxDOT spokesman said the agency could remove the project if the RTC moves ahead without it.
Much of the opposition to the road was that it would ruin a rural quality of life and force some people out of their homes. But residents also questioned traffic estimates that greatly outpaced Hunt County’s expected population growth. Residents also were critical of emails they said showed too cozy a relationship between the Council of Governments and Texas Turnpike. Council officials said the emails were taken out of context and denied that the company got any preferntial help in developing the project.
The Northeast Gateway is one of three toll initiatives that council staffers have recently backed off of after residents and officials pushed back against their plans. Another matter before the RTC on Thursday would drop an effort to involve the state Transportation Department in helping finance Dallas’ controversial Trinity Parkway toll road.
The moves portend a shift away from what many North Texas drivers consider an overreliance on using tolls as a way to finance highway projects. RTC member and Carrollton Mayor Matthew Marchant previously told NCTCOG officials that toll projects should only be used as a last resort, something he wasn’t sure was the case with the Northeast Gateway.
When asked about dropping the Trinity Parkway financing attempt, council spokeswoman Amanda Wilson said the agency is reacting to its sense that lawmakers, local officials and residents “support moving the pendulum back to pay as you go.”
Texas voters last week overwhelmingly approved giving the Transportation Department billions more in existing tax revenue under the condition that none of the new money could be spent on toll projects.
Lawmakers began filing bills this week for next year’s legislative session that aim to give the department even more money. Transportation funding is expected to be a major focus of the session that begins in January.
TxDOT still faces annual shortfalls of an estimated $3.3 billion it says it needs to maintain existing roads and to increase capacity to keep up with expected growth. Much of that boom is expected in Collin County, which officials say is likely to double in population and become larger than Dallas County in just a few decades.
Need seen
That growth is why Crew and Horn still believe the Northeast Gateway is needed.
“To know that and see historically the growth of the region, how can you sit back and say we’ve got to stop it?” Horn said.
Crew said that the company had yet to determine a final route, but the worst-case scenario would have required the purchase of fewer than 50 buildings. If the region continues to grow, he said, people may be demanding a new road when that area is more built-out.
“The impact is less now than it will be in the future,” he said.
Horn is now focused on widening existing roads that connect Hunt County to the core of North Texas, like U.S. Highway 380 and Interstate 30.
Texas Turnpike has other projects in the pipeline that can now take front and center, though Crew was hesitant to reveal any details about them. Crew said the Northeast Corridor could be “dusted off” in the future if local leaders begin to see the need for it. But he doesn’t want to spend any more of his company’s money on it until there’s political support.
He said the $5 million already spent is part of the risk of doing business.
“You win some and you lose some,” he said.
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