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85 mph flap much ado about Texas 130
Ben Wear: Getting There
Published: 7:19 p.m. Sunday, April 17, 2011
You may have heard or read that the Texas House this month passed a bill that would create an 85 mph speed limit on Texas highways. The widely misreported news sparked unsettling images of SUVs barreling down U.S. 183 or Interstate 35 at 90 or more, given the general assumption that people tend to drive a few miles per hour over the posted limit.
T'ain't so.
What the House did — and who knows if the Senate and Gov. Rick Perry will go along in the coming weeks? — was allow the possibility of an 85 mph speed limit on what amounts to one road. Which isn't open yet. And, oh, by the way, Texas law already allowed that speed on that road.
That highway, it's worth knowing, is here in Central Texas: the southern 40 miles of Texas 130, which has been under construction for a couple of years between Mustang Ridge and Seguin and should open in late 2012.
Actually, the real purpose of the legislation that started all this — House Bill 1201, by Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham — is to drive a final stake into the already inert heart of the Trans-Texas Corridor. The governor, the Texas Department of Transportation and the facts on the ground already have made it obvious that Perry's one-time plan for 4,000 miles of tollways, railroads and utility lines is deader than disco.
Multiple references to the corridor plan still exist in state law, though, and Kolkhorst, who represents an area that was a hotbed of opposition to Perry's corridor brainchild, wants that language gone. But those statutes also include authorization to slap an 85 mph speed limit on any Trans-Texas Corridor road, and officials assumed all along that the new portion of Texas 130 would be designated a part of the corridor.
This is no small financial matter to the state. Its contract with a consortium led by Cintra, a Spanish toll road company that is building and will operate (and, it hopes, profit from) that section of Texas 130 for the next half-century, specifies that TxDOT would get an extra $67 million if the speed limit is 80 mph. Set the limit at 85 mph, and that premium rises to $100 million. TxDOT would have six months from when the road opens to set those higher limits or lose the chance to get that extra money.
The logic is that a faster speed limit, which only the Texas Transportation Commission can authorize, will draw more toll-paying drivers to the road and thus increase Cintra's revenue. Ergo, the state should get some of that bonus cash.
Kolkhorst's bill would let TxDOT adopt that higher speed limit, but only on roads completed after May 31 this year that are specially designed to accommodate those extreme speeds. Which means the roads, among other elements, must be flatter, straighter and better banked in curves than a normal freeway.
The bill goes on to require TxDOT, in order to exceed the "normal" rural freeway speed limit of 70 mph, to conduct studies showing that the bulk of cars are already going faster than the existing limit. The logic is that people, absent the heavy-duty presence of state troopers handing out tickets, tend to drive at speeds appropriate to the road design and amount of traffic.
In other words, you could set a 70 mph speed limit on Lavaca Street downtown, and still the overwhelming number of people probably would never go faster than, say, 45. Or you could tell people the limit on empty and flat Interstate 10 near Ozona is 70, and people would still tend to go something close to 80. Actually, the limit in that section of I-10 is 80 mph already, thanks to legislation passed several years ago.
As for the idea that if you set the limit at 85, people will go a death-defying 90, TxDOT officials say that their studies, after I-10 from Kerr County west got that 80 mph limit, showed that 85 percent of drivers were going 81 mph or less. Yes, you could go 85 and probably not get a ticket. But most people had decided on their own that 80 was quite fast enough.
The kerfuffle over Kolkhorst's bill has obscured another bill that would make a much more meaningful change. HB 1353 by state Rep. Gary Elkins, a Houston Republican, would raise that general 70 mph highway limit to 75, and there would no longer be a 5 mph lower nighttime speed limit. That bill has motored through committee and is awaiting a final vote of the House as a whole.
People with safety and gas-guzzling concerns about high speeds should probably be fretting over this bill, not Kolkhorst's handiwork.