Gravel road conversions offer wakeup call on transportation needs

By: Sen. Carlos Uresti

The Texas Department of Transportation’s recently announced plan to convert some 83 miles of paved highways in West and South Texas into gravel roads should serve as a wakeup call to every Texan about the state’s unmet infrastructure needs.

Perhaps it was not a coincidence that TxDOT unveiled its plan just as state lawmakers were on the verge of passing legislation to provide the agency with additional funds for new highway construction and maintenance. It took three special sessions to get it done, but the extra money will be on the way if Texas voters approve — and they should.

Unfortunately, the constitutional amendment allowing some $1.2 billion to go to highways instead of the rainy day fund won’t be on the ballot until November of 2014. And even that amount is only about 25 percent of what TxDOT really needs to keep Texas’ transportation infrastructure on pace with the demands of an ever-growing population.

In the meantime, TxDOT needs to rethink its ill-advised solution of tearing up paved roads. In fact, Sen. Glenn Hegar and I have sent a letter to TxDOT Executive Director Phil Wilson expressing our concerns about the agency’s plans. Even if gravel conversion is a proper solution for some paved segments, many questions remain about the safety of such conversions and the shortcomings of TxDOT’s implementation process for the entire project.

We want more information and input from stakeholders before the agency proceeds.

Before embarking on this plan, TxDOT administrators should have engaged legislators and community leaders from the affected areas. By failing to do so, the agency imposed a unilateral solution on these communities with no notice, no opportunity to seek alternative solutions, and no clear understanding of what to expect in the future.

If no alternative strategy emerges and a gravel conversion is deemed appropriate, TxDOT should offer a process and timeline for converting gravel segments back to paved highway.  No conversion should ever be considered a permanent solution.

While these requirements were not included in the recently passed transportation funding bill, I am calling on TxDOT to implement them anyway if the conversion process proceeds.

During the regular session, I passed a bill creating a Transportation Infrastructure Fund that will provide $225 million to help maintain county roads that are being battered by heavy truck traffic in oil and gas producing areas of the state.

Some of these county roads, which are unpaved, could connect to the asphalt roads that TxDOT has now slated for conversion to gravel. How ironic it is that just as the Legislature comes to the rescue of county roads, TxDOT is turning its back on some of the paved highways that also lead to the oil patch — the very place that harbors so much of Texas’ future prosperity.

Texas voters would do well to approve the extra road money next year. But it won’t be nearly enough. The 2015 Legislature will have to revisit this issue and find more resources for transportation infrastructure. We can’t keep tearing up our roads for lacking the will to fund them.