{"id":55604,"date":"2023-08-11T00:02:56","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T00:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=55604"},"modified":"2023-08-11T00:02:56","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T00:02:56","slug":"txdot-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=55604","title":{"rendered":"County calls out TxDOT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Texas transportation planners apparently believe that what they giveth<\/em> they can taketh<\/em> away without being challenged.<\/p>\n

Not so fast, according to Collin County’s Commissioners Court.<\/p>\n

Commissioners have sent the Texas Transportation Commission a letter requesting the state return $490 million it had set aside for highway improvements that run through the heart of one of Texas’s fastest-growing counties.<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: I live in the area affected by this still-growing dispute between the county and the state.<\/p>\n

The letter references work planned for U.S. Highway 380 and Texas Spur 399 in McKinney. The 380 project includes a freeway bypass that TxDOT is considering for Princeton, as well as several other communities within the Collin County boundary. TxDOT wants to divert the money for high-occupancy vehicle lanes in Harris County.<\/p>\n

Collin County commissioners are having none of it. Nor should they.<\/p>\n

TxDOT has gone through a number of public hearings, taking hours upon hours of public comment on the impact of the highway improvements planned for cities such as Princeton, Farmersville, McKinney, Prosper, and Little Elm.<\/p>\n

Now it wants to yank a sizable portion of the money it had set aside for that work to build HOV lanes in Houston?<\/p>\n

I want to stand with Collin County’s Commissioners Court on this matter. I likely won’t live long enough to see the completion of the massive project being planned for Highway 380, but I damn sure want the state to listen to this elected governing board, which has stated in unambiguous language that it wants the money restored.<\/p>\n

“Mobility is part of what drives the strong economic engine of North Texas and specifically Collin County,” commissioners wrote to the Transportation Commission. “A delay on such critical projects can have an impact on state revenues” and would have a negative impact on air pollution associated with traffic congestion in the region, they wrote.<\/p>\n

Those of us who live here and who have to tolerate the stand-still traffic patterns along Highway 380 shouldn’t tolerate this takeaway of public money.<\/p>\n

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas transportation planners apparently believe that what they giveth they can taketh away without being challenged. Not so fast, according to Collin County’s Commissioners Court. Commissioners have sent the Texas Transportation Commission a letter requesting the state return $490 million it had set aside for highway improvements that run through the heart of one of … Continue reading County calls out TxDOT<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1063,9150,9210,4936,8497],"class_list":["post-55604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-collin-county","tag-farmersville","tag-princeton","tag-txdot","tag-us-380"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55605,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55604\/revisions\/55605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}