Guadalupe County asked to weigh in on future non-connector road to SH 130

Guadalupe County asked to weigh in on future non-connector road to SH 130 Main Photo

21 Dec 2022


State Highway 130, Infrastructure, Guadalupe County

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Cindy Aguirre

(Seguin) — Is there truly a public benefit for Guadalupe County to support the building of a non-tolled, high speed, east west connector roadway between SH 130 and I-35? That’s the question that seems to have resurfaced for the county following a request for such a road by the SH 130 Concession Company. The company is in charge of the operation and maintenance of 41 miles of State Highway 130 between Mustang Ridge and Seguin.

Company officials say they are ready to move forward with the connector road to help support the regional transportation system — a system that they say will promote not only local connectivity but help reduce everyday congestion around this area.

Doug Wilson, CEO of SH 130, recently explained to the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court on why they believe the county would benefit.

“When these projects begin to move ahead, they are going to add additional growth to northern Guadalupe County and the need for high speed east west routes to allow traffic to move off local farm to market roads and into higher capacity traffic arteries has long been identified by local leadership. 2018 Guadalupe County Strategic Plan and the 2019 Regional Capital-Alamo Connections Study both highlighted a need for such a roadway, and it was also part of the 2012 Guadalupe Thoroughfare Plan. No road meeting this need is in TxDot’s 10- or 20-year plan. As it currently stands, northern Guadalupe County is almost certain to have serious traffic problems before the state even begins to consider a solution. Highways of this type take many years to plan and construct. The county will not be able to get ahead of this problem on the TxDot timeline. I want to make it perfectly clear though that I am not criticizing TxDot. They have been great partners for us. They have many demands,” said Wilson.

As for the route, Wilson says that is all still to be determined in detail. The funding, however, has already been established.

“We will work the county. TxDot and other stakeholders to determine the best route and we will plan and design and arrange construction. SH 130 will also pay 100 percent of the cost without any cost sharing, obligation on the part of the county as would normally be the case with a TxDot built highway. Our ability to do this, of course as I said earlier, relies on us extending our agreement with the state for SH 130,” said Wilson.

Wilson adds that this non-toll roadway would not only increase safety, but it would help take the pressure off of all the various arteries that run through Guadalupe County.

“In the current network, travelers seeking to go between I-35 and I-10 or between I-10 and SH 130 or those trying to reach these high-speed arteries from within Guadalupe County have no practical choice but to use SH 46 or local roads such as FM 725 and 1044. This is all true for those trying to travel between SH 46 and SH 123. The non-toll east west roadway proposed by SH 130 would take pressure off of all of these roads, reducing traffic and easing the maintenance burden on the county. This will be especially important for Pct. 2 as regional growth spreads from the north as well as from the south and the west. It’s also expected that this non-tolled road would help to maintain low emergency response times in northern Guadalupe County as population and traffic increase and would generally increase the safety in the county road network,” said Wilson. 

Wilson’s presentation was aimed at receiving county approval; however, it was partially fueled with questions and concerns. Among those raising concern was Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher.

“With all the resistance that we’ve had and the connector road over the years, it always comes back to Guadalupe County. I think we talked about some of those potential routes and what the benefit could be that you could serve some similar purpose just a little bit further north. I understand state legislators and people tied to the governor’s office and other neighboring communities all have a lot of pull but if we are the ones that have to say ‘yes’ to it, don’t go ask other people, right? It’s great to hear what Comal, New Braunfels and the state and Hays County and everybody else wants but everybody keeps coming back to us – (it’s like) hey, we’ve decided all these things and it’s to your benefit now what do you want?’ Well, that would have been helpful to ask us like 12 years ago – not try to ram a connector road down our throat or catch a county judge at a golf tournament to try to get him to unknowingly sign a document, right? Those are the things that I have trouble getting over knowing it’s not the same people that are there, but I had to live through those things the last decade,” said Kutscher.

Kutscher also shared his views on the role that economic development should have in determining this proposed roadway.

“When folks look at roadways and talk about economic development, I don’t think we should be tying those two things together. As elected officials, it happens all the time but when we talk about roadways, I try to separate those two and look at how you effectively and efficiently move people and do that, number one and then that economic development discussion should be secondary. It’s always going to come into play. It’s the nature of the world that we live in. I get it but long term, the internal struggle I have is knowing that without a doubt at some point, there’s going to be a need for more connectivity between 35 and SH 130. I’ve told you if I had my preference, Guadalupe County would look like it did 100 years ago. There would be a lot more cows, a lot less people, a lot of round bales in fields – developers wouldn’t be here. We would have a different situation but that is not the way it is and sitting around wishing it was that way does not help the future of what our county looks like but at the same time, I don’t want to overreach as a county and a court or even myself taking these stances before making these decisions to help facilitate even more of what may not be the best thing for our county and may not be beneficial long term,” said Kutscher.

Kutscher, who has obviously spent many hours outside of this meeting talking about the issue with Wilson, says there are still several questions surrounding this roadway.

“There is a handful of things that have to work in concert, or this is a moot point. If you don’t have the county, TxDot, the MPO, the Concession Company, the legislature all saying the same thing at the same time, there is not going to be a road bill. Then it gets into a conversation after you leave the history and the economic development conversations possible diversion of traffic, all of the county roads that were tore up and the expense of the taxpayer’s (money)– all of those things are separate and apart from – you go, okay? When is the connector road needed and where is the location and to what extent is that going to happen?” said Kutscher.

Even on top of those questions, Kutscher says there’s still plenty of work and planning that needs to take place.

“And I met with Mr. (Clay) Forister (county engineer) talking about a thoroughfare plan and study. That’s been one of the hardest things for me to really consider and kind of switch in my brain because typically with roadway planning, you identify a need based on future travel demand, based on growth projections – you look at that, you identify that corridor, you start obtaining right-of-way through thoroughfare planning, through development, through dedications and then at some point, you fill in the gaps, you find funding, you build the road. This is backwards in a sense from that way of planning where you identify the need long in advance, and you basically find a location and you build the thing right? One of the issues that I asked you I think was and you made the statement with the SH 130 Concession Company not having condemnation authority, ideally your group want to go out and find landowners on a preferred route that agree with that transaction but what happens if you get a majority of them to agree but not everybody agrees. What happens at that interval where you’ve got 50 landowners that you are dealing with but five of them or three of them say ‘no, I’m good.’ What’s the process at that point?” said Kutscher.

Wilson says because they don’t have a condemnation authority, they must evaluate their route.

“That we either go around those three or five or whatever that number is or we explore alternate routes where we can accumulate the right-of-way that we need in order to get the road built. With us, it’s going to be a more collaborative approach than the typical one that you just described where in the extreme, I’m sure the state would try to work through a cooperative arrangement with the landowners but in the end, if they need to condemn, they’ll condemn,” said Wilson.

When it comes to taking the next step, Wilson told the court, “we are not going to do this over your objection.”

“We also need to get statutory relief in order to give TxDOT permission to extend our agreement. That means we have to go through this legislative session, and we need to get senatorial sponsors, get house of rep sponsors and we have to go through that process. If we are successful with that, the governor signs, then we can begin to sit down and have the detailed negotiations with TxDOT – how this works? By then, we will know much more about what route makes sense and then we will have that negotiation and my expectation is that sometime in the fourth quarter of next year, we will be in a position to officially start the development process and in terms of what we need from you all, if we ask senators and reps to sponsor legislation that does this, they are going to want to know whether the county is supportive of this or whether the county is opposed to it and so I think before the legislative session, we are going to need to know the answer to that so we can work with legislators in good faith,” said Wilson

Wilson says the need for the road in the northern part of the county is vital. He says building highways is expensive and takes a lot of time. He says such a connector road is not currently in TxDot’s plans. He says so it’s unlikely that the state will build such a road in 10 to 20 years. However, if they start the process now, he believes they can open a road in five to 7 years.

No official action on the proposed connector road was taken during that meeting.

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