Houston Ports Feeling Growing Pains with Greater Traffic

HOUSTON, TX -- The Port of Houston is one of the busiest ports in the U.S., and it is expected to get even busier by 2018.

However, the growing congestion along the port could that could lead to greater opportunities for the Port of Freeport.

Since 2011, leaders at the Port of Houston have been looking forward to the opportunities that would come with the widening of the Panama Canal, but the growth of the petrochemical industry, and the increase in trade has fostered an unforeseen and rapid growth that has manifest in greater traffic congestion.

The Houston Business Journal reported that in 2010, 10,000 trucks per day used the road system near the port.

Five years later, the number of trucks more than doubled to about 25,000 to 30,000 each day on the same unimproved thoroughfares.

With more projects and greater population growth projected along the port,the traffic counts expected to double again by 2018.

“We’re mixing commuter traffic and freight traffic at a level that’s unprecedented, it doesn’t happen anywhere else, not just in Texas, but in the country,” Chad Burke said during Houston Business Journal’s Energy Infrastructure Power Breakfast.. “Unless our region and our state and really even our nation takes notice of that, … we begin to constrict what we can do here.”

Meanwhile, other routes and other ports in Texas could be considered as alternatives in the very near future, and one of those is being led by a group called the Highway 36A Coalition.

Fort Bend County Commissioner Andy Meyers, who serves as the chairman of the 36A Coalition, other members of the 36A Coalition, and Port Freeport, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Texas Ports on May 4 and presented the case that the port is best poised of any in Texas to benefit from the Panama Canal Expansion, thereby establishing the viability for the 36A corridor.

“To reiterate, Port Freeport is the only port in Texas that has both the congressional authority to deepen and accommodate the Post Panamax ships and that is in close proximity to the only rail hub on the Gulf Coast of Texas, in Rosenberg,” Meyers said. “We have been receiving a very high level of support for this project from local governments and others in Fort Bend, Brazoria and Waller counties.”

Since 2007, efforts have been underway to create a new route from the Port of Freeport at Texas 36, into Rosenberg, and build an alternate --36A-- from Rosenberg, and continue north through Waller County to connect with Texas 6, providing traffic routes that bypass Houston to the west.

Phase one of the project, a roughly $460 million development which will widen the existing Texas 36 located on a north-south 55-mile stretch between Freeport and Rosenberg from two lanes to four lanes, is already
beginning to be funded and likely to start construction as early as 2018.

While the southern segments of the project are happening, there are roadblocks to the proposed northern segments that could become Texas 36A

One of those roadblocks is the Katy Prairie Conservancy.

The 501(c)(3) organization, which is dedicated to preservation of land and native species in the region, is hoping the proposed route can be re-directed farther west.

“We are not against development,” Mary Anne Piacentini, executive director for the Katy Prairie Conservancy told the Houston Chronicle. “We are for reasonable growth that accommodates the protection of natural areas; not just because it’s important for wildlife, but because it’s important for people…great cities need great countrysides nearby, and we believe we are that great countryside.”

Another potential roadblock is, or has been, funding.

However, that could change depending on the outcome of an environmental impact study.

Earlier this year, the Highway 36A Coalition was awarded $2 million from the Texas Department of Transportation to conduct a 15-18 month engineering study on the potential environmental and economic impact of the road.

“We are doing a procurement for a consultant to do the study which should begin in 2017,” said TxDOT spokesman Danny Perez told the Houston Chronicle. “The details on how to move forward in terms of financing and other factors would stem from the options provided via the study.”

In the next 10 years, more than 600,000 people are expected to live along the corridor in Waller, Fort Bend and Brazoria counties, most of those in Fort Bend County.

And at the current rate, the Houston region could see as many as 4 million new residents by 2040.

As a result, the population in Waller County alone would swell to about 200,000 residents.

That rapid growth, however, has worried Piacentini, supporters of the Katy Prairie and opponents to unfettered growth in rural areas around Houston, who are concerned that the loss of prairie habitat will affect the region.

“There are ways to meet mobility needs that don’t have to destroy the natural areas that are there,” she said. “I think we need to look at what’s the difference between expanding a road that is already there and building a whole new road.”

Image:Daniel R. Blume via Flickr