Crystal Brown
cbrown@weatherforddemocrat.com
Hudson Oaks city council members discussed the future of the Texas Department of Transportation pass-through tolling project during a workshop session Thursday night.
The council took action to move forward with the project during their October meeting, but due to a limited window to take action on accepting the funds, were not able to discuss the project in detail.
“We want to make sure that before we get to the next phase of this and have to take any form of action that we do have the opportunity to discuss this with you in more depth,” said City Administrator Sheri Campbell-Husband.
Director of Operaions Patrick Lawler said the city is still negotiating with Parker County for an agreement to contribute financially to the project. The county has already dedicated $700,000 in bond funds toward the project.
“But we want to split the debt services 50/50 with them,” Lawler said. “We are moving forward on that, not backward.”
He said this is the first time two entities in the county have discussed partnering on a project like this.
“We’re taking our time and the county is taking their time to digest this,” Lawler said. “It’s a big deal.”
The project will include work at the on Lakeshore Drive, the Interstate 20 frontage road and an exit ramp.
Thursday’s workshop addressed questions council and community members posed to Lawler at the last council meeting:
n Developers will pay for access to the new roadways.
n TxDOTs standard for urban access roads is three lanes. In order to reduce that to two lanes and save on construction costs, the city would “need to prepare an engineered traffic analysis to determine the future traffic demand,” stated a city report. Engineers believe the traffic count will be to high to reduce the number of lanes and the cost to conduct the study would cost $30,000 to $40,000.
n Debt payments will start after the project construction starts and continue for a period of 10 to 14 years. As TxDOT begins paying back the city in 2013-2014, the debt service cost will decrease.
As a pass-through tolling project, TxDOT conducts traffic counts on the new roadways and pays the city based on the road’s usage to reimburse the entity for construction costs. TxDOT will pay 42 cents per vehicle up to 5,200 vehicles per day for a total annual maximum reimbursement of $797,160. The total construction costs the city is eligible to be reimbursed for is $9.9 million.
Lawler said the city is currently seeing 4,200 cars a day on their main thoroughfares.
“I don’t think we’ll have a problem reaching 5,200,” he said.
Construction is projected to take place in an 18-month window starting September 2011.
In other business the council:
n Reminded the community that Thursday and Friday, Nov. 26 and Nov. 27 are city holidays as well as Dec. 24, Dec. 25 and Jan. 1.
n Discussed social media used by the city and the implementation of a city Facebook page to better network with the community.
n Cancelled the December regular council meeting.
Local News
November 20, 2009
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