Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Fort Bend considers plan for toll bridge over Brazos

SUGAR land — Garrison Bend County functionaries are studying the possibility of edifice the county's first toll bridge, a construction that would traverse the Brazos River River and supply a new traffic arteria for country motorists.

The survey is only in the early phases with contrivers trying to find if the span is economically practicable and making certain it makes not make more than traffic jobs than it solves.

A new span would do it possible for occupants of the Greatwood development and people who dwell on the West side of the river to drive directly into Sugar Land and beyond instead of having to take U.S. 59.

It would associate University Avenue in the sou'-west portion of Sugar Land to frequency modulation 2759 and the rural communities that are distribute across cardinal Garrison Bend County. Townsend Harris and Galveston counties are the lone other Houston-area counties currently operating toll bridges.

"The issue is, is there sufficient traffic to traverse the river to back up that toll bridge?" said County Judge British Shilling Hebert.


County cut in halfThe Brazos River River splits Garrison Bend County roughly in half. The eastern portion is a aggregation of sprawled suburban pieces of land and metropolises like Sugar Land and Show Me State City.

The western one-half throws Capital Of Virginia and Rosenberg and rural land that includes farming towns such as as as Needville and little crossroads such as Thompsons and Guy.

County commissioners in February authorized the disbursement of $147,962 to Kellogg, Brown and Root Services Inc. to analyze the feasibleness of edifice and operating the toll bridge.

If built, the span would be at the southwesterly appendage of Sugar Land where lodging pieces of land widen almost to the river bank.


Traffic flowing to be studiedDirectly across the Brazos River is a odds and ends of rural and suburban life.

The state is mostly unfastened land, dotted with edifices that include barns, little houses and swanky country estates. A couple of statute miles to the West of the projected span land site is the community of Greatwood.

"We necessitate to begin looking at some other ways to getting across the Brazos," said Garrison Bend County Precinct 1 Commissioner Uncle Tom Stavinoha.

Stavinoha, whose precinct covers the land site of the projected bridge, said the survey could be completed by late July or August.

But Sugar Land Mayor Dave Sir William Wallace said metropolis leadership have got concerns about how the span could impact traffic through that portion of the city.

The span would associate to University Boulevard, a broad thoroughfare that supplies a major north-south axis traffic flowing through what is mostly a concern district.

But the span also would link to Commonwealth Boulevard, a landscaped residential street. Officials worry heavy traffic could have got a negative impact on the vicinities the street serves.

"We just have got a batch of reserves at this point," Sir William Wallace said. "It makes a batch of questions."

The impact on traffic flowing on the area's expressways and streets will be one of the respective issues the survey will consider, said Bill Jameson, adviser for the Garrison Bend Toll Road Authority.

"We will look at all that during the traffic and gross portion of the study," he said.

Jameson said the span will associate up with frequency modulation 2759 on the West side of the river in an country expected to undergo major growing in the adjacent decade.

Planners will have got to see future development when crucial if the span do economical sense.


But will drivers pay?Another cardinal inquiry is whether there would be adequate automobilists willing to pay a toll to drive across a span that would only be about three statute miles from the free crossing of U.S. 59.

Officials make not cognize what the toll amount would be.

"Some people just are not going to pay," Jameson said.

A toll span would have got to pay for itself because the county justice have said he will not utilize taxation dollars to construct a toll facility.

"So if we make a toll facility, we have got to back up it solely from the gross it generates," he said. "Right now it looks debatable to me as to whether the Numbers are adequate to fund a undertaking of that size."

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