You can't make 2 lanes work.
There was a video of a two-laned toll road in Texas that was posted today on Facebook (video below), to “educate” people on what the Cibolo Parkway will look like if built as two lanes. This seems to have been shared to “calm” our anger that not only did the city get into a horrible deal with TTC, but now TTC backed out of their promised 4-lane road and only plans on building a 2-lane road. The 2-lane toll road, shown in the video, is Texas State Highway 550 near the Port of Brownsville. There are several differences between that toll road and the “Cibolo Parkway” toll road.
These two roads (TX550 and the proposed Cibolo Parkway) are completely different.
TX550 is a project of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority and TXDOT – NOT a privately funded road.
The developers (TXDOT and CCRMA) have actually built roads before.
The project is 4 miles long and cost $44M – at the same rate, the Cibolo Parkway project should cost $77M, NOT $125M.
TX550 includes FREE access roads for adjacent properties. Cibolo Parkway will not.
The road was designed to take truck traffic off of the other roads in the area. Cibolo Parkway, per TTC, will NOT be designed or built to handle truck traffic. Toll Road to Improve Truck Movement Near the Port | Brownsville Herald
CCRMA will maintain the toll portion; TXDOT will maintain the access roads.
The road itself is divided – Cibolo Parkway will not be.
The road itself is 14’ wide, with 4’ center shoulders and 10’ outer shoulders. As of January 30th, the 2 lane Cibolo Parkway is designed to have 12’ lanes, an 8’ outer shoulder, and no center shoulder/no gap between lanes.
TX550 is designed to be a part of a longer toll road that will be built in the future – it will end up being much longer than 4 miles.
Also note, in the video there are no other cars on the road. If this is what we would get in Cibolo, that’s concerning as TTC has stated multiple times they need 6,000 cars a day to make it stay afloat.
Don’t believe everything you see. You can’t make this road a “good” thing, no matter how you try to sell it.
