Division I Diatribes: A Real Roadblock

Have you been on Interstate 30 lately?

Chances are you have been. I haven’t and for good reason.

How about Highway 380 between Denton and Greenville?

Yep, sure have, and I have seen all I need to see.

So, what does traffic have to do with our transition to being a Division I institution?

Well, here are the statistics.

Over 50% of our alumni base lives in the DFW Metroplex.

Many live on the eastern edge in places like Greenville, Rockwall, Royse City, and Garland.

Many live far west in the mid cities like Lewisville, Carrollton, Coppell, Irving, and Arlington. Freeways are abundant in DFW and 15 years ago, the people building the George Bush Turnpike and the Dallas North Tollway were smart enough to know how much growth was coming and planned accordingly. Now the pressure of over 8.2 million people living among 11 counties is really starting to take it’s toll, and no where more obvious than northeast of Dallas in places like Collin County, Rockwall County, Kaufman County, and Western Hunt County.

Just Imagine having to drive from Downtown Dallas to Commerce on a Friday afternoon for rush hour. I don’t have to because I did it for nearly 5 months back in 2012. It was a nightmare. When I first started driving I thought as soon as I got to Rockwall things would thin out to a nice leisurely drive to Commerce, and it wasn’t. Every year that passed when I drove to Commerce for games, the commute would get longer, the homes would get more prominent, and more businesses would be in number. The area was growing, and still is.

So, in 2012, the powers that be formed a study corridor area called “The Blacklands Corridor” that essentially studied an area stretching from just north of LBJ freeway to just northeast of Greenville. They saw what anyone who drives east in Dallas saw. Growth was coming fast and furious and we needed another road. If you live in Greenville or Commerce and work and Dallas, you only have 3 ways to get from work to home and vice versa. You can take Interstate 30, US Highway 380, or State Highway 78. Just one small problem. I-30 is still only 2-3 lanes max through Garland and Rockwall and then goes back to two lanes through Royse City, Fate, and Caddo Mills. Highway 380 puts you through mindless amounts of traffic signals through Little Elm, Prosper, McKinney, Princeton, Farmersville, and then finally some relief before you get maybe 15 minutes from Greenville. State Highway 78 is vast urban sprawl until you get well north of Farmersville.

Then, the idea of building a limited access toll road that would start at the northeast bend of The Bush turnpike and then run across the far north end of Lake Ray Hubbard, run south of Lavon, South of Nevada, then bend north of Caddo Mills and run right into the northern end of Downtown Greenville merging with Highway 224 and taking you the rest of the way to Commerce. Commerce city managers thought it was a great idea, as did Greenville.

It was those little towns full of McMansions and first time suburban houses that raised the objections. You heard things such as

“We moved here for the quiet!”

“We don’t want to be near a road!”

“We love our country life!

“A tollroad wont make much difference!”

These were my all time favorites because they were so easy to disprove. I remember heading to a meeting in Lavon and having a somewhat contentious but nice conversation with a homeowner in western Hunt County. She said all of the above and my retort was; “This area isn’t going to be quiet in a decade, you will eventually be near a road of some kind, your country life will be suburban, and a toll road will make a huge difference for commuters.” I was right on all 4 counts, your honor.

Another question was about eminent domain, by which the government seizes private property for the wider good of the public. That is something nobody likes, but it was also something that was not necessarily needed. Commerce sits at the end of an old railroad easement. The study area is that very same inactive railroad easement that runs from just west of Greenville to Lavon. Along the way, the route passes through Hunt County via Caddo Mills as well as the communities of Josephine and Nevada. That same railroad used to connect the northeastern Dallas suburbs with Sulphur Springs and eastward, but has been inactive for decades. The pathway is just abandoned open land with trees, overgrown shrubs, brush, and cedar trees. The easement is owned by the Northeast Texas Rural Rail Transportation District, AKA NETEX. In other words, most of the road proposed back then, and even now, does not even sit on a lot of people’s private property. Close? Yes, but not on someone’s actual property. That isn’t to say that an off ramp wouldn’t be on someone’s land at some point. That is the nature of population growth.

Now, the powers that be are looking once again at a toll road not because it is a luxury anymore, but a necessity. Hunt County continues to explode in growth and Dallas keeps surely and and not so slowly creeping further to where Commerce will be enveloped in the next 5-7 years. Write it down.

A toll road would be beneficial for East Texas A&M and Commerce for many reasons. Easier access from Dallas, Recruiting, travel, higher enrollment, and here is the best deal, assuming that a toll road ends just north of Greenville and merges into Highway 224, that would make Commerce a destination, and not just a spot on the map. With dignitaries coming into Commerce and making a gameday drive for us DFW core county people that much easier, imagine the saying that “During the fall on Saturday nights in Northeast Texas, all roads lead to Commerce.”

This is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. Let’s get to paving.