No loop?
Plan for US 79 relief route has been in trouble for a long time

By Mike Brown
Reporter Editor

The “news,” if it actually qualifies as that, this week from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is that there’s no money in the foreseeable future for the US 79 loop around Rockdale.
 That shouldn’t come as a big surprise. Virtually the same thing was said, in much less direct words, at a public meeting in Rockdale’s Patterson Civic Center back in January. At the time TxDOT said it was meeting with state officials.
 The project has been in trouble for a very long time. Originally, the loop was envisioned as a four-lane divided affair, much like Taylor’s. That was shrunk to two lanes with plans to widen it to four once—the magic phrase—“funds become available.”
 Then TxDOT showed up at a Milam County commissioners meeting asking if commissioners thought it was a good idea to make the two-lane loop a toll road.
 They didn’t.
 That was a tip-off the money just wasn’t there.
 It’s still not and TxDOT, which, to its credit, is being quite honest about this, knows it’s still not there.
 In fact, no one from TxDOT has ever actually said funds would become available in year X, with land to be acquired in year Y and construction in year Z.
 Two and one-half years ago TxDOT floated a 2011 construction date but that was based on some assumptions (guesses) about state and federal funding becoming available.
 It didn’t. Still hasn’t.
 TxDOT isn’t totally closing the door on the project as now envisioned, a two-lane, non-tolled road of just over eight miles looping north of town. They want to see what the Texas Legislature might come up with next year.
 But if the highway department can’t see this project becoming a reality in about the next 10 years, their next step might well be to return Milam County’s “up front” matching funds and say “let’s start all over again in another generation or two.”
 No right-of-way has yet been purchased.
 The Legislature will gather in January, 2009. Maybe we’ll know something definite a year from now. Until then, the loop remains where it’s been for quite a while.
 In trouble.