The Road To Texas: Even Before They Build It, They Are Coming -- August 14, 2016

I've said this before: I just love this country. It is absolutely incredible what free market capitalism can do.

The second thing I've said is that I would brag about wherever I lived. It just so happens that I live in north Texas and so I do a lot of bragging about north Texas.

But when we lived in Boston for four years, I loved it. If I had all the money in the world, I would have a home in Boston, or along North Shore, or at the tip of Cape Cod.

I love California; if I could afford it and had no family ties, I would move back in a heartbeat and a U-Haul.

I loved North Dakota when I was living there and I still do.

One of the best things about the Bakken boom for me was seeing exactly what a real boom was all about. I also got a feel for the cost of infrastructure. I got to see how challenging it was for counties to keep up with zoning. I got to feel the excitement.

I say all that as a preface to this: I don't think folks in Texas know how fast the DFW area is growing. And I know folks outside of Texas have no idea how fast the state is growing.

I saw that for fourteen days straight when I was taking the two older granddaughters to UT-Dallas for computer camp, soccer, and water polo. Sitting at the Toyota soccer field in Plano one day I happened to mention that to one of the fathers waiting for his son to get fitted for a new soccer uniform. He said that 1,000 people were moving into Dallas every day. I assume he meant the DFW area, but whether it was specifically Dallas or DFW in general, that's a lot of folks. One thousand people a day.

I hadn't given that much thought until today's Sunday edition of The Dallas Morning News. Splashed across the front page this headline: Collin County's traffic time bomb. With a huge photograph of a ten-lane divided highway with eight additional lanes of frontage road, the caption: Central Expressway carries more car than it was designed to handle. And some planners worry that Collin County is behind on preparing for a projected doubling of its population.

I didn't even know where Collin County was, but I guessed. And I was correct. It's north of Dallas. Due north. North of Dallas, Richardson, Plano, Frisco, and then McKinney. I may not have it exactly right, but close enough.

Anyway, enough of this for now. For those interested, here's the link: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/transportation/20160812-collin-county-growth-creating-traffic-time-bomb-officials-say-we-have-to-get-moving-on-it.ece.

About 780,000 people live in the county today. According to estimates, that will increase to 2.1 million by 2054. And it could top 3.4 million by 2070 or later.

Picturing that growth over so many decades may be difficult, but the county is already seeing problems.

Just ask anyone stuck on Central Expressway or the Dallas North Tollway during rush hour. Earlier this year, the North Central Texas Council of Governments forecasted that the amount of hours Collin County drivers would spend in congestion will more than triple in the next 25 years.

Another challenge is that there’s virtually no geographic, bureaucratic or political barriers to the continued push north. And the processes for planning and financing the necessary infrastructure can move much slower than the clip at which Collin grows.

“None of them call us; they just come,” regional transportation director Michael Morris said of the continued influx of people. “Collin County is trying to get out in front of that.”

Webb said it’s hard to articulate just how unprepared cities are for the type of growth that is happening in the county.

“I’m looking at things at a regional and county level and cities generally don’t do that,” he said. “They are looking at things in a cycle of five, 10 maybe 15 years. We’re trying to look at a cycle now of 40 to 50 years to really try to figure out where we need to be.”

Toyota was not even mentioned. North American Toyota headquarters has moved from California to Plano, but apparently, according to my wife, the Toyota move has not yet been completed. That alone is driving a lot of the growth in Plano, they say.