Texas Opens New Highway With 85 MPH Speed Limit
This story appears in the Oct. 29 print edition of Transport Topics.
The first highway in the country to boast a speed limit of 85 miles an hour for cars and trucks opened last week in Texas.
The 41-mile stretch — called State Highway 130, or the Pickle Parkway after a former congressman — runs between Austin and San Antonio.
Although SH130 opened to traffic Oct. 24, drivers do not start paying tolls until Nov. 11.
Carriers “absolutely” do not want drivers doing 85 mph, Curt Valkovic, director of driver training at Maverick Transportation in Little Rock, Ark., told Transport Topics last week. “There are so many things that are going on, I cannot imagine human reaction to mechanical things, like steering, like tires blowing at 85 miles an hour, that we want anyone going that fast.”
“Nobody has the training to go 85,” he added.
Texas transportation officials said when they approved the 85-mph speed limit that they first did a study to determine the road was safe for that speed.
In September, American Trucking Associations called on Texas to rescind approval, calling the speed limit “unfathomable” in terms of safety.
Last week, ATA stood its ground.
“What was poor public policy in September is still poor public policy in October, and it will remain poor public policy until either the state of Texas or the private contractor they’ve auctioned off this toll road to reverse course and put safety ahead of profits and reduce the speed limit,” spokesman Sean McNally said.
Most carriers govern their trucks at about 65 mph, said Jason Smith, executive vice president of the transportation division at TrueNorth, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a truck insurance and consulting firm.
“You might find those small operators with their authority may be a little more apt to embrace this,” Smith said. “But I think the companies that are the tried-and-true, good quality, safety-conscious, customer-conscious companies, they probably will say, ‘We don’t care what the speed limit is, we’re going to still run our trucks at 60, 65 miles an hour.’ ”
Braking capabilities at 85 mph are a concern, Smith said. “You look at when a truck’s going from 65 miles an hour to 85 miles an hour . . . the braking distances, you’re talking hundreds of feet.”
Houston Chronicle reporter Vianna Davila learned that firsthand when she drove on the newly opened road.
“I didn’t realize how fast 85 mph really is until I started passing everyone else on the road, or when I suddenly had to slow down,” Davila wrote.
Greg Feary, president of Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary, a law firm that represents truckers, said 85 miles per hour is not automatically unsafe.
“The environment has a lot to do with the safety — is it raining; is it cold; is there distraction?” And driving in open spaces like those in Texas or Wyoming is different than driving intra-city on interstates, he said.
However, if a state allows 85 mph “without regard for . . . environmental conditions, you start to get concerned that drivers get more distracted by the environment and, as they’re going faster, they have less reaction time and that becomes a big problem,” Feary said.
SH130 is the first toll road in Texas built by a private consortium that will operate the highway and collect the tolls, although the state retains ownership of the road.
Under its 50-year contract with the developer, in exchange for approving the 85-mph speed limit in August, the state received $100 million.
On the new road, heavy trucks will pay $24.58 to run the 41 miles providing they have a TxTag, the state’s electronic tolling device. Cars with tags will pay $6.17.
Drivers without tags will be mailed bills that, under the development contract, cannot to be more than 33% higher than the base rates.
In all, the SH130 toll road is 91 miles long, but the state built the northern portion, which it operates and collects the tolls there. The southern portion was completed by a private consortium led by the Spanish company Cintra and San Antonio-based Zachry American Infrastructure.
