R-2008-09 Federal Funding Assistance for State Highway 146

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WHEREAS, the famous "Spaghetti Bowl," a complex of several thousand miles of pipeline connecting 200 chemical plants, refineries, salt domes and fractionation plants is located in the Houston Bay Area along with four Ports that make the petrochemicals accessible to the world: and WHEREAS, the Houston Bay Area is home to 43 of the nation's 144 publicly traded oil and gas exploration and production firms, including 10 of the top 25; six of the remaining 15 have subsidiaries, major divisions or other significant operations here with a crude operable capacity of 4.015 million barrels of refined petroleum products per calendar day: 83.3 percent of the Texas total and 24.4 percent of the total for the United States thereby controlling 56.6 percent of the oil pipeline capacity of the United States and 72.8 percent of the natural gas pipeline of the United States; and WHEREAS, the expansions of the Port of Houston Bayport facilities is resulting in an unprecedented construction of additional enormous distribution centers which, in addition to the widening improvements to the Panama Canal is projected to significantly escalate beyond existing capacity along with increasing truck/freight congestion due to the effects of growing cargo and goods demand (both imports and exports); and WHEREAS, with the demands that extreme economic growth is making on the current transportation infrastructure system, the cargo in Houston airport facilities as well as the Port of Houston is expected to triple in the next 17 years, thereby escalating the need for additional railroad expansion in order to provide adequate service and meet the needs of the region; and WHEREAS, all of these facilities are of great national and regional significance and damage to or destruction of which would severely handicap the economy of the entire nation and the protection of the lives of the individuals in the Houston Bay Area who labor to keep these facilities functional is of great import in continuing their operation; and WHEREAS, immediate operational and safety improvements are needed on vanous transportation facilities to remove bottlenecks, to reduce unacceptable accident rates, and update outmoded designs in order to accommodate the size, weight, and operational characteristics of current truck and two major rail operations, that are significantly contributing to rapid pavement deterioration, and WHEREAS, an ever increasing number of trains and trucks traveling to and from the Ship Channel refineries, other industrial businesses in the Houston Bay Area, the Ports of Galveston, Texas City, and Houston's Bayport and Barbour's Cut utilize roads and rail lines with numerous at-grade crossings that pose increasing potentials for train/truck collisions and cause increasing delays to all vehicular traffic; and WHEREAS, many evacuation routes serving the area have repetitively been subjected to considerable flooding including SH 146, Red Bluff Road, and BW 8 service roads, and the Texas City Wye (I-45/SH 146/SH 6 interchange), has caused unnecessary delay during emergency events and pavement deterioration requiring significant reconstruction; and WHEREAS, the safety and security of this area is of national significance the enumerated aforementioned factors but also the impending need for military mobility to deploy personnel and equipment needed to support the United States involvement in the global war on terror as well as the existing and projected rail cargo arriving and departing from the refineries and ports along the Ship Channel and Galveston Bay.