Anti-Lake Lavon bridge protesters crowd bridge hearing

by Bill Baumbach of The Collin County Observer

Collin County wants to build a bridge across Lake Lavon.

And that's steamed up a lot of residents. Yesterday over 300 local citizens overflowed the Wylie City Council chambers to let officials know they wanted nothing to do with a toll bridge and 6 lane road that is planned to connect Parker Rd in Lucas with SH 78 north of the City of Lavon.

HNTB, a large engineering firm, was selected by the commissioners court to do a study to determine the "preferred right of way" (PDF) for the bridge project. As part of that study, HNTB held a public hearing to get citizen input on the proposed bridge routes. Instead, they got a blast from property owners who wanted no bridge, and especially, no toll bridge.

County officials were quick to point out that any plans to build the bridge were decades away, and commissioner Joe Jaynes told the crowd that since there was no money budgeted for a bridge, it was a near certainty that it would have to be built as a toll road. Jaynes and Commissioner Jerry Hoagland told the crowd that the county had to plan for future growth. County Judge Keith Self, who moderated the meeting, told the crowd that he was opposed to the bridge because he didn't think it would generate enough toll revenue to pay for itself.

Most of those who spoke expressed a desire to maintain a rural way of life on the Branch Peninsula and eastern shores of Lavon. They asked that the county improve existing roads, such as highway 78 and US 380 to handle the expected increased traffic rather than build a bridge.

Several citizens criticized the county for spending over $374,000 for a right of way study designed to plan a route for the new road and bridge. One speaker asked tat the commissioners quit spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to draw colored lines on a map. In 2007, citizens approved transportation bonds that included the money to fund the bridge right-of-way study.

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