Why don't
developers have to expand roads first?
Why don't they plan for
new development? |
|
|
This page
last updated December 19, 2021 |
These
are seemingly common-sense questions. But in both
cases, like many things in life, while it may seem like there's an
easy,
common-sense fix for it, the answer is really not so easy. This calls
to mind a quote from the American essayist H. L Mencken:
"There is always a well-known
solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong."
In fact,
the explanation is so multi-faceted that I
thought it deserved its own page here instead of being buried in the FAQ
or construction questions
pages.
The
short answer is that there usually is
a lot of planning going on, and developers are
typically responsible for
making some road improvements. It's just that this mostly happens
behind the scenes, so most people don't know it's happening and aren't
aware of the realities and constraints that prevent the
process
from keeping up with new development. This page is an effort to give
some insight into the planning process and constraints. A lot of this
is from a San Antonio perspective, but it applies to most communities
in Texas.
Major thoroughfare plans
While it may not seem like it, transportation planners do plan for new
development. But most of it is rather arcane and wonky, so most average
folks are completely unaware of it. One example is the Major
Thoroughfare Plan. You can see San Antonio's here,
but all sizable cities have
one. Besides designating and classifying existing arterials, which is
required
for state and federal transportation funds, it also maps out the routes
for future
thoroughfares. When a new development is built, if it's on the route of
a planned thoroughfare, the developer is usually required to donate the
right-of-way and/or actually build the section of that road
through their development. The plan is updated every few years.

Snippet of San Antonio Major
Thoroughfare Plan showing existing and planned arterials in North
Central Bexar County
Comprehensive plans
Most
cities also have comprehensive plans, with transportation a key
component. In San Antonio, the current comprehensive plan is the "SA Tomorrow Plan".
These plans tend to be more of a high-level framework or "big vision"
plan, but often drive the more nuts-and-bolts decisions made by
planning
agencies and policymakers. Oftentimes, there will also be subregional
plans for specific neighborhoods and corridors.
Metropolitan Planning
Organizations
All
metropolitan areas are required by federal law to have a Metropolitan
Planning Organization
(MPO) to coordinate and plan the spending of federal and state
transportation funds (Here
is a list of the MPOs in Texas.) Each MPO has to
have a short-term (4 year) and
long-term (25 year) plan that is approved by a policy board comprised
of local
elected officials who are typically appointed by their respective
jurisdictions. Projects in the plans are submitted by the various
agencies in the area, and all
projects in the plans must have a designated funding allocation
(i.e. money budgeted for it) -- this is to ensure
that the plans are realistic. Since needs and
funding levels change often, the plans are updated about every two
years and five years respectively. TxDOT also has it's own short-term
(STIP)
long-term
(UTP)
plans which incorporate and inform the corresponding MPO plans.

Map showing projects in 2022
Alamo Area MPO plans
"Shovel-ready" plans
TxDOT
and many other agencies also have schematics developed ahead of time
for major upgrades that are likely to be needed at some point. For
example, in San Antonio, TxDOT has had preliminary schematics for a
full freeway
for SH 211 since at least 2007, even though such a project is still at
least a decade away even today. Having these
plans help to keep
these projects as close to "shovel-ready" as possible so that when they
are
needed, they can get environmental approval and funding more quickly.
This can be and has been especially helpful
when unexpected funding comes
along, such as federal economic stimulus, air quality, or
infrastructure funds.
Developer plan reviews
Finally,
with regards to planning for specific developments, developers
are
required to submit plans for their developments to the city or county
where it is reviewed for compliance with various laws and policies as
well as esoteric technical issues.
Larger developments typically start with a Master Development Plan,
which is a overarching conceptual plan that then guides the detailed
design of the individual projects within the development. The MDP lays
out the land use, major roads, access and egress points, green space,
and other high-level components. One required
element of these MDPs as well as many smaller standalone projects is a
Traffic Impact Analysis, which will be
discussed in a bit more in the next section.
Developers do pay for road
improvements
As
mentioned in the previous section, when a developer submits their
plans, one of the requirements in most cases is to conduct a Traffic
Impact Analysis (TIA). A TIA analyzes whether the existing
transportation infrastructure in the vicinity can accommodate the traffic projected to be generated by the planned development
and, if not, what improvements would be required to do so. Typically, a
TIA will identify the need for turn lanes, traffic signals, median
openings, arterial extensions, transit amenities, and
pedestrian/bicycle facilities. The developer is then required to
construct any mitigation improvements identified in the TIA, or in some
cases can instead pay an impact fee and/or donate right-of-way for a
planned public improvement. The policies vary by jurisdiction; you can
read San Antonio's TIA requirements here.
For state highways, TxDOT's process and requirements are listed here.
Traffic Impact Analyses don't
determine wide area impacts
That
said, TIAs only capture impacts and require improvements in the
immediate vicinity of the development. (In San Antonio, it's up to 1½
miles away.) The reason for this is that it becomes increasingly
difficult to impossible to
accurately gauge the impacts of a specific development the further away
you go. Furthermore, the new traffic from a single development
several miles
away is usually just a small percentage of the traffic at a
given location, so even if it can be accurately determined how much
traffic from that new development will travel past that point,
it usually would not be enough by itself to require mitigation
based on proportionality (see next bullet.)
Proportionality considerations
Even
in cases
where it can be predicted that most of the traffic from a new
neighborhood will, for example, travel down a single thoroughfare to
the nearest freeway, that one development on its own is not likely to
have the
proportional impact that would require them to foot the bill for a
major road expansion. For example, even if a study shows that traffic
from a new development would likely push an existing busy road over
capacity, that developer can't be made to pay for expanding the road
just because they "tipped the scale"; their development is only
responsible for their portion of the impact. Furthermore, people often
overestimate the traffic
attributable to
any single development (apartment complexes seem especially prone to
this.) Instead, it's
typically the cumulative
impact from multiple developments over time,
and there is no mechanism to go back and retroactively assess
specific impacts back to individual developments that were built well
before contemporary traffic problems arose.
Transportation projects take time
Even
if planners had a crystal ball and could accurately predict
developments and their impacts, it still takes several years before
major road projects can come to fruition-- that's just the reality of
the process. There's the initial study and
scoping, design and engineering, environmental studies and clearances,
obtaining funding, right-of-way acquisition, and utility
relocation. All of that has to happen before the actual construction to
build or improve a road can start. Each of those steps can take a year
or
more, and even though some of the steps are overlapped (see below),
it's still
generally a minimum of three to four years before a major road project
can go from inception to groundbreaking in the best case scenario; six
to seven years is more typical, and longer for the biggest projects. In the meantime, with few
exceptions, developers can't be legally prohibited from
continuing
with their project so long as they have met the local and state
planning and platting requirements. As a result, those new developments
are often well underway or even complete-- and therefore adding
traffic to local roadways-- before road projects can
get
underway. As mentioned earlier, many agencies develop basic schematics
and get preliminary approvals for some foreseeable projects ahead of
time to help shorten the timeline as much as possible. However, federal
transportation planning rules limit the extent to which that can be
done so as to focus planning resources for projects to address more demonstrable needs.

General TxDOT project development
timeline
Public projects can't be built
without a demonstrable need
While
planners do make projections and monitor traffic volumes and crash
history on roads to
try and anticipate where improvements will soon be needed, there
generally has to be an empirically demonstrable need for a project
before it can get
approved and funded. And if you think about it, that's good public
policy. If governments were to build or expand a road based on
theorized future development that never occurred, or if an actual
proposed development ended-up not being built for some reason, and as a
result,
the expected traffic never materialized, that would be a lot of wasted
tax dollars that could have been spent on something else that was
needed. Given that there isn't enough funding for existing needs,
spending those scarce resources on projects that can't objectively be
shown to be
needed really doesn't make sense. Plus, there are the costs for
maintenance of
those resulting facilities. Finally, such a policy
would
be ripe for abuse (i.e. "pork barrel" and "road to nowhere" projects.)
In short, transportation planning is a bit of a chicken-and-egg
exercise, and state and federal requirements to empirically justify the
need for expenditures will always result in incremental and sometimes
disjointed improvements. While not always ideal, this approach is
necessary to safeguard appropriate stewardship of public funds and
ensure a balanced approach to address the plethora of needs.
Texas favors property rights
Finally,
it's important to remember that Texas is a conservative state, and so
laws and courts often favor property owners in disputes with regulatory
agencies. As a result, cities
and especially counties have limited authority to block development.
They can require infrastructure, mainly roads, water,
wastewater,
and drainage, but those requirements must be reasonable and
proportional. Developments that meet established standards cannot be
blocked simply because local officials or residents feel there is too
much growth occurring. Cities can enact short moratoriums on
development if they can demonstrate that new development would
cause a critical shortage of essential public facilities. But these
moratoriums can only last a few months and can be extended only
if the city is making reasonable progress to address the shortage and
it sets a definite reasonable duration for the extension.
As
cities in Texas are now heavily restricted from annexing, more and more
development is occurring outside of city limits either in cities'
extraterritorial jurisdictions (ETJ) or even beyond that. Since cities'
regulatory authority is substantially limited in the ETJ, and since
counties have even less authority to regulate development, the ability
for government to manage growth and for citizens to have a say
in development standards will be even more limited in the
future unless the laws are changed, and that seems unlikely in the
current political environment.
So
I hope that helps to answer the two questions in the title of this page
and shows the immense legal and practical complexities of
transportation planning. Could things be better? Sure, there's always
room for improvement. But hopefully now you understand what the
constraints and pitfalls are and how, while not perfect, there is a
pretty solid and refined process in place to address current needs and to try to plan
for future ones.
Other
sites of interest
|