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Changes are coming for the Union Pacific Railroad switching station near Burleson Street in Kyle and for Farm to Market Road 150.
At its meeting Tuesday, the Hays County Commissioners Court approved an agreement for preliminary engineering services with Union Pacific for the proposed relocation of a switching station between Burleson Street and Kohlers Crossing.The switching station will be moved about 2,000 feet north of Burleson Street in order to avoid interfering with improvements to Burleson Street and to ease traffic concerns about trains blocking crossings in Kyle.
The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization gave the city of Kyle more than $15 million for the preliminary engineering, right-of-way acquisition and construction associated with the project. Kyle and Hays County have since agreed that the county will assume development of the project. According to the agenda item, Hays County has identified $1.5 million for the project in the voter-approved 2016 Road Bond Program.
“This is a huge project for the city of Kyle and something that’s been needed for a long time,” Precinct 2 Commissioner Mark Jones said.
Kyle resident Lila Knight thanked the county for taking on the project.
“Just to go on record, Union Pacific ought to be paying for this, but you know how that goes,” she said.
Knight also spoke on an agenda item that had actually been pulled prior to the commissioners’ meeting. The item was to remove the FM 150 Corridor Study Project between FM 2770 and Interstate Highway 35 from a Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and Hays County advance funding agreement.
“In light of the current TxDOT schedule for environmental clearance, and development projects and other major activities along the proposed corridor and occurring in the county and city of Kyle, the county has determined that it is in the best interest of the county to accelerate the development and construction of a facility that would fulfill the purpose and need of the FM 150 Corridor Study project from FM 2770 to I-35 as proposed,” the agenda item read.
Knight said she has been to numerous meetings about the road over the past five years.
“I’ve not been supportive of the road, but over the course of five years I’ve come to accept it,” she said.
The possibility of the county taking over the project raised numerous questions for her, Knight said, including what the alignment might be, whether there will be an environmental impact study, how the road would be constructed, how much it would cost and what the standards would be.
“I don’t know what your alignment might be, and the prospect of starting again … is just a nightmare, because I’ve seen my neighbors sweating over whether this new road would go through their front yards or cut through their property,” she said.
Hays County resident David Crowell also spoke about the project and said he was concerned about the origins of the project and the reasons why the county might want to speed things up.
