US 69 idea skirts Kountze
By JULIE SHEHANE EDITOR

Brandt Mannchen with the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club from Houston (center) gets information from Santiago Pons with Parsons Brinckerhoff (right) during a public meeting at the Lumberton Intermediate School on April 26. HCN/Mark M. Hancock

LUMBERTON - When Katrina Cook opened The Potato Shack in Kountze earlier this year, she expected to benefit from the new U.S. 69 corridor in a few years.

"I would have had a great location … but if the highway goes around Kountze, I will lose new customers," Cook said. "I'm not happy with that at all."

Cook said she and others believed plans had called for the 55-mile highway to skirt the Southern-Pacific railroad. Texas Department of Transportation officials, however, say that plans for the proposed four-lane, controlledaccess highway have called for it steer around Kountze rather than through it.

Department of Transportation officials showed their plans for the project to a standing-room-only, open-house meeting April 29 at Lumberton Intermediate School-a crowd that had at least one more unhappy resident.

"They don't ask you if they can build a highway through your house," said a woman who customarily identifies herself only as Mrs. Bernard W. Dixon Sr. She said she owns an acre of land on FM 421 that would be consumed by the new corridor.

"We are just rebuilding our house after Hurricane Rita. We've been there for 30 years. It's the last house my (late) father lived in. We don't want to leave."

The proposed highway addition begins near the U.S. 69/96 split, traveling north towards Kountze. Just south of Kountze, transportation department officials call for a "relief route" to go around the west side of Kountze near FM 1293. The freeway-style road connects back into existing U.S. 69 on the north side of Kountze at the intersection of Aline House Road and Jake Patta.

Officials said detouring around the city of Kountze is the best option for the corridor.

"Our best scenario was to leave Kountze alone and bypass it," said the transportation department's John Ritter.

"If we had followed the railroad through Kountze, we would have had to build a bridge over the BNSF railroad and that would have taken out part of Kountze," he added.

Department officials also are thinking of charging to use 20 miles of the new corridor from Lumberton to Kountze.

"We want input from the public on whether or not it's a tollway," Beaumont District Engineer Bryan Wood said in a videotaped statement at the meeting.

While many seemed displeased with the idea of paying a toll, Beaumont commuters welcomed both the corridor and a possible fee to travel on it.

"It used to take me 25 minutes to get from Kountze to the south side of Beaumont where I work, but now it takes 45 minutes and it's worse in the evening," said Jeff Langy, 47, of Kountze.

"I'd buy a toll tag and be happy to do it," said Kountze resident Jim Reed, 48.

Officials said plans call for the existing U.S. 69 roadway to be renamed and widened to five lanes-two lanes of travel north and two south, as well as a center turning lane-from FM 421 to Wheeler Road in Lumberton.

Local travelers would be able to use that roadway from Lumberton to Kountze without toll charges, department officials said. Construction on that part of the project, meant to ease traffic congestion in Lumberton, is set to begin in 2015.

Transportation officials said funding options for the $180 million U.S. 69 corridor project won't be on the table for at least 10 years. The Texas Department of Transportation initiated the U.S. 69 Corridor Study in the spring of 1997, according to information from the department.