The inaugural Southeast Texas Transportation Summit was filled with wonderful speakers, great information on upcoming projects and ended with the take-away that as a region, we need to band together to receive funding for all of our needs.
James Koch, TxDOT, talked about generating a freight village concept, especially near some of the distribution center-centric areas like west of Katy (have you driven by and tried to count the number of bays on some of those buildings?!)
Margaret Kidd, UH, said people are moving to Texas from California to get away from taxes, congestion, bureaucracy.
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20% of our US exports come through Texas headed to one of our 22 ports.
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LNG & chip investments in Texas are huge; hydrogen is next big thing.
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Not all climate change can be controlled; the Christmas tree shortage last year was due to droughts and fires (not supply chain).
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Digital twin proposal for ports with a focus on flooding is in the works.
Charlie Jenkins says Port Houston is the largest in the US—in fact, 50 million metric tons separates the Port from the second largest.
Congressman Dr. Brian Babin, Congressman Randy Weber, and Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia were excellent (courteous, decorous) examples of agreeing and disagreeing and agreeing to disagree.
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The Houston area produces 85% of LNG; 80% of military grade fuel, and 40% of gasoline east of the Rockies; Texas is #1 in wind energy and #2 in solar power; we should balance renewables with fossil fuels.
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The Sabine-Neches is the second longest waterway that feeds into the Gulf of Mexico (first is the mighty Mississippi).
Chuck Wemple, H-GAC, hopes we can soon overcome the hurdle of opposition to tolls.
Ed Emmett and Caroline Mays wrapped up the conference with a spotlight on TxDOT’s continued progression as a multi-modal agency.
Recap Courtesy of: Donna Adams, Atkins Global
BAYTRAN's Board of Directors and members would like to thank all of the panelists and our Regional Partners for co-hosting this summit. We look forward to next year!
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