Cruz reveals another area where red tape is blocking SpaceX at Boca Chica: roads
In a interview with a local news outlet in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that the state’s bureaucracy is stymieing SpaceX at Boca Chica in another unexpected way, getting the road to the facility repaired and upgraded.
“SpaceX has offered to invest their own money to improve the highway, and the problem is they’re running into permitting obstacles, environmental permitting obstacles that is slowing it down,” Senator Cruz said.
Cruz is the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. There are steps he says he can take to fix these roads, even if it is not something that will directly address the issue. “As chairman of the Commerce Committee, I am very focused on permitting, on reducing the barriers of permitting, on speeding up the ability to do things like improve and expand State Highway Four,” Cruz said.
In a statement, Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Ray Pedraza said, “TxDOT is currently providing upgrades and pavement improvements for the existing SH 4 between Brownsville and Starbase Texas (SpaceX). TxDOT is also working with SpaceX on further planning and environmental efforts to achieve additional widening on SH 4 in the future.”
I think Cruz did this interview to apply some public pressure on the Texas Transportation Department. Hopefully it will get the tortoise moving.
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In a interview with a local news outlet in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that the state’s bureaucracy is stymieing SpaceX at Boca Chica in another unexpected way, getting the road to the facility repaired and upgraded.
“SpaceX has offered to invest their own money to improve the highway, and the problem is they’re running into permitting obstacles, environmental permitting obstacles that is slowing it down,” Senator Cruz said.
Cruz is the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. There are steps he says he can take to fix these roads, even if it is not something that will directly address the issue. “As chairman of the Commerce Committee, I am very focused on permitting, on reducing the barriers of permitting, on speeding up the ability to do things like improve and expand State Highway Four,” Cruz said.
In a statement, Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Ray Pedraza said, “TxDOT is currently providing upgrades and pavement improvements for the existing SH 4 between Brownsville and Starbase Texas (SpaceX). TxDOT is also working with SpaceX on further planning and environmental efforts to achieve additional widening on SH 4 in the future.”
I think Cruz did this interview to apply some public pressure on the Texas Transportation Department. Hopefully it will get the tortoise moving.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I think it was the late, great, P. J. O’Rourke who, in his travels around the world, made this observation. He was in a rural location in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a local consortium wanted to build a factory. They needed a road to that factory. The locals argued back and forth vociferously about the need for a ‘plan’ to build the road. Mr. O’Rourke observed to the locals that they didn’t need a plan, they needed a few dump trucks full of gravel. No, no, the locals said, we need plan!!
O’Rourke later was in China. In China, when a factory needs a road, the local government builds a road.
So, Texas: are you more like Russia or more like China? SpaceX needs a road improved. Go improve the road.
I think the roadbed on Hwy 4 would be far more structurally sound if a number of worthless State bureaucrats were buried beneath it. From the comically awful TCEQ to the equally blundering TxDOT, things would be far better if the bureaucracies simply got out of the way.
One hopes that the New Speaker soon to be elected will bring these bureaucracies up short, and remind them that getting in the way where they don’t belong is often painful.
My county is really good about tearing roads up–then not pave them
It took about a year to replace the road in front of my house. It’s only three blocks long. They did pull everything out – roadbed, water, sewer, etc… – and rebuild from scratch, but still. The big bottleneck was labor. The crews worked hard, but there were rarely more than dozen people out there at any given time.
I just discovered that the bit of easement that they took to put in a suicide lane was important. The plows throw snow onto my sidewalk, now, which means I need to clear it twice. That’s annoying.