Texas appears to be headed for a colossal traffic jam. Some may say it’s already here.

Massive numbers of people are coming to Texas — the San Antonio area alone in the next 20 years is expected to add 1 million more people. Solutions already were needed years ago to relief congestion on the interstates, especially Interstate 35.

But passenger rail has become only a faint, distant hope. Widening I-35 where the congestion is the worst no longer is an option, especially at bridges and in cities. A remaining option may be finding a way to diminish the number of freight trucks on the interstates even as more trucks will be needed for companies selling to more people.

A concept for taking freight trucks off Texas expressways that has been around for about a dozen years recently received a boost.

Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott attended an event marking a memorandum of understanding between the Port of Houston and the Texas A&M University Transportation Institute aimed at building an electric-powered freight shuttle between two Port of Houston terminals.

The shuttle project could do more than just relieve traffic around the busy seaport. It could demonstrate to the freight industry the efficiency of the system and the cost and environmental savings to the general public.

San Antonio someday could become an important part of this revolutionary freight system.

“The Port of Houston will see increasing volumes of container traffic. It is evaluating options to moving containers on a system that is not dependent on roadways, a system that can reduce emissions, reduce congestion and wear-and-tear on roads,” said Stephen Roop, senior research scientist at the Bryan-College Station-based institute’s Freight Shuttle Program Office.

The cost and financing of the Port of Houston freight shuttle project is still under discussion, but the project might see completion in about three years.

Fifty-three-foot freight containers can be loaded onto conveyors that move by electric power on a guideway, or track, along highway right-of-ways. That’s instead of being pulled by trucks on highway main lanes, sparing passenger-car drivers from having to dodge the big trucks.

The system saves money several ways: It eliminates the driver. The system’s cost is only about 10 cents per mile, about one-sixth the cost of diesel trucks. Other savings would be lower emissions and highway maintenance costs, not to mention safer conditions for interstate drivers. Freight can move on the system at about 60 mph, and the system can operate around the clock.

Roop has estimated that taking 15 percent of trucks off I-35 between San Antonio and Dallas could save the Texas Department of Transportation $70 million in annual maintenance costs since the heavier trucks damage the highway more than passenger cars do.

That’s money that could be diverted to needed new-road construction instead of maintenance of existing highways.

“There’s a perennial driver shortage” in the trucking industry, said Nick Wingerter, San Antonio Transportation Association president. “This could be a solution to that,” added Wingerter, who runs a consulting service, Truck Safety 1.

Four years ago, Freight Shuttle International Inc. eyed a 12-mile prototype project at an El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border crossing. That remains a possibility, Roop said. In the meantime, a 95-foot prototype has been built at the institute’s grounds in Bryan, Roop said.

Roop declined to say how much the short prototype cost, but he said it was funded by private-sector investors, some related to the freight industry.

While Houston and El Paso may see small Freight Shuttle System projects, the long-term goal of Freight Shuttle International, a private company established to commercialize the institute’s patents, is a Dallas-Monterrey, Mexico, route crossing through San Antonio.

San Antonio transportation leaders should be mindful of this possibility. The first leg of the Dallas-Monterrey route, for example, could be built along I-35 on the less populated San Antonio-Laredo section.

Roop said that about 17,000 trucks a day travel between San Antonio and Dallas on I-35 in both directions. Between San Antonio and Laredo, the daily number is about 5,000.

“There’s room to put this in,” Wingerter said. But he warned that the Freight Shuttle System should reserve its location rights soon along the I-35 route. “Everyone is vying for the right-of-way,” he said, including the Lone Star Rail project, which technically is planning passenger rail service after being denied use of existing Union Pacific Railroad freight tracks.

Such a freight shuttle system may seem like pie in the sky, but Abbott supports it.

“The Freight Shuttle System is another way that Texas is using emerging technologies of the 21st-century economy,” Abbott said at the event announcing the Port of Houston project.

Interest is running “very high,” Roop said. “We continue to develop tests. We are beginning to have discussions with the Port of Houston on options, timing and feasibility. We will look at other venues and are working on putting in a commercial service.”

For I-35 drivers, the Freight Shuttle System can’t arrive fast enough.

dhendricks@express-news.net