A SpaceX-built haul road beside State Highway 4 at Starbase comes before the Texas Transportation Commission on Oct. 29, on a list of donations the commission is asked to acknowledge. The company’s entry says the route would move heavy oversized transports off the highway.
The entry sits on the commission’s routine list of donations worth $500 or more, among three dozen others — turn lanes and traffic signals paid for by homebuilders, litter-pickup sponsorships, travel costs for engineers attending a bridge conference. The agenda describes such gifts as ones that help the department carry out its duties or improve access to or from a state highway. Under the department’s own rules the executive director accepts a gift first, and the commission’s vote records that acceptance afterward.
The notice gives no cost, no length and no construction date for the SpaceX road, describing it only as an all-weather haul route parallel to the highway. The state has already committed money to the same road: a widening of about 14 miles of Highway 4, from two lanes to a divided four, is carried at $192.4 million in the ten-year plan the commission adopted in August, the Rio Grande Valley Business Journal reported. Highway 4 runs from Brownsville through Starbase, which incorporated as a city in Cameron County in May 2025, out to Boca Chica Beach.
The rest of the agenda is rules and money. The commission proposes throwing out its chapter on design rules for certain projects and replacing it with eight new sections, proposes changes to two highway sign rules, and repeals a prequalification rule for private partners on toll-style contracts. It also finishes amendments to the state’s traffic control device standards and re-adopts eight chapters unchanged — travel information, toll projects, aviation, public transportation among them — after the four-year review the state requires of every rule.
On money, Eagle Pass asks final approval of a state loan of up to $15 million to rebuild and extend Patsy Winn Boulevard, and the commission takes up condemnation filings on roughly 100 parcels, nearly 40 of them along one stretch of State Highway 31 in Smith County. Public comment comes last, capped at an hour and three minutes a speaker, and the notice says speakers must sign up before it begins.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 10:00 AM, Thursday, October 29, 2026. TRD 2026006250 was filed October 21 at 2:33 p.m.
- Where
- Dewitt C. Greer Building, 125 E. 11th St., Austin. The notice gives only the street address; TxDOT says commission meetings are held in the first-floor Ric Williamson Hearing Room unless an agenda says otherwise.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Transportation Commission — five members the governor appoints with Senate consent to overlapping six-year terms. W. Alvin New is acting chair. Marc D. Williams is executive director.
- Format
- Eleven numbered items, most of them consent lists and reports. One closed session, on legal advice and on the executive director’s evaluation and duties. An open comment period of up to an hour closes the meeting.
- Live video
- TxDOT streams the meeting, starting ten minutes before the gavel, and posts recorded video within 48 hours. A live text feed runs in English and Spanish.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · TxDOT commission agendas
Commission members
- W. Alvin New — acting chair; San Angelo; investor, rancher, former mayor.
- Robert C. Vaughn — Dallas; owner of Vaughn Capital Partners.
- Alejandro “Alex” G. Meade III — Mission; Texas Regional Bank executive.
- Steven D. Alvis — Hockley; co-founder of NewQuest Properties.
- Pat Gordon — El Paso; attorney; appointed February 2026.
TxDOT’s commission page, read October 22, lists New as acting chair, as does the masthead of the commission’s September agenda; neither gives a reason for the acting title. Cities and backgrounds come from each commissioner’s TxDOT biography page. The page states the commission has five members serving overlapping six-year terms, appointed by the governor with Senate consent. New’s biography says he was appointed February 20, 2018, reappointed April 8, 2021, with a term expiring February 2027; Gordon was appointed February 12, 2026. Meeting contact: (512) 305-9509.