Brazos County commission terminates design contract and permanently abandons the east loop highway project

This podcast contains comments from the July 29, 2025 Brazos County commission meeting.Brazos County commissioners terminate the design contract for the loop highway to the east of Bryan and College Station.This follows months of public comments from opponents who live in and near the path of the highway.Commissioner Chuck Konderla's motion was not only to terminate the design contract, but to permanently abandon the project.Konderla also said his motion was not politically motivated because he is not running for re-election next year.18 public speakers who all opposed the east loop spoke for almost one hour before the commission's unanimous vote.Some of the public speakers said cancelling the design contract was only a first step. Still to be done, is to remove the east loop from the list approved by the Bryan/College Station metropolitan planning organization. The MPO's website as of July 29 did not have a posted agenda for its next policy board meeting. The policy board is composed of representatives of Brazos County, the College Station and Bryan city councils, Texas A&M, the Brazos Transit District, and the Texas Department of Transportation. As of Tuesday, there is no future agenda for the MPO policy board's next meeting.None of the members Brazos County commission who unanimously approved terminating the design contract and permanently abandon the east loop project were on the governing body at the time it was included in a November 2022 bond issue.Before adjourning, acting county judge Kyle Kacal said "thank you to everybody for the decorum (and) the ability to work together. And I want to thank all our constables and sheriff's department for being here to help with the crowd. It was unexpected, but (it was) a very smooth show today and thank you all for being here."