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Katy Insider

Could Grand Parkway (finally) be expanding south?

For all my fellow Katy-ites wistfully watching the Texas Department of Transportation push the Grand Parkway further and further north while generally forgetting that anything south of Rosenberg exists, you might be in luck.

Our neighbors to the south in Brazoria and Galveston Counties are getting louder about the slight, with lawmakers now pressuring TxDOT to pump the brakes on northern toll expansion and focus on moving the projects south, our transportation reporter Dug Begley writes.

There are obvious commercial benefits to fleshing out the southern part of the Grand Parkway -- shipments coming into the Gulf of Mexico would have a convenient route to major thoroughfares like Interstates 45, 59 and 69. Selfishly, however, I'm just loving the idea of having a faster shot to the Gulf.

Can you imagine casually popping in the car because Galveston's water just randomly turned blue and getting there in half the time? Sounds good to me.

What are your thoughts on expanding the Grand Parkway southward? Is it time for TxDOT to focus a route to the Gulf of Mexico, or are we better off pushing north? Email me at claire.goodman@chron.com.

Claire Goodman
Katy reporter
claire.goodman@chron.com

Need to know

The Astros are once again playing the New York Yankees for a spot in the World Series, and there are plenty of places around town to watch the games.

Shout out

Cheers to Katy ISD for being one of only 59 school districts across the state to be recognized with the 2022 District of Distinction Award by the Texas Art Education Association. The district earned the award for providing a well-rounded education that integrates a visual arts curriculum that inspires creativity and builds social-emotional learning to connect learners to their community and beyond.

For the 2022 award, Katy ISD was among more than 1,000 other districts eligible to apply. Each district submitted documentation that met a 14-point rubric over the 2021-2022 school year.

One last thing ...

IKEA, best known for its total-assembly-required furniture and excessive use of umlauts, is now using self-driving trucks to make deliveries in Texas, my colleague Megan Munce reports.

The goal is both to reduce the typical strain of long trips on truck drivers while also improving road safety. The autonomous trucks never speed or weave in and out of traffic, the company says, and each truck contains a monitoring system that can tell when a sensor is damaged, when tire pressure is too low or when the truck encounters another condition that makes autonomous driving unsafe.

There is no word yet as to whether or not the trucks arrive pre-assembled or if employees have to put them together using only an Allen wrench.