Grand Parkway toll rates increase in 2020

New fares approved by the commission without comment at monthly meeting

People will pay a few more pennies to use the Grand Parkway next year, under a toll rate change finalized by the Texas Transportation Commission.

Rates rise annually, pending approval by the commission, which approved the new rates without comment at their monthly meeting in Austin last week. The new rates take effect Jan. 1.

In most cases, increases are 1 or 2 cents at entrances to the tollway — planned as an eventual third ring road for the Houston area — and 2 to 4 cents at main line toll plazas.

In 2012, before much of the parkway was even open, state officials agreed to set rates for each tolling point — where a vehicle passes a sensor — on the parkway. That approval also set a policy in which rates increase 2 percent annually, rounded to the nearest cent.

Those increases add up for many drivers. A trip from interstate 10 in Fort Bend County to southeastern Montgomery County at FM 1314 will cost $12.96 in 2020, up from $12.71. In 2017, that trip would have cost $12.12. A typical trip for a northwest Harris County resident traveling from Clay Road in northern Katy to Gleannloch Forest Drive between Cypress and Spring will increase from $6.24 to $6.37.

Even as people pay more to use the tollway, more drivers are jumping on it, according to state reports. In its latest quarterly report, which includes June through August 2019, monthly use averaged 15.4 million transactions, with a transaction occurring every time a single vehicle passes a tolling point. Transactions for the quarter were up 8.1 percent compared to the same period last year.