We have a road in our county that is a county road but it has been closed by the commissioners court several years ago. Now a land owner along the closed road has requested that the road be reopened due to access problems (landowner trying to sale the land but cannot sale it without the road open due to lack of access). Can the commissioners court approve the closed county road to be reopened under Section 251.051 of the Transportation Code? Is there any other action that the court would have to take to open the road besides placing it on the agenda and approving of its reopening?

I think this will be somewhat like opening the proverbial can of worms. If the road was, in fact, "closed", the land reverted to the abutting property owners and is no longer county property. Before "opening" the road, I thinkg the commissions will have to obtain the land, have it surveyed, and jump through all the hoops of acquiring a new road.

A short cut - and cheaper for the county - would be for the landowner(s) involved to restore the road to county specs, then dedicate it to the county, and allow the commissioners to formally accept it.

Of course you must not assume that the County actually closed the road in accordance with the statute. I would not be surprised by a failure to perform such a procedure.

I agree with Lisa and Ray. If your Commissioners Court properly closed and abandoned the road, the right of public access ended and the land reverted to the adjacent landowners. More than likely, the closure / abandonment was flawed. Did the landowner who now wants the road reopened object to its closure? (As I echo Lisa and Ray's comments, I hope you are realizing how we all face the same issues.) If you want to discuss this in more detail, please feel free to call me in Lubbock at (806) 775-1112. Our Commissioners have abandoned several roads since I came here. I have my fingers crossed that we have done it properly. We have never tried to re-open a road, but now that you raise that possibility, we will probably need to do it next week. Good luck.

Thanks for your advice on this matter. I did a search of the commissioners court minutes for the year (and years before and after) that the road closing was suppose to have happened. As Ray suggested, there was a flaw - it was never brought before the commissioners court. The �road closing� was what several people remember to have happened but it never did.

"Surprise Surprise" - - - why am I not surprised?! At any rate, if you can determine the true current status of the road, you should be able to help the commissioners.

If I can assist, call or e-mail me!

For what it is worth...

Because there is very little guidance (that I have been able to find) with regard to closing a road, we go through some pretty elaborate procedures. After a vote by the Commissioners which indicates an intent to close a road, we notify each adjacent landowner of the intended closing and ask that they file a written objection. We also give them a consent form, although few have ever returned it. We then barricade the road for about a month, with a big notice stating that the Commissioners will vote to close and abandon the road in, usually, 30 days, and we indicate the date, time and place of the meeting where they will take action. We then make it an agenda item and post it with the rest of that week's agenda. If there is a particular landowner that we are concerned might challenge us, I usually send his commissioner out to talk to him and get a written consent. Finally, the Commissioners take a vote and issue an order closing and abandoning the road, which we put in their minutes.

That being said, our bigger problem concerns determining ownership when we have nothing to show how we acquired a road in the first place. As I believe is the case with most rural county roads, most of our were acquired by implied dedication. Maybe we need a new discussion thread concerning these issues. If there is any interest, I would be happy to post some of our recent problems and solutions.

john, procedures to close county road are in statute...can't remember if it's govt code or transp code (I'm not at office now). They are a lot less strenuous that what you are doing.

Our comms don't like to close roads because as I understand it they are funded based on miles of CR they maintain.