New license plate to feature Lone Star State design

After reviewing voters' comments, the Texas Transportation Commission approved the Lone Star Texas design as the state's new general-issue license plate.

The design, which finished first among five selections in a February online vote, features the Texas sky with wide brushes of blue and red, the Lone Star and the mountains of West Texas. The plate design received 455,878 of the more than 1.1 million votes cast.

By law, the Transportation Commission must approve the state's license plate, but commissioners authorized the first online design selection in state history, giving Texans a chance to participate.

Almost 10,000 Texans sent emails explaining why they voted for a particular design, and many of them thanked the Texas Department of Transportation for allowing them to participate in the license plate selection.

Manufacturing of the new general issue plate will begin in early 2009. It will feature seven-character, alpha-numeric patterns.

The new plate pattern is necessary because TxDOT will run out of the current six-digit license plate number combinations by the end of 2008.

"Texas is a growing state," said Rebecca Davio, TxDOT vehicle title and registration division director. "We're home to a thousand new people every day, and that means more cars, trucks and buses on our roads.

"You often hear TxDOT talk about that growth in terms of road capacity, but it affects everything we do, from transit to maintenance to the license plates we all put on our cars."