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TxDOT has increased its estimated cost for five of the new highways it wants to build around Austin to a total of $2.5 billion. This is especially troublesome because Congress has recently cut federal highway funding, and is expected to cut more in the future, leaving a potential shortfall of between $1 and $1.8 billion.
The Statesman editorial board recently noticed that highways are expensive, but sees no alternative to building new highways as toll roads (claiming that raising the gas tax would be politically impossible). Toll roads don't seem particularly popular with the people, but politicians apparently like them, so that's nice.
Here's an alternative that doesn't involve toll roads or raising the gas tax (although raising the gas tax would be great): don't build these new highways. Especially don't build the elevated expressway in Oak Hill at 290 and 71. If anything, the Fix290 plan is much better. Instead, spend the TxDOT budget fixing our existing bridges and roads and bring back funding for trail, beautification and tourist projects. Austin doesn't need any more highways.
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Here's an idea: make the toll road pay for the improvements that will make the toll road valuable (#2 and #3 from statesman graphic), instead of making taxpayers foot the bill for it. Just saved you $1.5 billion! I'm on board with improving 183 though (#1), there are way too many lights on the way to the airport.
Of course, some jackass probably made TxDOT legally bound to provide those road improvements to SH-130, or some similarly awful deal.
Yeah let's just keep Austin even further back because the tree huggers don't want highways. There is only so much "fixing" that can be done to current roads. They were underbuilt to begin with so what do you expect them to "fix"? Basically you are for increasing the gas tax but you don't want to pay tolls? I love the new toll roads, it gets me from point A to point B way faster than it used it. To me its worth the extra cost. If anything some of you people SHOULDN'T be using the toll roads because you clearly cannot drive. The problem is not the roads it's the tree hugger hippies around here that is the problem. You want progress but you don't want to pay for it.
"I love the new toll roads, it gets me from point A to point B way faster than it used it."
Getting from Point A to Point B wouldn't have been an issue in the first place if point B wasn't Cedar Park, Round Rock, Hutto, or Buda.
Guest 2, what do you think Austin is "further back" from? I like the idea of moving Austin forward, but building more highways isn't going to move Austin forward in a direction I would like to see it move. I think increasing the gas tax has a lot of benefits. I think toll roads facilitate new highway construction, but I'm not in the "double-tax" camp or any of that. I don't want to see any new highways, toll or otherwise. I don't consider the construction of endless highways and the resulting endless sprawl to be "progress." I'm happy to pay for progress, but I don't like paying for unsustainable suburban development.
Toll roads >>>> freeways, because freeways, under our old funding mechanism, were a massive subsidy from urban drivers to Circle C residents, Huttoites, et al; and even (especially) from non-drivers to drivers. Big 'contributions' from city/county bonds to these highways were made, and have to repaid by property and sales taxes (which, in case anybody forgot, are paid whether or not you ever drive, or how much you drive).
More here on the urban driver gas tax angle: http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000313.html
The true "double taxation" is how city residents get screwed for the benefit of the people who are living way out there.
If we are to assume that these roads will get built one way or another, then toll roads are far better for people who care about central Austin (who don't, in other words, want to shake down urban residents even more to make suburban sprawl even more subsidized).
"Guest" is onto something.
Damn hippie tree-huggers! with their efforts to keep Austin green and sustainable. They tirelessy and selfishly work on behalf of our city to clean the air we breathe, the water we drink and swim in, and the open public lands for our citizens to enjoy. Someone should put a stop to their "fixing." I want progress that comes in the form of degrading sprawl the likes of Houston or the DFW metroplexes.
Maybe someone on the City Counsel has a brother who owns a horse farm and they can "contract" him to give us all free ponies to ride to work on.
I have driven the new toll roads north of Austin and each one seriously depressed me. Badly designed sprawl as far as the eye can see. I'm with Shilli on this, but if we must build, I agree with Mike that they should be toll roads rather than freeways. I wish people that disagree could just move to Houston or Dallas if they like sprawl. Aren't the burbs pretty much the same, after all?
Toll roads can be an acceptable choice if the proceeds go to paying for the construction of the road and for repair..but TXDOT's proposals are consistently glutenous and poorly planned. Not to mention that they will be turned over to private companies at some point which is unacceptable. There has to be better alternatives, especially for what TXDOT is proposing for the 290/71 split in Oak Hill. That monstrosity gives me nightmares.
Ryan, unfortunately, the idiots who move out there convince themselves they'll be driving into Austin every weekend (and then never do, or worse still, maybe actually do); or somehow convince themselves that they'll be out at Lake Travis every weekend or something.
I wish people that hate sprawl as much as you do, Ryan, would move out to the country or the desert where there's zero growth and zero sprawl - nothing as far as the eye can see. But that's not gonna happen now is it?
Dear last idiot guest:
Of course. Also, those of us who have gotten speeding tickets can't complain about murder, and whatnot.
The problem is that Austin is adding residents at a rapid pace, but not adding capacity at all. We don't need more capacity out in the boonies, which is where all of the highway construction generally has been. We need it in the city. Sometimes it should come in terms of road improvements (for example, adding a center turn lane on 2222 perhaps) but really it needs to come in additional transit choices. Park and rides with express commuter bus routes to downtown (this works very well in Houston), additional bus lines, the prayer of a rail system that would connect Campus, the capital, and downtown...
Expanding the freeways just pushes the logjam a few miles further out, and then the sprawl moves out further, and we repeat the cycle...
That's why we need horses. And camels. And maybe some elephants as well.
Dear mdahmus,
Kindly STFU.
Thanks,
Austin
Yes, I completely agree heyzeus. If people want examples of the results of this repeating cycle, look no further than Dallas and Houston. Which is why I propose people that like the sprawl should just move there. Mike is exactly right, all my friends that live in the sprawl think they are going to drive in for so many shows/dining/whatever and just end up staying in their burb. Maybe Austin can't avoid it, but at least we can try. I think it's a very good sign that all the registered comments on this post seem to agree with this goal to some degree. The least we can do is stop openly encouraging sprawl under the current laws/tax code. Keep up these posts, Shilli, and don't let the anonymous sprawl-developer comments get you down.
Ryan:
You realize that saying that people who "like sprawl should just move to Dallas or Houston" is dumb, right? It's no solution at all, right? Like when someone says a person opposing school prayer should move to Russia? (And you said it twice, so you don't get to claim it's tongue in cheek, either).
I don't think he realizes it. I mean, the dude can't even pick up on simple sarcasm.
Room 710 would like to suggest that the passive, overtly aggressive Guests who seem to know sarcasm whereas the rest of the registered Austinist community apparently are too stupid to figure it out should clearly move out to their own patch of land where they can play with their own asphalt.
My God, all this time, I never knew what true sarcasm was. Thank you for your comments unregistered real estate sprawl developers. I can now live a fuller, more meaningful life.