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November 19, 2009
Council gives go-ahead to U.S. 290/MoPac flyover project
The Austin City Council this morning unanimously approved an agreement with the state to build two more flyover bridges at the U.S. 290/MoPac Boulevard interchange. Construction should start by May, if not earlier, city and state officials said.
The project, which should take about a year to complete, includes building a flyover from northbound MoPac to eastbound U.S. 290 and another from westbound U.S. 290 to southbound MoPac. TxDOT, when it built the two existing flyovers about 20 years ago, had built the beginning sections of both of the missing bridges.
City officials say they expect that about 18,000 vehicles a day will use the two new bridges, and that drivers would save three to five minutes on each trip by using the bridges and avoiding ground-level traffic lights.
The city will borrow $13 million using what are called “certificates of obligation,” which unlike general obligation bonds do not require voter approval. Then, over the next 10 to 15 years, the Texas Department of Transportation will pay the city 80 percent of that original construction cost. The city will also pay between $2 million and $3 million of interest on the money it is borrowing, so its total expenditure in the end likely will be about $5 million.
The arrangement, authorized under state law in 2003, is called a pass-through toll agreement. Under those, cities or counties front money for improvements on the state highway system that TxDOT doesn’t have the money to get done, then are paid back for much of it based on how heavy traffic is on the new or improved road.
Williamson County, Hays County and the City of San Marcos had done pass-through deals with TxDOT several years ago, but the City of Austin and Travis County until now had declined to participate in the program.
Today’s approval of the deal, Austin City Manager Marc Ott said, is “a new signal about the kind of working relationship we and TxDOT expect to have going forward.”
TxDOT Austin district engineer Carlos Lopez said that only minor adjustments to existing environmental documents are necessary, and that the project could start even earlier than the May target.
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November 10, 2009
City looking to hear your transportation "issues and aspirations" tonight and Thursday
OK, we’ll admit we missed the deadline to tell you about the first couple of meetings last night. But tonight (Tuesday) and Thursday you can still come forward and talk to city transportation folks about gaps and bottlenecks in the city’s system of getting people around. It’s part of the city’s effort to create a “strategic mobility plan.”
Here’s the meeting schedule, minus the Monday meetings you missed already:
- November 10 at 7:30 am — St. David’s Episcopal Church — PLEASE NOTE: Because of construction on Brazos Street, many bus routes that serve St. David’s detour along Congress Avenue. If you are unsure of your route, please contact Cap Metro at 474-1200.
- November 10 at 6:00 pm — Bowie High School (Cafeteria)
- November 12 at 6:00 pm — Reagan High School (Cafeteria)
- November 12 at 6:00 pm — Travis High School (Cafeteria)
To read the full city release on the forums, go here.
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September 23, 2009
Two area road projects likely to get TxDOT OK
Two Central Texas road projects that have been on wish lists for years are likely to get the go-ahead Thursday from the Texas Transportation Commission.
The commission will vote to authorize negotiations on 10 “pass-through” agreements with cities and counties, including with the City of Austin, on two additional flyover bridges at the MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1)/U.S. 290 interchange. City officials have said building the two flyovers would cost about $16.2 million, a relatively low figure because ramps for the two bridges were built years ago and left waiting for more funding. An earlier estimate by city officials had had the cost of the flyovers at abotu $20 million.
Under pass-through agreements, a local government pays the entire cost of the project up-front, and then is reimbursed for much of the construction cost by TxDOT over the next 10 to 20 years. In this case, TxDOT would pay the city $13 million, or about 80 percent of the cost.
The two flyovers would be from northbound MoPac to eastbound U.S. 290, and from westbound U.S. 290 to southbound MoPac. The interchange currently has two flyovers in place: southbound MoPac to westbound U.S. 290 and eastbound U.S. 290 to northbound MoPac.
The other project is in Williamson County. The county has long wanted to connect RM 620 to the Texas 45 North tollway, cutting across undeveloped land on the Robinson Ranch. RM 620 has heavy traffic during rush hour, fed by neighborhoods in west and northwest Round Rock, vehicles that have to go west on RM 620 and then either double back on the Texas 45 North tollway or continue west to Parmer Lane. Other commuters head east and take Interstate 35.
By extending O’Connor Drive south and connecting with ramps to the tollway, many of those drivers would have a more direct path into Austin.
The transportation commission will consider an item to doll out money from Proposition 14 bonds to various projects around the state, including about $37 million for the Williamson County project. Proposition 14 bonds are backed by future proceeds from the state gas tax.
The county would kick in another $15.7 million from property tax-backed bonds approved by county voters in 2000. And the project assumes that another $5 million would come from money already allocated to the project by the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board.
O’Connor between RM 620 and the tollway would be a four-lane divided road. There would be exits and entrances added at Texas 45 North, just to the west of the tollways interchange with the Loop 1 toll road. And frontage roads would be added alongside Texas 45 North in that interval.
Bob Daigh, the former Austin district engineer for TxDOT who is now Williamson County’s infrastructure director, said although environmental clearance is not yet complete for the project (and thus no right of way for the O’Connor cut-through has been purchased yet from the owners of the Robinson Ranch) construction could begin on the project by late next year.
The five-member transportation commission are expected to vote on the pass-through and Proposition 14 items at its Thusday morning meeting.
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July 14, 2009
New Pflugerville-area roads opening Wednesday
Getting to Pflugerville and other northeast parts of the metro area will get easier Wednesday. Officials will cut the ribbon on a new section of Heatherwilde Boulevard, between Howard Lane and Wells Branch, and on a new stretch of Wells Branch between Heatherwilde and Tudor House Road.
Closing the gap on Heatherwilde will make it possible to take that road all the way from Parmer Lane in North Austin to Round Rock, where it changes names to Red Bud Lane. And the new stretch of Wells Branch will add an east-west option for getting to Dessau Road and the east side of Pflugerville, likely taking some traffic off of congested Pecan Street.
The ribbon-cutting for the $12 million Travis County project begins at 10 a.m. and thus both stretches of road should be open by noon or so.
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July 6, 2009
CATC, roadbuilding advocacy group, is no more
The Capital Area Transportation Coalition, formed 11 years ago to push for road building in Central Texas, closed its doors June 30. Bruce Byron, the group’s “first, last and only (and arguably the best) executive director,” (as he put it in a goodbye message to members) has gone into consulting.
Fundraising had become a problem, Byron said, and other organizations have arisen to take on CATC’s functions.
“It was getting harder and harder to raise money with (local business leader) Gary Farmer vacuuming the backseats of every car in town” for money for economic development, Byron said, going on to note that he has no quarrel with that. Many of the same people in the business community would be tapped for both needs and in a down economy, Byron said, it was getting hard for them to sufficiently support the coalition.
And he said the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, created in 2002 and now operating one toll road (with others on the drawing board), has to a great degree taken CATC’s role. Similarly, Take on Traffic, a Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce advocacy vehicle for roads, is doing what CATC was created to do.
“CATC wasn’t created as a permanent organization,” Byron said. “Its claim to fame was to get the toll roads up and running, and that’s been accomplished.”
The Web site for the group, still active Monday, listed 56 members, including a number of engineering companies, realtors, banks, title companies, law firms and Dell Computer Inc.
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June 15, 2009
Lane of Cesar Chavez to close because of sewer repair
Repair of a 21-inch sewer main underneath Cesar Chavez Street will force the closure of a westbound lane on the street between Interstate 35 and Colorado Street over the next week, city officials say.
Westbound traffic will have just one lane in different sections between Tuesday morning and June 23. Both eastbound lanes will remain open through the week, officials said, but left turns on Trinity and Red River streets will be prohibited at certain times.
The city is making the repair by using manholes to insert a liner containing a resin into the pipe. Then the liner and resin will be given time to cure, sealing cracks or other leaks, said Jill Mayfield, a spokeswoman for the Austin Water Utility. Normal sewer service will be maintained through the period, the city said, by diverting flow through a temporary pipe.
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March 16, 2009
City to jump-start road projects
In what amounts to a City of Austin economic stimulus initiative, the city will accelerate $69.1 million of spending on Austin street projects, City Manager Marc Ott said today.
In total, the city plans to begin about $103.7 million of road work within the next 18 months, Ott said. Some of the projects could begin as early as late spring, officials said.
The city would pay for them using bonds approved by voters in 2006, money promised by Capital Metro several years ago, revenue from the transportation fee Austinites pay in monthly utility bills and federal grants (which are not part of the federal stimulus package). In all, the spending should create about 300 construction jobs, the city says.
About $70 million of the spending had not previously been scheduled to begin for at least 18 months. However, many road construction projects around the area are complete, or nearly so, potentially creating a favorable pricing environment for the city.
City public works director Howard Lazarus said that over the past six months, construction bids have tended to be 20 percent to 30 percent below previous prices.
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February 24, 2009
MLK Jr. Boulevard section to see five-day closure
A Capital Metro rail construction project will close a portion of MLK Jr. Boulevard in East Austin for more than five days, beginning at 7 p.m. Thursday. The closure near Airport Boulevard will force drivers to detour to Manor Road.
Capital Metro, in the last stages of building its commuter rail line from Leander to downtown Austin, will be installing two tracks across MLK at that point, as well as a culvert to improve drainage in the developing area. The $500,000 job will run 24 hours a day, spokesman Adam Shaivitz said today.
MLK will be closed from just west of the railroad tracks to Airport Boulevard between 7 p.m. Thursday and 6 a.m. Wednesday, March 4. Eastbound drivers will be asked to detour on Alexander Avenue to Manor Road, and then to Airport. Westbound drivers will have to turn north on Airport, go west on Manor and then return to MLK via Chestnut Street.
Capital Metro is installing a siding track several thousand feet long in the vicinity of the MLK train station, which will allow oncoming commuter trains to pass one another without stopping, or with minimal delay. The agency will also be replacing the existing track as it crosses MLK.
The commuter line is expected to begin service March 30. Full-fledged testing of the trains, using the planned morning and evening schedule, can’t begin until the MLK siding is completed.
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August 14, 2008
Cesar Chavez to close again this weekend
Cesar Chavez Street downtown, which opened to two-way traffic Monday, will close again this weekend to allow installation of decorative brick crosswalks.
The closure, running from east of San Antonio Street to west of Congress Avenue, begins at 6 a.m. Saturday and will end by 8 p.m. Sunday. The closure also includes the South First Street bridge.
The crosswalks will be installed at San Antonio, Guadalupe, Lavaca and Colorado streets. Officials predict at least one more weekend closure will be need to complete the crosswalks, but have not said when this will occur.
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August 12, 2008
Cesar Chavez fix for some, hazard for others?
Austin officials have sold the new two-way traffic flow on Cesar Chavez Street downtown, among several justifications of the $8.4 million expense, as a way to eliminate the long-time “Second Street shuffle,” which has morphed into the Third Street shuffle.
But people going on south on Congress Avenue and looking to head west on Cesar Chavez have faced a harrowing challenge during the 30 hours or so since the road went two-way on Monday. The light at Congress and Cesar Chavez does not feature a left turn-only period for those northbounders who want to go west.
Worse yet, when the northbound Congress light turns red, the southbound light remains green for quite a while. The net effect, perhaps unique among busy Austin intersections, is that someone who has nosed out into the intersection to turn left is then caught there staring at a red light and passing cars.
People who have encountered this since the change have seen several near misses as people attempted to turn left after the light turned red and almost hit oncoming traffic. Others have simply pulled on ahead and used Second or Third to get west.
City traffic engineer Ali Mozdbar said this will be changed, perhaps as early as this evening.
“That should not be happening,” Mozdbar said. “I’m going to fix it.”
It’s less clear, however, if northbound Congress will get its protected left turn. Mozdbar said having left-turn periods for each of the key intersection’s four directions would create a perhaps unacceptably long cycle for Congress and Cesar Chavez. That, in turn, likely would cause synchronization problems at intersections downstream.
Mozdbar said his office will continue to study that possibility and make a decision sometime soon.
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July 30, 2008
Cesar Chavez: Trouble ahead on Thursday
The ongoing (and seemingly endless) construction project on Cesar Chavez Street downtown will force shutdown of the two key traffic lights Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Instead of traffic lights, the intersections of Cesar Chavez with Guadalupe Street and Lavaca Street (flanking Austin City Hall) will be controlled by Austin police officers for those seven hours Thursday. Those intersections are the entry and exit points for the South First Bridge over Lady Bird Lake.
The Cesar Chavez project, which began in November and was originally set to finish by April or May, involves widening the street, improving the hillside over the lake with decorative walls and a scenic esplanade, and — most prominently, making that five-block section of one-way Cesar Chavez into a two-way street. Officials say it will all be done finally in mid-August.
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July 21, 2008
Austin public works department to get new leader
Austin City Manager Marc Ott has reached outside the state of Texas — way outside — to get a new person to run the city’s $68 million Public Works Department.
Howard Lazarus of Trenton, N.J., who at one time was director of engineering and public works for Newark, N.J., will become director of the Austin department on Aug. 18. He will follow Joe Ramos, who has been acting director since Sondra Creighton retired in November. Ramos did not apply for the permanent position, according to the city.
Lazarus’ most recent job was vice president of Shaw Housing Privatization Ventures in Trenton, according to the city.
Lazarus takes over a department whose 517 employees not only maintain city streets, traffic signals and signs, but also do engineering, construction management and inspection services on projects for other city departments.
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June 20, 2008
Construction to close sections of Cesar Chavez, downtown bridges this weekend
Sections of Cesar Chavez Street through downtown Austin will be closed Saturday and Sunday due to an ongoing repaving project. Those closures, in turn, will cause temporary closures of two key bridges over Lady Bird Lake.
The shutdowns will allow workers to remove the top two inches of pavement in preparation for later repaving of Cesar Chavez.
Here’s what to watch for:
Early Saturday morning to midday Saturday: Cesar Chavez closed from just west of San Antonio Street to just west of Guadalupe Street.
Midday Saturday to late Saturday evening: Cesar Chavez closed from just west of Guadalupe to just east of Lavaca Street. The South First Street Bridge will also close during this period.
Early Sunday morning to early Monday morning (before rush hour): Cesar Chavez will close from just east of Lavaca to just east of Congress Avenue. The Ann B. Richard Congress Avenue Bridge will also close during this period.
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June 18, 2008
Chavez Street to get "countdown" crosswalk signals
Austin will see a new traffic signal, and a new type of crosswalk signal, when the $7 million Cesar Chavez Street overhaul is completed in a few weeks.
The city, given the new two-way orientation and added traffic from the apartment tower under construction on Colorado Street at Second Street, will add a new traffic signal at Cesar Chavez and Colorado. That intersection, along with five others along Cesar Chavez from San Antonio to Brazos streets, will have “countdown” crosswalk signals.
Aside from the normal walk and don’t walk symbols (a white walking man and an orange hand), the crosswalk boxes will countdown the seconds once the blinking hand comes on and reach zero when you have to be completely out of the crosswalk.
The city, using money in the Cesar Chavez project, had enough to buy 50 of the devices (most intersections need eight of them) at about $150 apiece. City traffic engineer Ali Mozdbar said that given the city budget situation, it is unlikely that any other intersections will get countdown signals in the near future.
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January 10, 2008
RECA weighs in with its downtown parking proposal
What downtown Austin really needs, according to the Real Estate Council of Austin, is parking. Specifically, RECA President Tom Terkel said as he unveiled the outlines of the plan at the group’s monthly luncheon today, the city needs five parking garages with about a 1,000 spaces apiece on the perimeter of downtown, and shuttle buses making an endless loop to serve those garages.
The executive summary of the plan, in fact, was at pains to say that “the circulator must be a rubber-tire vehicle” so the plan can “be implemented quickly and cost effectively.” The plan envisions a capital cost of $101.1 million and annual operating costs of $6.4 million. The garages and the buses, under the plan, would be built and operated by government, not the private sector.
The idea is that spaces would be offered at half the market rate — which RECA said would be about $75 a month for unreserved spaces, $90 a month for reserved spaces — so that employers would be motivated to rent spaces for workers. That way, under the plan, those workers would take the shuttle to near their work and then walk the rest of the way. The plan, RECA said, would address what it calls a current shortage of 2,500 parking spaces in downtown that RECA predicts will triple to a 7,500-space deficit within five years because of 30 ongoing downtown projects.
One oddity of the plan: The garages, conceptually, are several blocks away from the circulator route. RECA suggests that the garages could be near the Erwin Center at 15th and Interstate 35; near House Park football field at Lamar Boulevard and 12th; in the vicinity of Fourth and I-35; near One Texas Center on Barton Springs Road and South First Street; and on Fifth Street west of Lamar.
But the circulator, again, as envisioned, would run on 11th, San Jacinto, Fourth and Lavaca Streets. So a commuter, for instance, might park on West Fifth or at House Park and then have to walk six to eight blocks just to reach the circulator.
This proposal comes on the heels of coverage in the Statesman today of City Council Member Brewster McCracken’s proposal for a City of Austin parking department that would build and operate parking garages. But the two plans were prepared in isolation from each other.
RECA, which released the executive summary today, will unveil the full plan at Monday’s meeting of Austin Mayor Will Wynn’s rail planning group. And although the summary does not set out the plan as a permanent alternative to a downtown rail system, at least one prominent advocate of rail took it that way today.
State Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Williamson County, was at the RECA meeting and had nothing good to say about the proposal afterward. He particularly didn’t like the circular bus system.
As for the garages, Krusee said tax money doesn’t need to go into building them. He said bonds can be sold to build them. Any available tax money could go, instead, to rail, Krusee said.
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November 8, 2007
Red light cameras get green light
The Austin City Council today unanimously approved installing cameras at 15 intersections to catch people running red lights. The cameras should be in operation within about three months, city staff said this week.
The fine for violations, which would go to the car owner rather than the driver and thus carry no points or insurance consequences, would be $75. People who don’t pay within a month would face a $25 late fee.
The cost to the city during the eight months of the fiscal year that would remain after the cameras are up, according to projections, would be about $850,000, with an anticipated $1.3 million in revenue during that time. That revenue estimate assumes a successful collection rate of about 60 percent, city staff said this week.
The council awarded what could be a 15-year, $15.8 million contract to Redflex Traffic Systems to install and operate the cameras, and do initial processing of the camera images. Police would review the photographs and video footage and decide whom to cite.
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November 7, 2007
Red-light cameras on council agenda
Red-light cameras in Austin, up to now just a possibility, likely will become a reality beginning Thursday. The Austin City Council will consider a 15-year, $15.8 million contract with Redflex Traffic Systems that would put — in the beginning — camera systems on 15 intersections.
Those intersections have not been picked but will be shortly. City officials say the cameras could be in place in as little as three months. That means Austinites could start receiving $75 tickets in the mail in as little as three months and two days.
Austin officials had been playing around with the idea of red-light cameras for the past couple of years and even ran a pilot program with Redflex and another vendor during the summer. The experiment, on two intersections on the Interstate 35 frontage road downtown, involved dummy tickets only and was intended to evaluate the vendors, not the efficacy of the cameras as traffic safety devices.
The two camera setups caught about 2,900 violations in 42 days, or about 70 a day.
Paying late will cost you an extra $25, the city says.
The cameras will catch snapshots showing a violator not yet in the intersection, with the light already red, and then in the intersection with the light still red. And there will also be video of each event, available for viewing on an Internet site that the vendor will set up. Accused violators will get personal identification numbers so they can look at their videos and snapshots on the Web, and they will have the right to protest.
Half of the net revenue after the vendor is paid, under a state law passed earlier this year, will go a state trauma care fund. The rest will go to the city, but under that law (SB 1119) it must be used for traffic safety programs.
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October 16, 2007
Disappearing lane stripes? Nope.
A guy named Ken Whiteside, who describes himself as a “curious daily commuter,” in an e-mail this week had a novel theory:
“Has the Shoal Creek stripe syndrome stuck again?
“A couple of months ago, the stretch of Loop 360 between 183 and MoPac was resurfaced - innocent enough. Several streets in that area were resurfaced that month. All those others were re-striped within days, but the lane stripes on 360 have still not been repainted, although the cross-walks at Stonelake have. Odd in itself that a paint crew went out there, painted cross-walks, but not lanes.
“This is the same way the infamous Shoal Creek stripe debate started in the mid-’90s. Has someone taken this opportunity to rethink how that road is striped? Can we look forward to years of no stripes, followed by years of consulting reports and experimental striping schemes? Crape myrtle islands, perhaps?
“I’ve not witnessed any collisions caused by drifting drivers yet, but have seen a few close calls. But then, these days it’s impossible to know the true cause of lane drift - cell phone, no stripes, who knows?”
I checked with the city, and it appears we are are not suffering from Shoal Creek Syndrome. Jennifer Herber, spokeswoman for the City of Austin Public Works Department, said the city had two separate companies doing resurfacing in the area and thought that one company, which was working on one street, would do the striping on that section of Loop 360 as well.
When the confusion was resolved, the agency got someone out there Monday to do it. The striping pattern, Herber said, will be the “same was it was.”
Keep those theories coming, however.
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October 15, 2007
Islands in the Congress Avenue stream
The city later this week will get into the island-building business again.
This time, it will be six temporary “refuge” islands for pedestrians in the center turn lane of South Congress Avenue, four of them near the Texas School for the Deaf and two near the St. Edward’s University entrance. The idea behind putting them there is that Congress is so wide, the increasing number of pedestrians in the area need a safe place halfway across to wait for another gap in traffic.
The islands — actually just stripes on the pavement surrounded by plastic pylons for the time being — will be in place for six to eight weeks while the city evaluates how they affect nearby businesses, pedestrians and vehicle traffic. The city plans to put the 20-foot-long islands in places that won’t affect left turns onto side streets. Left turns into businesses should be mostly unscathed, although based on an aerial photo provided by the city, it could be hard for southbounders to turn into the St. Vincent DePaul thrift store’s parking lot.
After the trial run with the paint and the pylons, the city will decide whether to put permanent islands at any or all of the places. If they do, the concrete islands would have curb cuts on each side for wheelchair access.
No word on whether they would also have crape myrtles planted in them.
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