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Two lanes of frontage road at crash site to open
Two of the three closed frontage road lanes opposite the building damaged in the Feb. 18 plane crash will open this evening after rush hour, said John Hurt, spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation.
Hurt said that the inner lane of U.S. 183’s southbound frontage road will remain closed indefinitely in the area of the Echelon I office building, which had fire damage and a gaping hole torn in it when Joseph Stack flew a private plane into it 10 days ago. Officials have since determined that the building remains structurally sound and can be repaired. But the Internal Revenue Service, which has auditing operations there, has been busy since removing critical records from the building.
Hurt said that officials with the building and the IRS believe that both repair and document operations can proceed with two of the lanes open. Keeping the inner lane closed not only will protect passing cars but will also provide room for equipment needed for the repair, Hurt said.
There could be times in the coming months, Hurt said, when all three lanes would have to be closed overnight for repair work on the building. But such closures, Hurt said, would begin no earlier than 8 p.m. and end by 5 a.m.
The frontage road had been closed since the crash from just south of Loop 360 to near where it merges with Jollyville Road south of the Echelon office complex.
For complete coverage of the plane crash, click here.
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Council non-committal on downtown rail plan
Austin City Council members took a wait-and-see stance today on the expanded downtown rail plan unveiled this week by city staff.
They’ll wait for specific answers about the costs, and proposed ways to pay for what would be light rail or streetcars lines throughout downtown, then see if it makes sense to put rail bonds before the voters. But they emphasized that such a plan, if voters do get to see it this November or sometime later, would also have road and trail projects.
The city transportation department will present more details on the rail plan in late April, including costs, and a financial plan April 29. For now, at least, the council is scheduled to vote May 27 on its preferred route and how to pay for it.
The council by law may call an election no later than 70 days before election day, the city clerk’s office said today, meaning that the council by its Aug. 19 meeting would have to decide whether to put transportation bonds on the November ballot.
“We either have good answers, or we don’t” at that point, Mayor Lee Leffingwell said. “If we don’t have those answers, we won’t go ahead. We’re not going to put forth a proposal that’s not fully cooked.”
The “urban rail” plan released Wednesday was more extensive than a single-route plan that had been on the table for several years. Instead, the plan shows two north-south routes through downtown connected by two east-west lines. The rail line would run from the Mueller development in East Austin, pass by the University of Texas and the Capitol complex, then feed into a rectangular route formed by 17th and 18th streets on the north, San Jacinto Street and Congress Avenue on the east, Fourth Street on the south, and Lavaca and Guadalupe streets on the west.
It would continue across Lady Bird Lake to Riverside Drive and then to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, but for now city staff has not recommended an exact spot for crossing the river.
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Bike boulevard forum tonight
As a reminder, here’s the city press release on tonight’s Nueces Street bicycle boulevard forum:
For Immediate Release
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Wednesday open house for Bicycle boulevard traffic impact study
Stakeholders for the proposed bicycle boulevard will get a chance to see results of the traffic consultant’s study at an Open House hosted by the City of Austin’s Neighborhood Connectivity Division on Wednesday evening.
Open House - Traffic Impact Analysis Report
6 - 8 p.m. Wednesday Feb. 24, 2010
Pease Elementary Gymnasium
1106 Rio Grande Street, Austin
The Public Works Department recently hired HDR Engineering to perform a traffic impact analysis for the proposed facility.
The Open House will give people an opportunity to study and explore the data discovered by the traffic consultant’s study. There will be informational posters placed around the gymnasium, with comment cards available at each display. Staff and consultants will also be on hand to answer questions about the technical concerns of the report.
This open house will create an interactive and personalized experience for interested stakeholders.
Initial study findings show that forecasted traffic conditions in downtown for 2012 and 2020 indicate natural traffic growth, combined with traffic generated by new development and/or redevelopment will cause deterioration of traffic conditions.
The Public Works Web site (http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/publicworks/bicycle-public-input.htm) will host the bicycle boulevard project’s Transportation Impact Analysis report. Stakeholders who want to provide input but cannot attend the meeting will be able to submit feedback on the Web site after the Open House.
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Cap Metro to offer 5-day rail pass
Capital Metro, with the opening of its rail line apparently just weeks away, announced today that it will offer a five-day rail pass for $20. That will be in addition to the single-ride tickets, day passes and 31-day passes already approved by the agency’s board of directors.
Elaine Timbes, an executive vice president with the agency and overseer of the rail project, said the pass will allow people to try out the system without investing $70 in a 31-day “all-system” pass. In addition, people in Austin for a convention or other short visit could use the five-day pass, Timbes said.
The 32-mile rail line from Leander to downtown Austin will have two “zones,” one comprised of the three most northerly stations, and the other of the six stations closer to or in downtown. A single-ride, one-zone ticket will be $2; a two-zone, single-ride ticket will be $3. A day pass, good for both zones, will be $6.
A person who buys the $20 five-day pass would thus save $10 over someone who buys a day pass each day. On the other hand, if a customer were to buy a $20 five-day each week rather than a monthly pass, their cost in a four-week period would be $10 higher.
The day pass and multi-day passes allow a customer to use all Capital Metro buses as well without paying a further fare. A customer who buys a single-ride train ticket for two hours will be able to ride the connector buses waiting at the MLK and downtown stations without paying. But the holder of a single-ride ticket who transfers to a regular Capital Metro bus will have to pay again.
The agency plan is to run the trains with no charge for the first five days (there is no weekend service), beginning to charge fares only in the second week. People will be able to purchase a ticket out of vending machines at the stations, though not the five-day pass initially; it will be available at HEB stores and Capital Metro’s transit store on Congress Avenue until the vending machines have been re-programmed.
People will not have to show a ticket to get on the train, but will be subject to random checks from fare inspectors. People who ride without a ticket, in the beginning, will be asked to buy a ticket when they disembark, Timbes said. Within a few weeks, however, fare inspectors will begin to issue citations.
Timbes, speaking to the board’s rail committee today, sounded increasingly confident that MetroRail will open sometime next month. The agency plans to resume full-speed testing next week, including exercises March 4-5 where about 100 Capital Metro employees will pose as passengers. The agency workers will simulate boarding and off-loading from the train cars, including with wheelchairs, strollers and bicycles, and the trains will run with all of the passengers on board to gauge the effect on the car’s performance.
In addition, Timbes said Federal Railroad Administration inspectors will be on the scene full-time beginning next week and likely would remain so until the line opens to the public. And the agency plans to begin a blitz of public service announcements and releases to the media to educate people about the hazards involved with trains running through Austin.
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Bike boulevard foes form opposition group
The simmering dispute over turning Nueces Street or Rio Grande Street into a “bicycle boulevard” downtown has an official new player, Austinites for Downtown Mobility. The group is “circulating” an electronic petition on keepaustinmoving.org.
The formation of the group comes just before the City of Austin’s third and presumably final public forum on the boulevard concept. The forum will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Pease Elementary School, which is at 1106 Rio Grande St. downtown. The city had said previously that the forum will include results from a traffic analysis of Nueces.
The idea of making Nueces something of a bicycle haven was included in a citywide bicycle master plan approved by the Austin City Council. However, that plan did not include details of what sort of changes might be made on Nueces to slow down or reduce traffic and thus make it more commodius for cyclists.
Business owners along Nueces, who say they were not notified last year before the council vote that such a change was in the works, have grown increasing resistant over the past three months at what they say would hurt their businesses. In addition, property owners are concerned that cutting vehicle traffic and/or parking would lower their property values in the long term.
Cycling enthusiasts argue that having a bike boulevard could instead increase property values.
City officials, meanwhile, have guaranteed that southbound traffic will not be restricted, and say that a recommended set of changes won’t be unveiled until at least April. And they have offered Rio Grande, one block to the west, as an alternative. However, Rob D’Amico with the League of Bicycling Voters, which supports the boulevard concept, has said Rio Grande would not be an acceptable alternative because it is much hillier than Nueces.
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Room at the top at Capital Metro
Capital Metro’s new chief executive officer, whoever that turns out to be and whenever he or she is hired, will find several empty slots on the management tree.
Andrea Lofye, Capital Metro’s vice president and chief of staff, will leave the agency at week’s end and go to work next Monday for the Texas Department of Transportation. Lofye, a former spokeswoman for the agency who had risen at one point as high as executive vice president and interim chief operating officer before Elaine Timbes took her place last year, is making almost $125,000 a year.
She will make $85,000 a year at TxDOT as a congressional analyst/liaison on the agency’s government affairs team.
Rick L’Amie, likewise a former spokesman for Capital Metro, had been vice president of marketing until late last year. In December, he moved into a temporary position of senior communications advisor to Doug Allen, the agency’s interim chief executive officer. He is making $120,000. The temporary position ends June 12.
Those open positions come on top of Allen’s former slot as deputy chief executive officer, which he vacated to take over the top job when Fred Gilliam retired in October. The empty positions carry combined salary of more than $400,000 a year.
Once Lofye leaves, Capital Metro will have eight executives at the level of vice president or higher.
A search consultant hired by the board in January this month began in earnest looking for a new leader for the agency, a process that should take at least three months. Even then, that chief executive officer — unless it is Allen, who could be a candidate — might not report to work for some weeks.
Allen last fall had proposed creating a new executive position of senior vice president for public affairs, with a salary of $116,600 or more, and had advertised the position on the agency Web site in late December. But the job posting was pulled down Jan. 27, officials said, after Capital Metro board members said they would prefer that the agency bring on no executives until a new, permanent chief executive officer is hired.
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House panel will look at transportation bucks
A specially formed committee of Texas House members will study transportation funding over the next several months and recommends legislation for the 2011 session, House Speaker Joe Straus’ office announced this afternoon.
State Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, and Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, will co-chair the House Select Committee on Transportation Funding. The committee, according to the speaker’s office, will “review the effectiveness and efficiency of current funding options.”
Texas transportation funding, based for decades on gas taxes and then for a few years heavily on toll roads, is at a crossroads. The gas tax, unchanged since 1991, has lost considerable ground to inflation and the Legislature has resisted raising the levy. Meanwhile, taxpapers and legislators alike have rebelled against an over-reliance on toll funding. Last season, legislation to give local communities the option to raise the gas tax or other fees for transportation failed in the session’s final days.
The committee will include the following members: Patricia Harless, R-Spring; Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi; Ruth McClendon, D-San Antonio; Joe Pickett, D-El Paso (also the chairman of the House Transportation Committee); Vicki Truitt, R-Keller; Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City; Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas; Bill Callegari, R-Katy; Edmund Kuempel, R-Seguin; Armando Martinez, D-Weslaco; Wayne Smith, R-Baytown; and Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston.
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Traffic around crash site moving ‘pretty good,’ official says
UPDATE 3:36 p.m.: The northbound and southbound access ramps to and from U.S. 183 to Loop 360 have been opened for several hours and traffic is moving “pretty good” said John Hurt, a spokesman for the Austin district of the Texas Department of Transportation.
The southbound frontage road of 183 adjacent to the Echelon 1 building will be closed indefinitely as an investigation continues.
All other roads in the area are moving, officials said.
EARLIER:
The plane crash earlier this morning has closed an access road on U.S. 183, but officials won’t be closing the highway, state transportation officials said.
According to John Hurt, a spokesman for the Austin district of the Texas Department of Transportation, “Right now all the main lanes are open (on U.S. 183), so unless there’s a compelling reason, there will be no reason to close them.”
The access road between Loop 1 and 360, on the north side of 183 “will probably be closed a good part of the day, if not wholly then at least partially” for emergency vehicles. Because of the likely continued closure of that frontage road, he recommended that drivers going northbound on 183 this evening who wish to go southbound on 360, take a detour south on Loop 1 (MoPac), and taking Spicewood Springs or Far West Blvd. westbound. Drivers can also take Loop 1 north and then connect to 360 southbound.
With drivers looking at the accident site, “the whole area is going to be congested this afternoon,” he said. “But there’s no closure planned for the main lanes.”
A plane crashed into this building in north Austin earlier today.
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New Second Street detours start Monday
FROM THE CITY OF AUSTIN:
Downtown’s Second Street will move into a new phase of construction next week, continuing the Great Streets Program project into its second phase of improvements along the downtown corridor.
On Monday, February 15, work will begin on the south side of Second Street between Colorado and Congress Avenue.
Eastbound traffic on Second Street will be detoured around the block by turning south on Colorado to Cesar Chavez, then west on Cesar Chavez to Congress, and north on Congress to Second Street.
The work on the south side of Second Street is scheduled to take approximately 45 calendar days.
After completion of the work on the south side of Second Street, work will shift to the north side, at which time westbound traffic on Second Street will be detoured. Updates will be posted on the City’s website before traffic plans go into effect.
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Cap Metro hires Hamilton as fiscal consultant
UPDATED AT 1:10 P.M.
Capital Metro, saying that over the next six months it wants “to take steps to improve its financial sustainability,” has given a consulting contract to Billy Hamilton, who for many years was Texas’ deputy comptroller.
Hamilton, who will work about 20 hours a week for the next six to eight months, would make between $38,000 and $50,000 under the contract, said Capital Metro spokesman Adam Shaivitz. Hamilton, according to a press release, will work on “financial planning, financial performance measurements, budget processes and communication to various stakeholder groups.”
“Hamilton served as deputy comptroller for Carole Keeton Strayhorn and her Democratic predecessor, John Sharp. As deputy comptroller, he was responsible for running the day-to-day operations for the state’s chief treasurer, revenue estimator, accountant and tax collector.
“Hamilton also served on special assignment to the State of California to conduct a performance review and has advised the World Bank on issues of public debt management, performance management and tax policy. Hamilton has more than 20 years of executive-level financial experience and is a graduate of the University of Texas and the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
“He joined Capital Metro this week and will work closely with Interim President/CEO Doug Allen and Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration Randy Hume.”
“Billy Hamilton is one of the most highly-respected financial experts in the state if not the entire country. He will serve Capital Metro and the citizens of our service area well as we focus on this important initiative and strengthen our agency for the future,” Allen said in a statement today.
Hamilton’s hirings comes as Capital Metro struggles to right its finances and open a new rail line. The agency has been operating with a cushion of only a few days of reserves, less than $10 million. Sales tax revenue — estimated at $134.1 million this year — have nosedived because of the recession.
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A new bridge over Lady Bird Lake?
The City of Austin is considering building a rail bridge over Lady Bird Lake among three alternatives for extending a proposed light rail or streetcar line from downtown to south of the river.
The bridge likely would be in the first phase of building the rail line, which ultimately would go from the Mueller development in Northeast Austin, through UT and downtown, and east to the airport. The city and its consulting engineers are in the final stages of settling on a preferred route and will unveil it Feb. 25 in a briefing to the Austin City Council.
However, city transportation director Rob Spillar said today that the Feb. 25 map will not specify how to get across Lady Bird Lake, instead leaving as possibilities Congress Avenue, South First Street or a new bridge. In fact, Spillar said, that question is likely to remain unresolved until sometime after voters are given a say on the proposed urban rail in the form of a bond election, which could be as soon as November.
“We’re not ready to make that recommendation until we get detailed environmental and engineering studies,” Spillar said, studies that would be much costlier than the current preliminary engineering work. “And I don’t think we can do that until we get voter approval.”
A river crossing, he said, likely would cost $20 million to $25 million no matter whether it involved retrofitting an existing bridge or building a new one.
A map on display this week at several “mobility” forums hosted by the city shows that possible new bridge extending south from Brazos Street, crossing the river and then cutting across the western section of the American-Statesman’s property. But Spillar said that location, while it has some advantages, is not set in stone and that such a bridge could be located anywhere from east of there to west of the South First bridge.
“We put a line on there (the map) for discussion purposes,” Spillar said. “We’re not after you guys.”
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TxDOT ponders Oak Knoll tree vandalism caper
The tree assassins have come in the dead of night each time, on a weekend and at this time of year. The toll so far: about 10 shortish trees and three mountain laurel bushes that the Texas Department of Transportation had planted along U.S. 183 near Oak Knoll Drive.
Motive? A high school prank? Someone who doesn’t like TxDOT? Mardi Gras? Who knows.
“It’s just weird,” said John Hurt, spokesman for TxDOT’s Austin district.
The first incident occurred a year ago, according to Marie Moore, who lives in the nearby Summit Oaks neighborhood. Someone came along and took the tops off about 10 trees that TxDOT had planted in a strip of median between the elevated highway’s northbound lanes and the Oak Knoll exit ramp. They left behind naked tree trunks six or seven feet high. The branched parts of the trees were dumped beside the frontage road on the opposite side.
Then whoever it was came along a week later and sawed off the trunks down to six inches or so. The trunks joined the branches over on the other side of the frontage road. TxDOT filed a report with the Austin Police Department at the time reporting the vandalism, Hurt said, but nothing much happened after that. Tree assault likely falls below many other crimes that the police have to handle.
Then, the weekend of Jan. 30 this year, more carnage. Moore said someone came along and mowed down the three 10-foot-tall mountain laurels, dumping them with the refuse from a year ago. The mounting pile has migrated out of the TxDOT right of way and onto private property.
Hurt wasn’t aware of any other such vegacide occurring on other TxDOT property in the area, and said he hopes a little sunshine on the situation might prevent more from happening. Hurt, although he didn’t yet have dollar figures, said such plantings alongside TxDOT roads (done for erosion control and beautification purposes) are expensive. Given that, he wasn’t sure that these trees and bushes will be replaced.
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Skaggs, Daugherty share tollway thoughts with Hutchison
Former Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty and Jim Skaggs, his wingman in advocating for roads over rail transit over the past dozen years, have a message for Kay Bailey Hutchison: stop using toll roads as a whipping boy in the gubernatorial race with Rick Perry.
Daugherty and Skaggs, who came to political prominence in Austin in the late 1990s in a fight to lower Capital Metro’s sales tax rate, sent a joint letter to the GOP senator taking issue with her characterization of certain toll roads as “double taxation” and her criticism of Perry’s private toll road leases.
The letter does not endorse Perry over Hutchison in the March 2 primary, where the two will appear on the GOP gubernatorial ballot with Wharton small business owner Debra Medina. Perry and Medina, in fact, are not even mentioned.
Here’s the letter:
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison 961 Federal Building 300 East 8th Street Austin, TX 78701 February 2, 2010
Dear Senator Hutchison:
We share respect for your dedication and many accomplishments in your long service representing Texas as US Senator. It was a great disappointment that your campaign chose to substantially misrepresent and distort the characteristics and value of toll roads, casting them as liabilities to society rather than positive assets which have proven to be one of the important elements in addressing our growing mobility needs. Increased mobility has been directly related to improved quality of life for many hundreds of years. Today, mobility is vital to many aspects of our daily lives including access to affordable homes and greater opportunities.
We understand you may be influenced by your campaign’s perception of “political” necessity. However, you are highly regarded and your misrepresentation and influence will mislead many people. This will degrade or impede the future progress of many who have worked so hard to improve mobility in our communities. Contrary to your TV ads, the current toll roads in Central Texas are not converted tax roads and do not represent “double taxation.” In many cases, toll roads are funding additional “free” road lanes which are substantially improving mobility for both those who choose to use toll roads and those who choose to not use toll roads.
To a great extent, Mobility throughout the US has been dramatically degraded by governments at national, state and local levels continuing to divert greater portions of highway fund dollars to other uses. At the national level, some 20% of the highway gas tax funds are diverted to public transit and earmarks. At the Texas State level, about 50% of gasoline tax revenues are diverted to other uses such as education. Clearly, it would be more constructive to apply all highway funds to highways and to more directly address the funding issues of other needs.
These fund diversions and the continuing decline of gas tax revenues per passenger mile, due to greater vehicle efficiency and alternative fuel/power, coupled with no increases in per gallon gas tax amounts, have reduced roadway funding to an unsustainable level that cannot support needed mobility infrastructure.
As we have seen here in Central Texas, government and privately funded toll roads have played vital roles in partially filling the gap created by depleted roadway tax funds. These toll roads have dramatically improved the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people. Citizens have voiced their acceptance by acquiring toll tags for more than 50% of the registered vehicles residing in toll road served areas.
It would seem ill-advised to prohibit foreign investments from supporting needed mobility improvements if this is the most cost-effective alternative available and U.S. firms choose to not bid, or, are not competitive. If sound contracts are constructed to protect US toll road users, competent companies headquartered in many foreign countries are acceptable to provide the needed capital investment. The foreign firm leases the land or the right to operate the toll road but does not own a single square foot of the American roadway. For many years, the US was a dominant provider of foreign infrastructure in major industries throughout the world. Boeing is the top US exporter and maintains a major share of the world commercial aircraft market. Should foreign customers have rejected the US?
We urge you to assure campaign statements regarding mobility are accurate and that they support mobility improvements which are so vital to all citizens.
Sincerely,
Gerald Daugherty Jim Skaggs
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TxDOT mulls way to wire around toll lease ban
Interesting article today in the Bond Buyer about how the Texas Department of Transportation might contrive to use private money to build toll lanes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Thanks to an alert reader who told me about the story.
Under one scenario, under consideration for doubling the six lanes of Interstate 35 as it passes through Dallas, a private developer would front the $4.3 billion for the project (including more than $650 million just for right of way along the heavily developed highway) and then be paid back through the department’s pass-through toll program. But with a difference.
Under normal pass-through agreements — the state has many such deals with local governments that have led to completed road projects, and others approved — a city or county fronts the money for expanding a state highway. Then, over 10 or 20 years, TxDOT pays back about 80 percent of the money using gas tax revenue. Such projects typically are on free-to-drive roads that remain so after the work is done.
Obviously, that wouldn’t work in this case because paying back almost $4 billion over 10 years would take a huge bite out of what are already insufficient gas tax funds for TxDOT. Instead, the private developer would be paid back out of toll revenue, perhaps backed by general TxDOT revenue if tolls fell short of making the payments. The plan is add two free lanes to I-35 in Dallas, and four toll lanes.
TxDOT, spokesman Chris Lippincott said, would have to rewrite the current rules of the pass-through toll program to make this possible. But the department believes that state law, despite the expiration last September of authority to do all but a handful of private toll road leases, would allow this sort of pass-through toll agreement with the private sector.
As for putting tolls on an interstate, Interstate 10 in western Harris County already had toll lanes added to existing free lanes in the decade just ended, and there’s a project ongoing to add them on Interstate 20 in Fort Worth. In addition, TxDOT has signed an agreement with a private consortium led by Spanish toll road builder Cintra to add toll lanes to Interstate 635 in Dallas.
TxDOT can’t simply convert free interstate lanes to toll lanes — state law requires a public vote for conversions, and federal law may not allow it at all — but it can toll expanded capacity on an interstate.
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Recommended Nueces bike plan not likely until April
The specifics of how the City of Austin would put Nueces Street on a “traffic diet” likely won’t emerge until April, city bicycle coordinator Annick Beaudet said this afternoon. And the plan, although it is not technically required, will come back before the Austin City Council for review before anything is done, city officials said.
The next thing to happen: Release Feb. 24 of a traffic analysis commissioned by the city. This will occur at the third of three public forums on the proposal to make Nueces Street a “bicycle boulevard” from Third Street to MLK Jr. Boulevard. The forum will be at 6 p.m. at Pease Elementary at the corner of 12th and Rio Grande streets.
A bicycle boulevard could take on any number of forms, from a bikes-only street to one that retains full flow of traffic but adds bicycle lanes. No one from the city is suggesting a bikes-only approach for Nueces. And in fact, because fire trucks and ambulances from a station at Nueces and MLK use the street to get downtown in emergencies, one requirement is that southbound traffic have no impediments at all.
But various other strategies in the works, such as so-called “partial diverters” that prevent turns onto a lane of Nueces, could restrict northbound traffic.
The Nueces concept was included in a 540-page master bicycle plan for the city approved by the council last summer, but most landowners along the street were not aware of it until November when the city sent out notices of the public forums. Many of the landowners have mobilized against the idea, arguing that that traffic diet (cutting traffic by as much as two-thirds) would put their business receipts on a diet as well.
Bicycle advocates and city officials, meanwhile, counter with the idea that creating a unique haven for cyclists (there are none like it currently in Texas) would instead increase property values. Those opposing views provided the only tense moment today at what was otherwise a courtly hearing before the Austin City Council’s Comprehensive Planning and Transportation Committee.
Commercial real estate broker Susan Harris, who offices at 18th and Nueces and opposes the bicycle boulevard (at least in its more extreme forms), said that decreasing traffic would have a negative impact on coming plans to build high-density, several-story office or residential buildings on what is now a street of low-rise offices and old homes converted to business use.
Council Member Chris Riley, who commutes by bicycle and supports the bike boulevard concept, asked Harris if under that logic she would have opposed the narrowing of Second Street between Congress Avenue and San Antonio, a project that preceded construction of several residential buildings there. Harris, who noted that she is a recreational cyclist and that her daughter is an officer in a cycling club at her high school, began a discussion of her position. But Riley cut her off and asked for a yes or no answer.
Yes, Harris said, she would have opposed the narrowing of Second.
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Cap Metro details final steps to rail opening
The long and winding road that has been Capital Metro’s commuter rail project is in its last stages, increasingly confident agency officials said today, including work to complete late-in-the-game changes in the line’s signal and communication systems.
The 32-mile line from Leander to downtown Austin should be “operational” by late February, interim chief executive officer Doug Allen said, allowing federal railroad regulators to come in and give it a final once-over. Assuming the line passes that test, then agency rail contractor Herzog Transit Services will do about two weeks of on-schedule testing and the line would open before April. That would meet the first-quarter 2010 target for opening Capital Metro set last fall.
“I don’t lose any sleep over this,” said Elaine Timbes, Capital Metro’s executive vice president. “I’m just excited to be a part of it. I’ve been here 24 years. To be part of launching rail for this community, it’s an opportunity of a lifetime for me.”
Allen and Timbes stopped just short of guaranteeing a March opening, given that installation of new software in the line’s signal system is ongoing and will have to be tested. The agency decided last fall decided to reprogram the system of red, yellow and green lights that will tell train engineers when they can go and when they must stop, going from a system that had different modes for passenger trains and for freight trains to a single mode of signals. Cost: $530,000.
And the agency likewise is installing a radio-wave communication system along the line, including relay equipment on poles along the line. The agency had originally planned to use a cellular system for to relay data from the track signal installations to the central control system in North Austin, but decided last fall instead to use radio frequencies as a primary system with the cellular system as a backup.
The agency and Herzog are also engaged in an intersection-by-intersection final inspection and repair of the crossing arm equipment that had performed erratically throughout last year during train testing. Capital Metro also is “de-stressing” some track sections that because of installation problems had developed subtle waves that could cause discomfort to passengers.
Capital Metro, which had originally said construction and startup of the rail line would cost $90 million and be done by early 2008, since early last year has put the final cost at about $105 million. But that does not include a variety of expenditures directly related to the rail line, including a $7.4 million park-and-ride lot at the Leander station. Nor does it include any of the $35 million or so that will have been paid by the time rail opens to Veolia Transportation, the agency’s former rail operator fired in December, and to Herzog as they helped the agency get the line ready for service.
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Gilbert Tweed to search for new Cap Metro leader
The Capital Metro board this afternoon voted to hire Gilbert Tweed International, at a cost of $175,900, to help it find a new chief executive officer for the transit agency.
Gilbert Tweed president Stephanie Pinson was Capital Metro’s search consultant in 1998 when the agency hired Karen Rae as Capital Metro chief. Rae served for four years.
The 38-year-old, woman-owned executive search firm, based in New York, prevailed over three other finalists.
Gilbert Tweed will help the board refine what it is looking for in a leader, recruit and screen candidates, manage the interviews with finalists and shepherd a process to let the public have its say, and help the board make a final decision. The Capital Metro staff set out a best-case schedule that could have the board making a decision by late April.
But board chairman Mike Martinez, elected to that post earlier in today’s meeting, cautioned about rushing the search.
“For me, it’s not about whether it takes six days or six months,” Martinez said. “It’s about we hire the best leader for Capital Metro.”
That could include someone from outside the transit industry, Martinez said, asking if it was made clear to Gilbert Tweed that the search should not be confined to transit insiders. Human Resources director Donna Simmons assured him that was the case.
Fred Gilliam, who had been the agency’s leader since the spring of 2002, retired in October after a stormy last several years on the job. Doug Allen, who came to the agency in 2008 as the agency’s second in command, has been interim chief executive officer since Gilliam departed.
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Martinez elected Cap Metro board chairman
A unanimous Capital Metro board has just elected Austin City Council Member Mike Martinez chairman of the board.
Austin City Council Member Chris Riley had been serving as interim chairman since a reconstituted board took over Jan. 6.
“There’s a better day coming for Capital Metro,” Martinez said after being elected 8-0. “I don’t plan on being here long. I don’t plan on staying in this position 10, 15 years. My goal is to get this agency to where we all want it to be” and then step down.
Martinez has served on the board since June 2007.
Transportation and land use consultant John Langmore, who joined the transit board this month, was named vice chairman. And Beverly Silas, a consultant who formerly headed the Envision Central Texas planning organization, was elected secretary.
The board, drawing lots from a shiny blue mylar bag, then decided who among them will serve until June 2011, June 2012 and June 2013. The board, given that they are in effect a new body, had to pick different ending service dates to set up a system of staggered terms.
Board members Norm Chafetz and Langmore’s terms will end June 1, 2011. Members John Cowman, Frank Fernandez and Silas’ terms end June 1, 2012. And Martinez, Riley and Anne Stafford have terms ending June 1, 2013.
Members could serve a second term lasting three years if the bodies that appointed them to the transit board chooses to reappoint them.
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April now likely for Ben White/I-35 project start
Carlos Lopez, Austin district engineer for TxDOT, says the winning bidder for the Ben White Boulevard/Interstate 35 flyover project should be selected in early February, with construction starting sometime in April.
This is about six months beyond when the project was predicted to start at one time. But then it had to be re-bid. The winning bidder the first time around, McCarthy Brothers, had said it would do the job for $24.4 million, almost $3 million below the next lowest bid. But McCarthy said it had made that bid in error and withdrew from the project late last year.
So TxDOT had to start over.
The project involves building four more flyovers connecting I-35 to Ben White/Texas 71, those on the south side of the interchange. When a major reworking of that junction was done earlier this decade, TxDOT only had enough money at the time to do the four flyovers on the north side of the interchange. People who live or work south of there ever since have been frustrated at still having to exit and go through traffic lights to make the turn.
That should be a thing of the past by some time in mid- to late 2011.
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Rail: Maybe this time?
Capital Metro, in a letter Thursday to the Federal Railroad Administration, said it will make simulated runs on its MetroRail passenger line in early March and “open the line later in March.”
However, the letter to the federal agency’s regional administrator Bonnie J. Murphy from Capital Metro interim chief executive officer Doug Allen also says work on its signals and crossings remains to be completed. The performance of those signals and crossings has been the major hangup over the past year as the transit agency has worked to get the long-delayed line started.
Significantly, Capital Metro, which had said last fall it would open the line in the first quarter of this year, is still not yet ready to name a specific date for the opening.
The agency, during the runup to a November 2004 referendum authorizing it to build the line from Leander to downtown Austin, had said service would begin in “early 2008.” Over time, that target opening date moved to summer 2008, fall 2008 and then March 30 of last year.
But in mid-March, with the signal and crossing problems becoming obvious and work ongoing on two stations and siding tracks, the opening was put on indefinite hold. The agency then spent the balance of the year working on crossing equipment, which in many cases were not opening and closing as intended, and on the signal system, which the Federal Railroad Administration said had “vital logic” problems.
The agency and its former railroad contractor, Veolia Transportation, performed a “hazard analysis/risk assessment” on the system last summer and fall, and began the process of addressing remaining issues.
Veolia was fired December 9 and replaced by Herzog Transit Services as operator of the passenger line. Watco, which had been a subcontractor for Veolia and was running the agency’s freight rail operation, is still doing that job but is now directly working for Capital Metro.
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Meeting tonight on Nueces ‘bicycle boulevard’ project
The City of Austin will hold a second public meeting this evening on its plans to turn Nueces Street downtown into a “bicycle boulevard.”
The meeting will take place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Pease Elementary School, 1106 Rio Grande Street.
There will be an additional meeting Feb. 24 at the same time and place, where city staff members will present the results of a traffic analysis of Nueces.
The bicycle boulevard concept was part of the Austin Bicycle Master Plan, approved by the city council last summer. But details are still being worked out, and opposition has surfaced from some property owners along the street.
Advocates for the boulevard say that cyclists in effect need a road to call their own downtown. Nueces, which gently slopes toward the river from MLK Jr. Boulevard to Third Street (where it dead ends into the remains of the Green Water Treatment Plant), would be ideal for this, they say, because traffic is relatively light and because of its lack of hills.
Under the plan, devices to block or slow car traffic would be installed on Nueces between Third and MLK. That might include “bollards,” metal posts spaced a few feet apart that could be planted in the asphalt every few blocks. That way, cars could access every property, but wouldn’t be able to make a through trip on Nueces. Also under consideration: other traffic calming devices such as speed humps or “pinch points,” spots where the road would narrow to one lane.
In addition, cyclists would like to remove many of the north-south stop signs in that stretch, allowing them to move for several blocks without stopping.
The street is dominated by older homes converted into offices for lawyers and bail bondsmen. But the Blackwell/Thurman Criminal Justice Center is on the street between 10th and 11th streets, and the Regency Apartments also are on Nueces. In addition, there are restaurants at Sixth Street, and a city fire station at MLK that often disgorges firetrucks onto Nueces for calls.
Scott Sayers, who has offices in a building on Nueces near MLK, says that the proposed changes would inevitably cut business for property owners along the street, and that the plan is too intrusive for the relatively small slice of traffic on bicycles.
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Yesterday at 8:15 AM I saw a disturbing thing happen where the new rail line crosses Braker between Kramer and Burnet. As I approached from the west, the crossbars were down and there were a large number of cars waiting (like bars had been down a while).
... read the full comment by steve cummings | Comment on Room at the top at Capital Metro Read Room at the top at Capital Metro
The inner lane (the one furthest right) is the one closest to the building.
... read the full comment by inner lane | Comment on Two lanes of frontage road at crash site to open Read Two lanes of frontage road at crash site to open
Certainly you mean the outer lane, closest to the building, will be closed? The inner lane is farther from the building, closer to the main lanes.
... read the full comment by Lane Hog | Comment on Two lanes of frontage road at crash site to open Read Two lanes of frontage road at crash site to open
Finally! Hopefully, this will clear up the additional traffic that has been at the light crossing over 183 in the morning.
... read the full comment by woo hoo | Comment on Two lanes of frontage road at crash site to open Read Two lanes of frontage road at crash site to open
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