Posted on 06/01/2019 5:59:54 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority’s ability to build new toll roads may be temporarily stymied by opposition from state leaders, but the agency is keeping busy with major ongoing projects.
While the great majority of its spending is on expanding roadway capacity for cars, CTRMA Executive Director Mike Heiligenstein emphasized the millions the agency is investing in bike and pedestrian infrastructure in a Tuesday presentation to the Travis County Commissioners Court.
The $108 million construction of State Highway 45 SW, linking MoPac Expressway with FM 1626, will be accompanied by a 4.5-mile shared-use path, along with pedestrian and bicycle bridges over Bear Creek and Danz Creek.
The $743 million reconstruction and expansion of U.S. Highway 183 between U.S. Highway 290 and State Highway 71 – to include six toll lanes and six general-purpose lanes – includes $25 million to construct 16 miles of continuous bike lanes, 10 miles of shared-use paths for cyclists or pedestrians, 7 miles of sidewalks and connections to the surrounding trail system.
Plans for 183 also include four pedestrian bridges, most notably the Montopolis Truss Bridge, an 82-year-old bridge that is out of commission but which the agency envisions as a gathering space with a scenic view of the Colorado River.
“What we see here is a reinvention of that trestle,” said Heiligenstein. “It’s being done all over the country and there’s no reason we can’t do it in Central Texas.”
(Excerpt) Read more at austinmonitor.com ...
PING!
Because the gas tax is not enough.
Even though it is greater than the profit made on the sale of the item.
The foreign investors usually require that no competing free roadways be constructed to ensure large profits.
As far as I know, CTRMA is actually a public (government) agency. No telling who buys their bonds, however.
Well, I’d get information from their financial information pages on the web, but to do that, I’d have to agree to indemnify them for all their legal fees if someone sued them because of information I got from those pages. So they are obviously worried about something in there. And I frankly can’t afford to pay for the defense of any of their wrongdoing.
Damn! I really can’t post here how much I despise the stupid, liberal Democrats in Austin TX. It has become LA and SF East, with all of the PC, LGBT, Socialism, etc.
I don’t have a problem with transit and biking in densely populated areas. I’m just not sure that people’s tolls (paid on top of a general gas tax) should be what funds those modes of transportation.
OTOH, if Austin really does become SF and LA east, then cyclists and runners will be dodging piles of poop and trash and smelly tent cities all over the place. And of course, there would be the typhoid, dysentery, MRSA, plague and maybe even malaria and Ebola in the near future.
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