Austin: Free lanes degraded to drive more people to pay tolls
As usual, TxDOT and toll authorities are doing everything possible to make the freeways unbearable and substandard form of travel compared to their tollways. Of course, they make money off congestion so they have a profit incentive that drives their highway decisions. It's no longer about serving the public interest and getting Texans moving again, it's about manipulating congestion for profit -- even if that means degrading the level of travel on the freeways to force more people to pay the toll tax.
On tollways and making omelets
Ben Wear, Getting There
Austin American Statesman
Published: 8:16 p.m. Sunday, July 15, 2012
The medical maxim could be applied to tollways: First, do no harm.
Meaning, in building a tollway, shouldn't the public expect that the pre-existing situation for nonpaying drivers be made no worse? The Legislature agreed, enshrining in Texas law language that to some degree guarantees this. To some degree.
The issue first arose around here about 2006 when the Texas Department of Transportation was building the Texas 45 North tollway in North Austin on top of RM 620, routing the toll lanes through an existing underpass at Parmer Lane. Someone pointed out about halfway through construction, however, that before it all started people were able to use that underpass on RM 620 and not have to stop at the Parmer traffic lights up above.
Now, unless something was changed, the only people who would get that unobstructed passage would be those willing to pay a toll on Texas 45 North.
So TxDOT, at great expense and some delay, added a free lane on each side running under the bridge. A similar story played out on the Loop 1 tollway, also at MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1). A precedent was set.
The law, however, does not necessarily require this. It says only that TxDOT, or any other toll authority building a tollway where a free road existed before, must make sure that adjacent to the pay-to-drive lane there are free lanes equal to or greater than the number of free lanes that existed before.
Lanes, not "number of lanes unobstructed by traffic lights."
This has come up again out on U.S. 183 in Northeast Austin, where the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is building a tollway on the intersecting highway, U.S. 290. And that includes four towering flyover bridges that will connect U.S. 290 and U.S. 183.
What makes these flyovers unique is that, for the first time in Texas, drivers will have to pay a toll just to use those bridges. And in this case, the design of one of those bridges, specifically where it intersects with U.S. 183, caused the elimination of an exit ramp from northbound U.S. 183 just north of Manor Road. With that ramp closed, people who want to turn onto U.S. 290 up ahead have to exit earlier, south of Manor Road.
Which means they have to go through a traffic light at Manor Road. Before, they could bypass Manor on an overpass and then exit.
So, lost mobility for that subset of drivers. But no lost lanes.
On the southbound side, a similar situation exits with an eliminated entrance ramp. But it turns out that ramp was closed several years ago, long before the mobility authority began building the tolled flyovers.
Steve Pustelnyk, the authority's spokesman, said the agency's current plan is to restore those ramps when it builds the "Bergstrom Expressway," which will be a tollway overlaying U.S. 183 as it goes around the east side of Austin. However, environmental work is just beginning and the tollway, and thus those restored ramps, are unlikely to open for at least five years. Until then, a lot of people will have to wait at that Manor Road light.
This falls into the category, I suppose, of having to break some eggs to make an omelet.
The U.S. 290 tollway, which the authority calls the Manor Expressway, will run five miles from U.S. 183 to east of Texas 130 and will have six toll lanes and six frontage road lanes. That's eight more lanes than exist now, including two extra free lanes.
U.S. 290 in that section now has 30,000 to 45,000 vehicles a day on it, according to a 2010 TxDOT count. The mobility authority estimates that the tollway, the first section of which will open early next year, will have more than 41,000 toll charges a day by 2015. Hard to translate that into cars a day, but if you assume each trip involves two toll charges (one on the road itself, one on a flyover), that would mean something like half of the cars now using U.S. 290 now would instead be up on the tollway.
That would make life a lot easier not only for those who can afford to take the toll road, but also for the folks who chose not to pay, instead staying on those now-wider frontage roads.
The people waiting down at the Manor light will be dealing with broken eggshells and yolks. Maybe some of them will get a taste of omelet as well.