After reading Ms. Murphy's post concerning the proposed Express Lane project for Mopac, I was immediately intrigued. I live less than one mile from Mopac, and experience its grandeur as well as its horrors daily. When traffic is light, I can get from 183 to Slaughter in 20 minutes--a good excuse to see my brother. When traffic is normal, I can get from Far West to 2222 in 15 minutes. Every night that there isn't ice in town, I can hear the sounds of progress like something out of The Dubliners. The Express Lanes sound like a wonderful idea. It appears a thorough environmental study is near completion (http://www.mopacexpress.com/environmental/index.php), and TxDOT and its partners are going out of their way to encourage community involvement. The noise abatement barriers are long overdue, but I'm curious to see how the demand-based tolling will work.
No one who drives in Austin during the daytime will dispute that we need more major traffic arteries. Mopac is tough, and IH35 has become nearly as impassable as the Beltway in D.C. Additionally, the Y in Oak Hill is perhaps the biggest abomination I have ever witnessed, traffic-wise. 2 hours to get through the light on a run of the mill Sunday afternoon in early November? No wrecks, just the outdated infrastructure of a rapidly growing city. Austin, like nearly every square mile of America, needs sweeping infrastructure upgrades. Everything built in the 30's and 60's is OLD. Those periods were major engineering successes, but we need to stop resting on our laurels--they're rusty and crumbling, too.
The Mopac Improvement Project website I linked to earlier is very nice. It details a project that could be an effective Band Aid for Austin's traffic woes. They have a reasonable financing plan and are doing an amazing amount of due diligence. I hope the voters put on their forward-looking glasses, because it is time to make sacrifices to make our city more efficient while still keeping it beautiful and melodic.
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