I'm sure a few of us remember the disaster that was the Rick Perry Texas super highway dubbed the "Trans-Texas Corridor" back in the previous decade. A plan to make it easier to move goods across Texas with ease that included utility lines, commuter and commercial traffic, and railways running along side one another through the heart of Texas. While this plan ultimately did fail, I feel like a problem had presented itself and it was not solved.
Something that is very important to me is the environment. Since Texas isn't going to adopt too many green initiatives any time soon, I feel like it would be good to focus on making a more efficient system of freight shipment. Through many city highways there are large freight trucks moving to and fro, railways moving goods from the south and then returning from the north with fuel for power. It is a system that serves it's purpose. The problem is, that it isn't doing enough. Eventually something is going to have to be done about the sheer volume of goods moving through Texas.
In the end it's probably going to be a similar solution to the "Trans-Texas Corridor," since the best way to move that volume of goods would be to simply build a conveyor belt of sorts. The solution will have to be an Engineering marvel, and well the legislature isn't going to be able to come up with a solution that requires such a massive undertaking. My concern is what is going to be worse, keeping things as they are and increasing pollution and traffic congestion throughout the state, or moving everything to a concentrated corridor.
Keep an ear out, I'm sure a solution isn't so far off.
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ReplyDeleteI agree that something needs to be done about Texas’ outdated and congested highway system. One of the biggest problems is that the interstate system in Texas seems to have been designed with a built in planned obsolescence. Since most of Texas’ freeways have feeder roads on both sides lined with businesses, widening the freeways to add more lanes is not an option. The only alternative is to add an unsightly double deck. As we have seen in the past couple months it seems the only thing Austinites like to complain about more than traffic is the expansion of Mopac South by adding a double-decker bridge over Lady Bird Lake.
ReplyDeleteI really don’t know what the answer to future traffic problems is but the Trans Texas Corridor is not it. The idea of landowners forfeiting their property to eminent domain only to have a foreign company build a toll road and send the profits back to Spain didn’t sit well with most Texans. I don’t think it would have made it beyond a proposal without Rick Perry’s cronyism. I also don’t agree with TxDOT’s reasoning that all new roads need to be paid for with tolls, they are called “freeways” after all. I feel a better, although unpopular option for funding new roads would be to raise the gasoline tax. For the past two decades Texas’ gas tax has stayed at 20 cents per gallon with a nickel going to education. While the price of gas has more than tripled the tax per gallon has stayed the same. Even if we doubled the tax we would still have some of the cheapest gas in the country, California currently collects almost 50 cents per gallon in state taxes and has about half as many miles of highway.
While to population of Austin has doubled every twenty five years since it was founded, Interstate 35 has remained relatively unchanged since the Eisenhower administration. It would often be gridlocked just with local commuters, but if you’ve ever noticed the traffic seems to be made up mainly of 18 wheelers passing through Austin on their way to either Dallas of San Antonio. Recently TxDOT requested that truckers get a discount on SH 130 tolls as an incentive to get trucks off I-35. The only problem with that is SH 130 has a speed limit of 85 miles per hour, the highest in the country. The problem with this is most trucks either have equipment installed on their engines that prevent them from going over 65 miles per hour or they have GPS units that record their speed and get fined by their companies if they exceed 65 mph. The result would be trucks driving 20 mph slower than passenger cars causing more gridlock and accidents.
So we may just be stuck with Texas’ traffic problems at least until flying cars and teleportation becomes a reality.
I agree that something needs to be done about Texas’ outdated and congested highway system. One of the biggest problems is that the interstate system in Texas seems to have been designed with a built in planned obsolescence. Since most of Texas’ freeways have feeder roads on both sides lined with businesses, widening the freeways to add more lanes is not an option. The only alternative is to add an unsightly double deck. As we have seen in the past couple months it seems the only thing Austinites like to complain about more than traffic is the expansion of Mopac South by adding a double-decker bridge over Lady Bird Lake.
ReplyDeleteI really don’t know what the answer to future traffic problems is but the Trans Texas Corridor is not it. The idea of landowners forfeiting their property to eminent domain only to have a foreign company build a toll road and send the profits back to Spain didn’t sit well with most Texans. I don’t think it would have made it beyond a proposal without Rick Perry’s cronyism. I also don’t agree with TxDOT’s reasoning that all new roads need to be paid for with tolls, they are called “freeways” after all. I feel a better, although unpopular option for funding new roads would be to raise the gasoline tax. For the past two decades Texas’ gas tax has stayed at 20 cents per gallon with a nickel going to education. While the price of gas has more than tripled the tax per gallon has stayed the same. Even if we doubled the tax we would still have some of the cheapest gas in the country, California currently collects almost 50 cents per gallon in state taxes and has about half as many miles of highway.
While to population of Austin has doubled every twenty five years since it was founded, Interstate 35 has remained relatively unchanged since the Eisenhower administration. It would often be gridlocked just with local commuters, but if you’ve ever noticed the traffic seems to be made up mainly of 18 wheelers passing through Austin on their way to either Dallas of San Antonio. Recently TxDOT requested that truckers get a discount on SH 130 tolls as an incentive to get trucks off I-35. The only problem with that is SH 130 has a speed limit of 85 miles per hour, the highest in the country. The problem with this is most trucks either have equipment installed on their engines that prevent them from going over 65 miles per hour or they have GPS units that record their speed and get fined by their companies if they exceed 65 mph. The result would be trucks driving 20 mph slower than passenger cars causing more gridlock and accidents.
So we may just be stuck with Texas’ traffic problems at least until flying cars and teleportation becomes a reality.