Prop 1 discussion (Austin, Cesar Chavez: low income, houses, income)

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Novacek

A median is more functional, because you can actually use it to, well, turn.

With the suicide lanes, you never know if someone is going to pull in and start using it as an acceleration/merge lane.

Or the always popular, "pull into the center lane for a driveway one car length in front of the opposite going signal".

Or this favorite, which I actually saw driving in on Burnet just this morning.


Southgoing Burnet is stopped and backed up at a light, so genius A, turning left onto burnet to go northbound, decides to inch into traffic and try to use the turn lane as a merge lane into northbound. At the same time, driver B is using the turn lane to turn left off of Burnet into a driveway.

At the exact same spot.


Both are stuck, and genius A's ass is still hanging into southbound traffic, so Burnet is totally stopped up.




Shared center turn lanes just stop functioning when the traffic volumes are high enough. Once traffic reaches stop and go, and people think they can inch into traffic safely. Or can no longer turn left all the way into the traveling lanes, and try to suicide merge, they don't work anymore.

They should have been pulled out of Burnet decades ago.


Prop 1 has lots of both good and bad points, but putting in medians is one of the overwhelming advantages. It will definitely improve traffic throughput. And if done at the same time as driveway consolidation (also called for by the plans) left turns are still enabled, but in a controlled manner.

[Aquitaine]

Traveling so I don't have the statesmen link, but I did find a good argument against Prop 1 recently, which is that even at $720 million, they won't actually be able to do all the things they've listed -- that the total cost of those projects is probably double that, and they know it, but they listed all the projects that they did to get people to support it because they do "intend" to do all of them eventually even if they don't know where the money is coming from.

I understand why they did it, but it is a bit dishonest if you have to dig through it to figure out that city bureaucrats will decide in a year or two whether or not your favorite road(s) will actually make the cut. I'll probably still vote for it, but I'm less enthusiastic than I was.

[Trainwreck20]

I had heard somewhere that federal funding would be available for some of the projects, so that money was not included in the bond although it will be in the budget? Not sure if that is accurate or nor, though.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

Traveling so I don't have the statesmen link, but I did find a good argument against Prop 1 recently, which is that even at $720 million, they won't actually be able to do all the things they've listed -- that the total cost of those projects is probably double that, and they know it, but they listed all the projects that they did to get people to support it because they do "intend" to do all of them eventually even if they don't know where the money is coming from.

I understand why they did it, but it is a bit dishonest if you have to dig through it to figure out that city bureaucrats will decide in a year or two whether or not your favorite road(s) will actually make the cut. I'll probably still vote for it, but I'm less enthusiastic than I was.

Despite all the coverage of that, there seems to have been an absence of real investigative journalism on that issue.

Specifically, why are the numbers so high?


For instance, the Burnet corridor plan was put together in December 2013.

It included a fairly detailed line by line cost estimate.

https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/de..._Estimates.pdf

That put it at ~$76M. For all improvements, both short and long term.


Now they're saying (with a whole lot less detail, nothing line by line) the cost of Burnet is ~$180M (or something like that, I also can't find the full link).


So what changed? Or were the experts that constructed those original corridor plans massively incompetent?



My personal hope is that they're doing a little bit of "under promise/over deliver", and that we would actually end up with most of the plans implemented.

[cBach]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought "this doesn't pass the sniff test".

I think the only option at this point is to reject this bond package and see if they can come up with something better.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by cBach

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought "this doesn't pass the sniff test".

Who are you referring to? Hasn't literally everyone else on this thread said that they're voting for it?

[Aquitaine]

So what changed? Or were the experts that constructed those original corridor plans massively incompetent?

I mean, I guess I have as much faith in the newer/higher estimates as I did in the original, which is to say next to none at all.

[ATX Wahine]

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

Traveling so I don't have the statesmen link, but I did find a good argument against Prop 1 recently, which is that even at $720 million, they won't actually be able to do all the things they've listed -- that the total cost of those projects is probably double that, and they know it, but they listed all the projects that they did to get people to support it because they do "intend" to do all of them eventually even if they don't know where the money is coming from.

I understand why they did it, but it is a bit dishonest if you have to dig through it to figure out that city bureaucrats will decide in a year or two whether or not your favorite road(s) will actually make the cut. I'll probably still vote for it, but I'm less enthusiastic than I was.

This is what I've read as well. The bond *doesn't* cover all these projects. It will take additional federal funds, newborn babies left at the altar of Cthulhu, and probably even more bonds down the road to cover actual costs by the time they reach build.

I live in an Austin ETJ and don't get a vote, but if I did it would be a resounding "nope".

[sojourner77]

In a perfect world, we would make ALL the highways in Austin toll roads, except for SH130. Let the users pay for improvements.

[Roadking2003]

Originally Posted by Nor Cal Wahine

I live in an Austin ETJ and don't get a vote, but if I did it would be a resounding "nope".

I can't vote on this either. I just make an effort to not drive into Austin unless absolutely necessary.