On the Move

75 mph coming to SA area Interstates!

The Texas Transportation Commission approved increasing the speed limit to 75 mph on about 1,500 miles of mostly-rural Interstate highways in the state.  Around the San Antonio area, the following stretches will see 75 mph signs soon:

• I-10 West from Loop 1604 to past Kerrville (where it’s already 80 mph)
• I-10 East from just outside Loop 410 to Waller County west of Houston
• I-35 South from Palo Alto Rd. to the existing 75 mph section south of Devine
• I-37 from just inside Loop 410 to Corpus Christi

I-35 between San Antonio and Austin was not approved for the higher speed limit.

The Legislature approved the higher speed limits last year.

More information

• TxDOT’s 75 mph page – http://www.txdot.gov/safety/speed_limit/75mph.htm

Speed limits going up

If you have a lead foot, then you’ll love this news.

First, if you hadn’t heard already, the Legislature earlier this year approved– and the governor signed– a bill that would raise the statutory maximum speed limit for state highways to 75 mph (excluding, of course, the existing 80 mph speed limit on some sections of I-10 and I-20 out in West Texas.) Texas now joins all but a handful of states west of the Mississippi with a 75 mph top speed.  The limit can only be increased on roads where an engineering study determines that it’s safe to do so, but if past practice holds true, that should be the majority of roads that are currently capped at 70 mph.

Even better, the bill finally eliminates the matrix of speed limits for daytime/nighttime and cars/trucks.  All speed limits will now apply to all vehicles at all times.  Texas was the only state to still have a different nighttime limit and one of the few with a separate limit for trucks.

The new law takes effect September 1st.  A separate effort to increase the maximum speed to 85 mph died.

More recently, the speed limit on the northern arc of Loop 410 has gone up from 60 mph to 65 mph.  With the recent completion of construction to widen the freeway to 10 lanes, TxDOT completed a speed study that showed the 85th percentile speed being 65 mph, so in accordance with agency engineering guidelines, TxDOT asked the City of San Antonio to officially increase the speed limit to 65 mph north of US 90.  Signs went up this past week.

I also recently noticed that the speed limit along Loop 1604 south of Braun Rd. increased from 55 mph to 60 mph.

Jaywalkers beware!

(Image from Boston.com/The Boston Globe)

First it was Windcrest.  Now it seems that SAPD is also cracking down on jaywalkers.

Earlier this year, reports surfaced that Windcrest police were ticketing Rackspace employees who were on their way to or from lunch at one of the restaurants across Walzem Road from Rackspace’s headquarters at the old Windsor Park Mall, known affectionately as “The Castle”.

Now, there are several anecdotal reports of this happening in San Antonio itself, first at a school, now at some other location (it might even be the airport based on the person’s description of the sign, which I have only seen at the airport.)

So this begs the question, what are the state and local laws regarding jaywalking?  more »

Terri vs Bruce

Bruce Davidson, one of members of the Express-News’ editorial board, wrote a spot-on editorial in yesterday’s paper about how the root cause of toll roads is the Legislature’s and Governor’s resistance to increasing the gas tax.  His editorial essentially says not to blame the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority (ARMA) because they’re just playing the hand they’ve been dealt and that, in reality, they are working to find funding for 281 and other projects “wherever they can get it.”

Of course, the response out of southern Comal County was nearly instantaneous.  more »

MPO holding public meetings for 4 year plan

The San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) will be holding three public meetings on its 2011-2014 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP).  Essentially, this is the revolving list of local transportation projects that are proposed to be funded* over the next three four years (yes, I can count <g>).  The projects selected are typically a subset of those in the current long-range plan.  Obviously, what eventually does get funded depends heavily on what money eventually comes to this area, but this plan identifies the projects that are first in line to get whatever funding becomes available.  The plan includes allocations for all forms of transportation including highways, streets, transit, and bike and pedestrian amenities.

The MPO is the agency charged under state and federal law to control the transportation funding purse-strings for the San Antonio urban area, which in this case includes Bexar County and portions of Comal and Guadalupe counties in the Schertz area.  The TIP is required under federal regulations as a condition of receiving federal funding.  Projects not in the TIP cannot use federal funds, so this is an important process.

There will be three meetings, all with identical content:

• Tuesday, May 4th from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
• Thursday, May 6th from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
• Saturday, May 8th from 9:00 a.m. to noon

All three will take place at VIA Metro Center on San Pedro just south of SAC.  Visitors will also be able to check-out some new interactive systems and discuss the transportation planning process with the folks that make these decisions.

For more information and to see a draft copy of the TIP, click here.  Also, see the interactive site here (link added 5/4/10 10:35 am).

(* As I’ve discussed before vis-a-vis the US 281 project, the term “funded” in transportation parlance means that anticipated revenues during the plan timefame will be able to fund a project.  Until those revenues are actually allocated to the MPO, a project does not actually have money available to start work.)

Live steam coming to San Antonio

1925 Baldwin steam locomotive at Pearl Brewery

Question:  How do you return a long dormant steam locomotive back to active passenger service in 2010, with all the heightened concerns about safety?  Answer:  Very, very carefully.  This ain’t 1964.  Way back then early Texas Transportation Museum members including one Dave Wallace, acquired the 1925 Baldwin 0-4-0 steam locomotive from New Braunfels where it had sat idled in a shed since being retired around 1928, brought it to San Antonio, placed it on tracks adjacent to Pearl Brewery, simply filled the boiler with water and fired it up.  While it didn’t explode, it sent out enough smuts and soot that those same volunteers ended up cleaning car windshields for several blocks around. more »

100th anniversary of San Antonio’s first traffic laws

Lewis bzirdsong in a 1910 Franklin on College Street, San Antonio

It is, of course, one of the more minor centennial occasions.  You probably won’t celebrate it but you will, without noticing, except for this little reminder, observe it.  February 7, 2010 is the 100^th anniversary of San Antonio’s first traffic ordinance.  Nine years after the first gasoline powered horseless carriage, eight years after the city gained its first automobile agency, seven after the creation of the San Antonio Automobile Club, and six years after the city mandated that all vehicles be registered and display ID plates or numbers, the city introduced written rules for all road users. more »

Construction suppliers rally for new fed transpo bill

Congress has yet to approve a new, comprehensive surface transportation bill to replace the previous legislation (known as “SAFETEA-LU”) that expired last year, instead opting to keep it on life-support through a series of short-term extensions.  The resulting lack of certainty over future funding– as well as limited funding in those extensions– is severely crippling the construction industry, that according to several speakers at a noontime rally outside San Antonio’s convention center yesterday that attracted about 100 people.

more »

My first year as a born again cyclist in San Antonio

Around four o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday December 31^st, zooming alongside the old San Antonio & Aransas Pass railroad tracks on Villamain between Mission San Juan and Mission Espada, in top gear and the wind at my back, I reached my own personal milestone by completing one thousand miles in the first year of owning a bicycle since I left Scotland in 1991.  Today, Jnauary 9^th, also around 4:00 PM, on De Zavala Road at Clark High school I reached by personal goal of 1,040 miles.  That, of course, may seem like an obscure number, so let me explain. more »

MPO approves long-range plan; Tommy starts to get it

As reported here last week, the San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) policy board was scheduled to vote on the ”Mobility 2035” long-range regional plan yesterday.  Toll opponents were angry because the plan included numerous projects in three corridors (I-35 North, Loop 1604, and I-10 West) pigeon-holed as toll-concession projects, also known as Comprehensive Development Agreement (CDA) projects.  As I explained previously, because current projections show little to no gas-tax funds being available during the time span of the plan, those projects had to have creative funding ”placeholders” assigned to them in order to continue planning work on them, those placeholders being CDAs.

more »