Where’s the Loop 1604 Christmas tree?
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Been busy working on my big website update as well as the usual holiday tasks.
Speaking of the holidays, for the past few years, somebody has always decorated one of the trees in the median between the Loop 1604 mainlanes and frontage roads around Christmastime, usually in the vicinity of Blanco, Huebner, or Bitters. This year, I haven’t spotted one. Has anyone seen it? If not, I wonder what happened to the person who used to do it.
I-35 closed this weekend
With some dozen announcements about construction and lane closures apparently wrapped up for the week, the biggest snag to watch for will be on Interstate 35 near Fort Sam Houston.
In about an hour, crews will shut down all southbound main lanes of I-35 from Walters Street to New Braunfels Avenue so they can do bridge work, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.
The lane closures could last to as late as 5 a.m. Monday, with motorists detoured to the frontage road.
Alternative routes include Rittiman Road to Austin Highway and then Broadway; or Coliseum Road to Houston Street.
To check current traffic conditions, go to TransGuide.
History Passenger rail Railroads Uncategorized
by Hugh
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Transportation Museum Christmas Show
It’s been a while since I posted here but I’ve been busy setting up “Santa’s railroad Wonderland” at the Texas Transportation Museum. In its eleventh year, this eight night event has become a significant source of revenue for this small, independent museum, which receives no government funding of any kind, from city, county, state and federal levels. So we get by, solely, on visitor support. We must be doing something right because we are still here after 45 years.
 Click http://www.txtransportationmuseum.org/SHD.htm for more information about “Santa’s Railroad Wonderland.”
Laws and policies Roads Toll roads: CDAs MPO superstreet Tommy Adkisson US 281
by Brian
2 comments
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.
Uncategorized: website
by Brian
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TexasHighwayMan.com update coming soon
If you’ve visited my website lately, you’ve probably noticed that it hasn’t been updated in a while (since May in fact.) I’ve had a busy summer– a big project at work that invaded some of my free time, the duties of being the father of a now 14-month old (which I have loved every minute of), and the time I’ve invested into this new blog have all left precious little time for keeping-up my website.
However, the blessings of time-off for the holidays and some personal leave will allow me to completely update and overhaul my site, hopefully by New Year’s Day. In addition to updating all the information, I will be improving the design and format, dropping some obsolete pages, and slightly re-organizing the remaining pages to be more logical and easier to navigate. My companion site about Germany will see a similar face lift shortly thereafter.
So let me offer my apologies for allowing my site to go stale. I hope you’ll enjoy the new site!
Construction and closures: Loop 410
by Patrick
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Loop 410 closed this weekend
About an hour ago, state officials announced that construction workers will close eastbound Loop 410 on the Northeast Side this Sunday.
Crews will shut down all main lanes between Starcrest and Perrin Beitel from 7 a.m. until sometime Monday morning so they can do bridge work, the Texas Department of Transportation said.
Worthy alternative routes include Austin Highway and Wurzbach Parkway.
Motorists should also watch out for various lane closures through next week on this part of the freeway and its intersecting roads. Check TransGuide before you head out.
Also in late this afternoon from TxDOT:
Have a great weekend everyone. Stay Warm!
Gas taxes Laws and policies Roads Toll roads: CDAs MPO pass-through financing planning Prop 12 funds stimulus funds TURF
by Brian
5 comments
TURF: “MPO rams 37 toll projects down San Antonians’ throats”
During my daily review of transportation news, I came across this the-sky-is-falling press release by staunch toll-opponent Terri Hall and her TURF organization. As usual, TURF shows a continued lack of insight of what’s actually happening and peppers the article with their predictable array of tried-and-true rhetoric, fallacies, and mendacities as they denounce the large number of projects that are listed as possible toll and Comprehensive Development Agreement (CDA) projects in the new 25-year regional transportation plan. Yes, there are a substantial number of toll-option projects in the plan. However, the outright panic by TURF is premature and demonstrates their failure to see and comprehend the bigger picture and actually jeopardizes badly-needed future projects.
Toll roads: Prop 12 funds Tommy Adkisson US 281 Wurzbach Parkway
by Brian
3 comments
The man who doesn’t get it
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about “the man who gets it”, that man being state Senator John Carona of Dallas, who understands our current transportation funding crisis enough to risk political suicide by suggesting an increase in the state’s gas tax to fix it (the correct solution in my not-so-humble opinion.) Today, I’m going to write about the person who has shown once again to be deserving of the title of “the man who just doesn’t get it”: Tommy Adkisson, the current chairman of the San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (MPO) policy board.
As you may recall, Adkisson was the official instigator of a vote in October to drop the toll option from the MPO’s plans regarding future US 281 and Loop 1604 projects. That proposal went down in flames when the MPO board voted 13-5 against it, mainly because it had no objective engineering study to support it, something even an amateur elected official would realize is essential to substantiate your case. Even the San Antonio Express-News editorial board labeled his actions “erratic and ill-considered”. I, however, was willing to let Tommy off the hook for this boondoggle since it was obvious that outspoken toll opponent Terri Hall was the real culprit pulling the strings behind the scenes and I believed he just didn’t understand what he was getting himself into. His declaration after the vote that he was done with toll road issues and wanted to move on to more substantive discussions, such as mass transit, also led me to believe that he was sincerely jaded on the whole 281 debacle.
But obviously not.
Commuting Construction and closures: FM 3009 Garden Ridge Schertz Texas Department of Transportation
by Patrick
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Bridges, new lanes finally coming for FM 3009
FM 3009 through Garden Ridge and Schertz rolls over hills and past two railroad tracks to usher some 20,000 drivers to and from Interstate 35 every day.
Construction will soon start on FM 3009
The daily odyssey along two and four lanes is far from smooth. Traffic backs up during rush hours. Thundering trains blaring horns stop lines of cars for minutes at a time.
But one thing sure to be worse will be the construction to fix the mess. And yes, after years of planning and securing needed funds, the time has arrived to widen the road and build bridges over the rail lines.
Work is scheduled to start this week to build the two overpasses and add a lane in each direction between I-35 and Nacogdoches Road, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.
Construction and closures Roads: Jones-Maltsberger railroad crossing stimulus funds widening
by Brian
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Relief coming for Jones-Maltsberger bottleneck
Long a bane for shoppers trying to get to the Quarry Market from US 281 or vice-versa, improvements are finally on the way for the railroad crossing on Jones-Maltsberger.
Last week, the city announced that it had secured federal stimulus and state funds to widen Jones-Maltsberger. Presently, the street narrows from four lanes down to two at the tracks, then widens again back to four lanes on the other side. The improvements will consist of widening the road at the crossing to four lanes (two in each direction) plus a dedicated right-turn lane for traffic turning onto US 281 northbound.
According to the city, construction is set to start next February and be completed by the end of summer.
So what took so long to get this job done? My recollection is that there was some dispute between the city and TxDOT as to who was responsible for that section of roadway, not to mention the fact that any work involving a railroad crossing also has to include the railroad. Ergo, it took a while to get it all sorted-out. Then it was simply a matter of securing the funding, which is typically the sticking-point on most road projects.
UPDATE 1/8/10: San Antonio Express-News story