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.
Toll roads: overpasses US 281
by Brian
Comments Off on I’ve got an idea: just build overpasses!
I’ve got an idea: just build overpasses!
(Note: Significant edits were made to this posting at about 5:25pm on 11/19/09. The edits consisted of polishing the wording; the gist of the information was not changed.)
Several recent letters to the editor in the San Antonio Express-News have presented what their writers obviously consider to be an epiphany to solving the problems on US 281 North: just build some overpasses!
Wow, what a great idea!!! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before??
Well, they have.
Results from the big toll road vote
After hour upon hour of citizens to be heard (well over 100 of them), and then several agonizing minutes of parliamentarian wrangling over whether the proposed changes had to have cost estimates to be legal, the MPO finally voted at around 11:20pm. The first vote, to remove tolls from 281, was 13-5 against with one abstention; the vote among elected officials was 6-5 against. The subsequent vote on removing tolls from 1604 went the same way. However, in the surprise of the night (besides Jack Finger ending his comments with time to spare), the board voted unanimously to remove the CDA (comprehensive development agreement) option for Bandera Rd., essentially killing the prospect of tolls on that roadway. That almost seemed like a consolation offering to Tommy, Terri, and the anti-toll crowd. The final vote of the night– whether to build all eight ramps of the 281/1604 interchange instead of just the four already in the works– ended-up being dropped entirely after a board member pointed-out that the additional four ramps could not be built because they would have to be covered under a separate environmental study. This would cause it to lose its federal stimulus funds because the project would not be shovel-ready by next March’s deadline. In the end, I think everyone was too tired anyway to debate it.
Much more to follow in the coming days.
Tweeting from the toll-road meeting
Hey everybody, follow tweets from tonight’s long-awaited meeting to argue and vote on local toll plans, which starts at 6 p.m. at the Alzafar Shrine Auditorium. To join the tweeting, use the #sampo hashtag in your Twitter posts so that they’ll show up here.
UPDATE: Click #sampo to see all tweets from the start. Also, the half dozen posts at the top are actually earlier tweets that TexHwyMan reposted.
MUCH LATER UPDATE: Twitter only holds together hashtags for so long, apparently, since they’re gone now. Next time we do a tweetup, I’ll copy and paste the results after the chatter wraps up.
T4 Plan a “pipe dream”
Today’s the big day for the “T4 Plan” (Tommy and Terri’s Toll Termination Plan). The MPO board will vote tonight on whether to go foward with their proposal that removes the toll option from proposed expressway projects on US 281 and Loop 1604. I was prepared today to summarize why this is a bad idea, but lo and behold, the Express-News Editorial Board did a fantastic job in an editorial in yesterday’s editions.
Are we on the Daily Show yet?
Tommy Adkisson
After years of activists challenging engineers about the scope and cost of adding lanes and overpasses to U.S. 281, the public last month got one of its few chances to hear those arguments hashed out in the open.
But mostly what we got was a Jon Stewart-like moment.
The punch line came as Metropolitan Planning Organization board members began pressuring Chairman Tommy Adkisson, who’s leading the charge to pull tolls from several highway projects (item 9c), to explain details about his proposed non-toll versions.
“Are these not TxDOT numbers?” he answered, according to a San Antonio Express-News report.
As toll critic Terri Hall, who likely led Adkisson to the hot seat he’s in, nodded yes from the audience, MPO board member and TxDOT engineer Clay Smith said:
“No, no they’re not.”
Well, yes, yes they are. Well … sort of.
20 lane toll road?? Not really…
Back at the US 281 Super Street meeting a few months ago, I got into a discussion with a TURF representative about the proposed tollway for 281. His was adamant that the toll plan would need more lanes than the original toll-free or “gas-tax” plan. When I pressed him on it, he could not explain why a tolled expressway would need more lanes than a free expressway, only that “it would have to.”
As it turns-out, one of TURF’s most misleading half-truths is the notion that the tollway proposal for US 281 would be 20 lanes wide, while the “original overpass plan” would only be 10 lanes. Good job TURF! You guys have mastered the art of misinformation.
Toll roads: Loop 1604 MPO Terri Hall Tommy Adkisson TURF US 281
by Brian
2 comments
Why the MPO vote to remove tolls doesn’t matter
Tommy Adkisson
The San Antonio-Bexar County MPO is scheduled to vote next Monday on whether or not to remove the toll option from the US 281 and Loop 1604 expansion projects. This plan was put forth by new MPO Chairman Tommy Adkisson, Bexar County’s Precinct 4 Commissioner and an ardent toll road opponent. Make no mistake—his plan is actually the brainchild of staunch toll road critic Terri Hall, the self-appointed director of Texans United for Freedom and Reform (TURF), and is based on the theory that she could just take plans and estimates from 2001, add the inflation factor since then, and have the magic estimate of what it would cost to build the original toll-free plan today. This elementary formula skips a number of important steps and omits several ancillary items that were not included in those original estimates, such as design work, right-of-way acquisition, and utility relocation.