Don’t get excited about Mopac changes…

Posted on April 10, 2007 | 5 Comments

I’m still not sure if it’s willful ignorance or childish spite (because their grand plan to do the huge rebuild was rejected), but TXDOT still isn’t answering the most important question of all with the managed lane proposal for Mopac, which is:
Since the managed lanes do not have dedicated on/off ramps,
when the 3 regular lanes are stop-and-go, how is a car or bus in the managed lane going to manage to get over to its exit without having to also come to a stop, and thus make all the other cars or buses in the managed lane have to stop too?
Note that I’m the only guy even talking about this; the local media, unfortunately reduced to just rephrasing press releases, just reports this as “hey, a new lane in the middle, hooray!” without bothering to think about how it will actually work.

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5 Responses to Don’t get excited about Mopac changes…

  1. Adam Rice | April 10, 2007 at 2:23 pm |

    I was under the impression that, for TxDOT, the public benefit of road construction was secondary in importance to doling out taxpayer money to construction companies.

  2. mdahmus | April 10, 2007 at 2:40 pm |

    That’s certainly a popular impression. The other one of course is that the primary purpose of their highways is to open up rural land for exploitative retail and subdivision development. But neither one is likely the case here – except that I suspect TXDOT is sitting on some money that they have to use here or it’ll just evaporate.

  3. SpeckledTrout | April 10, 2007 at 9:50 pm |

    I thought the same thing when I read the article on News8Austin. Massive construction delays all for just a bit more induced traffic. The best part was that they were going to continously jack up the rates until morale got better. Or something like that.

  4. kigray | April 10, 2007 at 11:59 pm |

    I tend to agree about managed lanes being a problem when people want to enter or exit mopac and are in the middle lane. I expect people will exit and try to move over 3 lanes causing major disruptions in the traffic flow. Would you be against the plan if they simply added a lane and didnt make it a managed lane.
    Also I keep hearing people in Cedar Park complaining about traffic and that the city of Austin should do something about it. Since they dont pay Austin taxes it seems the city of Cedar Park be responsible for all the people that choose to live there and their traffic problems. If they feel their quality of life is affected by this it seems they should turn to the city of Cedar Park.

  5. mdahmus | April 11, 2007 at 7:44 am |

    I wouldn’t add any more general-purpose lanes to Mopac. The roads leading into downtown are at capacity – a large investment in transit is the only thing like to increase the people-moving capacity of the corridor; but it would require something like the 2000 light rail plan (NOT just running more buses, which end up stuck in traffic, which then end up not attracting any new riders because they’re so much slower than their cars would be).

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