Ref: (A) Our phone conversation
of Friday, March 17, 2000
(B)
My fax of Union Pacific Railroad‚s criteria for freight
rail
Dear Mr. Jackson:
In reference (A) we discussed
SH 130 design relative to the requirements for freight railroad as
laid out by Union Pacific, this region's only major freight
railroad company. Officially, I repeat what I said to you on the
phone; SH 130 as currently designed does not meet the gradients
and curvatures Union Pacific requires for freight operations.
Enclosed here is a copy of the document I faxed you which contains
this information. [Write
to Dave if you
would like a copy of this
document.] This
document was a part of an ATS/CMTA sponsored regional
transportation charrette, at the Capitol Marriott, May 22/23, 1997
that I attended.
During our phone conversation
you raised the suitability of SH 130 ROW [right of way]
for passenger rail and I agreed that it probably could be used for
that. In reality, once the road is constructed, it is highly
unlikely this will ever happen. One reason, of course, is the cost
of accessessing highway ROW after the fact vis-a-vis stations as
opposed to designing and building a road/rail facility from the
outset. Proposed light rail stations for the center of U.S. 183 in
the Transit Corridor Analysis Project (1986-1989) were estimated
in excess of $1 million apiece. Another reason urban rail transit
becomes less likely once the road is in place has to do with the
sprawl land use impacts engendered by the highway. The real return
from rail transit is from the high density high tax return on low
capital infrastructure costs that are possible by reducing auto
usage and parking lots. The pay back from an-after-the-fact urban
rail installation in SH 130 will be far slower if strip
development and traditional suburban development has taken place,
as it no doubt will under the current state and federal funding
arrangements that puts disproportionate funding into pavement.
This fact prompted acting Capital Metro General Manager Norma
Robinson in a 1988 letter to various public bodies concerned with
Mokan (SH 130), to point out that highway would have to be
constructed without frontage roads in the urbanized area if it was
ever to be suitable for transit. Like the freight parameters, this
requirement, too, has been mostly ignored by TxDot in the design
throughout road‚s urban area transit. This is history
repeating itself with respect to TxDOT ignoring official requests
from governmental bodies. In 1983 and 1984 we pointed out that the
proposed U.S. 183 need to have 33 feet in the center throughout
its entire length if two way transit was to be installed in the
future. Two designs were possible; one with 7 feet and the other
with 33 feet in the middle between Burnet Road and IH35. After at
least two letters from local FWHA administrator, John Conrado, and
resolutions from Capital Metro, the Travis County Commissioner's
Court and the Austin City Council calling for the 33 feet, the 7
foot option was built.
Now I would add my voice, as I
told you on the phone, to those would pointed out the falsehood of
claiming this facility will relieve congestion on IH 35 when the
TxDOT numbers show only 8% relieve at the bridge if SH 130 were a
regular freeway and then ignore the fact that SH 130 is being put
forth as a toll road. Besides, with traffic growing at 3% per year
on IH35, SH 130‚s billion dollar cost for even 8% relieve is
ridiculous. As Rob Dickson‚s letter points out in citing 15
years of Texas Transportation Institute studies of 70 cities,
roads cause, not solve congestion. There is, of course, the
farmland issue, both the loss of farmland and the failure of the
DEIS to address the Farmland Protection Act as noted by Jim
Vance.
In closing, it seems
unconscionable to take a perfectly good urban rail option and
essentially trash it for a road that will return far far less for
the money. The DEIS takes no account of the secondary
infrastructure and service costs put on local governmental taxing
bodies and the resulting years of debt service while local
government waits for the new development to reach the critical
mass necessary to pay for itself. With energy prices going in only
one direction-up, for the foreseeable future, SH 130 is an
extremely unwise decision especially when the alternatives are
clearly so much wiser.
