BIKE: Envision Central Texas, CTRMA & TxDOT

[David Dobbs]

At 08:25 -0500 4/16/04, Mike Dahmus wrote:
>In order to make this an honest figure, I'd be curious to know how 
>much of this MPO-directed sidewalk spending is on state highways 
>which didn't previously have sidewalks. It's very misleading to 
>consider this a big improvement (when you guys fail to build 
>sidewalks on urban and suburban frontage roads, and then hit up the 
>local and federal governments for funding to do it later at a much 
>higher cost).
>
>That's the way it works here, and I'm sure there's a guy at the 
>Austin TXDOT office who's very proud of it.

Amen to that!  March 27th I was in Ft. Worth attending a National 
Association of Railroad Passengers meeting and since I have not yet 
purchased my Brompton folding bike, I took a two and half mile walk 
around the periphery of downtown.

For those of you haven't been to downtown Fort Worth, know that it is 
a vibrant bustling place of people, shops, hotels and nice 
restaurants, despite its almost total orientation to arrival by 
automobile.  While the CBD center emphasizes pedestrians and has a 
fairly balanced car-control environment, the southern edge of 
downtown where it meets IH 30 is a mess because it totally ignores 
pedestrians, cyclists, and urban rail.  (The terminus of the Trinity 
Railway Express commuter train between Dallas and Fort Worth is at 
the historic Texas & Pacific Railway Terminal  on Lancaster.)

At Lancaster and Henderson there are no sidewalks adjacent to 
Lancaster and pedestrian movement along Henderson under IH 30 is 
hostile at best.  The south side of Lancaster at the intersection of 
Henderson is a steep concrete embankment which will require 
mega-bucks to retrofit to a sidewalk, which bears out exactly what 
you said.  This one of many many examples that can be found right 
here in Austin and all over Texas of how roadways, especially ones 
designed by TxDOT are monolithic, utterly precluding anything but 
movement in a ton-or-more motorized steel box.

TxDOT's mission is foremost about distributing public tax dollars to 
its clients--roadway consultants and contractors who lobby the ledge 
for funding; any benefit that accrues to the traveling public is 
purely secondary.

Dave Dobbs
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Texas Association for Public Transportation
9702 Swansons Ranch Road
Austin, Texas 78748
Ph 512.282.1149

Visit our website at  http://www.lightrailnow.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



At 08:25 -0500 4/16/04, Mike Dahmus wrote:
>Andrew Wimsatt wrote:
>
>>In TxDOT's Fort Worth District, 8.5% of this fiscal year's letting 
>>amount (or approximately $17 million) is being used for bikeway 
>>construction, sidewalks, park and ride facility construction, and 
>>pedestrian access improvements.  Of the $17 million. $9.5 million 
>>is being funded under Category 9 (Transportation Enhancements).
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 3198 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bicycleaustin.info/private.cgi/forum-bicycleaustin.info/attachments/20040416/57daa702/attachment.bin