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Follow TURFAdding toll lanes to MoPac, on existing right of way paid for already, is a DOUBLE TAX. It's also unsafe as they'll have to narrow lanes below highway standards to 11 feet wide (from 12 feet wide) in order to fit them, as well as eliminate shoulders. I find it interesting this Statesman article fails to mention the other toll proposal for MoPac, which is to toll EXISTING lanes in order to modify behavior -- to kick motorists off MoPac and into mass transit. The proposal also includes "dynamic pricing," otherwise called congestion pricing/tolling, which is code for government managed traffic control. They jack up the toll to intentionally tax people off of their own public roads when the government deems it's too crowded!
MoPac toll plan coming into focus
Low-profile flyovers would link new paying lanes with West Fifth, Cesar Chavez streets.
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
A plan to add a fourth, tolled lane to each side of MoPac Boulevard, resuscitated after a few years of financial doubt, would involve a substantial makeover at the highway's already complex interchange near downtown.
Engineers foresee building two overpasses to link toll lanes north of Lady Bird Lake to West Fifth and West Cesar Chavez streets.
Northbound drivers coming from south of the lake could also access the toll lane, which would extend 11 miles to near Parmer Lane. And southbound drivers in the toll lane could continue south to MoPac's free lanes.
Mike Heiligenstein, executive director of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority , which would build the project and collect the tolls, says the new flyovers wouldn't tower above nearby buildings as elsewhere on MoPac (Loop 1), Interstate 35 and other Texas highways.
"It's lower profile than some of the stuff that's there (at that interchange) now," Heiligenstein said. "It does exactly what we want to do without getting up in the air too high."
Heiligenstein said that an environmental study should be complete within two years.
"If all the financing falls into place the way we think it will, we're looking at 2013 for construction to start and 2016 to have it all wrapped up," he said.
The mobility authority and the Texas Department of Transportation, which owns MoPac and would continue to be responsible for its six free lanes and frontage roads, have agreed on a base toll rate of 22 cents a mile for the toll lanes. But drivers would rarely pay that amount.
Instead, as officials have said previously, tolls would fluctuate depending on the traffic volume. Elsewhere in the country, this approach is called "dynamic" tolling. The authority prefers the terms "time-of-day" or "demand-based" tolling.
"We're talking about whatever it takes to keep that lane moving," Heiligenstein said.
At times of truly sparse traffic, Heiligenstein said, the tolls might be well below 22 cents a mile because vehicles would be able to drive at highway speed for free in the main lanes alongside the toll lanes. But the tolls would never go to zero, even in the middle of the night, he said, "so that people would always sense that that is a toll lane."
Transit buses and emergency vehicles would be able to drive in the toll lanes for free. Everyone else would have to pay.
The four existing Central Texas toll roads operated by TxDOT have an average toll of about 12 cents a mile . The mobility authority's 183-A tollway in Cedar Park costs toll tag users more than 40 cents a mile to drive its 4.5 miles.
The area's transportation planning board, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, voted in 2005 to add "managed lanes" to MoPac between Lady Bird Lake and Parmer. TxDOT at that point began the design and environmental work in earnest.
But TxDOT, after double-counting $1.1 billion of its revenue in 2007 and then discovering the error, had to cancel or defer various road projects around the state. The MoPac managed lane project was one of the casualties, languishing for the next two years or so.
Earlier this year, state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin , and Texas Transportation Commission Chairwoman Deirdre DeLisi jointly announced that the project was back on track. TxDOT has pledged to provide at least $69 million in tax money toward the $250 million price tag.
The rest probably would be money borrowed on the bond market, the typical model for financing toll road projects. The key uncertainty at this point is just how much revenue the toll lanes would generate, and thus how much money the mobility authority could borrow. A traffic and revenue study is under way.
The project's main engineering challenges, aside from crafting efficient ways to get toll lane drivers in and out of downtown, are squeezing four lanes into the constrained right of way south of RM 2222 and deciding where and how to let drivers enter and exit the toll lanes. North of RM 2222, when the Union Pacific railroad is no longer in the median and where TxDOT owns a wide swath of land, putting in a fourth lane on each side is no problem.
A fourth lane would fit by narrowing the main lanes from 12 feet wide to 11 feet wide and virtually eliminating the shoulders in the tightest area near West 35th Street , TxDOT engineers said in 2007 .
The toll lanes could be accessed south of Parmer, at U.S. 183 and perhaps between RM 2222 and Far West Boulevard, Heiligenstein said. The toll lanes could be segregated from the main lanes by concrete barriers in areas where there is room and perhaps by some other means in the narrow stretches.
Public open houses
As part of the environmental study, the public is invited to open houses, both from 6 to 8 p.m.
Tonight: Murchison Middle School, 3700 North Hills Drive
Thursday: O. Henry Middle School, 2610 W. 10th St.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/mopac-toll-plan-coming-into-focus-956008.html
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