Like TURF
Follow TURFWASTEFUL: Toll agency gives away money for 'green' highway ideas
As if special interests aren't already taking taxpayers to the cleaners, now we're giving away money at a gala to make highways 'green.' Environmentalists must be doubled over with laughter and taxpayers are 'red' with anger over the wasted money.
Can a road be green? Agency looks for ideas for two long-awaited roads
By Ben Wear
Austin American Statesman
Published: 8:02 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011
Can there really be a "green" highway?
I suspect a good number of Statesman readers would say "no way," arguing that, by definition, cutting a new road through the countryside or widening an road inevitably pollutes nearby areas to some degree and encourages more suburban and exurban development. And more development means more trees leveled, more dirt moved, more ranchland turned into cul-de-sacs, more fertilizer- and grease-laced rainwater settling into aquifers, and more cars traveling more miles in Central Texas.
True enough. We still need the darn things to get around.
But maybe a highway can be "greenish," or at least a paler shade of whatever color is associated with environmental degradation. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, no doubt with its own road-building plans in mind, last week made a $64,000 stab at that goal.
The local tollway agency held a $50-a-head gala to award prizes to contestants in its "green mobility challenge," handing out $15,000 and $10,000 prizes to four engineering companies or groups of companies and $14,000 in scholarships and faculty honoraria to a team of students from Rice and Texas A&M universities for suggestions about how to make two future highways more environmentally friendly.
The choice of highway projects for the contest — the Texas 45 Southwest and U.S. 290 West tollways — was not a coincidence. Environmental activists have successfully resisted construction of those highways for more than a decade.
Both projects are over the Barton Springs segment of the Edwards Aquifer, an area where much of the creek flows and rain makes its way to Barton Springs Pool. The aquifer is also a drinking water source for tens of thousands of people who have wells.
Texas 45 Southwest, which the authority is calling the Manchaca Expressway, would be a new 3-mile-long road connecting FM 1626 to the south end of MoPac Expressway. The Oak Hill Expressway would be a six-lane tollway built on top of U.S. 290 and Texas 71 where they converge, and current plans call for it to have six frontage road lanes as well.
The mobility authority, by holding the contest and by ultimately using some contestants' ideas in highway designs, could blunt some criticism. That might be the triumph of hope over experience, because the road's opponents have proved to be a tenacious bunch. But in the end, the authority's primary audience is the group of politicians making the decisions on the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board, and they might be more persuadable.
At any rate, the contest ginned up some interesting suggestions.
In Oak Hill, for instance, one team suggested that instead of frontage roads alongside the tollway, a new parallel parkway should be built a couple of hundred feet from the existing road, just north of Williamson Creek. That would avoid what has been one of the major defects of the 12-lane plan — the requirement to build it over the creek and knock down some vintage oaks alongside the existing road.
For Texas 45 Southwest, designers suggested an arched concrete bridge over Bear Creek to minimize damage there, wildlife tunnel crossings, "bioswales" in the median to better filter out pollutants, a "teardrop" interchange at Bliss Spillar Road with roundabouts rather than a traditional diamond design, a park with walking paths alongside the road, and movable "zippered" concrete barriers that would allow a middle lane to switch from northbound to southbound during the day, minimizing the width of the road.
Will the authority use any of these ideas?
Some of them, probably. Agency spokesman Steve Pustelnyk said the ideas will be evaluated for their feasibility (including added costs) and would have to be cleared by environmental regulators.
A green highway? These two roads, like all of them, instead will probably be tinted in shades of gray.