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MoPac toll lane project finally gaining speed
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 9:49 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012
The move to expand MoPac Boulevard, which for several years has crawled along like 5 p.m. traffic on that overloaded highway, is about to enter the express lane.
"I would characterize it as a green-light go," Mike Heiligenstein, executive director of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, said last week.
A federally required environmental study is in its final stages, with approval likely in the fall. The mobility authority, deputized by the Texas Department of Transportation to develop the project, has refined what it will do: add a fourth express toll lane on each side of MoPac (Loop 1) from just north of Lady Bird Lake to near Parmer Lane in far North Austin.
Alongside the road from West Sixth Street to north of RM 2222, at a cost of about $20 million, would be 7.1 miles of tan-and-white, concrete sound walls 8 to 20 feet high. This would complete a quest of more than a decade by neighborhoods alongside MoPac for some relief from the noisy highway.
Construction on the $250 million project should start by 2014, agency officials say. If so, those two express lanes would be open to traffic by 2016. A significant portion of the cost would cover the construction of new flyovers connecting the toll lanes and West Cesar Chavez Street. The new lanes from the river to RM 2222 would be created largely from the existing pavement by narrowing lanes slightly and reducing the width of shoulders. North of 2222, the project generally calls for adding pavement.
The toll lanes would be dynamic, meaning the tolls would fluctuate depending on the speed of the traffic — as the number of vehicles in the toll lanes increases and traffic slows, the tolls would rise to discourage more drivers from entering those lanes.
Partnership possible
The mobility authority is strongly considering using a public-private partnership to finance, build and perhaps even operate the toll lanes, a departure from the agency's stance just a few years ago when such long-term agreements fell into disfavor across the state. After soliciting interest from the toll road industry last year, the authority heard from 22 companies or consortiums that might want to bid on some sort of construction, financing or operations deal.
The agency, in building and expanding the 183-A tollway in Cedar Park and beginning construction on the Manor Expressway (a tollway along U.S. 290 East), has racked up about $800 million in debt, which officials said could increase interest rates for further borrowing and thus nudge them toward an arrangement where the MoPac debt would fall on the private sector.
But officials emphasized that the project could still be done in a more traditional way, with the authority borrowing money on the bond market, then building and operating the toll lanes. A decision on which direction to go should be made this year or early next year.
Either way, the authority already has a commitment from TxDOT for $67.5 million, more than a quarter of the project cost, and has applied for a $72 million low-interest loan through a U.S. Department of Transportation program. Bond financing, or the private sector, might have to supply less than half the project cost.
Tolls would be used to pay back that federal loan and other borrowed money, support annual operating costs and, the authority hopes, spin off profit that could be used to build other roads.
"We look at the (traffic and revenue) projections, and it looks really strong," Heiligenstein said. "Because on MoPac, there ain't an alternative, and it's just going to get more and more crowded. You're not dealing with some area that's not fully developed like 183-A or the Manor Expressway. You're dealing with a known quantity."
Either way, what ends up on the ground will be another new transportation animal for an area that has seen a menagerie of change in the past decade.
Changing rates
Many large U.S. metro areas over the past generation have installed on urban highways some version of high-occupancy vehicle lanes, known colloquially as car pool lanes, sometimes allowing solo drivers to use them as well if they pay a toll. Central Texas never joined that movement, and the MoPac express lanes won't change that.
Instead, the added northbound and southbound lanes would be open only to those willing to pay a toll, to transit buses, to registered van pools and to emergency vehicles.
But the real departure would be the nature of the tolls themselves, which would change minute by minute depending on the level of traffic in the lane. The point, Heiligenstein said, would be to keep the toll at a level calibrated to keep speeds in the lane at 50 mph or more.
If traffic gets too thick and traffic begins to slow, the toll would instantly increase in an effort to discourage some people from choosing to use the express lane. Signs well upstream of the express lane entrances would alert people to the current toll rate. Though the Katy Freeway on Interstate 10 and U.S. 290 in Houston have something similar (with a schedule of tolls tied to the hour of the day), no other city in Texas has a road in place using constantly changing tolls.
"We'll provide reliability," Heiligenstein said. "If we don't provide a lane that has a reliable time between Point A and Point T, then we've screwed up."
Actual rates not set
The toll lanes, which would be on the left side nearest the center median, would be segregated from MoPac's three free lanes on each side by a series of plastic pylons. Drivers would be able to enter the northbound lanes only at the south end (through new bridges from West Cesar Chavez Street and the MoPac bridge over the lake) and north of RM 2222, where drivers could also exit. Southbound drivers would enter near Parmer Lane and south of Far West Boulevard, where they could also exit. New bridges at the south end would allow direct access to West Cesar Chavez and downtown.
So, how much might it cost to go the 11 miles from Cesar Chavez to Parmer? Wilbur Smith Associates, which has been doing traffic and revenue studies on the project for the mobility authority, has indicated to officials that the project would be financially feasible with a top rate initially of $2.57 in 2011 dollars. Since the road wouldn't open until 2016, that would equate to about $3 on opening day. Officials emphasized that the actual toll rates have not been set yet and that Wilbur Smith later will produce a more rigorous "investment-grade" study.
Heiligenstein foresees a minimum toll of about 50 cents to go the length of the road, even when MoPac is deserted late at night. In reality, few people are likely to take the toll lanes at times like that, but Heiligenstein has said the authority wouldn't want to confuse the public by having the lanes be free part of the time.
The agency, which in the past couple of years has hosted several open houses about the project along the MoPac corridor, anticipates having two more in March, as well as a public hearing that month required under federal law for the environmental study.
The mobility authority has established a website, www.mopacexpress.com , with more information about the project.
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Link to article here.
Will the new MoPac toll lane project cater to the rich and leave the rest of us behind?
Ben Wear, Getting There
Austin American Statesman
Published: 9:32 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012
Those of you who paused on the front page on your way to my column (yes, I know, it's hard to wait) might have noticed a truly excellent story about MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) and the unusual express toll lanes in the works.
What officials have in mind for what will be a fourth lane added to each side of MoPac north of Lady Bird Lake are "dynamic" tolls, charges that would change minute by minute in response to traffic volume. These new-fangled toll lanes, along with other forms of so-called congestion pricing, have been proliferating around the country, and enough of them are in existence (30 urban highways have them, and 11 are under construction) that the U.S. Government Accountability Office decided it was time to take a look.
The GAO's verdict: Such lanes do in fact ease traffic, including on nontolled lanes nearby, but raise worrisome questions about transportation equity between the well-heeled and people with holes in their heels.
The 14 projects the agency reviewed "have generally shown reduced congestion, increased speeds, and decreased travel times in the priced and unpriced lanes," according to the report released Jan. 12. However, in some cases the projects actually added lanes to the road — as will be the case with MoPac — making it hard to differentiate between the congestion-reducing effects of variable toll rates and simply adding another lane.
Both factors will be at work on MoPac, according to Mike Heiligenstein, executive director of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, which is putting together the express lanes project.
The dynamic pricing, he argues, will assure that something close to the theoretical maximum of 1,800 to 2,000 cars an hour go through that lane, even at the heart of morning or evening rush. Those cars right now are trudging along on MoPac's six existing lanes, or perhaps on parallel arterials like Exposition Boulevard, Jefferson Street or Lamar Boulevard. Or maybe even, for the transportation cognoscenti (people who, say, grew up in Tarrytown) on even more obscure neighborhood streets.
That's one answer, Heiligenstein said, to the equity question. Those people paying to drive much faster will make it possible for the rest of us to drive less slowly in the lanes alongside. Beyond that, he said, the agency's experience with its only currently operating toll road (183-A in Cedar Park) is that 80 percent of drivers use the road infrequently, once a week or less.
The other 20 percent, pretty much everyday users, pay the bulk of the tolls that in turn pay off the debt used to build the road in the first place.
"Now those 20 percent may be in Cadillacs," Heiligenstein said, perhaps showing his age with that choice of luxury car, "and if they are, fine. They're paying for those 80 percent who want to use it once or twice a week."
Meanwhile, traffic on parallel and free-to-drive U.S. 183, a nightmare before 183-A opened in 2007, is now relatively tranquil.
Presumably, a similar mix would occur on MoPac, with the hoi polloi (including newspaper writers) using it sparingly when circumstances make it logical to pay $3 or $4 to get north or south quickly.
Undoubtedly however, those with money will be able to use the variable-price lanes more often than those on a budget.
It may become something of a spectator sport for those caught in MoPac congestion to count the number of Lexuses, Mercedeses and Escalades that fly by in the express lane.
It ain't necessarily fair. But in the words of John F. Kennedy (who certainly could have afforded to use this lane), life is unfair. And it will help pass the time.