 "Photo: Katrina Perry")
The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization voted in favor of the Transportation Improvement Program Monday night, which will add five toll roads to central Texas highways, after nearly 20 meetings and a public hearing at the Capitol.
The plan creates five toll roads: U.S. Highway 290 East from U.S. Highway 183 to State Highway 130, U.S. 183 from Springdale to Patton, State Highway 71 East from Riverside Drive to U.S. 183, U.S. 290 west/state route 71, known as the "Y" in Oak Hill, and State Highway 45 from Mopac South to FM 1626.
Kyle resident and attorney Craig Young stood in front of Anderson High School with a "no toll" sign as local residents came to debate the proposed roads. The citizens spilled into the foyers of the school's performing arts center where the meeting was held.
At one door, a member of the Fix290 Coalition greeted supporters with yellow signs that read "Stop the trolls" on one side and "no tolls" on the other. A member of Take On Traffic, the coalition organized by business leaders through the Austin Chamber of Commerce, was handing out white hats representing support for toll roads at the other door.
The sides remained divided for the rest of the evening.
Symbolically, most of the white hat wearers sat toward the front, while the anti-toll groups held their signs in the back and interjected a mixture of boos, hisses and occasional applause as they listened to the proceedings.
Nineteen members are on CAMPO's Transportation Policy Board. Each road was voted on separately. Austin City Councilwoman Jennifer Kim, Hays County Judge Liz Sumter, Sunset Valley Council Member Jeff Mills and Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, were the only four members of the board to vote against every toll road proposal.
Travis County Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt also voted against the proposal to add tolls on state Route 45, suggesting to postpone the vote for another year because the road has significantly less traffic and therefore less need to be tolled.
Mills argued the plan does not address the highways that are the main source of congestion in Austin: Interstate 35, State Highway 360 and Mopac Boulevard.
Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, the chair of the transportation board, said the toll roads are necessary to relieve the congestion on the roads in central Austin.
Kim congratulated and thanked the groups that participated in the debate and said they had made the process more transparent to citizens and also saved 40 historic oak trees in the Waller Creek watershed. She then voted against all the proposals and said she could not support the program because of the environmental footprint in the Barton Creek watershed among other things.
"Austin can do better," Kim said.
Eckhardt stated that she was against most toll roads and that she did not want to see what "12 lanes of toll highway will do to Oak Creek and Dripping Springs."
She then voted for all but one of the proposals because the board had made an effort to ensure the revenue generated by the roads would be controlled by the residents of Central Texas.
Sumter voted against the plan, saying that the toll road would make Dripping Springs a town that Texans drive through, not stop in and stay. She said Dripping Springs is counting on the revenue that could be generated from ecotourism without the tollway plowing though town.
But it was the white-hat wearing Take On Traffic coalition who emerged victorious.
"I'm very happy with the results of tonight's vote. This is result of many months of work," said Brandon James, a volunteer with Austin Chamber Board of Directors.
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