Don’t do unto us!
At last week’s (March 12, 2013) city council meeting the TxDOT district engineer gave a presentation about TxDOT’s plans for far east Montana street.
They plan to widen the street from four lanes to six starting about 1/2 mile east of Yarbrough all the way out to Loop 375. The south side will have bicycle lanes, sidewalks and landscaping. The north side (think airport) will be where the majority of the new lanes come from and will not have these features.
The engineer explained that about 50,000 cars use the area each day now and that they expect that number to rise to about 200,000 a day within 5 years. Now is the time to widen the road.
Two city representatives immediately objected. It seems that TxDOT has not kept council informed and that building a highway is not appropriate in a “highly residential area”. The El Paso Times attributed this quote to one of the representatives: “I think the problem is we’re getting a lot of these plans piecemeal from TxDOT instead of seeing the whole picture. … It can be frustrating”.
No kidding! That is what council and city staff have been doing to the voters on this entire city hall, ballpark issue. We still don’t know the scope of what they are doing to us.
In this case though, TxDOT is going to pay for the improvements. This is money that we are getting back from the state, not new money that we must pay through our city taxes.
Residential?
Not hardly. The north (airport) side of Montana in that area is essentially desolate. There are a few government buildings on that side, with relatively few private establishments. I know of no housing there. The south side is largely vacant. What has been built is primarily retail and light industrial with a sprinkling of junk yards. There are a few apartments and condominiums on the south side, but housing development has not really occurred there. This is not a “highly residential area”.
Beyond that, TxDOT has promised to build a sound wall if the majority of the residents want one.
Why are the city representatives in an uproar? We certainly need to have roads that can handle additional capacity. Montana is not a residential street. It is a main thoroughfare in that part of town. Can it be that our two city representatives don’t want someone springing a plan on them without their input?
Maybe now they may have a bit of understanding about how we feel.
Then again maybe they think that as city representatives they should be treated with more deference than us “crazies”.
Or maybe money is involved.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 