CAMPO Archives - ChangeAustin.org

CAMPO’s $32 Billion Congestion Nightmare — Threat or Menace?

Posted on November 22, 2014 by Linda Curtis • 4 Comments

By Roger Baker

Just when we might have imagined that CAMPO’s history of generating developer-centered transportation planning couldn’t possibly produce a result worse than their previous plan, they have managed to pulled it off.

CAMPO has just gotten the results of its latest planning, and it predicts nightmarish peak hour congestion throughout Travis, Williamson, and Hays Counties in 2040, even if we spend $32 billion on roads and transit by then. And now this vision is likely to become Austin’s legally binding growth blueprint. How did this happen?

To review the current planning situation, CAMPO is the regional, federally sanctioned, transportation planning body for Austin and the surrounding six county metropolitan area. Every five years, CAMPO is required to come up with a new long range plan to get federal and state (mostly gas tax) money for regional road and transit projects. The new 2040 Long Range CAMPO Plan now being debated, modified, and must be approved in time to take effect in May 2015, replacing the CAMPO 2035 Long Range plan that is currently in effect.

CAMPO of course outranks the City of Austin in its bureaucratic pecking order, since it is a federally sanctioned planning body that controls the local spending of federal gas tax money. Given Congressional gridlock, and the fact that federal supervision of both the FHWA and the FTA are weak and chronically starved for money. There isn’t much federal planning supervision except that the local MPOs, the federally assigned planning bodies, have to follow the very explicit rules and deadlines in the federal code which govern the allocation of the shrinking federal money. Meanwhile TxDOT, controlled by Rick Perry’s road-centric appointees, is in a strong position to control CAMPO and other MPOs because of their control of the local allocation of Texas fuel tax revenues for roads.

We love toll roads, don’t you?

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Linda Curtis • 2 Comments

We figured that subject line that we love toll roads might get ya!

News Flash!

30,000 more cars and trucks on
Mopac every day!
Mopac converted to I-35 West!

This is what happens if local and state officials spend hundreds of millions of our tax dollars connecting South Mopac to I-35 and expanding Mopac from Cesar Chavez to the Wildflower Center.

TOGETHER WE CAN STOP THIS BACKDOOR CONVERSION
OF MOPAC INTO INTERSTATE 35 WEST – no toll roads please!

CAMPO’s No-Growth Agenda

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Linda Curtis • 6 Comments

The future of Austin – 40% roadway congestion after spending $27 billion.

Monday night, in a stunning acceptance of a wholesale drop in Austin’s quality of life and economic vitality, the CAMPO transportation board, comprised of local elected officials, voted 17-2 to prolong a pretend transportation solution which strangles the region’s mobility.

CAMPO accomplished its perverted NO GROWTH plan in the same grotesque way a tumor kills its host – by choking off the organs and causing them to fail. Planning to fail. Planning for a future that is worse than today and striving to get there. Driving the region into a brick wall of congestion.

This multi-modal wet dream of homebuilders, road builders, land speculators and meddlers has no reliable funding. The citizens in the region have no clue what their elected leaders settled for and what’s in store for them.

For comic relief, we give you this ridiculously funny plan by TxDOT to sue 150,000 individuals for non-payment of tolls. Thanks to attorney Bill Gammon who has been fighting the idiot tollers for years now, you will enjoy this: 3 minute KXAN report.

And, here’s what ChangeAustin’s Brian Rodgers told the board:

“People are no longer angry, they’re scared because their property taxes are climbing beyond their capacity to pay them, cutting into the bone of their daily finances. We cannot ask them to carry the burden of building more roads without shared sacrifice…” Read the rest below.

ANNOUNCEMENT!

Property Tax Appraisal Protest Mock Hearing
Carver Library, 1161 Angelina, Austin
Thursday, June 17th, 6:30 pm
.

Action Request-Do this before Monday 6 pm!

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Linda Curtis • 1 Comment

Those transportation planners at CAMPO have stepped in it again!

Now they want to bring 40,000 more cars on to MoPAC with another toll road (SH45 in southwest Austin) over the Edwards Aquifer! Why? Because big boy developers and land speculators want their roads paid for by…guess who…you and me. We can pay the tolls and still sit in traffic!

You can stop this madness. Just do this please before 6 pm next Monday when CAMPO will vote on the 2035 plan.

Email or call (or do both!):

Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe – 854-9555 – Sam.Biscoe@co.travis.tx.us
Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell – 974-2250 – lee.leffingwell@ci.austin.tx.us
Georgetown Mayor George Garver – 930-3651 – mayor@georgetowntx.org
Pflugerville Mayor Jeff Coleman – 251-5331 – mayor@cityofpflugerville.com
Bastrop County Commissioner Clara Beckett – 581-4000 – clara.beckett@co.bastrop.tx.us

What to say:

Dear Mayors Leffingwell, Garver and Coleman, Judge Biscoe, and Commissioner Beckett:

I am counting on you to put some common sense into transportation planning in our region. That means voting yes to eliminate SH45 (the southwest toll road) from the CAMPO 2035 plan.

Then say whatever else you want to but keep it clean!

If you want to know what community activist wonks have to say about these complex issues, go here:

Roger Baker in Ken Martin’s new local publication The Austin Bulldog.

Brian Rodgers’ presentation to the Real Estate Council of Austin.

Join us at the CAMPO Meeting on Monday 6 pm.