Antone's Nightclub
Planners Need to Think Outside the Box
RECEIVED Tue., April 24, 2007
Dear Editor,
Efforts to facilitate traffic flow in Oak Hill (April 20, p.10) [“Postmarks”] and on MoPac (p.19) [“MoPac Expansion Update,” News] are both doomed due to planners’ failure to think outside the box. The intellectual box in which they find themselves is the belief that transportation solutions lie in maintaining existing lanes devoted to auto traffic and then adding either more lanes, in the case of MoPac, or in the case of Oak Hill, waiting for commuter rail.
Fortunately for Mexico City, traffic planners there thought outside the box and realized that devoting eight lanes to autos on their major north-south arterial, Avenida Insugentes, was only resulting in ever-longer traffic jams. Rather than building yet more lanes, they banned cars from one northbound and one southbound lane and allocated the lanes to 160-passenger buses. Buses on this one route alone carry 260,000 passengers a day. The plan has been such a success that five additional lines are now being added. Austin’s transport planners’ failure to adopt this already proven, off-the-shelf technology dooms us to wasting millions of dollars, exacerbating pollution, countless hours wasted in traffic jams, and the devastation of communities such as Oak Hill.
My offer to the CAMPO board or any other traffic planners to accompany them on an inspection tour of the Mexico City rapid bus system is still on the table.
Efforts to facilitate traffic flow in Oak Hill (April 20, p.10) [“Postmarks”] and on MoPac (p.19) [“MoPac Expansion Update,” News] are both doomed due to planners’ failure to think outside the box. The intellectual box in which they find themselves is the belief that transportation solutions lie in maintaining existing lanes devoted to auto traffic and then adding either more lanes, in the case of MoPac, or in the case of Oak Hill, waiting for commuter rail.
Fortunately for Mexico City, traffic planners there thought outside the box and realized that devoting eight lanes to autos on their major north-south arterial, Avenida Insugentes, was only resulting in ever-longer traffic jams. Rather than building yet more lanes, they banned cars from one northbound and one southbound lane and allocated the lanes to 160-passenger buses. Buses on this one route alone carry 260,000 passengers a day. The plan has been such a success that five additional lines are now being added. Austin’s transport planners’ failure to adopt this already proven, off-the-shelf technology dooms us to wasting millions of dollars, exacerbating pollution, countless hours wasted in traffic jams, and the devastation of communities such as Oak Hill.
My offer to the CAMPO board or any other traffic planners to accompany them on an inspection tour of the Mexico City rapid bus system is still on the table.
Philip Russell