On April 6, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization postponed a vote that would have reclassified part of the MoKan Corridor – a 28-mile stretch of abandoned railway from U.S. 183 in Austin to Georgetown, and a site for some final pieces of the Walnut Creek urban trails system – as a test road for autonomous vehicles. In response to public pushback, the Texas Department of Transportation asked CAMPO to push the vote, which was originally slated for April 10, “so a full public engagement process can occur” throughout 2023. Even elected officials were surprised to hear of the request – Mayor Pro Tem Paige Ellis, who sits on the CAMPO Board, told KUT it’s unclear “who’s asking for it,” and TxDOT admitted putting it before the board was “premature.”
The reclassification of the corridor to a “principal arterial” – renamed Mobility for Connected and Automated Vehicles (MoCAV) – would pave sections of Southern Walnut Creek Trail for a four-lane road running through Round Rock and Pflugerville to the Georgetown Capital Area Rural Transportation System station, and would be available for normal vehicles as well as self-driving cars, with a shared-use path. Mobility bonds from 2016 and 2020 have funded projects to connect all sections of the 19-mile Walnut Creek trail system, which would range from Govalle Neighborhood Park in East Austin to Balcones District Park in North Austin. The last pieces of the northern section – some of which overlap with the MoKan Corridor – are slated to begin construction next year, pending TxDOT approval. When asked if MoCAV construction, if approved, would necessitate abandoning the last of the northern section, a TxDOT rep wrote that they are “not planning to remove any trails through the corridor.”
This article appears in April 21 • 2023.