A road like a loop is not an essential road and these circumfirentials have been proven ineffective thoroughfares by the planning community. It will not increase efficient movement of traffic through our region. What these roads are meant to do (nowadays) is to open up more land for development on the outer periphery of the city which creates sprawl. This haphazard form of growth is unsustainable and is not well placed in this fragile landscape (see next posting). In addition, the City of New Braunfels has the loop lined with strip commercial land uses in their Comprehensive Plan which alludes to the idea of more sprawl. The growth machine is a difficult mechanism to slow, but this loop would accelerate the growth machine and create more problems with growth issues in a shorter time span. Do we really want to be like Kyle or Cibolo and be a sprawling area with nothing unique to offer? Los Angeles decided that freeway construction was the best way to encourage growth. Look at this photo from space to see if that was a good idea or not?
6 comments:
I'm probably most worried about the Commercial Development that could occur on a new road. The City of New Braunfels has shown, with recently developed roads like Common Street, that they do not care about aesthetic quality, safety, or traffic flow. They have allowed EVERY business to have a driveway to Common Street - a terrible safety hazard. These businesses should have shared driveways - or better yet, a backage road. But a backage road would require that the City care more about its residents and the safety of the drivers than the businesses that want to build along a road. Not to mention the suicide lane - (two way left turn lane) that is known to be a bad idea, and more acceptable practices are used ALMOST EVERYWHERE!
What would this loop look like? I have no reason to believe it would be any better than Common Street currently is.
Please people. If you have ever spent any time in Austin and compared it to traffic in San Antonio and Houston, you would realize that though all of them have jams, none are more agonizing than Austin Traffic problems. Why, because you travel less with more time on the highway than the others and their are few if any options to travel. Andy why does this happen? Because Austin did not have the ability to build any loops and is in fact the largest city without a loop access system. It is for this very reason that I could never live in Austin again (and the politics).
The MAJOR problem with Austin is the fact that they have ZERO freeway to freeway interchanges. I have NEVER seen a system where you have to exit and sit through 2 lights to get to another freeway in the system.
Thank you anonymous for this comment about Austin and San Antonio. Instead of your insight, let us use real data from the US Bureau of the Census. According to their data, San Antonio ranks higher than Austin in commuting times in minutes. The average commute in SA is 22.5 minutes versus Austin with 21.9 minutes. This is the case because San Antonio is sprawling and their multiple loops are not efficient. I am not saying Austin is perfect or anywhere close to it, but like most of this NB Outer Loop Study, this comment is based on impressions rather than real DATA. Just as more insight on sprawl and loops, the top five cities in commuting times (NY, Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, Baltimore) all have either loops, beltways or in New York's case-- island geography which makes commuting difficult. In terms of sprawl, the census defines Atlanta and Houston as the most sprawling cities. Both cities have inefficient loops.
As mentioned before, please feel free to engage these points, but do so remembering that you are fighting logic and data.
Dr. Romig
With all due respect, the comment about Austin is bizarre. Yes, traffic is bad on IH 35 in Austin but quality of life is a whole lot better than any other large city in Texas. I guess some people define quality of life by how long it takes them to get to work. For others, it's a bit more complex than that.
Kevin,
You logic is flawed. The five cities you cite all have mass transit train systems.
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