Transportation Planning

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Transportation

Adequate transportation planning is a key part of the Hill Country’s future. Our growing population of residents must travel to and from work and school. Visitors travel our roads to enjoy the beauty of our landscape. If our roads are to remain the assets we enjoy today, transportation planning must consider not only mobility and safety, but also preservation of the historic, scenic and natural environment. We can do this by guiding development toward preferred growth corridors, such as those proposed by Envision Central Texas, by fostering compact growth near existing Hill Country communities and by using new planning tools like context sensitive design, which utilizes stakeholder input early in the planning process and strives to make infrastructure projects fit with the existing environment. Because of the significant effects transportation infrastructure has on growth patterns, it is important that Hill Country citizens be involved in transportation planning.

Regional Context

Like so many challenges we face in the Hill Country, transportation is often dealt with in a silo rather from an overall regional perspective. Studies over the past 3 decades have consistently revealed the need for conservation and land protection in our most sensitive water resource areas. National trends show a growing market for more walkable communities and more transit options such as rail. This resource page provides links to modern transportation planning ideas, regional and approaches to long-term transportation solutions and current news about local transportation planning processes.

Must Read

The Growth Ponzi Scheme: We often forget that the American pattern of suburban development is an experiment, one that has never been tried anywhere before. We assume it is the natural order because it is what we see all around us. But our own history — let alone a tour of other parts of the world — reveals a different reality. Across cultures, over thousands of years, people have traditionally built places scaled to the individual. It is only the last two generations that we have scaled places to the automobile. Read more from Strongtowns.org.

Integrating Land Use and Transportation Planning through Placemaking: When considering integrated land use and transport planning, Placemaking promotes a simple principle: if you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places. The power of this simple idea is that it reflects basic truths that are rarely acknowledged. One such truth is that more traffic and road capacity are not the inevitable results of growth. They are in fact the products of very deliberate choices that have been made to shape our communities around the private automobile. We have the ability to make different choices–starting with the decision to design our streets as comfortable places for people. Read more from Project for Public Spaces.

SH 45

One of the most talked about and contentious roadway proposals in the region has been SH 45. This outer-loop project is mapped directly over some of the most fragile, karst recharge features of the Edwards Aquifer. Some see the road as a traffic congestion solution, however a closer look reveals an increased traffic burden for Mopac which is already serving at maximum capacity. Public regional planning processes have recommended not building this project including Imagine Austin plan completed in 2012.

SH 45 Resources

Recent Transportation Planning News

Lots to lose

From Paved Paradise, which will be published next month by Penguin Press. The need for a perfect parking space has shaped the country’s physical landscape. It has become the organizing principle of American architecture, making our designs bigger, uglier, and farther...

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