Monday Morning Report
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| Labor Day Edition |
The Board of the Austin-San Antonio Commuter Rail District holds its quarterly meeting this Friday, September 5, 2008 at 10:00 am at the San Marcos Activity Center located at 501 E. Hopkins.
The Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council's Transportation Task Force will meet at 1:30 pm Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at the San Marcos Activity Center. Please contact Sarah@thecorridor.org or call 512-558-7360 for more information and if you plan to attend. An agenda is forthcoming.
Infrastructure
The New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung ran an update on Austin-San Antonio commuter rail at the end of last week in response to a Corridor Council presentation to the New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce Transportation Committee. It's a pretty good wrap-up of recent developments on the project, with details.
Mario Medina will take over as TxDOT's District Engineer in San Antonio. Medina was formerly the Laredo District Engineer and replaces David Casteel, who was promoted to oversee all TxDOT district engineers about six months ago. Mario formerly worked in the agency's Multi-Modal office, overseeing - among other things - development of Austin-San Antonio commuter rail.
The Austin Community Newspapers group, which already publishes the Round Rock Leader, will launch two new weeklies this week, the Cedar Park Citizen and the Leander Ledger. The Citizen will cover 14,350 households and the Ledger 8,700 households with local news coverage.
Texas State Senator Keven Eltife told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that he supports recent moves by the Governor, Lt. Gov., and House Speaker to issue $1.5 billion in bonds for road construction, but does not support using State pension funds to back toll roads. He wants to get more dollars to TxDOT by stopping the diversion of transportation-related fees away from the agency, indexing the gas tax, using state surpluses, and cutting other spending to increase transportation funding. Story here.
No one was hurt but a spectacular explosion in a natural gas line rattled residents of Caldwell County last week, sending up 400-foot flames and sparking ground shocks felt 12 miles away. Emergency crews responded quickly according to McMahan Volunteer Fire Department assistant chief Chuck Cutshall: "Everything here worked just the way it was supposed to.” Details from the Lockhart Post-Register.
Economic Development
Labor Day meant just another holiday for some of us, but for 250,000 Texas bird hunters it marks the opening day of dove season. And it's not just a hunting event, but a major economic development generator for sports equipment and gun stores (One store reported selling $4,000 worth of shotgun shells to just two hunters). A reminder of why we love living in Central Texas from the Temple Telegram here.
Bus ridership was up more than 12% in July compared with July 2007, the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority says. On average, Central Texans made 8,700 more trips each weekday. The system’s express routes were even more popular, ridership on those routes jumped 69% year-over-year.
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority has chosen Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. to design and build the Manor Expressway interchange at U.S. Highway 183. The future expressway will be a toll road running between U.S. 183 and State Highway 130 along U.S. 290. The first two segments of the expressway were awarded to LJA and Kennedy Engineering.
Southwest Airlines Co. said it will cut 190 flights from its winter schedule, beginning in January, to ensure the carrier is optimizing its flight routes and streamlining expenses. Southwest operates a total of about 3,400 flights daily.
Mark Webb has decided to leave his post as head of the San Antonio International Airport to accept a position with University Health System (UHS) and lead its $900 million capital program. His new role at UHS will be as vice president of facilities development and project management.
“Rainbows apologize for angry skies.”
~Sylvia Voirol