Austin @ Large: Toll Roadkill
The dead armadillos are on the sides of the highway, not in the middle
By Mike Clark-Madison, Fri., July 23, 2004
Normally, I'm pretty laid-back about such public displays of unlikely affection, such as last year's anti-Wal-Mart hookup between Bunch's Save Our Springs Alliance and its former enemy Stratus Properties. But at least Bunch and his SOS cohort, and Stratus' Beau Armstrong and his posse, are members of the same species. I have often argued that there is plenty of opportunity in this town for finding common cause among diverse constituencies, and that such efforts should not be hampered by tired tribal politics. Indeed, I am fool enough to think that the CTRMA toll plan is, in fact, just such an effort, which is why I supported it, much to Bunch's chagrin.
But I'm not fool enough to think that there is anything like common cause uniting Bill Bunch and Gerald Daugherty. Bunch and SOS don't want any more roads. Daugherty wants far more roads than the CTRMA, or the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, is likely to ever endorse. Bunch and SOS want major investments in mass transit. Daugherty wants to take away Capital Metro's sales tax revenue to build more roads. And so forth. Two different species, bound to produce mutant, freakish offspring. The fact that both are ideologues, or maybe demagogues, and (I think) sadly out of touch with on-the-ground realities on the transportation front, does not make them allies, any more than a bluefish is kin to a bluebird. If Bunch and Daugherty have really found a way to be partners, then one or both of them is, politically speaking, a whore.
Strange Roadfellows
Which troubles me, because I really have more respect than you might expect for both Bunch and Daugherty – I think both are basically men of integrity (though they could both use some lessons in tolerance and humility), and Austin is richer for their commitment to public life. On the toll-road issue, I simply think both of them are wrong. If I had to pick, I'd rather Bunch be right than Daugherty; ideally, I would love to embrace a future in which Austin never built another highway lane-mile. This is not that world.
We can and should try, through land-use and related strategies under the aegis of Envision Central Texas, to restrain future sprawl and thus the need for new extensions to the regional highway network. But the need for increased capacity on the current highway network seems to me beyond dispute because of land-use decisions made 20 years ago that are, unfortunately, irreversible. To meet that need, Central Texas deserves, and must demand, a plan that puts new capacity in existing corridors; that implements tolls to offset the massive but normally hidden public subsidies for drivers and autocentric development; that helps, or at least does not hinder, Austin's efforts to establish a rail transit system; and that brings all areas of the region up to some semblance of equity. The CTRMA plan would, or at least could, do all of those things better than I had expected. So I supported it.
I think my view reflects public consensus, which was in turn reflected by the 16-to-7 vote of the CAMPO board last week. I do think the 11th-hour amendments to the CTRMA plan by and large improved it – or at least made some of its implied positive assumptions more explicit – and reflected exactly the sort of leadership from, most especially, Mayor Will Wynn that had for too long gone missing. On the other hand, the fact that a bipartisan majority of the local legislative delegation – Reps. Keel, Baxter, Stick, Naishtat, and Rodriguez – stood with the nays does undercut, if only a little, the pro-toll argument that the CTRMA plan is a necessary response to a clear state mandate. If I were Round Rock GOP Rep. Mike Krusee, the House's transportation czar, I'd be watching my back.
Until Tomorrow
One can rationalize that Keel, Baxter, and Stick were voting their districts, as was Daugherty, even though the county commish was hardly reluctant to do so. It would have been easy for Eddie Rodriguez to say he was doing the same thing, since so many of the new CTRMA toll miles will be in his District 51, the poorest in Central Texas. But to his credit, Rodriguez took the far riskier stance of siding overtly with Bunch and labeling the final plan's rendition of SH 45 Southwest, over the aquifer, a straight-up deal-killer.
That leaves Elliott Naishtat and Council Member Daryl Slusher off to the side of the road with the dead armadillos, a curious place for these two to be. Naishtat, despite his many years of service, has never been all that prominent a player on the transportation front (compared to, say, County Commissioner Karen Sonleitner, who also represents a huge chunk of Naishtat's district), and for him to take an odd-man-out position of any kind at CAMPO is at least notable.
But Slusher's opposition, at least as he's expressed it, goes beyond "notable" into the realm of the simply confusing – as if he were trying to actually give Bunch and Daugherty's baby a name and raise it right. I say this in part because I can't believe that Slusher, who's been working this beat for a generation, actually needs more time to think about this issue, or that after eight years at City Hall and five on the Capital Metro board he doesn't know the political topography here. If, like Rodriguez, he simply can't support new lane miles over the aquifer, he should say so. I'm more inclined to believe Slusher really is uncertain than are Daugherty or Bunch or the other partisans for whom seeking "more time" and "more input" is just a tactic. I just don't know why.
At least, I trust, we can count on Slusher – and, if he's a man of his word, Krusee – to cross the road here and vigorously support Capital Metro's rail plans in November, as I expect Bunch ultimately will and Daugherty assuredly will not. So much for their summer romance. n
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