Agency admits new lanes don't cure congestion
The Mopac expansion discredits the I-35 expansion.
It's been seven years since Mopac added two tolled "express" lanes between Lady Bird Lake and Parmer Lane. Now the state agency that put them in place wants to add four express lanes (two in each direction) on the southern segment of the highway, from Cesar Chavez down to Slaughter.
The agency in question, the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, was created 22 years ago by the state to add toll lanes on highways in the Austin metro area. Over the next 15 years CTRMA built toll lanes on Mopac, SH 71, U.S. 290, U.S. 183, and 45SW.
Express lanes on Mopac south had been in the works since 2013 but were put on ice after Greg Abbott, responding to demands for highway socialism in his own party, imposed a moratorium on new toll projects. That's why the lanes being added to I-35 will not be tolled, even though that is what was envisioned by Kirk Watson when he was pushing for the expansion in the State Senate.
Anyway, a few years ago something changed and the powers-that-be quietly revived the Mopac South express lanes, presumably because some Abbott donor in Rollingwood was tired of sitting in clogged general purpose lanes like some middle management schmuck.
