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I talk often about the need for better transportation choices. When I write about that, whether on my websites or elsewhere (I keep a personal website under Jefferson Barton, where I�ve talked about this in more depth and more freely), frequently I refer to the need for better roads and my desire to reduce traffic congestion.
At least in part that�s because roads are such an �in your face� issue for us right now. The need is so apparent -- at least for me, at least along the Interstate 35 corridor. The question of whether to move forward with road bonds and a state pass-through financing partnership has been one of the most pressing, and most controversial, items on the Commissioners Court agenda for the past two years.
But transportation is really much more than just roads for cars, much more.
Transportation is -- or should be, in my view -- about facilitating a free and healthy civil society. One of the first things most dictators do when they come to power is to restrict movement.
In fact, the ability to move goods and people and ideas without undo hindrance is one of the hallmarks of a democracy. It is also usually an indicator of a healthy, economically vibrant society.
Roads are a historic part of free movement, but hardly the only part. Good roads are really just a tool, a technological innovation, to facilitate movement.
As our county changes, other tools, tools from �back in the day, are reemerging -- walkways, bike ways, passenger rail; and new-old types of vehicles: scooters, trolleys, bicycles built for two.
I serve on two regional boards to promote transit. We�re looking at ways to build regional consensus for purchase and operation of things like regional passenger trains, rapid bus solutions, or trolley cars to circulate commuters from the out-burbs once they arrive in Austin.
Meanwhile, I�m championing a planning-nerd idea here in Hays County (�Hello. My name is Jeff Barton. I am a planning nerd.�), an idea known roughly as �context sensitive design.� The principle is to recognize just what we�ve been talking about -- that roads are a tool, an end to a means, and not a means in itself.
That translates to involving the public in design. It means taking neighborhood character into account on the front-end of design, rather than forcing neighborhoods to adapt to rigid design standards that don�t make sense for the people who live there.
And, for me, it means recognizing -- emphasizing -- that while automobile vehicle traffic is surely the single most common single user of most suburban roads, cars and trucks aren�t the whole game. Increasingly, we ought to be enabling, even encouraging, land use patterns and road design that make it easier for kids to bike to school, for people to jog before work, for neighbors to meet during afternoon walks.
We are in the heart of bicycle country. Visitors from outside Hays County trust us with their dollars, and their lives, when they come here to bike along our scenic thoroughfares. Meanwhile, more and more locals also are using bicycles to move to and from work, to and from school -- -- to save gas and stay in shape. Troops of bikers -- the Lance Armstrong type, not the Hell�s Angels kind -- are a routine fact of life on many of our busy roads, roads that are no longer truly �rural� but still have a bit of seductive country character.
Too often this has led to culture clash, a dangerous and abrupt high-speed meeting two-wheel living vs. four-wheel tons of steel. Often it�s been seen as interlopers vs. locals.
We�ve got to get over it. The problem isn�t bicycles or bicyclers, it�s antiquated design, same-old-same-old engineering.
The world has shifted and we might as well get used to it -- embrace it. I�ve been pushing hard to change that old equation with our state partnership roads, like FM 1626.
Monday morning I was at the funeral of a beloved Hays County law enforcement officer who died when the bicycle he was riding to work on FM 150 east of Kyle was struck by a car. He was a productive, caring colleague in the county work force, of local family, by all accounts a devoted husband and father of young children.
We can�t afford to avert our eyes. We have to do better. We can do better.
During a season when so many are talking about translating hope into change, we can at least begin to change how we design our roads -- who we design them for, what we mean by �road� and �transportation,� what we hope and intend them to accomplish. If we are audacious enough, we might just change not only how we address transportation, what we mean by the term, but also how we live it in the future.
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