Travis County Commissioners Court
April 27, 2010,
Item 4
Now on to agenda item number 4. Receive comments regarding proposal to temporarily close mckinney falls parkway between william can nope drive and colten bluff springs road for roadway construction beginning on our about may 4, 2010, and continuing through august 31, 2010, or until construction is completed. This will also be action item 1.
>> move public hearing be open.
>> second.
>> all those in favor? That passes unanimously.
>> this is a capital improvements approved by the voters to extend mckinney falls parkway. Because of the nature construction, substantial variations in grade, we're proposing the road be closed for a period of time, may 4 through august 31. To better understand the reason for closure, the steve and chidy will kind of explain the reason for the closure.
>> thanks. We have handed out to you a smaller version of the map that chidl will walk you through the detour. And we will explain why we need to close the road. Chidy, you can go ahead. While he is doing that, we did want to explain that we did receive contact from the community through the public notification process. There are members of the community that are not supportive of closing the road, but there's really no way to do this project without closing it. However, we did in our communications with them agree to see what we could do to reduce the amount of time that it needed to be closed. Chidy will talk to that a bit and can explain some of the comments he received. If you don't mind excuse me, if you get that mike right there. There you go.
>> good morning chidy.
>> good morning, commissioner.
>> good morning.
>> during the discussion of the posting on street i received different calls from residents around the area and also from users of the road. They were mainly concerned about how long the road was going to be closed for and where the detour direction would be. We explained there would be detour signs from the road and it would be closed for approximately four months. Depends on weather and production rate of the contractor. What we show in here is one of the reasons why, the main reason why we need to close the road is at the intersection of mckinney falls and council bluff, the grade is about 7-9 feet, we really cannot do without closing the road without building a secondary road to support the traffic during that time. To do that will require significant right-of-way and cost to construct the temporary road. The detour that we are proposing this is the area where the people live on council bluff. There are two ways they can get around to where they need to go. This is way. If they get this direction and get on 1625, they can get on 183 and go to collins and get back on mckinney falls. And that distance is about 5.5 miles. The distance, if there was no detour to that same point, would be about 1.5 miles. It's about three and a half miles or so additional distance for them to go through. One of the concerns in that area is that there's no signal at 183 to make a left turn and there's no median lane for them to kind of have some kind of way to wait for traffic to clear. Alternate route is for them to go down colten bluff and down 1625 unto southen road and get saxton and up to william canyon. That route is about 15.5 miles also. And to go this way, back to mckinney falls would be about seven miles. The driving distance took me about ten minutes or so to go down the detour, but that was during daytimer not during rush hour traffic. I don't know what it is during rush hour. We spoke to the contractor and contractor gave us an alternate cost if we can, what you can do on some of the, oh, you can still hear me?
>> we can.
>> with some of the calls, one thing contractor was suggesting and we talked to them, if they can reduce the closure to about six weeks, in other words, they will do an accelerated construction in this area that will last about six weeks. And the people can start using that. And that would cost about, that would come in two phases. First phase would cost about $47 or $48,000 and next phase would be about $7,000. That would be a cost to the city because of the waterline constructed there and the $48,000 would be a cost to the county. So total cost of about $58,000 to save about two and a half months of full closure. So that is basically the gist of the closure what we need to do here.
>> so the basics of it are that we do need to close the road down to complete the project. No way to avoid that. We can reduce the amount oftime that it's closed. But it's going wind up costing us essentially $5,000 a week do that. We did time the closure during the summer so the school traffic shouldn't be a huge issue but there's always a chance of overlapping into one school starts up in the fall. Particularly weather drays so we could get into that period of time . We did talk to the community and they have concerns. I don't know if anyone was table make it to court but it's really the safety of going out on to 183 and the disruption of their ability to get back and forth to ar stin from where they live. We set this up for a road closure. It's been designed that way. We would rather spend the 50 some odd thousand dollars on more perm elements of the problem rather than a temporary solution to minimize detour. The option is there. We can put in a change order for this work and we can limit it to a six-week time frame barring weather conditions if the court decides they would like to do that.
>> i also spoke with the school district and they said impacts for them would be minimal.
>> just to clarify, in order to do the expedited process, it would run in total, the likely orange would be $50,000?
>> about 55 to $56,000 i think.
>> that does not include the city of austin share for water main.
>> that would include.
>> that would include. And that is $7,000. So actually 50,000 to us.
>> correct.
>> okay.
>> the second additional road for access, additional 50,000 to improve the access, does that increase or decrease the time frame of the project overall?
>> overall it should decrease it. Because we are in essence asking them to accelerate a part of the work. But chidy, if you have any other comment on that. I don't think the contractor is saying that he will reduce his amount of contract time in his contract, but accelerating this element of the project should put him in a better position to meet that original contract tim.
>> in other words, looking at part of the backup, if you could tell the public, i guess those that will be viewing this, to see exactly how long the road will be closed mean the shortened version.
>> okay.
>> tell us that. And then also tell us when, barring, you know, you have weather conditions that sometimes come up where folks can't work. But even within that ballpark time line when work will begin and when the work would be complete. I think those kind of dates are kind of--
>> okay.
>> very important public so folks will know something about that.
>> okay. As originally planned we were going to close the road for 16 weeks. And that assumed good weather conditions. We can reduce that 16 weeks down to six weeks if we require the contractor to accelerate his work in the area, which he says he can do, and resequence his work, accelerate. He might have to do some duplication of effort in some cases. That would cost around $55,000.
>> right.
>> he can do that in about six weeks. The actual start of construction when either the six or 16-week period starts, is actually next week. We would need to tell him next week whether we want to do this. If we could, if court doesn't want the rule today because of commissioner gomez's absence, we could go into tuesday and issue him a field order if that is the preference of the court. But if he is ready to get into this part of the work, you know, right now.
>> the six weeks that steve is talking about will entail they will have to go this direction also, get back here. They won't be able to go straight up this way. Six weeks would just be in the section in red.
>> when you propose this to the community, in other words, this expedient move, aggressive move to reduce the time of when you would have to be there for the original version, which would incur the $5,000 from six weeks to the other time line that you had set for the, what did the community say? Even though it's an inconvenience, but what did the community say in regard to the accelerated time line? Did they make comment on that?
>> yes, they did.
>> what did they say?
>> they don't like it or they--
>> didn't like it.
>> didn't like it but they will, they said it's the better alternative for them is six weeks so they can deal with the six weeks, better than they can deal with the four months.
>> four months, okay. Didn't like it but they can live with it.
>> yes, sir, they can live with it.
>> all right.
>> what is the total cost of the project?
>> about seven and a half million dollars.
>> including seven and a half million. Okay, any citizens here to provide testimony? Please come up and take a mike and tell us your name and give us your insights.
>> yes, my name is donny cowen. I reside at 7612 colten bluff springs road which is actually the road that is going to affect residents there. Our biggest concern is chidy, been speaking to him quite a while on this, and biggest concern, and he knows this also, is that all of our families happen to take the back route to get to town. In other words, the main concern from everybody there is having to cross highway 183 without any traffic signal of any type. Especially in the rush hour, busy time of the day, that is a very very congested highway. And also when there's fog involved, you can see absolutely nothing on that road. I know from experience, i have lived there all my life, so i pretty much know how the road gets. But other than that, the six months would be greatly appreciated by everyone there. Six weeks, i'm sorry.
>> six weeks.
>> i'm trying to make it longer than it is. The six weeks would be tremendous help to everybody. And we do have some older folks there that still drive. I worry a lot about them crossing the highway. There is some teenagers that live there that go to school every day. I know the school will be out most of that time but in case we did run into that, their route would be changed back to having to cross 183 up there during a bad time of the day. And that is basically the main concern from all of us there in the community.
>> clidy, can you point out that particular intersection he is referring to where he says he they have to come out to 183.
>> yeah.
>> can you point that out on the map so folks can see exactly where she --he is talking about.
>> right here.
>> right, okay.
>> 1625 at 183.
>> thank you.
>> is it possible to put blinking lights there temporarily? You i know that is a tex dot question and not tnr question. But if that was a consideration or if that was the main problem, i'm wondering if there's another solution.
>> the traffic signal to get tex dot to install a signal, even blinking, would entail the application of the process, the design and the cost also will probably be more.
>> they don't have temporary setups for something like this?
>> i don't know that they can do that this quick.
>> i see.
>> while i'm on the mike, i was informed commissioner gomez will not be back for at least four weeks.
>> i had one more question i wanted to put to chidy while i was here. As far as the six weeks, after six weeks, would that, if it did go with that plan, would the traffic, the road be opened up to all traffic after six weeks? Or would that just be for residents there?
>> that is something that commissioner can decide at this time. I see where you are going. You would want us to consider limiting it to only lookout traffic. Not through traffic. That is something we can consider. But having--
>> i don't know if that would help with the cost at all having a few cars.
>> it wouldn't.
>> i'm sure it wouldn't.
>> it wount do anything to the cost. It would be similar. Limited to local residents would be similar, i think. May not be necessary. I know there are some brushes around the area. We talked yesterday and road maintenance people were there yesterday and they cleared most of it. I hope that helps.
>> it did. I went through there this morning. It helped quite a bit.
>> what other traffic calming options might we have either in house or in collaboration with tex dot regarding, i know that we do have a couple of trailers for speed. I'm not suggesting that those would necessarily work. But if we had message trailers perhaps alerting folks to traffic merging in. Do we have other options to explore with regard to making a higher degree of safety or at least awareness at that intersection?
>> well, i don't know that you could do much on 183. It's a huge volume of traffic. As far as alerting the local community folks who wouldn't normally go that route, they know what ner going to have to deal with.
>> i was thinking more of the folks who weren't aware of the increased traffic attempting ingress on to 183.
>> i don't know how much more that will be. Perhaps they can less you know how many familiar --families live out there. What type of traffic is generally on the street. My idea is six to eight families with teenagers and stuff. I don't know how many vehicles per day that might be. Maybe 20 car trips. Pretty small volume relative to 183.
>> we have another citizen here.
>> yes, good morning. My concern is the traffic.
>> state your name please.
>> thank you. I'm pamela washington in the springfield meadow right right off colten bluff. My concern is now the road is going to be closed everyone will be coming into the neighborhood turning on running water turning down to william canyon down to mckinney falls parkway. There's an intersection of great concern, which is colten bluff and running water. Right now it's considered a four-way stop. Recently because of the new neighborhood. My concern now with all the traffic that will be coming through that area. We now have provision on running water for small humps but the intersection now is going to be very busy. Is there any kind of way that we can, some type of signs there to let people know that this is a neighborhood more than what is there. And also the concern the school is going to be closing true enough on william canyon but that traffic back down to mckinney falls is going to be very thick. Thank you so much for the six weeks versus the six months.
>> we haven't voted that yet.
>> thank you for the consideration.
>> right.
>> with regards to your question about the science, --signs, is that in the city of austin?
>> i think that is the city.
>> so that is something that if anything can be done, will have to be done through the city als.
>> thank you.
>> is there a light at running water and william canon?
>> yes, there's light. No, i'm sorry, the light is at salt spring.
>> yeah, there's light.
>> a light will be needed because coming around that corner from the school than the mornings it gets kind of foggy. So a flashing light or something would be nice because it's a very heavy intersection.
>> we can talk to the city staff to see what they can put up and with our own sign crews, see what type of additional warning we can give to motorists. That stuff we would do normally.
>> thank you.
>> also i'm just concerned about the wildlife. That is the only kind of stream part austin still available out there. I know progress has to take place but a lot of wildlife is being displaced out there. So whatever small impact that that could help out, the part of austin that is nature, keep it preserved out there with mckinney falls park. Thank you.
>> thank you.
>> let me just ask. I know that this is the $50,000 question really. Is the expedited time frame worth $50,000 to you?
>> to be honest, no. To be honest. I have to be honest. I really so appreciate that.
>> i have to be honest. It could be used for other things in that area to improve that area. I'm not back there in the back on allen rock and saxon. I sympathize with those people. Since the area is so large. But that is an extra lot of meenmoney for that time. It could be used for something else. I will probably be killed at the neighborhood.
>> the only thing i can say to that, the danger at the highway, again, is one life worth $50,000?
>> and that--
>> very much so.
>> that is true.
>> and that is really the biggest issue that i have with the whole thing.
>> have we had any conversation, is this, is 183 and colten bluff in city of austin or not?
>> no.
>> it's not. Have we talked to law enforcement and tcso at all about any safety issues that they might see that we could mitigate?
>> i believe they are alerted to the potential detour. But as far as any additional patrol effort they might put in, we have not asked them to do something like that.
>> uh-huh. There's doubt at all that this is terribly inconvenient and that it reduces the safety that y'all have come to expect at that intersection. All --although there are many other neighborhoods that also front on 183 that have had to face turning in, turning on to and off of 183 in order to get to their neighborhoods.
>> true. But a lot of them have a few more options as far as getting back towards the city.
>> chidy, you said you spoke with the school district to make sure that they were on board with what we were trying to do, especially accelerating the time line to bring this project through. What school district did you speak to, and of course, the school district being involved when you don't have to really do those things to serve, if the school year is out, and this is what it appears to be, with the then accelerated time frame reduced to six weeks, what was the conversation as far as the school district? Can someone help me with that?
>> we communicated both to isc and also del valle independent school district.
>> those school district are involved with the transport of the activity going on in this particular closed street area. Is that correct?
>> we spoke with them. The crossing that responded was the del valle independent school district. When they saw the closure was going to be not of william canyon and explained it was going to be south, that alleviated his concerns. Especially also this is going to be happening during the summer when they are lighter traffic load to maintain.
>> right. So the activity during the summer months, because of the school situation, then traffic will be reduced in that regard.
>> yes, sir.
>> is that correct?
>> yes, sir.
>> okay. Thank you.
>> one more thing i'd like to say about the buses. I'm not sure if the guy at the school district, i'm sure he probably realized, but there is, i know they do pick up kids on our road. And for them to do that, they would have to come in from of course 183, that side, all the way down to almost mckinney falls to pick those children up.
>> they peck up children in the summer?
>> if they have summer school and the kids would happen to , attend, i would say yes. I don't know if the kids go to summer or not. But they do have summer school and i do see the buses during the summer. Like i'm saying, they would have to come from the east side and come in and pick those children up. I don't know what they think they will do to turn a bus around there, because there's no place to turn a bus around. But they will have to turn the bus around somehow to head back east to get back to 183.
>> if this is planning to commence as soon as next week, would the road be closed before school is out for the summer?
>> chidy? Do you know?
>> again, talking to the transportation director for del valle who is the user of the road for that district. He said they can handle that. Easily. Not easily. They can handle. It's not a significant impact on them. I did not discuss the six weeks with them. That was the four months duration that we discussed with them.
>> and they were aware the closure might occur before the end of school.
>> yes. We gave them the dates and consideration of this happening and end dates.
>> are there any additional comments? Is there a motion?
>> move public hearing be close.
>> move public hearing be close.
>> second.
>> all in favor of the public hearing being closed? That passes unanimously. All right. This will be action item number 17. All right.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:35 PM
