Hays County road bond

May 9, 2007, 7:30 p.m.

Putting a price on life

The Myth of Jones:
A Column

As human beings, we value our shared existence and make pronouncements about our decency, such as, "You can't put a price on human life." As human beings, we also like to deceive ourselves with pronouncements of decency, such as, "You can't put a price on human life."

In reality, we price human life all the time. People are denied medical procedures because they're too expensive. Perhaps we don't purchase the most up-to-date fire fighting equipment because we just can't afford it. We might even take chances in our own homes until a tight cash flow situation elapses. And roads. We're debating in Hays County right now about whether safety and mobility upgrades concerning four major roads in the county are worth the money they would cost.

The discussion about Saturday's road bond election is artificially nuanced around the competing aspirations of a divided county. Like the great State of Texas itself, Hays County is an informal confederation of populations broadly defined by geography and, to some degree, ethnicity.

Like no other county-wide election, including a race for county judge, Saturday's vote will demonstrate just how the county's various players stand up to one another. Because of the natural divisions, to say nothing of honest political disagreement, the wind is blowing the course of a very close vote. And one should be troubled by the prospect, because the only issue that really counts is the one issue on which everyone can agree, which points to government's most solemn responsibility – the preservation of life and limb against the encroaching dangers of a booming environment. In a word, safety.

To the west, in Wimberley, they've worked up a very nice little hill town where a good number of well-wrought people detest disruption from the government. Many in Wimberley are more than happy that the town's principle link to the broader civilization is RR 12, which is comfortably passable only by seasoned experts. For the barely initiated, RR 12 is two lanes of unshouldered, roller-coaster horror on a dark night, let alone a rainy one. The county wants to widen RR 12 to five lanes from San Marcos to RM 32. Safety demands it.

To the east, SH 21, part of the old Camino Real, finally has been discovered by car traffic. Uhland locals have reported that they could stand near the road not so long ago without seeing a car for hours. Today, driving along the highway has become an uncomfortable proposition, especially in blaring sun light.

Though many on the county's eastern edge would like to minimize population growth, traffic fatality is not a perspicuous method. The county and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) have agreed, pending voter approval, to split the cost for $8 million in improvements, including surface overlays, left turn lanes and enhanced approaches at side roads.

In the northern part of the county, Buda and Kyle, the citizens are well aware by now that IH-35 has forged their destiny and they've resolved to work their predetermined growth into a virtue. The question isn't whether to grow, but how to grow well. Traffic is, therefore, a major issue. Increasingly heavy traffic is at once a daily perturbance and such a foreboding inevitability that additional roadways, alone, won't solve the problem. But they are necessary.

FM 1626, a two-lane westward loop from IH-35 exit 215 to IH-35 exit 225, serves as a secondary arterial feeding some cars to the interstate, others to MoPac via Brodie and Slaughter Lanes, and most of the rest into south Austin via Manchaca Road. The evening rush hour is merely an irritant; the morning rush hour is a travesty. By 7 a.m., working commuters can line up for a good half-mile onto the Hays County side of Bliss Spillar Road.

After listening to most of a CD by the time she reaches Brodie Lane, a hurried morning commuter working in northwest Austin follows thousands of others, steering left onto a residential arterial where children are waiting for school buses. Commuters, utterly hating the routine, have no better alternative. Like homeowners along Brodie Lane, commuters from Hays County have waited out years for a southwest section of SH 45 that would run directly from MoPac to FM 1626. But TxDOT procrastinates, in part, because a two-lane FM 1626 is not a logical terminus for SH 45.

The mobility issues surrounding FM 1626 are important, but secondary to the safety problem, in part because an improved roadway is not a sufficient condition for relieving traffic. Many studies have shown that additional lanes induce traffic because they change the calculation for drivers deciding whether to go somewhere. A driver who would decline a trip on a crowded two-lane road will often make that trip on a less crowded four-lane road, so the bigger road fills right back up. The county's proposed FM 1626 expansion to five lanes, then, is a frontal assault on traffic, a necessary step, at best.

As a rear guard action against traffic congestion, Buda, Kyle and Hays County must augment additional roadway by revising subdivision and zoning codes to allow, if not require, more mixed uses so people won't have to drive so much. Among other traffic features, streets of adjoining developments should be linked so motorists can take alternative routes, rather than idle in stalled traffic every time two other cars smack up on an arterial.

Roadways accommodate cars. They do not accommodate people. Only the physical design of the community can serve people in such a way that they're not so reliant on their cars. We would pollute a lot less, spend a lot less time in traffic, be a lot less reliant on oil and live a lot more happily if we build these cities more like the way cities were built when cities respected human proportions, which was before cars and highways took over America.

Meanwhile, we've still got a road that can't handle the traffic in place, let alone the additional traffic to come. By day, FM 1626 in its present condition is a winding bumper car slab that threatens children and drivers alike. By night, FM 1626 is always one drunk, one surging kid or one fool from one fatality, if not several. The county wants to widen the road from Jack C. Hays Trail to Bliss Spillar Road. The safety benefits aren't even debatable.

To the south, the county wants to expedite FM 110, a loop around the southern and eastern portions of San Marcos. Though the road would be new, even in this case the safety issue obtains due to certain heavy traffic at a new convention center and a new high school, which both are under construction. Though some local residents and landowners object, the road carries the additional virtue of steering development in San Marcos to the east, per the city's desire to protect the aquifer and other natural features on the west side of town.

Saturday, the voters will decide. Along with city council elections in Buda and Kyle, as well as school board and school bond elections in San Marcos, a county-wide election will ask voters to call up or down on two propositions.

A parks and greenspace bond, Proposition 2, is largely uncontroversial, much due to the county's success with a similar bond issue in 2001. Voters decisively approved $3.5 millions in bonds, which the county grants department has leveraged into an additional $14 million. If a few outstanding grant applications come through, that could go as high as $22 million. Now, the county is asking for an additional $30 million in bonding authority. In a county where everyone values green space and the government has responded so well, it's hard to imagine voters won't endorse the new proposal with enthusiasm.

Proposition 1 requests $172 million in bonding authority for the road improvements already mentioned. It's a pot boiler for some of the reasons Proposition 2 isn't. On its face, environmental preservation doesn't mix with highways. Furthermore, a $47 million county road bond in 2001 was not so successful. Voters approved the debt with an expectation that $21 million would go to state roads and another $26 million would improve county roads. However, as working out a deal with the state proved unwieldy, the county road upgrades also ran so expensive that the county looked up one day and found only $5 million left over for state projects.

Now, the county and the state have agreed to a deal. Pending voter approval, the county would issue $172 million in debt and pay up front for the San Marcos loop, the upgrades to RR 12 and FM 1626, and half of the SH 21 improvements. TxDOT would then pay the county up to $133 million over 20 years.

It's a good deal for the county, which would add 20 miles of necessary and strategically important roadway in the shortest possible time frame for a net cost of $39 million. The safety upgrades, alone, are worth the price. Consider, for example, that last June the city of Kyle opened its 3.1-mile extension of FM 1626, the Kyle Parkway, at a cost of $14 million, plus a $6 million overpass from TxDOT.

Just as Kyle astutely paid a premium for immediate action from TxDOT, the county would pay a premium of a little less than $2 million per mile to build these state roads right now. When you're dealing with TxDOT, which is notoriously under-funded and over-burdened, that's the reality on the ground. The county has that deal in hand with TxDOT, and a TxDOT bird in hand truly is worth two in the bush. The way TxDOT operates, anyone who believes the county could likely work a better deal is flat-out wishing. And if this vote fails, the deal is gone.

As TxDOT's payments to the county would be roughly concurrent with the county's debt payments, the net result for taxpayers is an increase of one cent per $100 of taxable property value for each proposition. For the owner of a $150,000 home, the road bond would cost about $15 per year.

So, we're putting a price on life Saturday. If the bond fails and one person dies on these roads because the TxDOT fairy was busy in Houston, that life was worth $15 per owner of a $150,000 home. For those who own $200,000 homes, the life is slightly more valuable. Twenty bucks. But here's good news for the budget minded: the more people die, the cheaper life gets.

On every other day, we like to say we can't put a price on human life. Saturday, we'll find out what it's worth.

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