TxDOT & City of Austin Pedal More Waste

In a recent article TxDOT & City of Austin Pedal More Waste, written by Dustin Matocha in the Empower Texans Blog he describes the ideas of the Austin City Council as "moronic".  According to the article the Texas Department of Transportation and the City Council of Austin are creating a plan to create more bike-lane bridges in Austin which will also help reduce traffic congestion. Matocha tries to prove a point by criticizing and name calling. 

"There’s something downright moronic that the Austin City Council does or proposes every week, but this one ranks up there with some of their all-time dumb ideas..." said Matocha. 

Matocha's argument is that the City council should spend tax money on more important things like the providing more 911 operators which the Austin Police Department claims they need. He believes it is wasteful spending and emphasizes on how much money will be spent on this plan to create a "bike-share" program in downtown. 

According to Nadia M. Barrera the Bicycle/Pedestrian Project Coordinator of the Neighborhood Connectivity Division in Austin says, "the project seeks to improve connectivity and access for bikes and pedestriants within the Loop 360/Mopac interchange, and to provide connectivity over Barton Creek. Prop. 12 funding is slated for congestion relief.  Since the southbound shoulder will be converted to a travel lane (carrying approximately 2,000 cars an hour), a bicycle and pedestrian facility must be built to accommodate non-motorized traffic. We know that (especially on the weekends) hundreds of cyclists use this corridor to travel southbound."

There are many cyclist in downtown who are very concerned with this issue, and would consider this a main priority. I believe he makes a good point but there are many issues that the city council must deal with, and this is one of them.

Although Matocha gives examples of how much money this will cost tax payers I think he approached this the wrong way. In my opinion his article seems very childish and unconvincing due to his immature criticism of the Austin City Council. Some of his arguments seemed very ignorant and not well supported for example he said that cyclists "don't even pay the gas tax that's helping to pay for their new bridges" , which I think is very untrue many cyclists do own cars and biking isn't their only means of transportation meaning they do pay the gas tax.