Tag Archives: Austin

Paper or plastic … bags, that is?

Texas might find itself in the middle of yet another legal snit.

This time it could be over whether cities have the authority to ban plastic grocery bags. My hope, given my environmentally friendly attitude about such things, is that cities can do this on their own if they see fit.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/03/11/push-tra-bag-ban-goes-attorney-general/

State Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Canton, has asked the Texas attorney general’s office to rule on it. He believes cities’ efforts to ban plastic grocery bags don’t comply with state health and safety laws.

I’ll ask the question here that I’ve asked regarding cities’ authority to install red-light cameras at intersections: Doesn’t local control mean that cities and other local jurisdictions have the right to do what’s best for their communities?

Today in the Texas Panhandle offers a prime example of why such a ban makes sense. The wind is howling at this moment, gusting at 60 mph and greater. I shudder to think what I’m going to see in the morning. I’m betting I’m going to see plastic grocery bags strewn across large stretches of open country, piled up against fences, snagged in trees, wrapped around utility poles or piled up in my front yard.

Would paper bags be immune from that kind of wind-driven mess? Of course not. The paper, though, is quite biodegradable and a better fit for the landfills.

Cities all across the country are enacting bans on plastic bags. That’s their call and individual states empower the cities to act independently. In Texas, though, the Legislature retains control over municipal affairs, despite contentions from politicians — starting with Gov. Rick Perry — who espouse the value of “local control.”

Grocer associations hate the idea of the ban. Their lobby is strong in Austin. In my view, it is too strong.

I’d prefer to see a more environmentally friendly policy enacted in cities, such as Amarillo, that does away with the plastic bags. If only the state would allow it.

Austin soon may not be so ‘weird’ after all

Well now. It turns out Austin — the Texas capital city and the home of some of the best music anywhere — is grappling with ways to maintain its self-proclaimed weirdness.

Motor vehicles, lots and lots of them, are rattling Austinites’ sense of uniqueness.

NPR broadcast a story today detailing how Austin’s population is continuing to skyrocket and how all those people are arriving in Central Texas aboard all those vehicles, be they SUVs, pickups, sedans, Jeeps, whatever. They’re clogging the city’s streets. They’re making Austin like, well, every other big city in America that apparently has done a good enough job in planning for future growth.

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/17/248757580/even-an-85-mph-highway-cant-fix-austins-traffic-tangle

My favorite part of the story was when it told how the Texas Department of Transportation built a toll highway east of the city that is intended to divert traffic away from Austin.

Here’s the problem: TxDOT put an 85-mph speed limit on Texas 130, which I’m guessing has scared a lot of motorists away from the highway. The NPR reporter noted that Austin traffic is still gridlocked but Texas 130 is virtually empty.

How is the city going to deal with this problem, which only is scheduled to get worse in the years ahead? The city’s current population of about 850,000 residents is projected to double in the next two decades. One set of ideas being kicked around is to make Interstate 35 a toll road, take the toll feature off of Texas 130 (and perhaps slow it down a bit, say, to around 80?) and build some light-rail lines through the city to lure people out of their cars.

Good luck with that, Austin.

NPR took particular note of an ironic twist. It said Dallas — long thought to be a bastion of conservative political thought — has built the nation’s largest light-rail transit system while Austin, arguably the last liberal holdout in all of Texas, has done nothing to promote rail transportation.

And Austin remains the largest city in America with just a single interstate highway running through. I-35 has long been thought of as a virtual demolition derby between Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio.

Traffic is going to be a great inhibitor to future growth in Austin. That’s the message I got from NPR’s thorough report this morning.

But hey, there’s always the music.