The Austin TX regional toll authority (CTRMA) opened its first tollroad to traffic Saturday (2007-03-03) - US183A Toll. It is the fourth in the Austin area.

Located in the northwest of the greater Austin area the $238m project extends over 19km (11.6mi) comprising about 7.3km (4.5mi) of 2x3 lane tollway and 11.4km (7.1mi) of untolled 2x2 lane frontage roads with a median in the center designed to accommodate future tollway.

The tolled section is a busy tight urban expressway with two sets of braided ramps - the off-ramps of one interchange being bridged over or under the on-ramps of the adjacent interchange in order to avoid weaving problems on the mainline.

There are two mainline toll plazas and one pair of ramp toll plazas.

Open road electronic tolling, some frontage roads

Going north the first staggered mainline plaza is electronic only (transponder/video). Those who don't want to pay the 45c toll can use frontage road lanes which peter out a couple of intersections along. Ramp plazas are 45c transponder/video or 50c cash and the mainline plaza toward the northern end of the tolled segment where there are no frontage road lanes is $1.35 transponder/video or $1.50 cash with cash off to the side with barriered-offf decel and accel sections to ssaefly segregate stop-to-pay from the highway speed electronic tolling.

The finished tollroad extends from TxDOT's recently opened TX45N past Cedar Park to FM1431 Whitestone Boulevard where the expressway standard tollroad ends for now.

Northern half is just frontage roads for now

From here on it consists for now of free frontage roads separated by a grass median wide enough to accommodate six toll lanes and slip ramp lanes to the frontage roads. The frontage roads meet cross streets at grade with signals.

Traffic of 53k/day by end 2012 forecast

Vollmer have done traffic forecasts for the tollroad. Counting at the northern mainline toll plaza, cash and ET, they project about 18k/day toll transactions by the end of this year, 23.7k by end 2008 based on ramp-up discounts. Equilibrium levels would be nearly twice as high. For 2012, the fifth full year they forecast 52.7k. Volumes on the US183 which the tollroad parallels are currently 60k/day.

Toll collection starts May 1

Toll collection begins May 1, but in an effort to encourage transponder accounts they will go free the first month, half toll in June and only the full transponder toll the third month, July.

Builders

The prime design-build contract was with project-formed Hill Country Constructors, Granite and Abrams. They started work January 2005 and expect to finish late 2007. Toll systems costing $8m were by Caseta. Transponders will be TxTag sticker tags from TransCore. HNTB were the engineers. Toll booths were from Meta-Lite's Clifton NJ shop where they do beautiful stainless steel sculpting.

Warning: at this point we're getting opinionated.

Architecture was from a designer of pseudo Swiss chalets - gotta handle all that alpine Texas snow - who in one of the hokiest toll plaza designs we've seen managed to stick top heavy high pitched roofing and dormer windows atop a toll plaza canopy - a serious esthetic atrocity in our opinion, but no doubt others thinks it's charming. Guys, Disneyworld's in Florida.

CTRMA comment: CTRMA say that their design was "patterned after the styles of buildings in the adjacent neighborhood."

Virtual tour informative

CTRMA has an excellent "virtual tour" visualization video of the new tollroad on a 183A website: http://www.183a.com/ and other materials at www.mobility authority.com

Next project US290E on hold

Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA)'s next toll project is US290E - a toll road in the median of US 290 from US 183 (Ed Bluestein Blvd) to the new TX130 toll road. The existing lanes on US290 will be rebuilt and upgraded to frontage road lanes with at grade intersections and will remain toll free.

Lying loudmouths

This is what local tollroad critics dishonestly call "tolling a free road." They start with a free signalized arterial with properties fronting onto it. This is replaced by frontage roads with the same number of lanes but rebuilt further out to each side to free up space in the middle. The middle then has a tollroad built in it connected to the frontage roads with slip ramps. Those who don't want to pay tolls still have signalized arterial level of servicer exactly as before but there's a tollroad option in the middle with expressway style design speeds and bridging over or under cross streets.

CAMPO doing yet another review

This US290 project was ready to go to construction next year with three groups shortlisted for design-build contracts but it is on hold after a decision by the local metro plan outfit CAMPO to do yet another "review" of tollroad plans as a result of a ruckus over "tolling free roads."

Several TXDOT toll projects in the Austin area are also on hold pending CAMPO's latest review.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-03-04 ADDS & MODS 2007-03-05