EDITORIAL
Another week, another accident on FM 1626 – this one fatal.
It’s not like the road can’t be made safer. It’s not like we don’t know what to do. Even the money is already set aside.
The project’s been bogged down in state and federal bureaucracy for years. Neighborhood leaders, church officials, bus drivers, fire chiefs and city council members have begged for help. Two successive county commissioners have demanded it.
County voters approved funding in November, 2008, as part of a bond package. By then the road was already a fixture in the news, a frequent scene of tragic accidents and epic congestion.
And still the project lingers.
Whether and when to act was the spark for bitter contests on the Commissioners Court in 2007-2009 between local commissioner Jeff Barton (who, along with commissioners Will Conley and Debbie Ingalsbe, was ready to take extraordinary action to push improvements) and County Judge Liz Sumter of Wimberley, and her allies, who favored delay. Barton won the fight at the local level, securing funding, but the wheels of bureaucracy have turned with deathly slowness.
With both Sumter and Barton gone, a new Commissioners Court seems united behind addressing the gaping safety and mobility issues in the county, highlighted by FM 1626. New commissioner for the area, Mark Jones, is again a strong advocate.
And still no dirt is turning.
Because FM 1626 is part of the state system and federal highway dollars are involved – including state and federal reimbursement for part of the work the county is willing to do (since the state won’t) – no construction can start until a maze of federal and state sign-offs are met. An alphabet soup of agencies and vague, sometimes contradictory laws and regulations are involved. Despite repeated promises, no one in TxDOT or the Federal Highways Administration or U.S. Fish and Wildlife seems capable of taking hold of the process with any sense of urgency or consistency.
Ambitious outsiders – people who don’t live here or regularly travel the road – have compounded the delays by trying to use FM 1626 as a tool to leverage their own narrow agendas. Whether just misinformed and misguided, like some Austin environmental groups, who jump to false conclusions about the area and the terrain; or wholly cynical, like the attention-starved Charles O’Dell and his tiny but loud Wimberley-Dripping Springs Hays CAN no-growth “good government” group; or just plain inexplicable, like Travis County Commissioner Karen Huber, whose petulant opposition to safety improvements in a neighboring county smacks of the worst of Austin big-brotherism, these interlopers have clogged already unwieldy bureaucracies with their complaints.
Eighteen months ago, more than 400 people jammed the tiny cafeteria at Elm Grove Elementary for a TxDOT hearing and shouted “Fix 1626,” a call echoed by thousands more via email, letters and proclamations. The vote that night was more than 15-to-one in favor of the project – with most of the “no” votes imported from outside the community.
Dissent should have a valued place in every democracy. But in democracy there’s also a time to vote and make decisions – and then to move on. These road improvements have been delayed for years. The reasons seem to have more to do with fear of lawsuits and just plain bureaucratic mindless paper shuffling than with any real substantive concerns about engineering, the environment, or even money.
Gov. Perry, before you go making plans to redecorate the White House and all, how’s about first polishing your shoes on the butts of some of your appointees?
Conditions on this road drive up the cost of commerce, endanger children and delay parents getting home each night to their families. The existing two country lanes are long since inadequate. There are no passing lanes, no safe turn lanes, no sidewalks, no shoulders – gravel trucks drift, ambulances get stuck, fire trucks get routed around. Friends die.
To the leaders at TxDOT, to Gov. Perry who ultimately controls and enables them, we say this: no more excuses, no more delays. Your job’s tough, we understand that. You asked for it. Now do it. Save a buck, save a life: fix 1626.
