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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Numbers Don't Lie: FMSP Entrance is a Major Traffic Safety Concern


First an email from TxDOT El Paso Regional Engineer, Bob Bielek. Afterwards, the numbers. [Red emphases are mine.)
Subject: Franklin State Park Entrance Environmental
All,

Based on our teleconference yesterday, and my review of the situation, I have reached the following conclusions:
1.      The purpose and need for the project have been inadequately defined.  It appears that the purpose and need to this point has been focused on some unspecified safety concerns from the public or stakeholders.  We need to subject the situation to a standard traffic engineering analysis taking into account the volumes on the main lanes, the volume on the entrance road, and the end state from the current project, i.e., no left turns exiting the park with eastbound traffic routed to the frontage road and the “Texas Turnaround” at the Paseo del Norte interchange.  We will gather historical information on accident data as well as current and projected traffic to support these analyses.
2.      The loss of funding for this fiscal year provides an opportunity to gather information from the stakeholders and the public on what additional factors, or substitute factors, should contribute to the purpose and need for the project.  For example, is the real purpose to provide a safe path to connect the two sides of the park for hikers?  For wildlife?
3.      For the public meeting, we will show the alternatives that have been developed so far and provide several blank aerials that depict the situation that will exist at the end of the current project to allow the stakeholders and public to offer their suggestions or additional alternatives that should be considered.

I appreciate the work that has gone into this so far and the work you have all done in developing and progressing the alternatives.  Given the scrutiny that projects are receiving today from other members of the public who, for example, question the wisdom of spending money on providing bike lanes on arterial roadways, we need to ensure that the purpose and need for the project are clearly stated and that we are solving a real, and not imagined, issue.

Bob Bielek, DPA, PE
District Engineer, El Paso District
Texas Department of Transportation
(915) 790-4203 Office
(915) 309-0482 Cell

Okay, here are the real numbers (not imagined) as gathered by Franklin Mountains State Park Superintendent, Dr. Cesar Mendez.  Dr. Mendez says that the numbers are: ". . . the estimated number of vehicles (ingress and egress) rather than the visitation, since we have other areas of the park that are accessed by visitors, as well as many times  there are more than one visitor per vehicle.  But also we will include park staff (personal vehicles and TPWD vehicles, community service, volunteers, TDCJ, special events, search and rescue training, search and rescue incidents, media, etc. etc.) that are not accounted for in the visitation numbers, but certainly have an impact in the vehicle traffic numbers."





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