by BRAD ROLLINS

HUBER

On-again off-again plans for Texas 45 Southwest might be off for good if a Travis County commissioner succeeds in an effort to strip the roadway from the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s 25-year master plan.

After an hours-long discussion on Tuesday, the Travis County Commissioners Court approved Commissioner Karen Huber’s resolution calling for the project to be removed from the planning organization’s roster of transportation projects for the next two decades.

“My biggest concerns are that we need to be sure that as we grow, and build our roads and our mobility systems, that we are doing it responsibly. And I believe that this particular proposed highway has many, many unanswered questions,” Huber said, citing what she said were unconvincing projected growth patterns in the areas that would be served by the road.

The court approved the resolution 3-1, setting up a show-down over SH 45 SW when CAMPO’s transportation policy board considers adopting its 2035 Master Plan at a May 24 meeting. Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe, who also chairs the CAMPO board, was the lone dissenter.

A procession of outraged residents of Shady Hollow and other neighborhoods in the area had sharp words for Huber, whom they said promised support for the project when she campaigned for her position in 2008.

“I’m disappointed in you almost to the point of tears. Do you deny that during a fundraiser at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden that you told me that I would get my road? … Did you not look me in the eye and say, ‘You will get your road?’” asked Pam Baggett, a director of the Shady Hollow Homeowners Association.

Huber said she did not remember the conversation.

For more than 20 years, regional planners have envisioned a highway connecting the southern terminus of MoPac, Loop 1, in Austin and FM 1626 in northern Hays Count

Proponents say SH 45 SW would ease the daily commute for thousands of residents who live in the Buda area and work in Austin while relieving traffic in neighborhoods along Brodie Lane and Manchaca Road.

In December 2008, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board appointed a subcommittee of its members chaired by Biscoe to study how to get the road built.

A draft report of the group, completed in June, recommends the highway be constructed as a four-lane toll road if it can’t be otherwise financed and built as a non-toll road.

The report estimates its cost at $69 million to $92 million.

In August, Biscoe effectively put the brakes on the project when he told his CAMPO colleagues, “I don’t believe there is support for this kind of project at this time.”

Removing Texas 45 Southwest from the CAMPO master plan would go even further in making it very difficult to apply federal or state funding to the project, Hays County Pct. 2 Commissioner Jeff Barton said.

“If you think about the next 25 years, we at least need to be thinking about SH 45. It makes it difficult to even plan for SH 45, by definition, if it’s not in the master plan,” Barton said.