The city expects to move forward with $146 million in construction projects on major vehicle corridors in 2025, with improvements to Burnet Road and Slaughter Lane expected to go to bid as the next steps using funding from the 2016 mobility bond package. Other efforts planned to move forward include bike and pedestrian improvements along […]
November 2016 elections
Posted inTransportation
Council votes to clarify the road ahead for Austin’s $482M corridor plan
Austin voters now have a clearer road map for a slate of bond-funded projects intended to relieve congestion and improve city infrastructure on a massive scale. With little more than a guarantee from City Council, voters overwhelmingly approved a $720 million mobility-focused bond in 2016. Council voted Thursday to approve a construction plan for some […]
Posted inTransportation
Council revisits draft Corridor Construction Program during work session
Tuesday’s City Council work session featured a swap of information between city staff and Council members regarding the draft Corridor Construction Program. Council delayed a vote on the draft program at its March 22 meeting. That vote set the stage for this week’s discussion, which featured Corridor Program Office Director Mike Trimble answering several outstanding […]
Posted inTransportation
Council positioned to delay corridor program decision
City Council appears all but certain to postpone a scheduled vote on Thursday on the draft Corridor Construction Program, the highly ambitious blueprint for spending an unprecedented amount of bond money in a particularly condensed time frame. During Tuesday’s work session, several members expressed their desire to hold off on the decision, a sentiment that […]
Posted inBonds & Propositions
City unveils proposed Corridor Construction Program
The long-awaited proposed Corridor Construction Program, the road map to Mayor Steve Adler’s Smart Corridor Plan that he’s now touting as potentially “genius,” is finally out of the stable. The city’s Corridor Program Office has been working to develop the program voters approved in the record $720 million mobility bond in November 2016 that set […]
Posted inTransportation
Council members walk the walk on new bond-funded project
Mayor Steve Adler and two City Council colleagues celebrated the first sidewalk to be funded by 2016 Mobility Bond money by taking a walk on it Thursday morning. Joined by Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo and Council Member Greg Casar, Adler and about two dozen city staffers, residents, activists and members of the media strolled […]
Posted inTransportation
Worries about mobility bond timeline surface at City Hall
City Council on Tuesday balked at hearing a lengthy update from staff on the ongoing efforts to ramp up the massive but compressed mobility bond program voters approved last November. By the time Council made it to Assistant City Manager Robert Goode’s briefing, several members had left for the day, and Mayor Steve Adler indicated […]
Posted inElections
Nucleus Learning Network Data Vis Series: Exploring the election
Join Sarah Morris, a librarian who co-directs an educational nonprofit called Nucleus Learning Network, as she explores data visualization in a new series. So much of this past election season was spent poring over maps: from electoral college projections to historic election results to those memes that showed what the electoral map would look like […]
Posted inElections
Nucleus Learning Network Data Vis Series: Voter turnout
Join Sarah Morris, a librarian who co-directs an educational nonprofit called Nucleus Learning Network, as she explores data visualization in a new series. Travis County, and much of Texas and the country, saw record voter turnout levels during the 2016 election. That begs the question: How have voter turnout numbers looked in Travis County and […]
Posted inCity Council, Elections, Radio
Austin Monitor Radio: Election ’16 Wrap
Austin Monitor editor Liz Pagano, politics editor Jo Clifton, and contributor Caleb Pritchard join publisher Mike Kanin to analyze the local results of the 2016 November elections. Audio embedded below. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/293051219″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Sore losers and sour grapes
Ghosting on reporters… It’s probably never fun to take reporter’s calls after losing an election, but usually candidates are good sports about it. However, former City Council District 7 candidate Natalie Gauldin managed to ignore more than five phone calls throughout the day from multiple reporters at the Austin Monitor (and several other news outlets). Nearly […]
Posted inBonds & Propositions
Mobility bond rolls to big victory
Opting to go big, Austin voters on Tuesday night overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1, Mayor Steve Adler’s $720 million transportation bond package. The massive grab-bag of mobility infrastructure spending is the city’s largest-ever bond proposal to survive an election. Its victory is also a significant boost for Adler, whose self-declared Year of Mobility limped into Election […]