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Fix Your Commute: Parmer Lane between I-35 and RM 620

Updated: Friday, November 2 2012, 07:12 PM CDT
If there’s one thing we’ve learned during our “Fix Your Commute” segments, it is that toll roads will be a main component of the future of Austin transportation. Parmer Lane is no different.

When we drove the section between I-35 and RM 620, the issue was obvious – the stop lights. Between I-35 and RM 620, a 13-mile stretch, there are about 20 lights on Parmer Lane.

Austin driver Clay Lunday seems to have stopped at all of them.

"Just like this light right here," he said.  "When it turns green, you catch a red right here. You can't even make a hundred feet before you hit a red light."

The good news is the City of Austin is actually working right now on retiming the lights and upgrading their traffic signal system.

"We are replacing the brains of the signal system if you will," Austin Transportation Director, Rob Spillar said, "Making the system smart and learning from traffic movements and having multiple signal plans that we can address that."

Retiming the lights is not nearly as exciting as what one of you asked for, which is to make Parmer Lane a freeway. But it is the city's short term solution. So we went to Texas Department of Transportation to talk about the long term solution.

"The Campo 35 Transportation Plan calls for adding a tolled express lane in that area – one lane in each direction," Christopher Bishop with TxDOT said.  "When it's going to be built?  That's going to depend on funding. In the meantime the traffic signals there belong to the City of Austin."
 
Yes, you heard that correctly, another tolled express lane. It sounds like that option on Parmer Lane is a long way down the line and there are a number of highways in the Austin area that need work before Parmer Lane.

But because the federal dollars just aren't available the way they were 30 years ago, transportation officials say private funding and tolls are really the way of the future.

By Erica Harpold
Fix Your Commute: Parmer Lane between I-35 and RM 620