The countywide transportation committee has begun outlining the next six months of work as it nears its projected June completion date.
Bob Manning, Kendall County, Boerne and Fair Oaks Transportation Committee co-chair, cited a hard March deadline for the committee to make its recommendations to the city of Boerne, which is eyeing a November bond referendum.
While Manning originally suggested developing a list of shortterm projects for city officials to shop from when considering bond projects, committee members like Bitsy Pratt urged the committee to consider some of the subcommittee’s projects. The subcommittee projects primarily served roadways impacted by Boerne Independent School District traffic. However, Pratt pointed out only a short list of the recommendations fall within the city limits.
Pratt said while there are several projects on the subcommittee’s report that are already underway, she said there were also several projects that have been easily identifiable as problems in the city for 20 years, including the intersection at Adler Road, Main Street and School Street.
There was some discussion among committee members on whether they should consider alternate funding sources, avoiding placing projects on a bond issuance list that could receive grant or federal funding. However, Manning suggested the committee not get too far “down a rabbit hole” when considering funding, and it was decided city officials always could identify alternate funding sources as they review project recommendations.
In the end, Manning suggested moving long-term project evaluations further up on the committee’s work timeline to the beginning of March, giving the committee the opportunity to consider both short-term and long-term projects together. He said this might allow the committee to consider finance-matching opportunities for the city which could change the prioritization order of project recommendations.
The transportation committee successfully completed an initial review all of the public recommendations made but has yet to dive into the controversial projects – like an alternate route through or around the city that would avoid Main Street and/or River Road. When asked how many projects are left for review after the committee’s initial evaluation, committee member Northern Hendricks made it clear that was a difficult question to answer.
Hendricks said assistance would be needed to determine which projects can be consolidated into phases, which projects can be dropped and which projects should remain separated despite being on the same roadway.
Aiding in the committee’s efforts to develop congestion solutions, committee member Steve Sharma has volunteered to develop models of different intersections with different solutions modeled out using a program called Syncrho.
Sharma said the program works by entering traffic count, putting in a single timing and creating an existing model for both morning and evening peak traffic times. Then, he said the committee would be able to see how vehicles are stacking up at an intersection and apply the growth factor established by the committee.
As an example, Sharma said he looked at the intersection at Ralph Fair Road – also known as Farm-to-Market-Road 3351 – and Interstate 10 several years ago. He said the model that best resolved the issue was a flyover from Ralph Fair to I-10, as there is little that can be done to mitigate traffic with two traffic lights so close together with Old Fredericksburg Road intersection FM 3351 so close to the I-10 intersection.
This kind of modeling was something several committee members felt would be helpful in determining which intersections to address first and which solutions to recommend to the city or county. So, Sharma is set to model out the intersection at Herff and River roads and to update his data on the intersection at Ralph Fair Road and I-10.
While the committee agreed the Synchro models would be very beneficial when developing a list of recommendations for the Boerne bond referendum, Sharma estimated each intersection model would take between four and eight hours of work. So, it’s unclear whether the information will be available in time for the committee’s hard deadline in March.
The transportation committee’s next meeting is set for 2 p.m. Feb. 1 at Boerne City Hall.
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