The July meeting was held at the Lone Star Cafe in San Marcos. The San Antonio chapter began the meeting with a lot of swearing-in.

Tom Cagley said that the Habitat for Humanity project is under new management and will cover about 16 weekends instead of a crash two-week program. We should have details on the Web in about 10 days.

Tom Payne has begun planning for the golf tournament and is looking for a few good storm-troopers to get the ball rolling.

There were three menu options: Chicken Fried Steak, Charbroiled Chicken Breast, and Chicken Taco Salad. I had the delicious CFS, but after seeing how much fun Patti Bielss had with her Taco Salad, I questioned my decision.

The program

David spit out many facts about the growth in the 9 county corridor area, and his presentation was very entertaining. The primary focus of the Council is on infrastructure and communications among the various government and business power centers. "The Corridor from Austin to San Antonio has been a center of commerce and trade since the days when Indians and Conquistadors still roamed its richly-wooded hills, rivers and streams. Modern Interstate Highway 35 parallels the legendary Camino Real-- the "King's Highway" -- used by Spanish explorers and missionaries in the 1600s to speed goods up from Central Mexico to missions in East Texas and from there to the distant commercial centers of the American Northeast and Europe."
One of the council's goals is to reduce the traffic through Austin.
Here are a few factoids:

• There are about 2.7 million people in the area
• San Antonio is number 2 in growth over the last 10 years.
• The biggest bottleneck is at the Town Lake Bridge( 206,000 vehicles per day).
• 80% of the trade between Mexico and North America travels on I-35.
• Along I-35, there are 31 daily trains which is near an optimal schedule.
• I-35, from Austin to Georgetown is the deadliest street in the nation.
• Growth is running about 5-6% in spite of the traffic.
• It would take about 12 lanes to handle the projections.
• There are about 12,000 commuting students at SWTU who could use the rail.
• Light rail could be used within the city and commuter rail between the cities.

Four options to handle the growth

• Do nothing
• Building I-35 overhead would cost about 22 billion.
• Building out west near US 281 would cost 3-5 times because of the rock & environment.
• Building I-130 to the East would cost about 1 billion.
  • They expect to have the authority to begin buying right-of-way by year-end.
  • Funding is complicated if we go non-attainment for Air Quality. We could loose funds to build the roads.
  • At least parts of it will be toll roads.
  • Just the construction should take about 5 years.
  • The project will include rail to eliminate some railroad crossings.

There are over 200 people on the council. You too could be a member and help solve this problem before I retire from the active work-force.