Austin, Texas, is about to do something that the local media (which can never be trusted) claims has never been done before. We’re about to open 75 miles of new highway all at once. Most of these are going to be toll roads, although they’re not going to actually start charging tolls until the 1st of January.

It may seem a little weird, but I’m actually very excited about this. The first stretch of highway (25 miles) opens tomorrow officially, but I found out last night that they’re starting to open things up at 9 this morning and are supposed to be done with the section that effects me directly by 2 this afternoon. It’ll be open when I drive home tonight. I’m almost giddy at the thought of how much time this will save.

The reason that I’m excited about this is that Austin has no freeways. We have a single interstate highway — Interstate 35, which jams up early and often. I-35 runs from the Texas/Mexico border in Laredo, to the Minnesota/Ontario border, and there’s no bypass. We’re a city of 750,000 people (1.5 million metro), and all of the traffic that’s going from somewhere else to somewhere else gets to sit on I-35 along with all of the local traffic that’s just trying to get two exits up the road. I leave the house at 6:40 in the morning, and, as this morning was rather typical, it took me 20 minutes to successfully get on the freeway (2 miles away), and another 30 minutes to get to where I need to go.

But all of that’s about to change.

For me, the anticipation has been building because my commute home is on a different freeway. Alternately known as Loop 1 (although it runs in a straight line), MoPac Boulevard (even though it’s a controlled-entry freeway), and FM 1325 (No, I don’t actually know what FM stands for, it’s just one of those Texas highway designations), MoPac is easier to access from the garage on campus where I park. MoPac ends abruptly at what, 20 years ago, was wayyyy out in the middle of nowhere, but thanks to the explosive growth of north Austin, is now the middle of something else entirely. To get up to Round Rock during rush hour, I cruise along at 60 miles an hour for about five minutes, and then come to a screeching halt where the freeway ends and the traffic lights begin. The lights don’t work in sync, and it actually takes just as long to get from campus to the point, 10 miles north, where the freeway ends as it does to get from there to Round Rock (another five miles). And that’s if there’s not a wreck, or if some idiot — and there’s a lot of idiots in the Austin area — has decided not to sit in the middle of the intersection and block traffic.

For the past two years, I’ve watched as they’ve ripped up FM 1325 and replaced it with a brand-new gleaming freeway — the Loop 1 Extension. All those lanes just sitting there, only a couple of yards away from where my carpool buddy and I sit choking down the fumes of the pickup trucks in front of us, begging to be used. Drive me, they call out, come on over and floor the accelerator … you know you want to …

There are a lot of people who are up in arms about the new toll roads, naturally. There are the usual concerns about the environment (this is Austin, after all). More highways=more pollution goes the equation, but wouldn’t shorter commute times actually mean less pollution?

There are concerns that we’re being taxed twice — once in the tax dollars that go to the Texas Department of Transportation, and once in the form of the tolls we have to pay. Then there are people who are just being stupid — one group complains that extending Loop 1 will make it a “regional alternative to I-35.” It already is the regional alternative to I-35.

But I’ll tell you what I think — Austin is a big city. The city planners are finally catching up to that, and so is TxDOT. Of course, since this is Texas, all of their plans to deal with urban growth involve new freeways and nothing in the way of, say, efficient and widespread public transportation. I’d happy take the train in every morning if there were an actual train to take in. But there isn’t. And there ain’t gonna be for a while.

Maybe new freeways aren’t the most productive way to handle Austin’s growth problems. I dunno.

I’ll give it some thought while I’m speeding along on my way home on the new highway …

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