November 2006 Archives
Spinning down HPR yesterday on my bike, heading to Cypress Mill, as I approached the hairpin above Hammett's Crossing, another cyclist coming the other way shouted a warning to me. I could barely make out something about "bad road". About five seconds later I hit it:
Consider that the grooves are about the width of a 700x23c bicycle tire. We've got our own little Paris-Roubaix, right here in western Travis County! Lance, you always wanted to do P-R, right?
Believe me, it is painful crossing this half-mile section at any speed. It remains barely passable to cyclists. And this is to... prevent accidents during our icy season? What icy season? If we have ice, it is one day a year. The other 364 days we have to put up with this?
People: there are multiple modes of transportation in this county. When you make a change to the road you impact all the modes. I am positive nobody at the county thought to assess the impact of this change on cycling, and it's not required procedure (or is it? worth checking). Tons of cyclists use HPR and other area roads, so we need a procudure in place so that engineers think about impact on all modes of transportation that use the roads.
Not to mention the environmental impact... Ric will post here soon about that.. right Ric?
You couldn't ask for much better development than The Ranches at Hamilton Pool. OK -- it would be nice to get a conservation development in there. And it would be nice gesture for them to promise to abide by local water quality guidelines. But still. They only platted 16 lots on 384 acres. Would that some of our other neighbors, up near Crumley RR, would take the cue from them.
They have asked to revise their plat. They propose to convert four large lots into nine. The largest lot formerly was 180 acres! So we are not talking quarter acre lots here.
The hearing is November 28th, 9 a.m. at the Commisioners Courtroom. 
This development is the next property west of the rifle range on HPR. Hamilton Creek flows through it along with lots of tributary creeks.
Potential concerns: a) Five more wells in the Trinity. b) Hamilton Creek impact. Right off the bat it doesn't strike me that this proposal is very impactful -- I'm just putting it out there for thought.
