Fix Hwy 71
Fix Hwy 71: We need your help
September 14, 2017
Spicewood Community Alliance Members,
Highway 71 west of the Pedernales River continues to experience a significant increase in automobile and heavy industry truck
traffic. With this increase in mix use traffic come higher related traffic deaths. As Constable Toby Miller recently stated, "There
are no minor wrecks on Highway 71."
TXDoT has a plan that is currently unfunded to widen a three mile stretch of Highway 71 from the Pedernales River bridge to the Blanco County line. The plan is to install a center turn lane and improved shoulders.
TxDOT does not foresee community interest to justify the SH71 widening to continue beyond Blanco county into Burnet County. Let's prove them wrong!
Joe Don Dockery, Commissioner Precinct 4, has been trying to convince TxDot there is definitely interest, and hopes to ride the coattails of the widening in Travis County to get a center turn lane installed all the way to Hwy 281. Spicewood Community Alliance, a subsidiary of Save Our Spicewood, is helping to advocate for the widening of SH71 through Burnet County to US Highway 281 (US281). We urge all Spicewoodians and all users of SH71 to help.
While an uphill task, with full community support, the highway widening is possible. And, when supplemented with the Spicewood Emergency Medical Station from Emergency Services District No. 9 (coming in 2018), and the recent upgrades to the 911 emergency system, the growth from Scott and White Hospital on western SH71 (just west of US281) on these infrastructure improvements will go a long way in making our Spicewood Community safer for all.
We ask every one of you to go on-line to http://www.txdot.gov/inside-txdot/get-involved.html and leave your statement in the "Contact Us" dialogue box (please send to both Austin and Marble Falls) and/or call Cathy Kratz, our local TxDOT engineer at (512) 756-2316. Make your voice heard. It is important that we have a very large number of persons to show they are concerned about Hwy71, so please take action today. Email TxDOT, call Ms. Kratz, or both.
Feel free to copy and paste the short paragraph below. It will fit in the limited space for your email comment options at TxDOT.
Texas SH71 in Spicewood Texas has seen rapid new residential subdivision growth, along with with increase truck traffic for concrete, aggregate and asphalt plants on an already over-worked highway. Death tolls are fast approaching the rates seen previously on Eastern SH71 in Travis County. The time to fix this is now! Before more people die.
Other required information you will need for the email dialogue box:
Date of Occurrence: "Daily"
Location of the Complaint: "Texas SH71 west from the Pedernales River to US Highway 281 in Marble Falls."
Date of Occurrence: "Daily"
Location of the Complaint: "Texas SH71 west from the Pedernales River to US Highway 281 in Marble Falls."