MucinTx: Let's loosen up that congestion

Austin, Texas has been one of the fastest growing cities in the US for some time now, ranking 2nd on Forbe’s list of fastest growing cities of 2015. With a growing city comes traffic issues until the state decides to do something expensive such as build a new highway or a metro system, but government of Texas, I’ll do you one better. Texas should reduce the price for commercial vehicles to ride on the toll road SH130 for Austin. 

When looking at the traffic trends for Austin, we see that the rush hour times are growing to inconvenient times for commuters. A drive that can take 20 minutes is stretched to over an hour if caught in traffic at the wrong time. Rush hour also lasts enormous amounts of time, ranging from 6a to 11a in the mornings and 3p to 7p in the evenings. Of course it can be expected that in any major city the downtown area will be congested at all times, but that congestion is stretching northern and southern of downtown and it doesn’t seem like it is getting better any time soon. 

Being a commuter to The University of Texas at Austin and having an internship in North Austin while living in South Austin, I’ve had to deal with the horrific traffic times myself consistently for a year now. There is no dodging traffic for anyone that needs to go to school or work at a specific time, and it will always be a drag to go home when it is over. One day at about 4p in my boredom in traffic, I counted how many vehicles with 4 axles or more (according to TxTag’s website) that I came across in the 20 minutes it took me to get out of traffic. I counted 67 vehicles going only the oncoming direction in traffic. With this figure and a few estimations, we round that to 60 vehicles for benefit of the doubt, assume commercial vehicle traffic is similar to that for 18 hours a day and dead for the other 6 hours, that’s 583,200 vehicles in a quarter of a year on I-35, almost twice as much as TxTag counted in Q1 of 2015. 

If Texas could do this, there would be no need for the highway renovations or train constructions. If Texas could also afford to have them travel on SH130 free of charge, this would be the best option, but it is understandable that Texas’ government gets a good amount of money from vehicles that take the toll roads and may not want to lose this revenue. With this solution, Texas can continue to save money for long term road construction rather than completing small renovations that will only last for a short while. 

So how does that make YOU feel?

In this blogpost “The Death of Sandra Bland,” Erica Grieder gives her opinion on the incident involving a black woman and a DPS trooper in a traffic stop. Grieder is a senior editor at Texas Monthly and has had works in the New York Times, the Spectator, the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and the New Republic. She is appearing on Burkablog, a popular left leaning blog created by Paul Burka who is also a senior editor of the Texas Monthly. The audience for this blog is Texans due to its place in Texas Monthly’s Burkablog, and liberals due to the ideology of Burkablog.

There is no room to challenge the credibility of this author since both the owner of the blog and the author to the blogpost itself are senior editors for the Texas Monthly. However, with that being said, I expect a better argument in this article. Sandra Bland was pulled over by DPS officer Encinia for not using a turn signal to switch lanes. After being pulled over for such an irrelevant punishment, Bland was irritable with Encinia and this led to her arrest. Encenia forcibly removed Bland from her vehicle and arrests her. She goes to jail and is found in her cell three days later hung from her neck with a trash bag. 

This is a situation that makes people feel something. Anyone that hears this story has a say and has heard of the trouble between people (specifically black people) and police brutality in the US. Because of that, it is disappointing that instead of formulating her own opinion, Grieder states other people’s opinions and says “I agree” on this blogpost. It’s a blogpost for pete’s sake! Blogposts are full of differing opinions and arguments. The opinions provided that Grieder agrees with are valid opinions with valid arguments that I agree with. But, because a senior editor to a profound Texas news source uses this blog to support others’ opinions rather than have one herself or expand the conversation, this post is untapped potential. 

Why This Article Falls Just Short

Overall, Daniel Hung’s article “Republican leadership is responsible for many improvements in Texas” completes its goal. It comes from The Daily Texan, a source that has been alive for a century, is given to the correct audience of Texan voters, and it makes points on why Hung believes Republicans are responsible for Texas’ prosperity. However, the author misfires at the intended audience, omits an important factor of his argument, and the argument doesn’t reach the overall point of the article. 

In the article, Hung uses California to make points on how successful of a state government Texas has. His points are probably valid and reasonable, but his intended audience is Texas voters. Unless the reader is from California, studies Californian politics, or is informed by Hung with facts on California, this argument is a swing and miss at helping his argument. If the audience doesn’t know where California ranks in the country, Texas being better than California doesn’t mean anything. For all the audience knows, California could be the 50th ranked state and Texas the 49th. The only points successfully made by this comparison were oil wealth and business climate, but all other arguments fall through due to this. 

Secondly, Hung’s argument on oil production intends to show how Republican rule is best for Texas, saying “It is this pro-growth, pro-jobs Republican policy that makes Texas one of the fastest growing states in America.” When looking deeper into this argument, the evidence does not match the claim Hung is attempting to make. This graph shows the productivity of the Texas oil market. There is a steady decrease from 1985 to 2004, leveled out from 2004 to 2010, and a sharp increase from 2010 to 2013. When looking at the governors of Texas for these years and their political affiliations, the steady decrease had party control flipping back and forth between Republicans and Democrats from Mark While (D) in 1985 to George Bush (R) in 2000. From 2000 to 2013, one governor alone, Rick Perry (R) stopped the decrease, steadied out, and sharply increased the oil production in Texas. Yes he was a Republican, but under other Republicans oil production continued to decrease. So it was not Republican rule we should necessarily be thanking, just Rick Perry. 

 Lastly, this article’s intention is to show Republican rule makes for a better overall state government, but it seems the only arguments to be made are showing Republican rule makes for a better state economy. If the argument was shooting for a better state economy than any other in the nation, you’ve got me. But that doesn’t appear to be what Hung is going for here, and it invalidates his argument. I honestly liked this article and understand how a Republican reading this will agree with all these points, but reading from a critique standpoint, Hung leaves too many holes for me to agree with him here. 

GEDs Become Harder to Attain for Those Who Actually Need Them

In the article “New Test Causing Fewer Texans to Get GEDs,” Sophia Bollag explains a new dilemma causing many Texans problems. For those without formal education, it appears that there is a new, more expensive, more challenging AND less accessible test to receive a GED in Texas. When analyzing who would need a GED and why they would need one, this doesn’t sit well with them. From the changes, there is a 45% decrease in the amount of people taking the test as well as only 30% of those people taking the test actually passing. That comes out to a whopping 83.5% LESS people receiving a GED from 2012 to 2014! Tsk tsk, Texas….

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/14/education-advocates-say-new-computer-based-ged-too/