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Spotlight / Traffic — No Comments
10
Apr 13

Project Spotlight: Decker Lake Road Extension

On March 27, Bury+Partners joined representatives from Travis County, the City of Austin, Taurus of Texas and many others for a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the Decker Lake Road Extension in Austin.

 

Ribbon Cutting 1

 

Travis County Precinct 1 Commissioner Ron Davis began the ceremony by addressing the crowd on-hand to highlight design aspects of the project and praise the design team, City, County, and Developer representatives for their partnership efforts throughout the project design and construction.  Mr. Douglas Gilliland (Taurus of Texas) echoed this praise, prior to gathering with Commissioner Davis, Mr. Guenther Reibling (Taurus Investment Holdings, LLC), and Mr. Gary Sheffield (Sheffield Asset Management) in the ceremonial ribbon-cutting.

 

Ribbon Cutting 2

From left to right: Guenther Reibling, Ron Davis, Gary Sheffield, and Douglas Gilliland

The project was developed as a Public/Private Partnership (PPP) between Travis County, the City of Austin, and Taurus of Texas.  The extension of Decker Lake Road serves as a direct link between existing Decker Lake Road (which previously terminated at FM 973) and State Highway SH 130 – noted as Project # 115 on the CAMPO 2035 plan.  The 4-lane median-divided roadway features 6’ sidewalks and 5’ bike lanes to facilitate future multi-modal transportation modes.  An experimental pavement section designed by the City of Austin was constructed and is intended to limit the amount of pavement heaving and cracking due to the highly expansive clay soils in the area.

 

Ribbon Cutting 3

 

Decker Lake Road Extension will also serve as the backbone of Indian Hills – a future multi-use development of residential, retail and office space.

 

Congratulations to the Bury team!

 

Bury provided traffic impact analysis for the Indian Hills development, as well as several other design services including: roadway and intersection, storm sewer drainage, erosion control, SWPPP, water quality, pond, sidewalk and bike lane, turn lane, and the traffic control plan.

 

Take a look back at Decker Lake Road’s ground breaking: SH 130, Decker Lake Road project begins

 

Community / Traffic — No Comments
11
Apr 12

MetroRapid Comes to Austin in 2014

MetroRapid

Just a few weeks after celebrating MetroRail’s two-year anniversary, Capital Metro made public their latest transportation initiative. So, what’s on the horizon for the City of Austin?

 

On Tuesday, April 10, the general public was invited to downtown’s Republic Square to hear from Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff about the next big thing in Austin transportation.

 

Capital Metro President and CEO Linda Watson, Capital Metro Chairman and Council Member Mike Martinez, and Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell were present for the event, during which Peter Rogoff announced the $38 Million Federal grant to provide MetroRapid service.

 

MetroRapid is Capital Metro’s bus rapid transit (BRT) with service scheduled to begin operating 40 buses in 2014.  BRT is a positive addition to Austin’s transportation infrastructure in many ways. Signal prioritization hardware is included in each MetroRapid bus, allowing for fewer delays at signal lights while driving on city roads. In some areas, the buses will likely have dedicated lanes. The buses are large and comfortable, and oftentimes have amenities that are attractive to business commuters, such as small tabletops and Wi-Fi.

 

Other cities, such as Houston, allow BRT vehicles to travel in HOV/HOT (high occupancy vehicle/ high occupancy toll) lanes to make trips in and out of the City core faster. When these lanes eventually do come to Austin, we can likely expect the same.

 

BRT focuses on commuter travel in and out of the City core and keeping connections available to other modes of transportation, including local bus service, rail, car rentals (such as Car to Go), or bike rental stations.

 

Valerie KaiserEngineer Associate Valerie Kaiser and Project Engineer Tony Estes, two of Bury’s transportation team members, attended Tuesday morning’s announcement and even had the opportunity to board one of the model buses. Valerie said, “As a traffic engineer, I am excited to see Austin take this next step. MetroRapid offers a convenient and affordable solution to what is too often a long and difficult commute to and from home and work.”

 

One viable solution to traffic woes would be to incorporate additional rail lines in Austin. However, the taxpayer benefit of the MetroRapid service is that more vehicles will be off the road as they choose to ride the BRT, without the expenses associated with purchasing and building on additional right of way.

 

On Tuesday, Administrator Rogoff also awarded Capital Metro a $3 Million grant to upgrade the existing local bus fleet, which has an average age of 15 years. Capital Metro was founded in January of 1985 and has the highest per capita ridership in Texas.

 

Read more from local news coverage of the event, or check out photos from the event on our Bury Facebook page.

 

KXAN – MetroRapid gets $38M federal grant
Austin Business Journal – MetroRapid bus project gets $38M grant
Community Impact News – Federal agency green-lights rapid transit bus routes

Community — No Comments
1
Dec 11

Movember at Bury

Movember

Like many others, you may be celebrating that today is the first day of December. Thanksgiving has come and gone and now the holiday bustle really picks up speed.

 

With everyone looking forward to the excitement of the next 31 days, here at Bury+Partners we’re taking time to look back at a charitable cause many of our staff supported in the month of November.

 

What was once simply “No Shave November” has turned into a global movement to raise money and awareness for prostate cancer. Men pledged to grow out their facial hair, mustaches in particular, to celebrate “Movember,” and together they played a part in “changing the face of men’s health.” MoSistas also joined local teams, supporting the men in their lives and raising money right alongside them.

 

Last year, the organization as a whole raised $7.5 Million for men’s health research and education, and this year the Austin MoBros raised more than $1,800. The month-long fundraiser culminates this evening with Gala events around the world. Movember will continue to accept donations through the end of December, so there’s still time to donate to the Austin MoBros.

 

Austin MoBros

 

Our MoBros included Bobak Tehrany, Charlie Brown Lohr, Jason Roberts, Kelley Fowler, Donald Cecil, Micah Ater, Tom Caponi, Kenny Wayne Azzarello, Andrew Marshke, Daniel Mahoney and Steve Burtke (not all pictured above). A few Bury and HS&A women participated as well, including Kristin Kibling, Debbie Newell and Stasi Vance.

 

During the company Thanksgiving luncheon, the guys got a surprise when some of the Bury women showed up sporting their own (fake) moustaches.

 

MoBros and MoSistas

 

Congratulations on a fun and successful Movember, everyone!

Community — No Comments
4
Oct 11

Bury Walks for Heart Health

Heart Walk 2011

The weather was beautiful this past weekend as Bury team members joined thousands of other Central Texans to show  support at the American Heart Association’s 2011 Austin Heart Walk. A huge thanks goes out to Shilo Cikalo, Rebecca Garza, Sarah Shepard, Nick Brown, Stephen Johnson, Tal Jackson, Lillian Cooper and Brad Harwick for coming out on Saturday with your families and friends to parade the Bury Flag.

 

The annual 5K walk is designed to bring public awareness to physical activity and a heart-healthy lifestyle while raising the critical dollars needed to fund heart disease and stroke research and educational programs in the Central Texas region. Teams are made up of employees from local companies, along with friends and family members of all ages. This year’s event raised $558,575.

 

Special thanks goes out to Sarah Shepard and Stasi Vance for their good work coordinating the event this year!

 

American Heart Association

For more information on this event, please visit www.austinheartwalk.org.