The Bee Cave Bee

In a attempt to simplify the voter's understanding of where the five candidates stand on  key issues I sent all of them a note on the morning of April 30th giving them until the end of day on May 1st to respond to this - one of three questions:

Question: "Do you or do you not think Bee Cave has a traffic problem? What do you think Bee Cave City Council CAN do to improve the situation?"

Candidates Goodwin, Coleman chose not to respond, but Matzen submitted his answers on Friday the 2nd.

Carrell Killebrew responded first with :

"Bee Cave needs to work with TXDOT, Lakeway, and Austin as appropriate to fund studies:

• to improve RR620 along its entire length, including for example  measures such as light synchronization in high traffic areas from TX71 through Lakeway
• to fund a study on FM2244 to prevent future problems, before it becomes another RR620
• Ask TXDOT to evaluate lower speed limits along FM2244 within the city limits.
• Consider implementing a tough no-texting while driving ordinance coupled with dedicated enforcement. 
• Evaluate connecting the entire city with dedicated bike paths to reduce intra-city car traffic."

Marie Lowman came next saying:

"Yes, Bee Cave has traffic issues.  We need to carefully consider all PDD’s, and the associated traffic impact analysis.  Answering questions like “What is the alternative? How can we help mitigate the traffic challenges now, and following the initiation and completion of any proposed development?”  up front, can help manage things downstream.  The future of our City needs to be at the forefront of the decision-making process.   Bee Cave has established excellent lines of communication with TX DoT, we must continue to nurture this relationship and ensure our engagement on traffic issues remains intact and improves. "

Tom Matzen's reply

"Traffic and safety are two issues Bee Cave will definitely be facing in the next several years of development.  I am not going to say we can “fix” the traffic problem. What we need to do as a Council is work to mitigate the problem the best we can.  The City Council needs to keep growing its ties and lines of communication with TXDOT and be in their ear constantly about our concerns.  If we need to spend some money on additional studies and surveys regarding traffic patterns, we should do so.  We also should encourage development of trails systems that connect as much of Bee Cave possible to hopefully take some cars off the road. With the expansion going down 71 and HPR, we need to consider the impact of those growth areas as well despite being outside Bee Cave."