With a potential November public vote on a first segment of a downtown-centric, electric-powered rail system, City of Austin transportation planners have added about 10 miles to the 16.5-mile, $1.3 billion proposed system that has long been public.

The newest map shows rail lines reaching Southpark Meadows shopping center in far south Austin, MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) near West Fifth Street and at West 35th Street, the Triangle on Guadalupe Street and MetroRail’s Crestview Station on North Lamar Boulevard.

Construction of any part of such a system is far from certain, and decisions by officials or the public on the newly proposed sections likely would be many years away. Nonetheless, retired political consultant Peck Young said city officials are making a politically savvy move.

“The only way you can get citywide support for those kinds of things is to have a citywide plan,” said Young, executive director of Austin Community College’s Center for Public Policy and Political Studies. “And that looks like what they’re trying to do. I’m glad in particular that we decided to remember that South Austin is part of the city too.”

The city’s original urban rail proposal has been criticized both by rail skeptics —for being too concentrated in the central business district and thus failing to address highway congestion — and by some rail advocates, who have major quibbles with its route. That route connects Mueller in East Austin with Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, running through the University of Texas, the Capitol complex and downtown.

This map from the Statesman is helpful:

Check out the whole article here.

Even more confusing than people complaining about a lack of opportunity for the public to participate in this decision are the occasional comments from commentors threatening to go out and buy their own plastic bags from Amazon to take into stores as their “non-reusable” bags.  (Search for Amazon on this story) Oh boy. That will really teach City Council to try and beautify Austin. People are such idiots sometimes.

Best of all are comments from the likes of “Kristen” on that same story:  ”Where do they expect me to put my cat poop?”  I didn’t write this reply from “JP”, but I think it sums it up well:

Really people? “Where will I put my cat poop?” The sky is not falling, and the short-sightedness of so many here that are screaming because they will be ever-so-slightly inconvenienced is amazing to me…

“I have to bring a reusable bag to go grocery shopping in my city” – first world problems, indeed.

Look up 5 gyres. Educate yourself about what kind of world you are creating for the generations to come. This is real, and really happening. We can reverse it…

Before and after the ban takes effect, the city plans to do a $2 million education campaign to make customers aware of the change and remind them to bring reusable bags.

The council decided not to enact a fee on disposable bags before the ban takes effect. A fee had been discussed as a way to help shoppers and retailers prepare for the ban.

Austin is the first big Texas city to pass a bag ban. More than two dozen U.S. cities have bag laws, most of them prohibiting plastic bags and imposing a fee on paper.

In Austin, retailers will be able to offer only reusable bags, defined as those made of cloth, durable materials or thicker paper and plastic bags that have handles.

Exempt will be single-use bags used for bulk foods, meat, fish and produce, newspaper delivery, dry cleaning and restaurant carry-out foods. Also exempt will be the bags that charities and nonprofits use to distribute food and other items.

It had been suggested that plastic bags be added to the city’s curbside recycling program, but the director of the city’s trash and recycling program said that option would be too costly for the city.

A final draft should be ready by the end of this month, and council will vote on it in March.

Read the Statesman article here.

The City of Austin might ban disposable plastic and paper bags at checkout counters three years earlier than originally planned.

A revised draft of the ban, released Friday, moves up the date the ban would take effect to January 2013 from January 2016 .

The new draft would require retailers to charge customers 10 cents per disposable bag — paper or plastic — from June to late December, as a precursor to the outright ban. Under the old draft, retailers would have had to charge 25 cents per disposable bag from January 2013 to late 2015 .

A city commission will discuss the revised draft Wednesday. Austin Resource Recovery, the city department that wrote both ban drafts and oversees trash and recycling, also plans to hold a public meeting Jan. 23 to gather feedback.

The changes reflect input from retailers, residents and other advocates since the first draft was unveiled last month, said Austin Resource Recovery Director Bob Gedert. Some wondered why the city couldn’t enact the ban sooner than 2016. And retailers, as well as advocates for low-income people, complained that the 25-cent interim fee was too high.

The draft could be changed again before the council votes on it in March , Gedert said.

I didn’t attend the public meeting about the first draft, I only read about it in the Statesman, but it sounds like city staffers were convinced that there is a lot more support for the ban than against, so they came up with something that moves faster toward a total ban.  Exciting!

• Establishing reuse centers and drop-off facilities throughout the city to recover a variety of recyclable, reusable and repairable materials, including batteries, motor oil, paint and anti-freeze

• Enhancing the Single Stream Recycling Program by accepting additional material types

• Conducting a pilot program to collect yard trimmings, food scraps and compostable paper at the curb, and possibly rolling out a new citywide organics collection program based on the pilot program results

• Developing and operating a new Household Hazardous Waste Facility in North Austin

• Phasing in universal recycling and composting requirements to all waste generators — both residential and commercial — within the city

Check out the ABJ article for more details.

Neither of those arguments sound like such great points as to negate the benefits of a bag ban.  Just as people will have to learn to remember to carry their reusable bags into the store, they will also have to remember to make a point of washing their bags every few weeks (more or less depending on what you’re comfortable with), and if you aren’t able to lift large bags, you’ll have to remember to ask the bag boy or girl to not fill your bags over X pounds, and if they do fill them over X pounds, you’ll have to ask them to re-do it.  I can remember back in the day when I was little my mother preferred paper over plastic, and often she would have to watch the bag boy/girl when they were bagging our groceries into paper bags and make sure they didn’t over-pack them so they got too heavy. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

The Texas Retailers Association, which represents grocery stores, pharmacies and other retailers statewide, has resisted a ban and said it is disappointed with the details of the draft.

Ronnie Volkening, the group’s president, said Friday that the 25-cent fee would be one of the highest in the nation.

“It will have a hugely regressive impact on low-income citizens and families,” he said.

He also said the ban unfairly exempts some plastic goods, such as dry cleaning bags, while targeting large retailers that have worked hard to cut down on plastic bags by promoting recycling and reuse. Enacting a ban would be a disincentive for retailers to continue to accept plastic bags and other plastic products for recycling, meaning many more of those products could end up in landfills, he said.

I for one am very happy with what I’ve heard about the proposal and look forward to learning more!