After voters approve bond, Mayor Adler talks about what's next

Austin Mayor Steve Adler was a happy camper on election night.  His $720 million mobility bond passed with about 59% of the vote.

"Today this city is taking a big step to dealing with mobility," he told the crowd of supporters on Tuesday night.

Now that the victory celebration is over, it's time to get to work.

"We need everybody to stay engaged in this process and involved because we're going to be laying out here in short order how this money is going to be spent, what the plans are...what the roll out plans are going to be to get the work done over the next 6 to 8 years," Adler said on Wednesday.

The bond work is divided up into 3 different "buckets" as the Mayor calls it. 

Smart corridors are in one bucket -- the biggest bucket.  Major roads like North Lamar, South Lamar, Burnet, Riverside and more may end up with raised medians, cut-outs for buses to pull into and improved signal timing," Adler said.

Another bucket is for "regional mobility" -- improvements to roads like 360, Spicewood Springs, Parmer Lane and others.

The last bucket -- "local mobility and active transportation."  It includes sidewalk improvements, safe routes to schools, urban trails and bicycle infrastructure.

Adler says the sidewalk and safe routes will most likely be first.

"The reason for that is because those are the most shovel-ready projects.  They are the ones that are the quickest to implement and to execute," he said.

City Staff sent a memo out Wednesday morning saying they're looking for a corridor consultant to help them out and staff is expected to come back to council soon on the roll-out plan.

"My guess would be probably a year away from actually being in a position to actually start doing the work on the corridors.  But that's just a guess at this point.  Staff will be coming to us sometime in the next 2 or 3 months to start laying out those types of timetables," Adler said.

So what does this mean for taxpayers?  The mayor has said it's less than $5 a month for the median-priced home in Austin.  If you want to test that out, there's a tax calculator on the bond website.

Here it is: http://www.austintexas.gov/page/2016-bond-financial-and-tax-impact