On Feb. 11, Austin City Council members will weigh its options on if and when to call the city’s next mobility bond to fund transportation projects such as road improvements, regional projects, sidewalks and bicycle facilities.

Council Member Ann Kitchen said Feb. 3 during the Mobility Committee meeting that council’s discussion will direct staff on pursuing a bond, possibly in November or in 2018.

“A bond is not our only funding option, and bonding does have a lot of implications with regard to our taxes,” she said. “That’s something we would want to understand before we made any decision.”

Assistant City Manager Robert Goode presented a list of the city’s mobility needs that could be included in a bond totaling $4.5 billion, although he said the list was not comprehensive and did not include regional projects.

“This is very preliminary,” he said. “We know there are needs we didn’t attack and didn’t address, but this is just an idea of the huge need we have in our community.”

Included in that list is $2 billion to $2.5 billion of projects on I-35 in the Texas Department of Transportation’s Mobility 35 program. Goode said TxDOT would fund the majority of that work but the city could be a partner.

Goode said the city has six completed corridor programs that need additional funding to implement. City staffers identified $120 million worth of short- and mid-term needs and $700 million worth of long-term needs.

“Those [corridor programs] have already been looked at and have had some public involvement,” Goode said. “Through that stakeholder process we have developed a vision for what that corridor could be and these are the funds that would be identified to accomplish those visions.”

The remaining identified needs total $1.3 billion such as sidewalks, bicycle facilities and street and bridge rehabilitation.

Between 1988-2014, voters approved $1.5 billion worth of bonds, of which $638 million were for transportation and mobility projects, Goode said. Voters approved the last mobility bond in 2012 for $143.3 million.

Goode said council has three options on moving forward with a bond election. The traditional process would take between 15 and 18 months, but he said staffers identified shorter processes that could take either up to 12 months or up to eight months.

“It would be really difficult to go to every neighborhood and ask for the universe of needs in the shortest path,” Goode said, adding if council chooses that option it would be limited to projects that have already been vetted and had public involvement.

Council Member Delia Garza said she has concerns about pursuing the accelerated process and not being able to have the grassroots neighborhood meetings.

“The purpose of that kind of input is not only to get input but also to get buy-in and get support,” she said. “I absolutely understand these projects have been vetted, they’re ready to go, they’ve been studied, [but] the circle of people who know that part of it is small, and we need support and votes to pass a bond election.”

Council Member Don Zimmerman said he was frustrated by the 2010 mobility bond that included a concrete hike-and-bike trail by Lady Bird Lake when education materials showed vehicles stuck in traffic. He said he hopes the city can change how it presents the bond before an election.

“To me that’s our biggest problem as a new City Council, is trying to present more honest choices to our voters,” he said. “… We bundle stuff together so we never get a clear chance to vote as a community on which direction we want to go.”