The Oak Hill Association of Neighborhoods has yet to support or oppose a proposed transportation project at the Hwy. 290 and Hwy. 71 intersection, or the Y at Oak Hill, after Texas Department of Transportation staff and consultants responded to the neighborhood association collective’s set of criteria in June.

The Oak Hill Parkway environmental study aims to find a long-term solution to address traffic congestion at the Y at Oak Hill and may involve the construction of a 6-mile elevated toll road with flyovers and service roads. The project is in the environmental study phase.

The Oak Hill Association of Neighborhoods plans to support the proposed Oak Hill Parkway project if transportation authorities address members’ 10 criteria before construction begins.[/caption]

OHAN issues project criteria

On Jan. 14, 2015, OHAN established 10 criteria that Oak Hill Parkway staff should address before the association gives approval for the project, including noise mitigation and water quality.

“Part of [the goal of the criteria] is to keep this dialogue going [with project staff], so it’s not just, ‘Here is what we’d like,’ and then they ignore us for the next two years and do whatever they want to do,” OHAN President Darryl Pruett said at the OHAN membership meeting Aug. 10.

TxDOT spokesperson Kelli Reyna said TxDOT is not required to find reconciliation with all of OHAN’s criteria before completing the environmental study, but project staff takes input from the community seriously.

Out of the 10 criteria that Oak Hill Parkway staff responded to in June, the OHAN transportation committee deemed two of the criteria sufficient, two of them not met, and the remaining six as needing more information or progress, Pruett said.

Noise mitigation was one of the two criteria project did not meet, he said.

“We reviewed what staff said they had done in terms of noise mitigation, and I can tell you, my feeling about it is, what they said was, ‘We’ll comply within the law,’ and that was pretty much all they said,” Pruett said.

The second criterion not met, elevation, was not sufficiently addressed by project staff because of conflicting information in whether the proposed flyovers would be up to 34 feet above existing ground, Pruett said.

OHAN Transportation Committee co-Chairman Robert Tobiansky said OHAN members’ feelings for the Oak Hill Parkway project range from the most optimistic—who want the highway built—to the most pessimistic, who want nothing built.

“I am probably the most optimistic person on the whole committee that TxDOT is going to accomplish a lot of the things that we have set out for them to do,” Tobiansky said.

OHAN member David Richardson said he advocates for traffic alleviation, but is in favor of creating a highway that diverts traffic onto SH 45 and FM 1826 instead of through Hwy. 290.

“It seems to me that taking the traffic that could end up going to Austin through Oak Hill might be better routed around Oak Hill because of the environmental constraints,” Richardson said.