City Council committee to hear briefings on LBJ toll lanes and people mover at Love Field

The Dallas City Council's Transportation and Environment Committee is expected to hear a couple of interesting briefings today that could have long-range effects on how we commute, especially on LBJ and to Love Field. This briefing involves managed lanes on LBJ and this one discusses a self-propelled people mover that connects the DART rail station west of Love Field to the airport's terminal.

I wish I could tell you exactly when these briefings will occur, but the City's Web site lists two committee meetings, this one and the Quality of Life Committee both meeting at noon today (or perhaps midnight, since the actual time listed is 12 a.m., but I'm guessing this means noon).

The LBJ briefing talks about hiring a private firm to construct six managed toll lanes beneath LBJ so that it would become a cantilevered eight-lane freeway from approximately Greenville Avenue on the east to almost Luna road on the West and south on I-35E to the Loop 12 fork. Managed toll lanes, according to the briefing, are "lanes where traffic is kept moving at a faster more reliable speed (at least 50 miles an hour) by adjusting the toll rate up and down as the number of vehicles increase or decrease." Vehicles with just one person in it would pay the full toll, those with two or more would be pay half the toll.

The Love Field people mover would take DART passengers on the proposed Green Line from the DART station on Denton Road over that road and then tunnel under the airport itself to the main terminal. The people mover would be similar to those used to shuttle passengers around airports like DFW. The briefing estimates it could take six years to complete the project at a construction cost of up to $330 million in 2010 dollars and $4.8 million annually to operate it. These costs, according to the briefing, would come from something called a Passenger Facility Charge, which, I'm guessing, means that the price of airline tickets in and out of Love Field will go up.

Stay tuned.