The problem: the winning bid was too low, according to the company that submitted it. McCarthy Building Companies Inc., shortly after winning the right to build the four flyovers with a $24.4 million bid, informed the Texas Department of Transportation Oct. 28 that it had made a bidding error and wished to withdraw its bid.

“They left $2.7 million on the table,” said Carlos Lopez, TxDOT’s Austin district engineer, meaning the company’s bid was that much below the next lowest bidder.

McCarthy’s error message set in motion a complex internal TxDOT process of evaluating the alleged mistake, one that is still ongoing. But the upshot for the public is that TxDOT almost certainly will have to rebid the project in January, and construction likely won’t start until April, officials said.

That would be about six months after officials had hoped to have it going. When work does begin, it will take about 18 months, officials estimate, to build the four bridges on the south side of the huge highway interchange.

TxDOT had spent about $100 million at I-35 and Ben White early this decade, a project that included construction of four flyovers connecting the two roads (Ben White is also known as Texas 71), new frontage road bridges and a Ben White underpass beneath the interstate.

But four bridges were left only half-built, those that would allow unfettered movement to and from I-35 south of Ben White. That has meant people who live south of there, and want to go either east or west on Ben White, have had to exit I-35 and wade through traffic lights. This has generated considerable frustration, along with innumerable e-mails over the years to TxDOT and to the American-Statesman.

The remedy, paid for with so-called Proposition 14 bonds that will be paid back with future gas taxes, was supposed to break ground in October or November.

McCarthy’s bid came in 10 percent lower than the next lowest bidder (among about a dozen bidders), officials said. McCarthy then told TxDOT that it incorrectly bid how it would handle lane closures during construction.

Mike McWay, president of McCarthy’s Texas division in Dallas, could not be reached for comment.

TxDOT’s evaluation of the nature of that error will determine whether McCarthy is allowed to simply withdraw, or if it will have to forfeit a $100,000 bidding bond as well. Either way, TxDOT officials said, it will not be eligible to bid in a second round.

McCarthy could chose in the end to do the job for the $24.4 million it bid, and if so construction might start as soon as January. But TxDOT officials today said that is the least likely scenario.

The project, which should take about a year to complete, includes building a flyover from northbound MoPac to eastbound U.S. 290 and another from westbound U.S. 290 to southbound MoPac. TxDOT, when it built the two existing flyovers about 20 years ago, had built the beginning sections of both of the missing bridges.

City officials say they expect that about 18,000 vehicles a day will use the two new bridges, and that drivers would save three to five minutes on each trip by using the bridges and avoiding ground-level traffic lights.

The city will borrow $13 million using what are called “certificates of obligation,” which unlike general obligation bonds do not require voter approval. Then, over the next 10 to 15 years, the Texas Department of Transportation will pay the city 80 percent of that original construction cost. The city will also pay between $2 million and $3 million of interest on the money it is borrowing, so its total expenditure in the end likely will be about $5 million.

The arrangement, authorized under state law in 2003, is called a pass-through toll agreement. Under those, cities or counties front money for improvements on the state highway system that TxDOT doesn’t have the money to get done, then are paid back for much of it based on how heavy traffic is on the new or improved road.

Williamson County, Hays County and the City of San Marcos had done pass-through deals with TxDOT several years ago, but the City of Austin and Travis County until now had declined to participate in the program.

Today’s approval of the deal, Austin City Manager Marc Ott said, is “a new signal about the kind of working relationship we and TxDOT expect to have going forward.”

TxDOT Austin district engineer Carlos Lopez said that only minor adjustments to existing environmental documents are necessary, and that the project could start even earlier than the May target.

In January, the toll at 183-A’s Park Street plaza will go from $1.35 to $1.55, meaning that what is now a 4.5-mile-long road will have a total toll of $2. In 2012, when a several-mile extension north of RM 2243 should open, the Park Street toll will decrease to $1.25 and a new toll point north of New Hope Road will begin charging 95 cents. The 11.7-mile road’s overall toll at that point will be $2.70.

Beginning with January 2013, tolls, absent action by the agency board, will increase by a percentage equal to the annual growth in the consumer price index for urban areas. Over the past five years, the cumulative increase in that index was 15.2 percent.

TxDOT this afternoon announced that it will restripe a section of northbound U.S. 183 between MoPac Boulevard and Great Hill Trails next week, a spot where currently three lanes squeeze down to two. That causes a slowdown at rush hour.

Now, at a cost of just $55,000 and a few nights work, TxDOT is going to fix the problem. Which is definitely a good thing.

Here’s the press release in its entirety from Marcus Cooper, spokesman for TxDOT’s Austin district:

Headline: “TxDOT Restripes Northbound US 183 between MOPAC and Great Hills Trail”

“Drivers on northbound US 183 will no longer have to squeeze down from three to two lanes near Mopac. The Texas Department of Transportation will restripe the outside lane of northbound US 183 and extend it beyond the Braker Lane exit. The restriping will not affect the direct connect ramp from Mopac to US 183. TxDOT Spokesman Marcus Cooper says, ‘The footprint of US 183 will remain the same, but the new striping will allow more cars to flow through and ease congestion during evening commutes.’

“Beginning Tuesday night, TxDOT engineers will remove the existing lane striping from northbound US 183 between the Mopac Direct Connect Ramp to Braker lane. Striping removal and installation will continue over the next three nights. One to two lanes of traffic will be closed each night during the project. However, at least one lane of traffic will remain open at all times.

“Weather permitting; the restriping project should be complete by Thanksgiving. The project cost is $55,000.”

The City of Austin and car2go, a subsidiary of Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler AG, is unveiling today a car-sharing partnership that in short order will unleash about 200 of the truncated, two-seaters in the city’s core. The stubby vehicles — they’re less than nine feet long and get about 33 miles per gallon in city driving — will be parked here and there around town, and city employees who register as car2go members will be able to use them more or less spontaneously for errands related to city business.

They’ll be able to use them for personal business as well, but will have to pay 35 cents a minute during those trips.

If the pilot project works out as the company expects, next year it would bring in even more Smart cars and open membership to anyone willing to pay by the hour for a set of wheels.

The company, which will keep track of where each car is parked, will have a corps of employees maintaining and keeping them gassed up. And, under a barter agreement with the city that allows the free use by city workers on business, there will be no parking charges for the cars, which have “car2go” logos prominently displayed.

The city will pay nothing under the agreement, but will set aside 40 marked parking spaces around downtown for the cars, and “host” about 85 of them in municipal garages and parking lots. The rest will be in effect free-range Smart cars, although each trip must begin and end within a “geo-fence” roughly bounded by 51st Street, MoPac Boulevard, Oltorf Street and Interstate 35. Trips may extend outside of that area, however.

Austin, which already has the non-profit Austin CarShare offering a handful of vehicles for short-term rentals, thus will move in a big way into the growing “car-sharing” movement. As of 2006, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study, there were about 350,000 registered car-share members worldwide, about a third of them in the United States.

This will be car2go’s second such proving ground. The company a year ago released 200 Smart cars into the streets of Ulm, a town of about 125,000 people in southwestern Germany, again starting with public employees. The program was opened to the general Ulm populace in March, said Nicholas Cole, president and GEO of car2go’s North American division. About 15,000 of the town’s 80,000 licensed drivers are now members, the company says, and the cars are rented up to 1,000 times a day.

Aside from the $16,000 cost of each car, the company covers insurance, fuel and maintenance. With more and more Austinites living downtown and others perhaps considering public transportation to get to work if gas prices shoot up again, Daimler believes it can make a profit offering Smart cars as an alternative.

“This sort of fills that gap,” Cole said. “Is it my expectation that people will start selling off their cars? Not immediately.”

Here are the rudiments of how the program would work were it expanded beyond city employees:

• Licensed drivers 18 and older could register as members online, listing their license number — and a major credit card number for payment. If approved, they would receive a membership card in the mail a few days later. The cards have microchips in them that communicate with a card reader just under the windshield on the driver’s side. Becoming a member would be free initially, Cole said, although that policy might change later.

• If a car is not checked out to another user — the reader has green and red lights to indicate availability — passing the membership card near the reader would unlock the driver-side door. Then, after the customer answers some questions on a dashboard computer screen, the car key would be released from the glove box.

• The timer would begin when the car starts. That 35-cents-a-minute rate would be discounted for longer use — $12.99 an hour, or $65.99 for a full day. And if the gas tank is below a quarter full, then a driver would use a pre-paid credit card in the glove box for a fill-up. In that case, ten minutes is deducted from the trip time to account for refueling.

• No smoking, no pets and no open alcoholic beverages would be allowed inside the car. Eating is OK, but members would be expected to leave the car’s interior clean when they release the car.

• A driver could go as far as 200 miles outside that geo-fence in Central Austin, but would have to leave the car back inside it at the end of their rental.

• When a driver completes one leg of a roundtrip, the driver could either keep the meter running while leaving the car to do something else; or sign out, return the key to its hiding place, and risk losing the vehicle to another user.

The trains will be begin running at about 3 p.m. For more details, see the Shortcuts blog entry from last week.

Agency officials hope to have the trains in service by the end of March.

Look for the red trains running from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the line, which runs from downtown Austin, through East Austin, then northwest through North Austin, Cedar Park and Leander. The trains will be running on simulated schedules comparable to what Capital Metro will use when service begins sometime next year. That would mean northbound trains running every 30 to 35 minutes, with a few southbound trains as well.

“MetroRail will be traveling at full operating speeds, nearly twice as fast as freight trains,” Capital Metro said in a news release today. “Additionally, train activity will increase significantly. For these reasons, motorists, cyclists and pedestrians are encouraged to always expect a train, and to stay off the tracks.”

The MetroRail line, in its 32-mile path, crosses about 70 streets, highways and private drives. The agency has crossing gates, in some cases special four-armed gates, at almost all of those intersections, and had experienced trouble this year getting the gates to open and close at the proper times. Recent progress reports from the agency have indicated that those problems had been solved for all but a couple of intersections near Lamar Boulevard and Airport Boulevard.

Those glitches, along with more complex questions involving the track’s signal control system, have pushed back indefinitely what was at one time to be a March 2009 opening. Agency officials now hope to have the trains in service by the end of March.

Here’s the meeting schedule, minus the Monday meetings you missed already:

• November 10 at 7:30 am — St. David’s Episcopal Church — PLEASE NOTE: Because of construction on Brazos Street, many bus routes that serve St. David’s detour along Congress Avenue. If you are unsure of your route, please contact Cap Metro at 474-1200.
• November 10 at 6:00 pm — Bowie High School (Cafeteria)
• November 12 at 6:00 pm — Reagan High School (Cafeteria)
• November 12 at 6:00 pm — Travis High School (Cafeteria)

To read the full city release on the forums, go here.

Fernandez, executive director of the non-profit group Green Doors, will fill a slot reserved — under a state law passed this spring — for someone with at least a decade of finance or accounting experience. Langmore, a lawyer who was a district manager with Caterpillar Inc. during an 11-year stint with the company that ended in 2002, was appointed in the position requiring 10 years or more of executive experience.

Martinez, who has served on the seven-member transit board for more than two years, will continue as a CAMPO appointee.

The three will join holdover John Cowman, Leander’s mayor, chosen last month to represent the small cities in Capital Metro’s service area. Austin City Council Member Chris Riley, who joined the Capital Metro board this summer, likely will get one of the two appointments given to the Austin City Council, he said.

That leaves three other appointments for what will now be an eight-member Capital Metro board, choices to be made by the Austin City Council, Travis County commissioners and Williamson County commissioners.

Martinez said Tuesday that the council likely will vote Nov. 19 to create a subcommittee consisting of him, Riley and Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell to review applicants and recommend a choice to the overall council. Martinez said the council will consider people who applied for the CAMPO appointments but didn’t prevail, as well as anyone else who sends in a resume and letter of interest in the next few weeks.

The council will vote Dec. 10 or Dec. 17 on its choice, he said.

Travis County is taking applications for its transit board choice through Nov. 25, according to its Web site. Those interested can e-mail IGR@co.travis.tx.us or call Veronica Chidester at (512) 854-4774 for more information or an application packet. Williamson County will accept applications through 5 p.m. Thursday, spokeswoman Connie Watson said. The commissioners courts in both counties will make their choices in the first half of December.

The fare increase should generate an estimated $2.3 million during the transit agency’s 2009-10 fiscal year. That will allow the agency to spend federal stimulus money on one-time capital costs, officials said, specifically on additional siding tracks for Capital Metro’s commuter rail line and on easing a troublesome curve in the track near downtown. The agency had been intending to spend $2.6 million in stimulus funds on operating costs this year.

The vote on the fare increase was 4-1, with board member Mike Manor dissenting. Board member John Trevino, who has health problems, missed the meeting and a seventh slot is open currently.

The board rejected a staff proposal to begin charging a 25-cent fare for each bus ride to people with disabilities and seniors, defined by the agency as anyone 65 or older. Both classes of riders currently pay nothing to board a Capital Metro bus. The 25-cent fare would have generated an estimated $600,000 this fiscal year.

But board chairwoman Margaret Gomez, a Travis County commissioner facing a challenge in the March Democratic primary, had said last week she did not support that change. Leander Mayor John Cowman spoke for charging seniors and people with disabilities, saying “everyone should pitch in” to help Capital Metro pay for its operations. But Cowman, aware of the prevailing view on the board, did not bring the idea up for a vote.

Today’s action means that what most Capital Metro riders pay will be much higher in January than it would have been in the fare hike approved for August of next year. The monthly 31-day bus pass, for instance, will go from $18 to $28, rather than the previously scheduled $25. The express bus 31-day pass, now $36, will go to $63 rather than $48. And the agency’s MetroRail line from Leander to downtown Austin will see a fare increase before it even opens, going from $36 for a monthly pass to $70.

It had been scheduled to go to $48 in August.

Under a state law passed this year, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board has the authority to overturn within two months any increase in the agency’s base fare, currently 75 cents. The CAMPO board, officials have said, has no jurisdiction over any other Capital Metro fares.

That base fare, under a 2008 vote, had been scheduled to go up to $1 in August 2010. Today’s vote maintains the $1 new base fare, but moves it forward in time by seven months, a minimal change that might or might not move CAMPO to consider the matter before the increase occurs January 18.

Alonzo Livingston Hall, 45, exposed his genitals to a passenger on a special transit van that he drove, and requested sexual contact from her, according to arrest affidavits. He had also repeatedly touched her inappropriately while helping her move from her motorized scooter to a seat on the bus, the woman told police.

The woman, while she spurned the advances earlier, did not complain to Austin police and to Capital Metro until just after the Aug. 19 episode, according to the affidavit. Hall was suspended for a week beginning Aug. 20, Capital Metro said, then reinstated because Capital Metro at the time did not have sufficient information.

He was suspended without pay this week after police issued a warrant for his arrest, Capital Metro said. Hall was arrested at his home in Manor Tuesday evening, Austin police Det. Michael Crumrine said, and booked into Travis County jail. He posted bond and was released early today, Crumrine said.

Crumrine said Capital Metro had assured him after the August incident that while the investigation continued Hall would drive only vehicles that had video equipment that constantly recorded what was happening on the bus. When the earlier alleged incidents occurred, Crumrine said, the vans Hall was driving had equipment designed to record and retain images only after the vehicle comes to a sudden stop.

Hall could not be reached for comment.

Hall began working for Capital Metro affiliate StarTran in 1991 as a driver of regular buses, then in 1992 transferred to the agency’s special transit services. That section, now called MetroAccess, provides door-to-door rides for people whose disabilities make it difficult for them to use regular buses.

Crumrine said the door-to-door service Capital Metro was providing for the woman is one of a number of ways society seeks to help its most vulnerable citizens.

“That to me is the tragedy of this case, that this is someone she depended on to help her, and instead he took advantage of her,” Crumrine said.

The hearing will be at 5 p.m. in the board room at Capital Metro headquarters, 2910 E. Fifth St. in East Austin.

The board could act to approve the fare increase changes at a special meeting planned for Nov. 9. If approved, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board would have 60 days to vote to overturn the fare increase, under state law. If CAMPO does not take such a vote within those 60 days, the fare increases would go into effect.

If that happens, Capital Metro likely would put the new fares into effect around Feb. 1, spokesman Adam Shaivitz said in an e-mail.

The base fare would increase from 75 cents to $1, and the much-used 31-day MetroBus pass would increase from $18 to $28. A MetroAccess booklet of 10 fares, which until a year ago was $3, would increase from $7 to $12. And people with disabilities and those 65 years and older, who ride Capital Metro buses for free currently, would pay 25 cents for a ride.

To see a Capital Metro chart showing all the proposed increases, go here.

The Capital Metro board, backed by a panel of local officials required at the time under state law for fare increases, in the summer of 2008 had approved a two-step fare increase that would double or more fares that had been locked in place for more than 20 years. The first increase took effect in October last year, and the second was to take place next August.

The board this summer had talked of moving the August increase up to January to address its tight budget, but backed away after complaints about raising fares during a recession. Then, in September, when the board approved the budget, it once again started the process of moving up the fare increase and raising some fares beyond what had earlier been approved. In all, the change would increase revenue by about $3 million in the current fiscal year, Shaivitz said.

Members of a CAMPO committee charged with sifting through candidates for the Capital Metro board have cut the field of competitors in half, leaving:

Rick Burciaga, a principal with Capitol Consulting in Austin and from 2000 to 2005 the Greater Austin regional manager for Wells Fargo Bank. He has a bachelor’s in public service from UCLA;

Frank Fernandez, executive director of Green Doors, an Austin organization that works on “ending homelessness by providing affordable housing and supportive services.” He formerly worked as deputy director at PeopleFund, a community development group in Austin. He has a bachelor’s in philosophy from Harvard University and a master’s in public affairs from UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs;

John Langmore, a transportation and land use consultant since 2003. Before that, he was a policy aide to former state Rep. Mike Krusee when Krusee headed the House Transportation Committee, and for 12 years he was a lawyer with Caterpillar Inc. and with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and

Richard Maier, vice president/land manager with DR Horton, a homebuilding company. Maier has been in real estate since 1973, and is a board member of the Real Estate Council of Austin and Envision Central Texas. He was previously a director of the Hill Country Conservancy. He has a bachelor’s of science from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s in business administration from the University of Chicago.

A nominations subcommittee of the CAMPO board (both of them chaired by state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin) will interview the finalists Friday and make a recommendation to the full CAMPO board to name two of them to the Capital Metro board.

The new members (current CAMPO appointees Mike Manor, one of the rejected applicants today, and John Trevino will leave the board at year’s end) will be a part of a revamping of the transit board. By January, what was a seven-member board will have eight members and is likely to have five new members.

Enough numbers to confuse you?

John Langmore, an Austin transportation and land use consultant and lawyer who years ago worked as an aide to state Rep. Mike Krusee, e-mailed in his application and other materials before the Oct. 14 deadline, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization says now. But somehow, due to a technical glitch, that e-mail fell through the cracks.

Langmore called CAMPO after published reports of the candidates did not include his name. CAMPO officials determined that he indeed had applied in time.

Langmore joins seven other men (yes, there are no female applicants) vying for two appointments that the CAMPO board will make to a newly constituted Capital Metro board of directors.

The other applicants: insurance executive Ernest Auerbach, Rick Burciaga (a former chairman of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce), Norm Chafetz (Capital Metro’s government relations director back in the 1980s), Frank Fernandez (who serves on the Transit Working Group for CAMPO), Glenn Gaven (a UT shuttle bus driver), Richard Maier (a homebuilder), and current Capital Metro board member MIke Manor.

Three other applicants — former high tech executive Jim Skaggs, downtown developer Tom Stacy and Tom Griebel, who had headed the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority — were disqualified because they don’t live in Capital Metro’s service area.

A subcommittee of the CAMPO board, headed by state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, will pare the list down to three or four and interview them next Friday, Oct. 30. The full CAMPO board is expected to make the appointments in early November and the new members would take their seats Jan. 1.

What will now be an eight-member board will also have three new members appointed by the Austin City Council, Travis County commissioners and Williamson County commissioners. Current Capital Metro board members Mike Martinez and Chris Riley (both are Austin City Council members) are expected to continue serving, and Leander Mayor John Cowman last week was named to the board representing seven suburban towns that are part of Capital Metro.

Cowman was already on the board under a different appointment.

Bottom line: three of the seven members of the current board likely will be on the new eight-member board, meaning an infusion of five new people to help get a troubled agency back on track. Pun intended.

The new bridge over the creek will be 19 feet higher than the current bridge, just above the 100-year flood plain, TxDOT area engineeer Terry McCoy said. McCoy says the current bridge floods about twice a year, causing what are sometimes brief shutdowns of RM 2222, a key commuting artery to the west and northwest suburbs.

The current RM 2222 creek bridge, which has no shoulders and substandard railings, is considered “functionally obsolete,” McCoy said.

More or less simultaneously, the city will build a new bridge upstream on Bull Creek where Lakewood Drive crosses the creek. That project is estimated to cost $716,000. The two projects have been timed to ease what will be something of a traffic nightmare over the next two years for people who live on and near Lakewood Drive.

Commuters on RM 2222 will have their own challenges as well.

The TxDOT project, expected to take about two years, centers on the bridge-raising but also includes lane additions at the RM 2222/Loop 360 interchange, construction of a 500-foot-long ramp on Lakewood Drive as it approaches RM 2222, and water and wastewater utility work. The city is contributing about $830,000 to the overall $5.7 million project cost.

The Lakewood ramp will be necessary because RM 2222 will be several feet higher at the two roads’ intersection once construction of the RM 2222 bridge is complete. People who live in the neighborhoods near Lakewood Drive had complained when word of this project first surfaced in 2005, concerned about the loss of trees and perhaps greater cut-through traffic.

The additional bridge project on Lakewood, which the City of Austin will commence later this fall and complete in about five months, will further complicate traffic patterns.

The RM 2222 project will begin with the lane improvements at Loop 360, allowing concurrent construction by the city of its Lakewood Drive bridge further north. That way, once the work on the RM 2222 bridge begins, Lakewood Drive can be closed there and people in the Lakewood neighborhood will have a clear alternative path north to Loop 360.

People can also exit the Lakewood neighborhood to the east using Far West Boulevard.

The Lakewood Drive bridge will raise what has been a low-water crossing, where cars actually drive through water even in periods of no rain, to a five-foot-high bridge.

Lynne Lightsey, a spokeswoman for the city’s Watershed Protection Department, said that low-water crossing is typically one of the first places to flood in Austin when there is heavy rain. With a five-foot bridge, the road will be out of the two-year flood plain but still might flood periodically.

Lightsey said Bull Creek Park just east of the low-water crossing — currently an off-leash dog park — will be closed for a renovation project at the same time as the bridge project, and for time after that will be an on-leash park.

Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN

A project to rebuild the RM 2222 bridge over Bull Creek is about to begin.