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The History of Roads and Bridges in San Antonio
and South Cardinal Texas upwardly to 1944
This chapter focuses on the development of roads and bridges in San Antonio from the first span over the river up to 1944. As early as 1775, there were three categories of roads in Texas. There were urban streets, farm to market or rural roads, and main roads between towns, often referred to as highways, a give-and-take that goes back to the days when the almost straight routes betwixt towns were built most to rivers and longer routes with less shade and access to h2o for oxen and mules were built on higher ground. The highway was less convenient for local traffic but was less likely to exist rendered impassable when it rained. By law, all roads between county seats in Texas were supposed to be get-go course, which was divers as xl anxiety broad and cleared of all obstructions. In the less inhabited parts of the country, the army was charged with maintaining postal roads between the series of forts that were built to maintain security in the area. In the more settled areas it was a county responsibility. Many farmers maintained the roads in lieu of taxes but their efforts were not ever easy to discern.
Early on bridges in San Antonio
From San Antonio'southward very earliest days in 1718, the thoroughfare between the Alamo and San Fernando cathedral, now called Commerce Street, was the most important thoroughfare in the city. The first wooden bridge suitable for more than pedestrians and light carriages was built over the river in 1841. Replaced with a stronger wooden structure in 1867, Commerce Street was thronged with activity of all kinds. Freight trains of upward to thirty wagons, each pulled by teams of oxen and mules, arrived and departed every day. Mixed into this would be street vendors and blacksmiths. The number of mules, horses and oxen must have made the air nearly unbearable. Disease carrying flies filled the air. A stroll across Main Square total of grazing animals provided an entirely different experience from today.
More than early bridges in San Antonio
When Comal County was established in 1846, one of the first tasks for the Commissioner's Courtroom in New Braunfels was to define rights of way. The master arterial route, known every bit the San Antonio Road, was already "kickoff class" by the standards of the day, as was the old stage road from Seguin, just few others had been created. By 1847 a route to Fredericksburg had been established, with landowners along the fashion compensated $10 for one-half an acre and $25 for a total acre. By 1890 routes to Blanco and Boerne had been added. Many landowners maintained the roads on their property in lieu of taxes, keeping them gratis of brush, weeds and low hanging tree limbs. Persons bedevilled of misdemeanors either unwilling or unable to pay their fines could also work off their debt by performing road work. Comal too required all able bodied men betwixt twenty-one and xl-five to "donate" several days of labor each year towards road maintenance. When Atascosa (which can be translated equally "boggy land that is difficult to cross" County was created in 1856, its population was extremely small. Teams of men were sent out from Pleasanton, the original county seat, to create roads and place markers along them, often simply piles of stones, to betoken the chosen path. Only continual utilise in all conditions soon made the original route and then badly churned upward that successive wagons were obliged to keep finding less disturbed ground, making information technology almost impossible to say exactly where the original "road" was supposed to be.
Unpaved roads in San Antonio and South Texas
Bexar County had the advantage of a higher population and having always been a destination for travelers, so its roads and highways were well established and traveled and then frequently that large rocks and encroaching brush had get less of an issue. Information technology as well had college property values that generated more tax income for the care and maintenance of urban center streets. Nonetheless, improvements came slowly in San Antonio. Ox carts and mules plied the streets, fording the river to get to the other side when the electric current allowed. For the first 125 years of the city's being,but a small number of wooden foot bridges, often crude suspension types, were constructed over the wild, broad, costless flowing river. It was not until 1841 that the first bridge potent plenty for heavily loaded wagons was installed, connecting old Main and Almeda. When this bridge was replaced by a larger one, however of wooden construction, in 1867, the thoroughfare was renamed Commerce Street. The new bridge was constructed with logs made of cypress and cedar and could support ox carts laden with 5,000 lbs. of freight. In 1851 a second heavy duty bridge was erected, uniting Rivas Street (renamed "Houston Street twenty years afterward) on the e side of the river, over San Pedro Creek to a narrow foot path known as El Paseo del Rio. Land immediately north of the new route, a few blocks up river from Commerce Street, was still agricultural and supplied about of the compact city's fruit and vegetables. For many years these were the but street level bridges capable of supporting wagons in San Antonio. A wooden foot bridge at St. Marys Street had been built in 1858. It was replaced in 1869 past the first iron span in the city. The metal pieces for what was still merely a pedestrian crossing were hauled to the city in mule drawn wagons. Some of the growing number of locally built wooden human foot bridges that followed rested on floating pontoons. When heavy rains increased the river's flow, one finish would be detached to allow them to become with the increased current. The two heavy duty bridges were permanently anchored. When the wooden span between what were still known as Rivas and El Paseo was washed away in 1865, the city replaced it with 1 made of iron in 1871. This was manufactured in St. Louis and hauled in sections, some forty feet long, from Indianola in 1871 past August Santleben, using purpose built wagons which arrived on the same send as the bridge parts. After it was installed the thoroughfare was renamed Houston Street. The new bridge stood in place for twenty years until information technology was replaced by a concrete and steel bridge that was wider, stronger and required less maintenance. The fe bridge was moved upwardly stream to the quieter location of Grand Avenue, where it served for another forty years, by which fourth dimension that street too had been renamed, as Jones.
Early automobiles and primitive roads in Texas
The pace of alter accelerated, along with the metropolis'southward population, with the arrival of the showtime railroad in 1877 and some other from the northward in 1881. The transportation of iron and steel for bridges and taller buildings became much easier and less costly. An attractive fe span soon replaced the wooden bridge on Commerce Street. Introducing streetcars became possible. Cyclists were amid the most ardent early campaigners for improved roads. Such efforts led to a number of improvements. Within San Antonio side walks were created and paving stones laid at the intersection of main streets to help pedestrians avoid the inevitable dust or mud from the unpaved streets. Some main roads, such equally San Pedro Avenue, were macadamized, which involved laying downwardly courses of stones of diminishing size towards the surface. Downtown streets needed to be watered downwardly every twenty-four hours to keep down the dust. Special streetcars did this get-go things in the morning. Others were regularly dragged by mule drawn wagons with large spikes to reduce ruts fabricated past heavily loaded wagons. While improvements to San Antonio streets were paid for by residents on a street by street basis and from a small taxation on streetcar tickets, roads in and around smaller towns, with their smaller populations, remained archaic.
Route progress and the railroads in San Antonio and South Texas
A decidedly "South Texas" improvement to San Antonio's streets began in the mid 1880s with the laying of hexagonal mesquite blocks on Alamo Plaza. Mesquite was not only abundant, it was inexpensive. In fact it was substantially useless for much of anything else. Today many ranchers regard information technology every bit little more than a thirsty weed, but the gnarled wood is adequately durable and resistant to rot, a quality enhanced with the awarding of creosote. This did non fully discourage swelling following heavy rain, which frequently led to an uneven road surface. This was still considered a huge improvement over the quagmire on Alamo Plaza every time it rained, which gained the nickname "Sweeney'south Mud hole," and was impassable to all traffic. By 1889, Military Plaza and downtown sections of Commerce, Houston, Dolorosa, Market and St. Marys were similarly "paved."
Streets with mesquite blocks in San Antonio
Past 1890 the population of San Antonio had reached virtually 38,000. In that same year the outset traffic control sign, undoubtedly saying either STOP or YIELD, was placed at the intersection of Commerce and Medina Streets, in front of the International & Great Northern railroad station. And St. Marys Street gained a wider atomic number 26 bridge to replace the old footbridge, increasing the number of all traffic metallic bridges over the river to iii. In 1891 G.K. Braden became San Antonio'due south first sidewalk contractor. Funds from a tax on streetcar tickets took care of 1 tertiary of the cost. Residents on each side of street were levied their share in proportion to the size of their lots. For an extra fee, high physical steps could exist congenital in front of houses to aid getting into and out of horse carriages, and such amenities, indicating a certain level of wealth, were very popular. In New Braunfels and elsewhere, downtown streets had sidewalks only were otherwise unimproved. Most, like Comfort, hired a contractor to drag them daily to keep them passable. In Seguin, folks walked forth the streetcars tracks on Austin Street to keep out of the mud when it rained.
Alamo Plaza over the years
In 1898 a small section of Marketplace Street on either side of St. Mary's Street in San Antonio became 1 of the first streets in Texas to be given a tiptop layer of asphalt. A similar experiment was undertaken in downtown Houston. The fabric came from the just naturally occurring cobblestone mine in Texas. Located virtually Uvalde, the operation ran until 1935. (Today asphalt is a manufactured alloy of oil and crushed limestone.) The natural asphalt was practical quite crudely for several blocks by the Parker-Washington contracting company. Modernistic methods are quite more than advanced than this first attempt to see how the material would fare in a busy intersection section of a major Texas city. In fact the original application stayed smooth and impervious until 1910 when it was replaced during a $220,000.00 street widening project.
Main Plaza in San Antonio
By 1900 there were some 20-four bridges over the yet meandering San Antonio River. There were around eight thousand horseless carriages in America, but the step of production was increasing rapidly. The start horseless carriage on record in San Antonio was an electrical, delivered to the showrooms of the Staacke Brothers on Commerce Street. (It'south virtually probable that Montgomery Ward brought in an electric vehicle demonstrator in 1897, but accented confirmation has not exist be established. The first gasoline powered machine appeared in San Antonio in 1901. The San Antonio Motorcar Club was formed in 1902 with 13 charter members. That same year, Emil Seeliger of Lockhart acquired a machine. The first machine drove through Uvalde in 1904 and four were acquired by local residents the same year. Dr. C. Jones brought the offset automobile to Comfort, a ii cylinder Maxwell, in 1906.
Commerce Street images
The pace of development of San Antonio into a truly modern metropolis really picked up after 1910. The project to widen Commerce Street, begun n 1914, is a watershed in the city'south history, the defining betoken where the city shifted from narrow, unpaved streets to modern, uniformly broad thoroughfares stretching well beyond the confines of the historic city center based around Main Square at San Fernando Cathedral and Alamo Plaza. From its earliest days Commerce Street was noisy and congested and incomparably foul smelling, with hundreds of oxen and mules, warehouses, blacksmiths, saddlers and livery services catering to the large amount of freight entering and leaving the city every day. It was and then crowded that it was not possible to operate streetcars through its confined space. Houston Street was newer and wider. Every streetcar route began and ended there. Soon Houston Street eclipsed the older route, becoming the premier location for shopping and other businesses.
San Antonio street improvement projects
During the four year widening project on Commerce Street many buildings were either totally demolished or lost several yards of their original structure. A few had their frontages advisedly removed and and then rebuilt. Only 1, the new v story Alamo National Banking company building, was physically raised and moved back while work continued uninterrupted within information technology. The costs were staggering. Widening the street to a consequent xl anxiety and adding twelve anxiety broad sidewalks on each side lone came to $411,000.00, of which the city paid $90,000.00, $221,000.00 were raised in bonds and over $100,000.00 by popular donations. Moving back the fronts of buildings cost an additional $450,000.00. With the movement of the bank edifice the entire project came to almost $i.five Million. This is the equivalent to around $21 Million in today'south money. The urban center took pride in the transformation being undertaken to continue San Antonio equally the number one metropolis in Texas.
Houston Street images
Along with widening of Commerce Street, at that place came the creation of Broadway, a wide road to the north, which unified and replaced River Avenue and Artery C in 1914. Soledad Street had been widened in 1910, at a cost of $400,000.00, causing the loss of the historic Veramandi Palace. This building, built in the 1770s, had been the site of many celebrated events. James Bowie lived there briefly with his new married woman, the girl of the Spanish Governor, for whom the building was known. In 1835 Ben Milam had been shot within its grounds by a sniper during the struggle for Texas independence. An adobe construction, the then chosen palace was in very poor condition. It was first threatened with demolition in 1893, followed past a second attempt in 1897. Information technology took the widening of the road to seal the building'southward fate. The demolition of significant buildings would continue for many years. In 1927, when Market Street was widened from xxx-v to 70 anxiety, the venerable Marketplace House was demolished. The Guilbeau House on Main Street, built in 1847, suffered one indignity subsequently another. It first lost its spacious front gardens when the route was widened in 1929. Suddenly, streams of cars were just a few feet from the front door. It became an officers order during World State of war two but ownership by the city since 1941 was not enough to save information technology and information technology was razed in 1952 to brand way for a post part parcel sorting station. The site of Federal Reserve edifice on Main Street was in one case occupied by the very mannerly Vance edifice. Built in 1859, it as well had been caused by the city. In 1939 information technology housed the Country Employment Service offices. In 1952 it was replaced with a conspicuously unattractive concrete box unloved by anyone to this mean solar day.
San Antonio buildings lost to street widening projects
Funding road structure has always been a political football. Everybody wants improve roads and fewer potholes simply the coin is always a very difficult upshot. The first try to pass national legislation that would provide funds to states and create a federal agency to create uniformity of construction was made in 1911, the same twelvemonth the idea of a transportation department at the country level in Texas was put frontwards. Neither campaign was initially successful. Until these institutions came into being, each county was left to go information technology alone, using funds from fees and property taxes to build the best roads they knew how. In 1915 when the main road through Uvalde was graded and macadamized for the get-go time, San Antonio had 307 miles of hard surfaced streets at a cost of $two,900.00 per mile, 381 of Macadam construction, 36 miles of graded dirt roads and 25 of dirt and sand. Finding money for streets and roads was comparatively piece of cake in what was the largest city in Texas. San Antonio had a merchandise surface area of at least sixty counties, an surface area the size of Ohio, with 850,000 residents. The first city route bonds had been issued in 1904, for $500,000.00, followed in 1907 by a further $250,000.00. In 1913 bonds to the tune of $1 million were issued. This increased to $1.5 million in 1915.
Archaic Texas Roads in the early car era
And yet, despite all this expenditure, many people in San Antonio believed more could and should be washed to improve both city streets and regional highways. Following the early lead of cyclists, car clubs staged events to demonstrate the need for meliorate roads. 1 of the best known was "The Farm and Ranch Tour," organized by Farm and Ranch Magazine publisher, Frank Holland, who put up a $1,000.00 prize to encourage participation. On July 22, 1912, xx six cars set out from Dallas across the center of the land. They stayed overnight in Austin on the 23rd. The following mean solar day the remaining twenty-3 cars arrived in San Antonio. Each runabout was obliged to carry one or more than passengers and touring cars at least four. They were all wined and dined by local dignitaries while their vehicles remained on Alamo Plaza overnight before heading to Galveston and then back to Dallas. Borough pride was also used as a motivator. August 10, 1913 was declared "Adept Roads Day" by the Bexar County Highway League, i of the largest machine associations in the country. Led past David East. Culp, whose enthusiasm led him to be a member of effectually 100 motoring associations, the call went out to local citizens from San Antonio and Austin and all points in betwixt to come out and work on the highway. The effort in New Braunfels was led its Expert Roads Club secretary, Martin Faust. Despite the heat of a Texas summertime, volunteers were asked to bring their own shovels and other tools to work on the highway and demonstrate support for better roads in their expanse.
San Antonio highway improvement projects
Click prototype for separate page about the Old Spanish Trail in San Antonio
San Antonio became an important national cross-roads with the dawning of the motorcar age. Mirroring railroad development 30 years earlier, the city became a pregnant destination on many major north-due south highways. The best known of these today is the "Old Spanish Trail" - See linked page - which became the starting time southern transcontinental road, running from the Atlantic in Florida to the Pacific in California. First proposed in 1915, it would accept over ten years to complete. The next route to include San Antonio was the "Glacier to Gulf Motorway." which was begun effectually 1924. The route began in Calgary, Canada, and ended in Brownsville, Texas, running through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, via Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi. There was likewise a subsidiary route from San Antonio to Galveston, via Beeville and Victoria. San Antonio was on two more routes originating in Canada. Another was called the "King of Trails." Its symbol was the letters KT on a yellowish groundwork. This route ran almost directly s from Winnipeg, through Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma and and then through Dallas, Waco and Austin before sharing the same route as the Glacier Highway to Brownsville. And yet some other, the "Height Highway," also began in Winnipeg but ran through the Dakotas and Kansas, then Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and down to Laredo.
Tourist Trails in the 1920s
San Antonio maps & aerial view
A huge step forward in the creation of the modern highway arrangement came in 1916 with the passage of the Federal Road Help Act, the get-go pregnant federal legislation to address the demand for better roads in the automobile age. The Bureau of Public Roads was set upward inside the Section of Agriculture in 1893 but was provided picayune authorization or funding. In 1907 the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal authorities had the right to create interstate highways under its constitutional authorization to regulate interstate commerce. Funds for post roads were included in the 1912 Post Office Section Appropriations Human action. In Texas federal money went to creating the sixteen human foot wide macadam Post Route between San Antonio and Austin, which for years was touted as the best road in the state. However, many southern states, including Texas, resented Federal interference, particularly with regards to enforcing off-white and equal labor practices. This led to widespread southern opposition to whatever farther efforts to involve central government in more highway projects. All the same, after four years of wrangling, the 1916 Act became police force. Information technology included an obligation on the function of all states wishing to receive federal help to take a department of transportation and so, in 1917, Texas, resisting to the terminate, became i of the last states in the nation to create such an agency. The earliest had been Massachusetts in 1894. The purpose of the new department in Texas was two fold. Information technology was to utilise qualified engineers to oversee the construction and upgrading of roads to federal standards, if federal funds were involved, but besides allowed the state to employ workers on its own terms. This included the use of prisoners in chain gangs, every bit it did in other states. The practice in Texas was mainly confined to the eastern function of the state and ended in 1925.
Early Driving Hazards in Texas
When the Texas Section of Transportation, often referred to as TxDOT, was formed there were almost two hundred thousands automobiles and trucks in the state. San Antonio became the headquarters of one of the original half-dozen route department divisions in Texas. In 1918 the first stretch of highway in Texas to be given an cobblestone surface was a 20-five mile stretch near San Marcos on the Mail service Road betwixt San Antonio and Austin, now officially called Route 2. At the same fourth dimension, while nearly no roads outside of cities had a hard surface, many were graded and provided with better drainage, and the land speed limit was increased from xviii to twenty-five miles per 60 minutes. 70-five million dollars was allocated for roads across the nation in the 1916 Act. Five million was spent in the first yr alone. Projects were to funded with matching funds provided past Federal and country governments. A long standing argue over what kind of roads should be given priority had been raging since the first horseless carriages hit the roads. Many wanted long, wide, paved roads between towns and cities to allow faster speeds and heavier trucks. Others demanded that farm to market roads were the most important in what was still very much a rural land. Railroads were strongly in favor of the latter as they would let farmers to bring their produce to depots in trucks, reducing the need for endless branch lines while, at the aforementioned fourth dimension, stifling the development of longer range heavy trucks which were already starting time to announced. The heated debate was somewhat brought under control in 1921 with a revision to Federal constabulary that stated that no more than vii% of roads in each country could exist interstate in character. However, like any good compromise, the resource allotment of monies told a different story. Recognizing that almost driving would actually be done on these new arterial highways, upwardly to 60% of spending could be allocated towards such roads.
Texas Highway Improvement Projects
To begin with, each country came up with its own numbering systems. The route between Laredo, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and the state border with Oklahoma was Highway 2. Highway 3 ran from Lake Charles at the Louisiana Border through Houston to San Antonio and on to Del Rio and Marfa. At Van Horn information technology merged with Highway One, from Fort Worth, to reach El Paso. The road to Corpus via Floresville and Beeville was Highway 16. The road to Fredericksburg via Boerne and Comfort was Highway 9. Many erstwhile time Colina State residents still refer to the road to San Antonio as Sometime Number nine. But there was almost no cooperation between states when it came to roads numbers, leading to a great deal of defoliation, every bit the number of well-nigh roads changed when you crossed a country line.
Early Texas Highway Maps
Until the land took full responsibleness for road signs, information technology was left to each town and sometimes even individuals to take care of them. The New Braunfels VFW postal service, under the leadership of WW1 veteran Joe Sanders, besides chief vehicle mechanic and chauffeur at the Dittlinger Flour Mills, began to place mitt made signs along country roads and at intersections around the town for the benefit of the growing number of motorists in the area. Long before Canyon Lake was created, folks were seeking out the cool waters of the Guadalupe River for recreation and relaxation. River Road, along the Guadalupe, despite the lack of either pavement or bridges was as a popular road for a Lord's day bulldoze, by now an established national pastime. Much to the dismay of the VFW volunteers, who painstakingly measured distances, built, painted and erected the road signs, many were immediately vandalized or simply removed, either by local teenagers or older residents who did not welcome the intrusion of so many city dwellers nigh their property.
Early on Texas Highway Signs
In 1922 Congress set about making certain that the near disastrous transportation experiences encountered past the military during World State of war One would not be repeated. During the conflict railroads became then entangled that the government had to take them over, although the trouble was more a lack of suitably long sidings than anything else. Troop and material movements over the nation'southward underdeveloped road systems were about every bit bad. Repeated long convoys of heavy trucks, nearly of which had solid tires, apace ruined unpaved roads and lightweight bridges. To rectify this state of affairs a national network of military highways was proposed. Harral Ayres, as the state leader of the Old Spanish Trail Association, and a civilian representative of San Antonio, i of the most important armed services cities in the country, successfully lobbied Washington politicians that the unabridged length of the OST be so designated; ensuring increased federal funding for its construction and improvement.
Early Highway scenes near San Antonio
The next step in route development in Texas was perhaps the almost meaning of all. Starting time in the early 1920s, Governor Pat Neff campaigned across the state for the imposition of a one penny tax on each gallon of gasoline. In his speeches he said that no route was better than its deepest pot hole. He likewise pointed out there was not one hundred miles of continuously paved highway within the state. The tax was fiercely opposed, as most taxes are. The increasingly powerful oil industry in Texas, the largest in the nation, was vehemently opposed to it. To sweeten the pot, 25% of all revenues raised were promised towards education. The measure passed in 1924. Finally there were enough funds to begin edifice a mod road network beyond the country. The taxation became a political football. In 1927 it was raised to iii cents. It was reduced in 1928 to just 2 and then raised to four in 1929. By this time the number of cars in Texas had reached nigh 1.5 1000000, over 1 for every four people. Equally part of the deal, the land assumed total control of highway structure but also causeless all route related debts accrued past each county, allowing for the reduction of holding taxes, always a pop move.
Texas Highway Comeback Projects
A national road numbering arrangement was introduced in 1925, to reduce defoliation between states using different numbers for the same highways. Highways going north and south were given odd numbers, with even numbers allocated to e/west routes. The numbers given to roads in Texas just a few year earlier were replaced. Highway 2, from Laredo through San Antonio and Fort Worth became Highway 81. Highway 3, from the border of Louisiana to El Paso became Highway 90. Old Highway ix to the Loma Land became Highway 87. Texas Highway 66, not to be confused with its more famous successor, from McAllen to Wichita Falls, was renumbered every bit Highway 281. The need for volunteer efforts faded abroad when the Texas department of transportation began installing hundreds of thousands of professional signs across the state.
Railroad grade crossing improvement project in New Braunfels
In 1929 work began to improve the road between San Antonio and Austin. Originally classified equally a post road, then Highway two and at present Highway 81, the roadway was widened from sixteen to forty feet, abrupt curves were eliminated and, using eminent domain, the route was given a straighter grade across land initially denied by unwilling property owners. Birthday the newly paved road, with a total right of way width of one hundred anxiety, was shortened by 8 miles.
Texas Highway Improvement Projects
Equally the 1920s drew to a shut, the original dream of a continuous highway across the south, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was finally realized. Governor Neff had dedicated an OST cypher milestone exterior the Bexar County Court Business firm in March 1924. It is still at that place today. Drivers were supposed to reset their maybe unreliable trip odometers for the adjacent leg of the journey at such markers, but as the first intrepid motorists had done 20 years earlier. The first formalism drive across the 2,817 miles of continuously improved road, lined with signs put upwardly past each country, began in San Diego, California on April 4 1929. Their arrival in San Antonio was ceremoniously greeted with a dinner at, of course, the Gunter Hotel, where Ayers had kept his HQ. It had taken 14 long years for the original vision of a southern transcontinental highway to exist realized. The volunteer OST organization quickly faded away. States had been issuing official maps since 1927 and had taken responsibility for highway structure much earlier. Some OST ideas remained in a more than subtle course. Equally early as 1923, OST beautification committees had been formed to provide guidance on how roads, bridges, signs and remainder areas should be designed. They even provided suggestions on how restaurants, gas stations and tourist camps should wait, with particular emphasis on the use of attractive stone work.
Texas Highway Comeback Projects
The early era of efforts by enthusiasts and amateurs was over. The Texas Department of Transportation had grown to sixteen divisions, employing hundreds of engineers and road gangs. The automobile industry was the largest in the nation. It churned out 4.v millions cars in 1929, a number that would not be exceeded until 1949, post-obit 20 years of depression, war and recovery. During this flow the appetite for transportation never diminished. The 2nd world state of war would create stresses upon America's road network that would eventually lead to a fourth form of roads, interstate highways, but at that place were still many miles of hard road to exist traveled earlier and then.
Roads in Due south Texas Towns
But travel across the region was still a hit and miss matter. Equally late as 1929 a San Antonio guide book recommended that persons should not travel past road outside the city if information technology had rained recently, was raining or looked every bit though information technology might. The big number of pictures of cars stuck axle deep in endless mud attest to the wisdom of the advice. While the road to Corpus Christi seems to have been particularly bad, running as it must through some less affluent counties, even the much vaunted Quondam Spanish Trail was not much better. Even though what was now called Highway 87, from San Antonio through the Hill Country was technically improved, in many cases this meant that it had been graded and provided with ditches for drainage. Many sections remained unpaved. Along the Gulf declension the road surface consisted of crushed body of water shells.
Archaic roads in Texas
Thank you to a lot of research on the part of the Comfort Heritage Foundation, the history of roads in and around this town is pretty well established and serves as a skillful snapshot of the region as a whole. The big obstacle in this part of the Hill Land is the Guadalupe River, which can rising from a sleepy fiddling stream to a raging, destructive torrent with astonishing speed and subversive force. The first bridge to broaden the original ford was congenital in 1906, ii years later on Dr. C. Jones brought the first auto to Condolement, a two cylinder Maxwell. The structure was insubstantial and hovered only a few feet in a higher place the surface of the water during normal weather condition. Information technology did not last long as it was no match for the river when information technology flooded. A rickety intermission bridge was also built nearby at the same time but information technology was simply suitable for foot traffic. A more than substantial concrete bridge was congenital in 1914. It, too, was just a few feet above the surface of the river. When the river was in inundation, water would pour over the top, making crossings very hazardous. And yet this bridge still stands, more or less. It had to be rebuilt in 2007 post-obit a catastrophic failure when an oversized truck proved as well much for the 1914 structure. This truck was directed onto the old bridge because information technology was accounted too heavy for the newer bridge, installed in the early on 1980s. Against the advice of locals, when the erstwhile surface level bridge was rebuilt in 2007, it was provided with side rail, to minimize the danger of people driving over the sides. Almost immediately a prolonged season of heavy rain swept debris of all kinds downward stream, clogging these side track, and the bridge began to deed as a dam. Water was forced towards the center of town, uphill, along the old road of Loftier Street.
Roads and Bridges in Comfort, Texas
Following the completion of the 1914 concrete bridge, little more was done to ameliorate area roads for almost twenty years. The unpaved streets of Comfort had to beingness dragged every day until around 1933. Following the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, the federal government began operating a series of "make-work" projects to provide relief from the Groovy Low. Improving roads in rural areas was looked on very favorably. They provided much needed employment and yielded long term benefits for the community. The Public Works Administration had responsibility for financing such highway improvements, including bridges and the emptying of grade crossings. The Works Progress Administration took care of local roads and the Civilian Conservation Corps built access and fire roads in remote areas. Highway 27 between Boerne and Kerrville was designated a Federal Emergency Construction Highway Projection. Viii different contracts were issued to improve the road surface and build bridges. Brown & Root was awarded the $110,563.45 contract for the 16.2 mile stretch between Boerne and Condolement. This included a new high level truss bridge with an exposed superstructure of girders supporting the weight from above rather than below. Also referred to as an elevated box bridge, the two lane span price $3,350.00, nearly $39,000.00 in today'due south money.
Roads and Bridges in Comfort, Texas
The projection was designed to utilise equally many people as possible. No one could work more than thirty hours, or four days, a calendar week. This was to let farmers and ranchers fourth dimension to work their land on their free days. Skilled laborers received 45 cents and unskilled workers 30 cents an hour. People in the expanse will tell yous with pride how their families survived these lean years thank you to this and similar employment programs. Many can bespeak to a specific element, such equally a canal, and say that their father'due south piece of work in that location kept them alive for six months during those tough times. The problem was the resulting roads, fifty-fifty though they now had asphalt surfaces, were still not all that skilful. It was recognized that the existing federal standards were condign bereft for a mod route network. Information technology would take years of study and investment to come up with what at present seems obvious; sharp curves and obstacles too close to the roadside, such every bit trees and poles, make driving unsafe. Skillful sight lines and articulate areas at the side of the road save lives and increase traffic speed.
Roads and Bridges in Condolement, Texas
Within San Antonio itself, perhaps the nigh significant change wrought past the automobile was the evolution of urban expressways, planned as early on equally the 1930s. Many arterial roads through the metropolis were straightened and widened to accommodate ever growing numbers of cars and trucks, to relive pressure on otherwise crowded neighborhood streets. These allowed suburban residents to work down boondocks and keep the city center viable. Folks, both individuals and businesses, were leaving downtown in droves long before expressways were added to the urban mural. The concept of the freeway as savior of urban center centers runs contrary to modern thinking, which tends to arraign them for the decline of downtown areas beyond the country. The opposite is really true. Why would any sane urban center or state leadership spend fortunes building these intrusive scars through the urban landscape if the goal was to bring about bankruptcy and desolation? Multiple shelves at the downtown library are filled with proposals from this era, as metropolis hall strove to discover means to keep the center alive and vital, an effort that is still going on today.
San Antonio Hotels
During the low the federal government's share of route construction costs rose from around 10% to well-nigh half. In both 1934 and 1936 Congress emphasized spending on farm to market place roads at the expense of express access highways. As a result almost none existed exterior of California and the northeast of the land in 1940. Of the 190,000 miles of roads in Texas, just 26,805 could be classified as interstate in nature and none were limited access. Most had only two lanes, "B" roads by today'south standards. Of the nation's iii million miles of roads only half had been graded, graveled and tuckered and therefore classifiable as all weather roads. With war once over again on the horizon, 75,000 miles of the nation'southward roads were designated strategic highways. Of these, fourteen,000 miles were constitute to exist too weak and 4,000 miles as well narrow. Over 24,000 bridges need to be upgraded or replaced. Work on other roads was suspended to concentrate on urgently needed military projects. Fortunately the railroads were meliorate prepared this fourth dimension. They carried the majority of war machine supplies during the war, but suffered enormous wear and tear due to overuse and insufficient maintenance due to manpower and material shortages.
More San Antonio street scenes
World War Two would bring even greater changes to San Antonio and its road systems. These volition be discussed in a unlike chapter on this web site.
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San Antonio Road Travel Timeline
1841
First heavy duty bridge over the river in San Antonio
1847
Texas United Stated Mail service Line was running two stagecoaches a week betwixt Houston and San Antonio.
1848
Bi-monthly stage coach service running between San Antonio and Corpus Christi, afterwards extended to Brownsville.
Stage coach service from SA to Austin past Tarbox & Brown
1849
Phase omnibus service from SA to Port Lavaca
1851
Henry Skillman begins running a stage coach service between San Antonio and El Paso.
Stagecoach service from SA to Indianola.
1854
First volunteer fire company is formed.
1857
George S Giddings takes over the El Paso contract and extends service to San Diego, CA. It initially took seven weeks to travel the one,476 mile journeying but this was cut to fours weeks. Called the Southern Overland Mail, the service lasted until the first of the civil war, when the federal contract is revoked.
1867
Heavy duty bridge over the river in San Antonio at Commerce Street replaced with a 2d wooden structure
1871
First heavy duty atomic number 26 bridge installed in San Antonio creating Houston Street in the process
1880
Three horse railroad vehicle manufacturers operate in San Antonio. Work to replace the wooden bridge over the river at Commerce Street with an atomic number 26 span is begun.
1889
Some downtown streets are paved with mesquite blocks.
1890
Start traffic signal installed, on Commerce Street, about I&GN station.
1898
Several block of Market Street on either side of the intersection with St. Marys are crudely asphalted. Along with a similar projection in Houston, these are the offset paved roads in Texas.
1899
1st horseless carriages, battery powered Studebakers, make it at the Staacke Bros. exhibit on Commerce Street.
1901
1st gasoline powered automobile, a Haynes Apperson, acquired by a Commerce Street broker
1902
1st city automobile sale, a single cylinder Curved Dash Oldsmobile made at a cycle shop on Houston Street
1903
1st Auto club formed
1904
City ordinance requires automobiles be numbered. A city wide speed limit oif vi MPH was set up, leading in March to the commencement speeding ticket and courtroom fine.
1905
As of August 21, 1905, the urban center engineer of San Antonio reported that in that location were 71 automobiles in San Antonio, representing a value of well-nigh $37,200.
First motorized vehicles have office in Battle of Flowers parade
1909
First Ford dealership opened.
1910
SAPD acquires its get-go automobile, an air cooled Franklin, for patrol piece of work, plus motorcycles
San Antonio issues its first gear up of road rules. Rule #one: Drive on the right side of the street.
Starting time motorized fire trucks acquired.
1912
Widening of Commerce Street begins.
1913
Broadway is created out of Avenue C and River Avenue
1915
Old Spanish Trail connecting St. Augustine, FL, to San Diego, CA, via San Antonio, is begun
1917
Texas Department of Transportation, TxDOT, is created.. Texas highways given state issued numbers. Road between Houston and San Antonio becomes Land Highway 3
1917
The first bus in San Antonio is built in the shops of the San Antonio Public Service Company.
1919
San Antonio gains first TxDot offices equally headquarters of i of its six divisions. TxDot was created in 1917.
Headquarters of the "One-time Spanish Trail" moved to San Antonio.
Lonely Star Motor Company sets up an automobile and truck constitute at 515 Roosevelt.
1922
Alone Star Motor Company goes out of business.
1923
First manufactory built bus is caused.
Get-go electric traffic lite is installed.
SAPD creates an auto theft squad.
The last law equus caballus is retired.
1925
National highway numbering system introduced. Route between Houston and San Antonio becomes Highway ninety
1927
Terminal employ of horse drawn fire equipment.
1928
San Antonio motorist guide however advises not to get out the city if it's raining, has recently rained or rain is in the forecast.
1929
"Onetime Spanish Trail" completed, 14 years after it began, running from St. Augustine, FL, to San Diego, CA. Inside Texas the route becomes HWY 90 and runs through San Antonio.
1932
Texas Lath of County and District Road Indebtedness is created to pay dorsum local authorities for roads created by bonds and other means which were at present part of the state highway system.
1933
San Antonio becomes the first major US city to carelessness its street rail car service.
1935
SAPD patrol cars are fitted with 2 style radios.
1936
Commencement traffic meters are installed
1942
The privately endemic San Antonio Transit Company takes over the previously metropolis endemic passenger vehicle service.
1943
Planning begins in San Antonio for the postal service war free fashion system as the city expands apace.
1949
San Antonio'due south first superhighway, HWY 281, is completed.
Get-go 3/4 mile department of US 87, at present IH10, is completed between Woodlawn Avenue to Martin Street.
1956
First department of IH35, from Alamo Street to Broadway is completed.
1957
Beginning section of Loop 410 is completed.
IH35 now reaches due south to Segmentation Artery.
1959
The urban center owned SA Transit System takes over from the SA Transit Company.
1960
City first mall, Wonderland, at present Crossroads, is opened.
1964
IH10 now reaches De Zavala to the west and exceeds city limits to the eastward.
First section of Loop 1604 is opened, from Bandera to IH 10.
1967
Loop 410, nearly 52 miles round, is completed.
A section of Loop 1604, west from HWY 90 is opened.
Breathalyzers are introduced by SAPD.
1973
Employ of radar to catch speeders introduced.
1978
VIA Metropolitan Service takes over the city bus system, making information technology a county wide service.
McAllister free way, the improved HWY 281, is finally opened after a decade long political struggle to prevent its creation.
1979
Loop 1604 is completed.
1985
Mobile digital terminals, MDT's, installed in SAPD patrol cars.
1990
Downtown bike patrols introduced.
2006
November 17, Friday - Showtime production vehicles come off the production line at new Toyota factory in San Antonio. Peak production, when achieved, should be one new Tundra choice up every 73 seconds, of 750 a day, 200,000 year.
Source: https://classic.txtransportationmuseum.org/history-road.php
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