Welcome!

Welcome to On the Move!  I’m excited to be part of this new forum for discussing the ever-changing and sometimes contentious scene of transportation issues here in San Antonio and Texas.  I’m especially proud of the other contributors to this blog: Patrick Driscoll, former transportation issues writer for the Express-News and instigator of this endeavour, and Hugh Hemphill, curator of the Texas Transportation Museum.  Both bring their unique expertise and experience to this blog.

As for myself, as you may know, I go by the moniker of the “Texas Highway Man”.  If you’ve been to my website or read my bio, then you know that I’m primarily a “road aficionado”.  I’ve lived here in Texas since 1985, most of that time in the San Antonio area.  But I also have extensive experience with European transportation systems– especially Germany– having lived and traveled there for a number of years.  So although my primary focus has been highways, I have quite a bit of understanding of and appreciation for public transportation, especially rail transit.  As a result, expect to see me chime-in periodically on the various rail transit proposals that have been gathering steam here recently.  But most of my posts will be related to local highways and roads, traffic issues, and, of course, the always fun topic of toll roads. I also plan on occasional post on traffic laws and driving in general.

Most of all, I want to hear from you.  Transportation is one of those topics that affects us all every day, but one that most people seem to be apathetic about until something happens that draws their ire.  Part of the problem is that transportation planning and road building, while very visible to us every day, is still something quite esoteric.  Everyone these days likes to be an armchair quarterback, but on the subject of transportation planning, so much goes on behind the scenes that the average citizen in most cases just isn’t in possession of enough knowledge to formulate an informed opinion, and so anger, fear, and plain-old cynicism frequently prevails.  That’s where I hope this blog will help.  If you have a question or complaint about anything transportation-related, feel free to post it here or e-mail me and I’ll be happy to track down the answer for you and share it here for others who may have the same concern.

So thanks for stopping by!  Be sure to drop by often to find-out what’s happening to keep San Antonio and Texas “on the move”.