City to enforce Don’t Block the Box

Come Monday, as part of the City Manager’s Traffic Congestion Action Plan, Austin Police officers along with the City of Austin Transportation Department will begin enforcing the Don’t Block the Box campaign. The goal is to reduce traffic congestion on Austin’s major arterial roadways and in the Downtown Central Business District. Implementation of the campaign will include officers being present in the City’s Traffic Management Center as well as at key intersections to keep traffic flowing during the morning and evening peak travel times. Those intersections will include Cesar Chavez Street at Guadalupe Street, Colorado Street and Congress Avenue. Officers at the intersections will be looking for interruptions in the flow of traffic. They will be ticketing drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists for red-light violations, blocking intersections, failure to stop at a proper place, failure to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, driving in bus lanes and other disruptions to traffic flow. Police say “blocking the box” means that a vehicle has entered an intersection without enough room on the other side to clear it. To learn more about the campaign, go here.