You're high.

Put another way, on one hand we have a line that runs through the job/destination/population dense riverside corridor. On the other, a line that runs adjacent to a highway.

One of those lines will vastly outperform the other.

In Tyrone's defense, it isn't totally unreasonable to consider a local and express offering between downtown and the airport in the long-run. And repurposing that bridge may be one of the lowest-cost options to cross the river.

Under the basic "butts-in-seats" barometer of transit success, however, the Riverside LRT, i.e. "local" option, will vastly outperform. But it will take an 8- to 9-figure river crossing to do it, and it is highly unlikely to compete with taxis/ridesharing for anyone on a tight timeline.

You're talking about elevated rail along the highway ROW and then street grade LRT down 7th St. That's easily 1.5-2 billion for an "express" option. Come on guys.

If it came to that, you could run express (limited stop) service on the blue line (to downtown). There should be capacity as it’s only going to run half the frequency of the Lamar segment. Might need some bypasses at stations.

Still probably not worth it, given the limited ridership airports usually have. But cheaper than a whole separate line.

Not to lengthen an internet debate, but I personally never said anything about a 7th St alignment, elevated rail, or along highway ROW.

Putting Stadler DMUs along Cap Metro ROW to the MoKan spur gets you to the Colorado river north of the port without spending a dime. Cross the river and buy some underutilized land south of there gets you virtually a straight shot into the port from the north.

That is by far the cheapest way to get rail to the airport, but I thought I conceded that the demand wasn't there yet. And I also concede that no amount of downtown-airport direct express service would justify a $2B investment.

But the demand doesn't need to get all that high for the numbers to possibly work if you criticize what I actually said. To that end, please try not to be so dismissive if you want to foster some good conversation on Austin transportation.

The only configuration that would use the Monopolis bridge would be the 7th st corridor. If you are talking about using the freight rail system then that wouldn't involve the Mokan corridor at all which is good because Cap Metro doesn't have rights to it. It would just basically follow the green line and then you would need to acquire new ROW once you are past 183 and head south instead of north and build new track. The problem then is that the Blue line and this new airport line can't share track and infrastructure since once is a commuter line and the other is light rail. There wouldn't be enough room if they want to run transit between the 2 new garages.

You're basically describing this:

https://i.ibb.co/hYs2pRs/Screen-Shot...4-19-09-PM.jpg


TLDR: Not really a serious discussion about using the monopolies bridge or different types of trains serving the airport which probably doesn't even need mass transit and only got it so we could pass Prop A with the voters.

The Montopolis Bridge is being dedicated for bike / ped. It will connect the LAB to the new shared use paths along 183 and eventually trails along the south side of the Colorado River.

On one of my recent weekend pandemic drives, I took 183 from Cedar Park all the way south to the 130 junction. The new highway is probably 75% complete, but a lot of it is driveable. And gotta be honest, it’s fantastic. Easy, roomy — so many of the rough spots smoothed out. They’re finishing the last leg right now, from about Montopolis to 71. It was such an important part of near east side development (vs Far East, where Tesla is), it’s really going to supercharge things out that way, IMO.

The new highway is about %98 complete.

I’ve never been very good with numbers.

The cheapest way to get to the airport is what they're doing: once potential ridership justifies light rail on Riverside on its own merits (not to mention the need for a service yard out thataway) pay the incremental cost to run a couple extra miles to the airport. Especially since the feds will presumably pay for half.

An extra river crossing for infrequent commuter frequency use, plus RoW acquisition for a whole new corridor, and less chance of a federal share, plus higher operating costs doesn't pencil out.

Well...not right now

All that being said, I would LOVE if we could eventually get LRT down the 7th street corridor from 183 at the new regional CARTS bus depot to Mozarts at Lake Austin Blvd west of Mopac. That's a big pipe dream but that's why we have pipes. I think by that time Clark's dream of bunchable buses that use 5g might be a reality.

This was posted on DallasMetropolis. Not sure if it's been posted here yet.

https://virginhyperloop.com/project/texas

Can we just build a high speed train instead of speculating on this dumb shit? If you want even faster than make it a mag lev train.

I'm not in disagreement with you. I'm a huge fan of HSR - used it all the time in Asia. Maglev is super cool also - used that in Shanghai.

What I am encouraged by is the continued talk of a need for *something* between especially DFW and Austin/San Antonio. I'm not opposed to continued development of hyperloop by any means, but HSR is a proven technology that isn't going anywhere any time soon.

But when people are focused on unproved technology you never get around to building anything.

Can't argue with you there.

Speaking of unproven technologies, I saw this yesterday on twitter and found it interesting enough to read about. A Canadian company is pushing a bus/rail hybrid model. It's a 60' bus chassis that rides on rails but has regular tires as well for going on and off tracks as needed. The rubber tires just sort of sit next to the steel ones and spin without touching the ground when on rails.
Electric propulsion via capacitors re-charged at stops. Presumably they can produce some cost justification of doing this instead of plain BRT but I'm skeptical. I suppose it would be more useful than a streetcar, so maybe there's a place for this somewhere that needs route versatility or has big hills/tight corners. The website doesn't inspire much confidence.

https://municipaltransitsolutions.com/