AUSTIN | Transportation Updates - Page 416

drummer · #**8301** Posted **Feb 9, 2022, 4:31 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinYIMBY

[IMG]https://www.texasfreeway.com/austin/...ing-maps/#1969[/IMG]
This is a pretty cool website I found. Not sure if it has been posted here before. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, there are some links to other interesting site, one has some great historic pictures centered around highways in Austin.

I've spent some time on that site but not in a while. I will say that some of the best things about Austin are because there aren't a lot of freeways cutting through the core like Dallas or Houston. That said, it also is why we have such a traffic headache basically always.

IrvineNative · #**8302** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 12:33 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Novacek

"full light rail" to leander probably doesn't make sense, at least in our lifetimes, and probably isn't physically possible given the freight sharing (CM will probably always have to drop to half hour frequencies or even longer off peak/nights/some weekends).

San Diego Trolley Blue Line is double tracked and electrified. It runs 7.5 minutes all day, M-F. For 3-4 hours past midnight it closes and freight trains use it.

Novacek · #**8303** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 2:28 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by IrvineNative

San Diego Trolley Blue Line is double tracked and electrified. It runs 7.5 minutes all day, M-F. For 3-4 hours past midnight it closes and freight trains use it.

My understanding is that San Diego's system, as it opened in the 80s, is essentially grandfathered from further safety restrictions the FRA has put into place.

The process for sharing track between light and heavy rail now requires explicit waivers from the FRA. CapMetro when designing ProjectConnect has basically been assuming all along that they'll need complete grade separation from the freight rail, even just for a crossing.

Now, it may be that they're gun shy from the original Red Line commuter rail. Though it passed in 2004, it only opened in 2010, and in between I believe the FRA got more restrictive. They had to get waivers even for the DMU commuter service, and that seemed to be quite a process.

There also seems to be a difference in the scale of the freight traffic. San Diego seems to manage with a single run overnight in the 2-4 AM window. Austin has late night runs but also weekend runs.

I'm having a hard time getting current figures, but it appears that in 2008 the San Diego and Imperial Valley RR moved 6500 carloads of freight.

Austin Western RR (Capmetro's tracks) moved 49k in 2010.

https://www.bnsf.com/news-media/news...shortline-year

jkconno · #**8304** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 3:00 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by IrvineNative

San Diego Trolley Blue Line is double tracked and electrified. It runs 7.5 minutes all day, M-F. For 3-4 hours past midnight it closes and freight trains use it.

I stayed at the Marriott Marquis in San Diego one time, and coming back from the Gaslamp District late at night a freight train was stopped on the tracks through downtown. We had to climb through the gap of a couple of the rail cars.

Is that the one you're talking about? Seemed pretty strange to me, honestly.

wwmiv · #**8305** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 3:39 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by jkconno

I stayed at the Marriott Marquis in San Diego one time, and coming back from the Gaslamp District late at night a freight train was stopped on the tracks through downtown. We had to climb through the gap of a couple of the rail cars.

Is that the one you're talking about? Seemed pretty strange to me, honestly.

An SC student died one time doing this and the whole campus shut down for an hour (about half of the dormitories are on the other side of the tracks from the academic core. They drafted plans to build a second pedestrian overpass because students kept doing it, even afterward. I am not sure if it ever got built, I have since left Carolina.

ATX2030 · #**8306** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 6:46 PM**

Transit planners study allowing buses on light-rail bridge over Lady Bird Lake

https://www.kut.org/transportation/2...lady-bird-lake

By Nathan Bernier

Facing pushback over plans to allow only light-rail and pedestrians on a new bridge over Lady Bird Lake, officials overseeing Project Connect, Austin's $7.1 billion transit expansion, are taking a closer look at whether to design the bridge so Capital Metro buses could cross into downtown.

kingkirbythe.... · #**8307** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 7:09 PM**

This could be good.

Novacek · #**8308** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 7:18 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by ATX2030

Transit planners study allowing buses on light-rail bridge over Lady Bird Lake

https://www.kut.org/transportation/2...lady-bird-lake

By Nathan Bernier

Facing pushback over plans to allow only light-rail and pedestrians on a new bridge over Lady Bird Lake, officials overseeing Project Connect, Austin's $7.1 billion transit expansion, are taking a closer look at whether to design the bridge so Capital Metro buses could cross into downtown.

Wasting money on a bad idea.

Bus service that duplicates the light rail is a bad idea. The entire point of Project Connect and the Blue/Orange lines is that they become the spine of the transit service in Austin. Why ride a bus from somewhere in South Austin, across this bridge, to somewhere in North Austin, when it would be faster to take the light rail (better performing vehicles, no traffic, exclusive RoW, etc.)? Many of the existing bus routes should/will become routes that feed into the light rail, because even with a transfer total trip times will decrease.

And that's before even getting to the point that there's no existing bus routes here, and there's no road to get to or from this bridge.

drummer · #**8309** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 7:42 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Novacek

Wasting money on a bad idea.

Bus service that duplicates the light rail is a bad idea. The entire point of Project Connect and the Blue/Orange lines is that they become the spine of the transit service in Austin. Why ride a bus from somewhere in South Austin, across this bridge, to somewhere in North Austin, when it would be faster to take the light rail (better performing vehicles, no traffic, exclusive RoW, etc.)? Many of the existing bus routes should/will become routes that feed into the light rail, because even with a transfer total trip times will decrease.

And that's before even getting to the point that there's no existing bus routes here, and there's no road to get to or from this bridge.

I agree with a lot of what you say here, but I do have a question. Could it be possible that a bus route that hits both sides of the river could simply take advantage of the crossing? Does it necessarily have to take away from the rail line? I could see this being done well, but it could almost certainly also be abused, to your point.

Novacek · #**8310** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 7:55 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by drummer

I agree with a lot of what you say here, but I do have a question. Could it be possible that a bus route that hits both sides of the river could simply take advantage of the crossing? Does it necessarily have to take away from the rail line? I could see this being done well, but it could almost certainly also be abused, to your point.

In order to take advantage of the crossing, the route has to reach the point where the blue line is. There would never be a rider on such a bus that couldn't have transferred to the blue line instead.

Could you hypothetically construct a point to point trip where slogging through traffic on a bus is faster than taking the bus to the blue line and transferring, sure. But how many riders, how many trips. And would there even be such a point to point bus route?

If we've put the light rail in the right spot (which I think we have) it's located where the highest travel demand is. Radial routes from the light rail stations then leverage that investment to serve other trips.

Is there travel demand from some point (not downtown) to some other point (not downtown), sure. Enough to serve with its own specialized route, probably not.

Especially once you subtract all those trips which are better served by crossing the river someplace else (for instance, SE Austin to E Austin trips better served by crossing at Pleasant Valley).

IrvineNative · #**8311** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 7:58 PM**

I am surprised at how low 2040 Project Connect Ridership forecasts are:

Orange Line: 74K, 21 miles
Blue Line: 19K, 8.2 miles
Gold Line: 20K, 6.4 miles
Total: 113K, 35.6 miles

That's 3174 riders/mile, which is high for US LRT.

But this is Austin, the fastest growing of the top 100 US metro areas with a city proper that is also the fastest growing among big US cities. With this amount of growth TODs should be popping up left and right. And the Orange Line is not only getting a Downtown tunnel, it's also entirely located off of freeways and right on busy arterial streets running through the middle of dense neighborhoods.

To top it off, Austin has a Downtown whose share of regional employment is fairly high (not as high as Seattle much less San Fran, but still much higher than LA or San Diego or Dallas).

Is CapMetro simply being too modest in its projections? I mean even San Diego, which is growing five times slower than Greater Austin and has a Downtown employment share less than half of Austin's, had 119K weekday LRT riders pre-COVID. The SD Blue Line in particular had 57K riders over 15.4 miles despite running through industrial sprawl and strip malls for most of its length.

I think in 2040, outside SF, Boston, and LA, the top three LRT systems in the US by ridership will be Seattle, with Austin a distant second and San Diego a close third. What do you think?

AustinYIMBY · #**8312** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 8:13 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Novacek

Wasting money on a bad idea.

Bus service that duplicates the light rail is a bad idea. The entire point of Project Connect and the Blue/Orange lines is that they become the spine of the transit service in Austin. Why ride a bus from somewhere in South Austin, across this bridge, to somewhere in North Austin, when it would be faster to take the light rail (better performing vehicles, no traffic, exclusive RoW, etc.)? Many of the existing bus routes should/will become routes that feed into the light rail, because even with a transfer total trip times will decrease.

And that's before even getting to the point that there's no existing bus routes here, and there's no road to get to or from this bridge.

One reason I can think of would be to reroute buses onto this bridge to get them off of other river crossings, in an effort to lessen time spent in traffic on those other bridges. But, given where this crossing will be, it would only really make sense for busses that use I35 or Congress, and I dont think any cross Congress and looks like only a couple use I35 and those travel on the highway for quite a ways north of the river. Having a ln alternative for buses going over the Lamar bridge would be the most beneficial because traffic gets so backed up there and I have seen many buses sitting in that traffic, but this would be so far out of the way for that.

atxsnail · #**8313** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 8:39 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinYIMBY

One reason I can think of would be to reroute buses onto this bridge to get them off of other river crossings, in an effort to lessen time spent in traffic on those other bridges. But, given where this crossing will be, it would only really make sense for busses that use I35 or Congress, and I dont think any cross Congress and looks like only a couple use I35 and those travel on the highway for quite a ways north of the river. Having a ln alternative for buses going over the Lamar bridge would be the most beneficial because traffic gets so backed up there and I have seen many buses sitting in that traffic, but this would be so far out of the way for that.

I can't think of any route other than maybe the 7 that would benefit from this at all. Any other route's use of this theoretical bridge option would be a time-wasting diversion from the regular route. In any case, once they show a render of what the bridge landings would do to the hike and bike trail in order to accommodate buses I think it will get killed pretty quickly.

I can appreciate that the UTC commissioners probably mean well, but there are a lot of cranks who are out there equating a train-only bridge to apartheid/robert moses. The much smarter idea is to push hard for a bus lane conversion on the existing bridges.

Novacek · #**8314** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 8:59 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by AustinYIMBY

One reason I can think of would be to reroute buses onto this bridge to get them off of other river crossings, in an effort to lessen time spent in traffic on those other bridges. But, given where this crossing will be, it would only really make sense for busses that use I35 or Congress, and I dont think any cross Congress and looks like only a couple use I35 and those travel on the highway for quite a ways north of the river. Having a ln alternative for buses going over the Lamar bridge would be the most beneficial because traffic gets so backed up there and I have seen many buses sitting in that traffic, but this would be so far out of the way for that.

I'm all in for bus only lanes on bridges. It's just that this is the wrong spot.

They've talked for years about putting bus only lanes on Drake (south 1st bridge). That would be a lot closer for Lamar routes. Or as I mentioned, PV which will now have metrorapid on it.

Lobotomizer · #**8315** Posted **Feb 11, 2022, 11:42 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Novacek

I'm all in for bus only lanes on bridges. It's just that this is the wrong spot.

They've talked for years about putting bus only lanes on Drake (south 1st bridge). That would be a lot closer for Lamar routes. Or as I mentioned, PV which will now have metrorapid on it.

Yes, and Guadalupe and Lavaca already have bus only lanes all the way through downtown. The logical thing, as well as most cost effective, would be to continue the bus only lanes across the river on the 1st Street bridge.

But, in the name of social justice and virtue signaling we will probably blow a bunch of money to build the new bridge to unnecessarily allow buses to cross there instead.