AUSTIN | Transportation Updates

[We vs us]

Originally Posted by Lobotomizer

I don't think you can ask for much more than that design. It truly does turn the frontage roads into a boulevard through downtown, and makes any caps a much more inviting place.

I know for many the default position is freeways are bad, and if we're not tearing it out just leave it in it's current state. I disagree vehemently, and say let's get this show on the road asap. We need the Riverside crossing rebuilt for the Blue Line, and Capital Express North and South are kicking off this year.

Let's not have an ugly, dangerous, outdated freeway through downtown.

Well said.

[freerover]

I'm very very very thankful they adjusted version 3 to take out the horrid raised managed lanes. Now the only thing that will rise above in central Austin is the Train which I think is going to look dope.

The cap changes are great but I would feel better knowing there was a realistic way we could fund it. It's going to be somewhere between 1-2 billion and we currently have literally 0 dollars allocated to it. How much private funds can we get? How much federal dollars? Will people vote to bond the rest? That might be a much bigger ask to regular folk who might not want to help drive up their property taxes to pay for limited use park on top of the highway. If we could build museums and shit on top of the caps then it would be a different story but we can't. It's just going to be grass and some concrete.

[StoOgE]

What can the caps support?

Trees/planters/hills?

Small buildings (bathrooms/cafes/carousels)

I mean I don't care if uts just grass but I'd love to see a design of what we could expect as possible.

[Lobotomizer]

I can't find the article, but in some of the Austin Chronicle coverage it mentioned that buildings can be built on the decks. I don't remember any mention regarding size, but as you can't dig into concrete, I assume these would be small structures such as bathrooms, walk up cafes, or similar. I envision having a string of Republic Squares sitting atop I35.

[freerover]

It would be amazing if we could get those self cleaning public bathrooms lining each cap. It would certainly help reduce the amount of human shit on city streets.

[StoOgE]

Originally Posted by Lobotomizer

I can't find the article, but in some of the Austin Chronicle coverage it mentioned that buildings can be built on the decks. I don't remember any mention regarding size, but as you can't dig into concrete, I assume these would be small structures such as bathrooms, walk up cafes, or similar. I envision having a string of Republic Squares sitting atop I35.

This is my absolute dream scenario.

[Speculator]

Originally Posted by Lobotomizer

I can't find the article, but in some of the Austin Chronicle coverage it mentioned that buildings can be built on the decks. I don't remember any mention regarding size, but as you can't dig into concrete, I assume these would be small structures such as bathrooms, walk up cafes, or similar. I envision having a string of Republic Squares sitting atop I35.

Hudson Yards is built on a cap, isn't it?

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by Lobotomizer

I can't find the article, but in some of the Austin Chronicle coverage it mentioned that buildings can be built on the decks. I don't remember any mention regarding size, but as you can't dig into concrete, I assume these would be small structures such as bathrooms, walk up cafes, or similar. I envision having a string of Republic Squares sitting atop I35.

Putting parkland over the top would be great, but it would also be nice if they could put up buildings, however big or small, along the crossings to make the east side feel even more connected downtown. With only parkland, even though it would be a huge improvement, it still might feel somewhat separated.

[ATX2030]

List of structures built on top of freeways

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...op_of_freeways

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by paul78701

Putting parkland over the top would be great, but it would also be nice if they could put up buildings, however big or small, along the crossings to make the east side feel even more connected downtown. With only parkland, even though it would be a huge improvement, it still might feel somewhat separated.

One of those parcels could easily be a new Parks & Rec HQ.

[Lobotomizer]

Originally Posted by paul78701

Putting parkland over the top would be great, but it would also be nice if they could put up buildings, however big or small, along the crossings to make the east side feel even more connected downtown. With only parkland, even though it would be a huge improvement, it still might feel somewhat separated.

Agree 100%. Plus housing and retail downtown is always a great thing!

It could also make it easier to fund the decks if some of the newly created land could be built upon. I'm no expert on the topic, but I think TIFs are a type of funding mechanism that is sometimes used in situations such as these.

[StoOgE]

Originally Posted by Speculator

Hudson Yards is built on a cap, isn't it?

The skyscrapers in Hudson yards are not over the cap. The cap is a plaza between them iirc.

[sammyk]

Originally Posted by StoOgE

The skyscrapers in Hudson yards are not over the cap. The cap is a plaza between them iirc.

I think most of them sit on a platform over a rail yard.

[freerover]

It doesn't matter who has done what. TxDot has told us that there are weight limitations to the caps that are related to how they plan to structure and build the thing. Could that include structures like 1 story bathrooms? I don't know but it will absolutely not include any kind of development. It would be nice (if we could find the money) to make a museum row along it but that's not an option being offered to us.

[IrvineNative]

I've never been to Austin, so forgive my ignorance. But here are some of my humble observations:

1. People keep complaining that SH130 is useless for local traffic and goes through sparsely populated land. That's the point. It was designed to be a bypass. Bypasses by definition go around the edge of the city and are designed for thru traffic rather than local traffic.

2. SH130 could massively reduce I-35 traffic. But it doesn't, simply because SH130 tolls are super high so thru-travlers avoid it like the plague and clog up I-35 instead.

3. The Texas Transportation Institute did a study that shows that at the busiest portion of the I-35 through downtown 14% of the vehicle count is thru traffic. Now 14% doesn't sound like a lot, but in traffic engineering, it's well known that reducing 14% of the vehicle count could reduce congestion by 40-50%, which is a lot.

4. It's a myth that Greater Austin has a particularly low expressway lane-miles per capita. Greater Los Angeles, Portland, and Greater Sacramento actually have fewer expressway lane-miles per capita. The problem is, Austin has lots of tolled expressways while Portland and Sacramento have none. So while in Portland and Sacramento drivers are evenly spread across all the free expressways, Austin drivers avoid the toll roads and clog up the free freeways.

Another problem is simply that Greater Austin grew 33% last decade compared with 2.9%, 12.89%, and 11.55% for LA, Portland, and Sacramento, respectively. And unlike LA and Sacramento, where no new freeways have been built in ages because California shames itself for car dependency, Austin has actually recently built a new expressway, SH183, by converting an arterial road.

When you're the fastest growing of the top 100 US metro areas, no matter how many expressways you build, you can't keep up with demand.

[H2O]

I think everything you stated is bang on. Keep in mind though, that until the toll system started to be constructed about 20 years ago, Austin did have a very limited freeway network. That network could not have been built out in such a short period of time without the tolls. The tollways have been extremely politically unpopular, even among otherwise progressive people. After the initial toll investments, the powers that be restricted toll development to new capacity (adding managed lanes or new freeway lanes on previously traffic controlled high speed arterials). It would be great if at least the proposed managed lanes on I-35 could be tolled and joined the Central Texas Tollway network. The tolls could be set higher than SH-135 and contribute to paying off the tollway debt so the bypass tollways could be set at a lower price to encourage the use of the bypasses for through traffic. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen with the current regime at the Capitol.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by IrvineNative

I've never been to Austin, so forgive my ignorance. But here are some of my humble observations:

1. People keep complaining that SH130 is useless for local traffic and goes through sparsely populated land. That's the point. It was designed to be a bypass. Bypasses by definition go around the edge of the city and are designed for thru traffic rather than local traffic.

2. SH130 could massively reduce I-35 traffic. But it doesn't, simply because SH130 tolls are super high so thru-travlers avoid it like the plague and clog up I-35 instead.

The issue with 130 is that it was built so far east. Frequently, the time necessary to divert over to take it and back exceeds the time to just slog through on 35. So why take it, even if it was free.

Making it free would probably be worse, as that would induce some local trips on it, making the diversion even slightly slower.

You'd need a combo of making it free and tolling all of I35.

[StoOgE]

130 is a failure.

It has rarely in its life been faster than I35 by more than 10-15 minutes if you are going to San Antonio and bypassing austin at extreme cost. It was too far east to be a bypass as it just was not faster - so much so that they increased the speed limit to try and make it a better bargain.

What is has done is become a daily commuter road into Austin from the SE and is leading to increased development out towards Lockhart to the point that it now has congestion at rush-hour.
If anything it did just what most urbanists accuse freeways of doing - encouraging sprawl by making commute times faster from further flung places.

[Lobotomizer]

130 has enough traffic they just added a lane in each direction from 71 to 45 North, or maybe even past.

It may not be successful as a bypass to I35, but anyone saying it is little used is incorrect.

[papertowelroll]

Originally Posted by StoOgE

130 is a failure.

It has rarely in its life been faster than I35 by more than 10-15 minutes if you are going to San Antonio and bypassing austin at extreme cost. It was too far east to be a bypass as it just was not faster - so much so that they increased the speed limit to try and make it a better bargain.

What is has done is become a daily commuter road into Austin from the SE and is leading to increased development out towards Lockhart to the point that it now has congestion at rush-hour.
If anything it did just what most urbanists accuse freeways of doing - encouraging sprawl by making commute times faster from further flung places.

This very much. 130 is not effective whatsoever as a bypass. What it has done is spur a bunch of sprawling development in Hutto, Phlugerville, COTA, now Tesla, etc.