Rapid Bus fell off the map about six months ago when McCracken raised a red flag about the cost-benefit ratio - as far as I can tell, CM has basically stuck the whole plan on a shelf (they don't talk about a prospective opening date in any new materials; and some older stuff indicated delays).

And, no, rapid bus wouldn't have helped your commute - sorry, but that was wishful thinking. Have you driven on the most congested portions of the #1 lately? Traffic backed up from 4 lights ahead can't be fixed by holding the light green directly in front of you.

I agree that it would not help during peak rush hour - unless, they created peak hour dedicated bus lanes. Similar to what Dallas and Houston have.

It could help during other times, theoretically only having to stop to pick up/drop off passengers - but probably not justified by the expenditures required.

I ride the #1 to and from work everyday and have for four years. We lose tons of time downtown when we miss lights because we are picking up passengers every block. Or because we're stuck behind another bus picking up passengers. So just the act of taking the bus off Congress downtown and stopping only a few times actually would make a difference. Of course you could just reroute the #101 and accomplish the same thing. Why does an express bus stop every block downtown?

And if it actually came at the headways they were talking about so I could transfer, that would make a difference too. I have to wait so long for the 101 transfer that it negates the speed benefit.

I think it's probably best for the city to shelve it - but I would stilll have personally enjoyed the marginal improvements. :)

The express stops every stop downtown because most people taking it work downtown (or at UT) - this is par for the course for an express route - consider the express subway in from Queens to Manhattan, for instance - skips lots of stops before the river but hits most of the Manhattan ones. It just sucks that your particular stop is actually past the center and on the outbound leg as far as they're concerned.

:previous: Yea but stopping every block is ridiculous. Stopping every two or three wouldn't be.

Yeah, I agree, in Houston ALL buses downtown alternate every other block. (Or did 8 years ago..) Every third block and you would never be more than a block from a stop. That's not unreasonable.

Of course the whole cluster&^%$ effect is an issue too since almost every route gets on Congress in the CBD.

from what i am reading is that you guys want a full fledge light rail system to go to every place possible and you want it to magically appear out of no wear and that land use is not even in the discussion. This kind of thinking is what is keeping this issue grounded.

the first step is to find out where is can be built then start off with a small plan to get it started if it is successful then you can expand to more places if the land is there to build on.

there may be places you wish the train would go but due to the land already being built on they cant put it there.

and a second point is you guys think that people do not walk that far. this is untrue people are willing to walk there just has to be something to go to. tones of people will be willing to walk atleast a half a mile and most do it every day anyway

Dear NormalGenyus:

How about familiarizing yourself with the issue first?

The commuter rail line uses a critical part of the ONLY FEASIBLE ROUTE FOR LIGHT RAIL. Once commuter rail is there, light rail can't go there; and commuter rail can't be expanded to go where light rail would have gone (the vehicles aren't capable).

And the 1/4 mile walk rule is from national research on transit in all sorts of conditions and is iron-clad. Anything else is wishful thinking.

I'm not trying to flame the fire here, but where would anyone really want to go with this? Are they hoping that this will create a lot of future employment in East Austin and around Highland Mall?

http://www.impactnewspaper.com/image...Picture_16.png
www.impactnewspaper.com

1. Cap Metro knows people won't walk from the Convention Center to most of downtown (and obviously not to UT and the Capitol). So that puts them ahead of most of the wishful-thinkers here. However,

2. The left hand of Cap Metro thinks that many people who aren't willing to ride the direct express buses today will ride shuttle buses from the train station to their destination (and once again on the way back). Meanwhile,

3. The right hand of Cap Metro knows they won't - and has projected ridership at 1500/day (about 10% of what the 2000 projections were for light rail; about 5% of what the most recent LRT systems have been able to pull off in year one).

Okay so I'll bite. If this is the situation then why in the world did light rail fail in 2000?

Just for the moment, let's ignore the downtown/UT riders and assume that they will or will not decide to transfer to a bus. I want to know who else would want to ride this? I used to work over by the #3 stop, and there is nothing over there worth stopping for. Are they trying to encourage development in East Austin in order to boost the eventual ridership? It just doesn't make any sense to me why they would even bother with this, knowing that it might make them look even worse than they already do in the public's eyes.

It failed because of stupid and misinformed voters. It certainly didn't help that Rob Lippincott, the owner of Guero's, did everything he could to kill the light on South Congress. Oh, it would have disrupted his business. Boo-fuckin-hoo. Will he campaign again when it comes time to repave South Congress? I doubt it. He and his business would have greatly benefited from the light rail. Come on people. If you want omelettes, we're going to have to break some eggs. So he, along with his myopic vision, are the reason I won't go to Guero's. Well that, and the food sucks.

CM was getting ready for an election in May or November of 2001. Krusee forced them to go early, and do so in an election where the suburban Republican vote would be at its highest (because of W). Thus, all the stars were aligned against it:

1. They didn't know for sure which streets it'd go down in a couple places (because they were forced to the polls before being done)

2. The opposition's message is simple - and works great when people are being shown a hazy route with no real details

3. The rednecks were already out at the polls

Despite all of this, it still lost by about 1500 votes, which is less than 1%. It passed in the city of Austin. Revisionist history by people like Lyndon Henry (and "SecretAgentMan" aside), a scaled-back starter segment would easily have passed in 2004 - but by then, CM had new leaders who don't really want to build rail - and Krusee found a way to get some rail built out to Round Rock someday without having to do anything nice for the hippies in Central Austin (and without his Round Rock constituents actually having to pay any taxes for it, either).

Likewise, I will never eat at Texas Chili Parlor again for the same reason. Well, the food there didn't suck.

Like I've said, some of CM's leadership is anti-rail, and is convinced that they can end it for good with this. Others actually drank their own Kool-Aid and think this can actually work. Still others actually bought the pig-in-a-poke pushed by Lyndon Henry, Dave Dobbs, SecretAgentMan, and their ilk ("pass commuter rail and then work to get light rail") which as I've detailed is completely impossible anyways (commuter rail precludes light rail from happening).

why are they so focused on the route coming from cedar park? it seems more people complain about the traffic on ih -35 so the best and first route should be going up to pflugerville round rock and georgetown . i know cedar park and leander are fast growing also but i do not yet see 183 in bad enough shape to need an alternative to the free way

Leander (and, when light rail was being floated, Cedar Park) are in Capital Metro, while Round Rock and Georgetown weren't and aren't (Pflugerville was, until a few years ago). CM also already owns the railway heading up to Leander, while Union Pacific owns the one going up to Round Rock.

Oh, and the UP line terminates at Seaholm (just as bad if not worse for downtown/state/UT workers as is the Convention Center). And on the UP line, there's zero chance of freight being pushed to the wee hours anytime soon, so they'd probably have to use true heavy rail vehicles (worse, even, than the DMUs on the Leander line - i.e. they will never be able to corner).

That map showing the AUS-SA commuter rail makes me vomit in my mouth. Just terrible use of prime rail real estate.

What cities were involved in the light rail vote? Why did Austin not take on a smaller starter line w/o surrounding cities.

This anti-rail talk about RR and Krusee make me think even less of RR than I already did -what a bland, boring part of the ATX metro. If I ever hear someone from RR talk about how ugly Houston is I start rolling on the ground laughing.

Capital Metro is the transit agency - not "Austin", and CM has to let everybody that is in their service area (and thus pays taxes) vote. When I was on the UTC, I floated a resolution which would have demanded that Cap Metro provide some rail service to central Austin or explore withdrawing from CM's service area - it died for lack of a second; although a few months later I heard from commissioners who regretted their decision after further studying the craptacular plate of subsidizing-suburbia we were served up.

I'm a bit confused, I thought it was mentioned above that RR is not in CM? I'm trying to figure out how RR could have controlled the vote on light rail if they were not in CM?

"Leander (and, when light rail was being floated, Cedar Park) are in Capital Metro, while Round Rock and Georgetown weren't and aren't (Pflugerville was, until a few years ago)"

I find this interesting. My parents and others I know who live in NW Austin were a part of that light rail election.

It is my understanding from them, and that's all I can go by, that their neighborhood had been recently annexed by the City of Austin, and the majority of the taxpayers there were not happy about it at all. I have no poll to prove it, but I grew up there, and I can believe it. They have described it to me on many occasions as being forced into the city and forced to pay city taxes, but without any real increase in services. I haven't talked with them about it in a while, so those feelings may or may not have changed.

Consequently, shortly after this annexation came the 2000 light rail election. I remember seeing yard signs in that neighborhood that were anti-rail. People in general were really hot about having been annexed, and there was some real commitment to shoot down council members, light rail, and any new taxes being forced on them. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I do remember seeing the results of the light rail election in the paper, and my parents' newly annexed neighborhood had very solidly rejected it--by enough margin in fact, that it would appear that light rail would have succeeded had they not been allowed to vote.

I thought it was funny at the time. I'm not laughing about this craptacular commuter rail now, though, and I'm sure they aren't either. As lousy a value to them as light rail might have been, they would probably see it as a better value than this commuter rail, in spite of the much higher price tag of light rail.

Rob, your parents were in the Cap Metro service area already, in all likelihood (it includes portions of unincorporated Travis & Williamson). And the taxes wouldn't have gone up; and, don't get me started on bitching from suburbanites about annexation ("waaah, we can't be parasites any more").

JAM, "Round Rock" didn't do anything to light rail; but their state rep (Mike Krusee) wrote the law that kneecapped it by forcing the election in 2000; then forcing elections only in Novembers of even-numbered years (bills that apply only to Cap Metro, not to any other transit agency in the state, by the way). The obvious long-term goals were to get more money for highways (this happened) and get rail service up to Round Rock without his constituents having to pay for it (this is still possible - you guys who think this line can be expanded to better serve Austin aren't paying attention to the announced "next steps" they plan on taking if they are allowed to).

Several reasons, but the main reason is that Austin is a very provincial, inward-thinking place when it comes to urban development. What many see as a progressive idea (community-level activism and decision-making) turned out to be Austin's undoing; letting ersatz hippies with big bank accounts cry foul and NIMBY is not progressive in the slightest. In fact, it's really downright pathetic how many of Austin's central neighborhoods pretend to be progressive when what they're really trying to protect is some kind of gaussian blur bungalow nirvana of the past.

So you didn't have the central wards entirely on board with this. You had South Congress business owners whining that the construction would affect their business combined with many other neighborhood activists complaining that it would ruin their quality of life.

Combine that with a fairly disengaged college voting population and ambivalence in the suburban sectors of Austin and it's no wonder it failed. In fact, it was the very moment I realized that Austin was more suburb than city and wasn't quite ready or willing to take a step into the future. Instead, it became overstretched, oversprawled, and NOW people are wondering what the hell happened.

Light rail failed for many reasons, perhaps the biggest one being that most people felt that it would have been a Cap Metro boondoggle that would have wasted a lot of tax money. Face it, light rail would not make any noticeable dent in traffic congestion, and most people would never be riding it on a daily basis. Why would they want to vote for something so expensive that has such little value to them?

In spite of the shortcomings, I would personally vote for it today. I'm not so gullible to believe that my commute would be shorter on Mopac or 35, but I do see its benefits as far as promoting a different growth pattern along the line. I would like to see more densely populated areas that are less dependent on cars, even if it is confined to just a few corridors of the city. I would like that choice to be there someday. To me, that's what it's all about, but for others, thinking out decades is of no interest to them or their wallet. I can't really blame them.

I personally think it will take something catastrophic, some sort of a major and continued energy shortage, to make a real dent in our current patterns of growth and to make people look towards dense cities and public transportation. It will take a lot to make people say, "I want to ride that," instead of, "I hope everyone else will ride that."

I think that's one of the things that sets Austin apart from some other cities its size - namely Portland. Ask many liberal central Austinites and they'd be hard pressed to think of themselves as more conservative or inward thinking than a Portlander, but the truth of the matter is, you've got two cities of similar metropolitan size, and one has been walking the walk for 25 years. Austin's quixotic nature meant that it just shrugged and started flailing its arms when major population growth hit - and as a result, we went from being a fairly pleasant college town, to a fairly pleasant college town surrounded on three sides by a hybrid of suburban San Antonio with the employment pattern of, say, San Jose. I challenge anyone to argue that Austin's suburban landscape isn't anything but typical and average.

Portland's MAX has 100,000 daily riders. Look at Calgary, look at Minneapolis, look at cities where it's butt-clinchingly cold, and they've got excellent ridership numbers. Even Dallas isn't doing too bad for what it is - I know people who live in Richardson in mainstream suburbia who ride DART to work every day. It's possible to change things, but instead Austin turned inward instead of looked forward. It will take an entire generation to fix what's been done. And, M1EK will tell you (many times, over and over), that commuter rail is more trouble than it's worth and only a veneer when we need to have solid wood.

Commuter rail is more like starting to build a new house and discovering halfway through that you've built it out of asbestos and lead. You have to completely tear it down and start over before you can accomplish anything worthwhile - it can't be fixed; it can't be improved; it can't be extended; it can't be supplemented; it has to be eliminated first.

I'm not convinced about that. There are a few cities that I can think of that have commuter and light rail, Dallas, Chicago, London, Bay Area, I'm sure the list goes on. Light rail would be a great way to make your way around the core of Austin. Commuter rail would be a great way for folks who live in Leander to rail their way to work downtown Austin, albeit, the stop is more than 1/4 mile from many of the office buildings. I'm having trouble seeing Leander, Cedar Park or Round Rock voting for light rail in the near future, because they are so far away, it could never serve their needs, why would they want to pay for it. Central Austin is the only area dense enough to justify light rail at this point in time. Realistically, it seems Austin will need to pull light rail off all by herself. Is that possible with a starter line, or do these other cities get to vote it down anyway?

ok if i get this straight your saying commuter rail can't be expanded but light rail can? if this is correct then i agree with jam and have Austin do it its self. start with a basic route through Austin only then if that is successful then if the other cities want it and want to help pay for it expand it to those cities.

Please elaborate on how this is not a "don't build roads plan." By saying, "The city tried not to build it...," I think you are describing a don't build roads plan.

The city tried not to build a FEW of the roads (actually built most of the ones that were actually, you know, not just real-estate inducements and even some of those kind as well) AND do a bunch of other stuff.

The state built the roads anyways AND stopped all the other stuff.

The "we didn't build it (roads) and they came anyways" makes it sound like the only thing Austin did was petulantly decide not to build a few sorely needed roadways, which is the farthest thing from the truth.

Austin added more freeway lane-miles in the 1990s, I hear, than any other city of its size in the country. Those decisions were made in the 1980s.

Really? I am curious to know where that statistic comes from. Because the only major highways that were built at the time were the extension of 183, a small sliver of Mopac, and part of Ben White...

I think the major difference between the first generation and the second generation of highway building is that the 2nd generation is more speculative - building roads in the middle of farmland, connecting dots where dots were previously unconnected. At least with the 1980's and 90's freeways, it was mostly upgrading existing road...

http://monkeymuse.blogspot.com/2005/...lie-texas.html

I'm unable to come up with the right set of terms to google the exact claim, but it was being made during the light-rail election of 2000. The link above is close, though.

Phoenix easily built 3 or 4 times the freeway miles that Austin built in the 90's.

http://www.letsgetmoving.org/pdfs/mobility.pdf

Page 20.

Seems unlikely that Phoenix built "3 to 4 times the freeway" (lane-miles) that Austin did in the 1990s if they're still so far behind. Possibly you confused arterial lane-miles, for which Phoenix is always recognized as one of the leaders?

Well, maybe not Phoenix proper, but all over Maricopa County freeways (real freeways with no tolls) were being built. To name a few The Pima Freeway, was built between IH10 past Tempe and all the way up along the eastern side of Scottsdale, where it loops around to the west and goes on past IH17 and continues over to the Glendale areaand then turns south and returns to IH10 and beyond. Then there was the new freeway constructed from from central Phx north over the something (can't recall name) Peak adjacent to Paradise Valley that now goes all the way out to the Pima Fwy. That is a whole bunch of freeway miles, and there was more being built south in the southern part of the metro also. The PHX area was a lot like Austin in that it did not get around to building freeways until rather late in the game. I lived there during a lot of this construction, so I am pretty sure of my facts. I was amazed that they were able to fund so much freeway construction so rapidly, especially after moving back to Texas and seeing how hard it is to come by funds to build roads in this state.

I just checked the map and the freeways in question are the 101 loop road, AKA Pima Fwy, and the 51 Freeway. That's a lot of miles. Also the 202 FWyin the southern part of the Valley of the Sun, aka greater Phx.

M1EK- I suspect you and I are the only ones interested in this little debate, but this is what I uncovered in my online search. In 1990 Austin had 430 freeway lane miles; Phoenix had 580. In 2000 Austin had 575 freeway lane miles; Phoenix had 1030. In 2005 Austin had 585 freeway lane miles; Phoenix had 1405. Phoenix is still building FREEWAYS because they passed a special tax back in the late 80's or early 90's to fund the construction. The tax is set to expire soon and will likely be renewed.


http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/congestion_data/tables/phoenix.pdf[/url]

Intuition tells me to look at the population stats of Phoenix back in 1985-1990 time frame. They were probably experiencing congestion problems similar to what Austin had in 2001 and took action. It would make sense for them to build more freeways, because they have more people. At that time, toll roads may not have prevailed, so they passed a special tax. Fast forward to 2001 and Austin is now at approximately same population as Phoenix circa 1985-1990. However, in the state of Texas, the city of Houston has now had tremendous success with its toll road model, and Austin follows Houston, rather than the Phoenix model to get the needed roads built.

I'd need to see the definitions of the metropolitan areas to understand this - it flies in the face of the scatterplot in the other report - if Phoenix had really built that many freeway miles in a statically sized metro area, then you'd have expected their congestion to have decreased far below Austin's, would you not? It's also possible that they weren't including Phoenix in the "cities Austin's size" list back then, for either reason (too small or too big).

I wish I could remember the exact language of the claim - it would make it much simpler to settle this. Sorry; it's been way too long since then.

If anything, M1EK, this observation substantiates the invalidity of the argument that a city can build their way out of congestion. IIRC, the majority of roads built in that area per the passed Proposition were loops and spurs that facilitated growth in the far flung regions (that are now being developed).

To that end, I-10 and I-17 (if I've got those numbers right) were and are the main arteries in Phoenix, and they have not been substantially developed in the last few decades, ergo my suspicion is that the strain on those roads has increased. This is, of course, my interpretation of the situation.

I would rather have Austin use a special tax to build freeways rather than Toll Roads any day... Why can't the government here do what Phoenix did?

The Phoenix tax was basically non-drivers and urban drivers subsidizing suburban sprawl - just like what we do here, except a bit worse. Toll roads, on the other hand, actually make the people who cause all the congestion pay the bills (well, at least more of the bills than they pay today).

The gas tax would be OK IF there was a minimum funding mechanism in place like the federal gas tax has (i.e. Austin guaranteed to receive no less than 90% in spending for the taxes their drivers pay). But there isn't - urban drivers' gas taxes go to places like Round Rock and the like.

If you want sustainable urban development, tolls are a great start - they're like bus fares in that the connection is immediate to the facility/service in a way that gas taxes, and especially the non-user-fees like property and sales taxes aren't.

Dude- you are just wrong, and it would be refreshing for you to admit it for once. The Phx metro is about the same size in sq. miles as the Georgetown/Austin/San Marcos metro, maybe a bit larger. The population there has almost doubled in the past 15 years; that is why there is still so much congestion. Phx. had a long running debate leading up to the decision to go for broke and build all these freeways. The theme of that debate was that many in Phx did not want the freeways for fear of Phx becoming too much like LA. This debate raged on for years until the sprawl just overwhelmed the place and the wide fast arterials that laced valley became overloaded with traffic. This is when the Arizona legislature let Maricopa County voters have their say in creating a special tax for road construction. Maricopa County is the only county really in the Phx. metro. The result has been massive road building that has taken place along with massive population growth. C'mon, M1EK, just this once be wrong about something.

IH10 has had a lot of upgrades including new lanes, a tunnel through central Phoenix, and HOV lanes. I think IH17 is getting a lot of upgrades now. You are correct that most of the new roads with the exception of the 51 connected newer areas of the region. 51 relieved a lot of pressure on N/S traffic in the valley. Yes, traffic on IH10 and IH17 is, well, a lot like traffic in LA, but Phx is really a lot more like LA than it is Austin.

I betcha anything that if voters were given a choice, especially if they understood that the alternative was toll roads, they would vote overwhelmingly for the special tax. We have never been given that choice.

I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it until I hear a better argument, but I like toll roads. He who uses it, pays for it - I don't see what is wrong with that. People still have a choice, they can move somewhere that there is not a toll road in their way to work. Or they can also take mass transit. They can also take the side arteries that travel along side the tolls. No one is forcing them to pay the toll.

Plus it seems to keep the roads in better condition and better flowing than traditional "free" roads. I've seen the model work in Houston - it works, and it works well. You pop on a toll road, and it is amazing the condition of the vehicles on the road. In general, the vehicles seem to be reasonably maintained. So I would also argue that toll roads are safer due to better maintained vehicles on them and less congestion.

i do agree that there is no need for tolls austin can pay for the roads other ways. i have seen studies where just one extra lane on a highway can decrease traffic a good percentage. no i do not have all the number or the link but i am sure i can find one. the roads down here do not need to be maintained that much due to the fact that there are not many big temp shift like up north. up north we had to repair or replace roads every few year and we still had money to build new roads and improve existing roads. phoenix should not be compared to Austin its more like Dallas or Houston. and trying to say that tolls are a good way to pay for roads cause only the people that use them pay for the roads? that maybe somewhat true but its also true that the toll roads force you to pay for them no matter if you want to or not cause there are and will not be alternatives to taking them if watson and his cronies get their way. and have you driven on the frontage roads to the toll raods? every few miles SURPRISE you are forced on the toll road and have to pay the toll