Posted Jan 14, 2022, 3:53 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 539
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Quote:
Originally Posted by IrvineNative
The closest I've been to Austin is Dallas, so I'm not an expert, but here's my impressions of Austin:
1. Austin is proof positive that even if your city is super-NIMBY, you'll still grow gangbusters with good weather, low crime, low cost of living (relative to SF/LA), low taxes, and a strong corporate economy.
2. It's a myth that Austin has an inadequate expressway system.
Austin actually more expressway lane-miles per capita than Los Angeles and Sacramento. But when you're the fastest growing major metro area in the country, no matter how fast you build freeways, you're not going to keep up with demand.
3. Austin drivers avoid toll roads like the plague, so the toll roads end up being nearly empty while the free roads get clogged like hell.
4. People keep complaining about SH 130 being too far from Downtown to be useful. But SH 130 was literally built as a bypass, and a bypass is literally designed to go around the edge of the city. The problem with SH 130 is that tolls are too damn high, so no one uses it and instead clogs up I-35 and MoPac.
5. Lowering tolls on SH 130 to divert all thru traffic off I-35 onto SH 130 would work wonders. The Texas Transportation Institute studied that at the busiest portion of I-35, 14 percent or so of traffic is thru traffic (i.e. just passing through Austin). Now that sounds minute, but reducing car count by 14 percent would likely reduce traffic congestion by a whopping 45 percent. Because it turns out that decreasing vehicle count by 10% often reduces traffic congestion by three or even four times the factor (30-40%).
6. I have extremely high hopes for Project Connect. I believe that, after Los Angeles and Seattle, it will, hands down, have the highest ridership of any light rail system in the US once complete. Why? Because not only is Austin proper densifying like a weed, Metro Austin employment is highly concentrated in Downtown. Metro areas with the highest concentration of jobs in Downtown do the best with transit ridership.
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Good points, but DFW is the fastest growing metro in the country.
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