AUSTIN | Transportation Updates

[gillynova]

Originally Posted by urbancore

Thanks for posting this. What a great video. Impressive research that most Austinites (even natives) are unaware of.

I whole heartedly agree with most of his opinions and his overall take that Austin (as a city) is objectively better in many ways than it was at ANY point.

...

I had the SAME sentiments! He seriously did an AMAZING job researching, going to places and filming places. I was honestly amazed. Definitely my favorite urbanist channel on YouTube and I look forward to seeing all his videos of other cities!

--

Also, I'm looking forward to the Tesla robotaxi! I saw it in person when I went back home in the Bay and it looked gorgeous

[urbancore]

Originally Posted by urbancore

I predict rail will be dead in 30 years. Fleets of autonomous cars will rule the roads. We will subscribe to our transportation provider of choice (Google, Uber, Apple, Tesla- who I understand are currently working in conjunction with auto makers to design fleets of cheap "auto cars") fixed rail does not make sense when you can pull an app on your phone and have a car pick you up in 3 minutes. No insurance, no gas bill, no car payments, no commute to a train terminal, no increased taxes. the list goes on and on.

The transportation world is about to completely change.....quick talking about 19th century options and start looking towards the future.

I'd like to update my prediction from 10 years ago.

"New" rail in Austin will NEVER happen. Project Connect missed the window. It will drag out a long slow death, as the grifters sponge the last of the $ we appropriated.

Autonomous cars are here and they will quickly (within a few years) transform commuting and mass transit. People under 30 will adopt the new lifestyle, that will yield benefits we haven't even thought of....(send your car to run errands for you, while you sleep perhaps?) Will there be some issues, sure, some of them may even be tragic. But it won't be worse than the current situation of letting everyone who can fog a mirror on the road. Next time you get a chance, watch cars go by and count the number of drivers looking at their phones.

As an urbanite, I can't wait.

I will gladly wait another 10 years for the "you were right" comments. Sometimes you have to "take" credit.

[clayton_rogue]

Originally Posted by urbancore

I'd like to update my prediction from 10 years ago.

"New" rail in Austin will NEVER happen. Project Connect missed the window. It will drag out a long slow death, as the grifters sponge the last of the $ we appropriated.

Autonomous cars are here and they will quickly (within a few years) transform commuting and mass transit. People under 30 will adopt the new lifestyle, that will yield benefits we haven't even thought of....(send your car to run errands for you, while you sleep perhaps?) Will there be some issues, sure, some of them may even be tragic. But it won't be worse than the current situation of letting everyone who can fog a mirror on the road. Next time you get a chance, watch cars go by and count the number of drivers looking at their phones.

As an urbanite, I can't wait.

I will gladly wait another 10 years for the "you were right" comments. Sometimes you have to "take" credit.

I supported / voted for the new rail system and still "hope" it happens. However, I think you have a good point urbancore. With Tesla piloting their autonomous cars here this Summer, I think this could be a real possibility (depending of course on how the public reacts/adopts their new business model). As much as I would hate the new rail project to encounter a slow death-spiral due to fading public support, it's a real possibility. Time will tell.

[chinchaaa]

Originally Posted by clayton_rogue

I supported / voted for the new rail system and still "hope" it happens. However, I think you have a good point urbancore. With Tesla piloting their autonomous cars here this Summer, I think this could be a real possibility (depending of course on how the public reacts/adopts their new business model). As much as I would hate the new rail project to encounter a slow death-spiral due to fading public support, it's a real possibility. Time will tell.

Tesla's "self-driving" taxis are a joke. We'll see if they even make it to the road on June 12th like they said. All of the tests have engineers in the car, so they are still LEAGUES behind Waymo, which is already doing hundreds of rides every single day. Tesla gets zero credit for any of this until they prove they are capable of actually delivering something to spec and on time.

[Riverranchdrone]

While things like UBER and LYFT helped. They got greedy and now it costs too much to use and the drivers no longer get a good cut. I see the self driving vehicles going the same route. They are just cutting out the driver part. The high costs and greed is still there. We will get another rail line but it will be streamed down to one new route versus the Red Line that we have now. But it will still be more affordable then any of these single vehicles/taxis. It is a step in the right direction just not the decorated cake we were planning on.

[wwmiv]

From a cost perspective (when costs are normal/reasonable and markets operating properly), in areas with high population density***, a thoughtfully* designed rail system will always outperform automated personal (or shared) vehicles.

Why? Because they are financed, maintained, and used en masse and on specific routes. They can simply carry more people at higher frequency at a lower price point when summing both collective and individual investments in transit. Automated vehicles will not replace rail unless the price point of rail becomes obscene because the market is not operating on free-market competition principles.**

Automated cars will beat rail IFF:

*system design and routes are not thoughtful—thoughtful means that the routes go where people live and work with as few transfers as possible.
**cost of rail is too high to compete with automated personal/shared vehicles due to a contractor bidding market that does not exhibit free-market competition principles.
***density of the broad inner swath of most major cities remains below ~10k ppsm.

As it stands, rail is losing the battle not because it is the inferior option but because government policy at all levels continues to inherently choose vehicles over rail by:

*designing un-thoughtful rail systems that are doomed to failure because they can’t and will never generate ridership.
**structuring a contractor market and bidding process that artificially reduces competition (and thereby artificially increasing cost).
***incentivizing peripheral development at low densities vis-a-vis infill development

A note: * and *** are getting better as time goes on, whereas ** seems to be getting worse: consolidations, mergers, etc. in the contractor industry have significantly reduced the number of realistic bidders on these projects.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by urbancore

Autonomous cars are here and they will quickly (within a few years) transform commuting and mass transit.

Transform it to an unbearable gridlock?

Where are all these autonomous cars going to drive?

The population of the metro is going to double. It's going to take billions of dollars and years to add a couple lanes to I35 (it'll likely end up costing more than the train, since TxDot hasn't updated their cost estimates since Covid).

At that point, where is the road capacity going to be added?

[Lobotomizer]

Originally Posted by urbancore

I'd like to update my prediction from 10 years ago.

"New" rail in Austin will NEVER happen. Project Connect missed the window. It will drag out a long slow death, as the grifters sponge the last of the $ we appropriated.

Autonomous cars are here and they will quickly (within a few years) transform commuting and mass transit. People under 30 will adopt the new lifestyle, that will yield benefits we haven't even thought of....(send your car to run errands for you, while you sleep perhaps?) Will there be some issues, sure, some of them may even be tragic. But it won't be worse than the current situation of letting everyone who can fog a mirror on the road. Next time you get a chance, watch cars go by and count the number of drivers looking at their phones.

As an urbanite, I can't wait.

I will gladly wait another 10 years for the "you were right" comments. Sometimes you have to "take" credit.

Nope. Voters didn't allocate an amount of dollars to fund Project Connect. They voted for and approved a permanent property tax increase to fund the building, operation, and maintenance in perpetuity. Between the massive dollar amount generated annually by the tax increase, and the bonds that can be issued with said money backing them Project Connect is 100% moving forward. The lege ain't stopping it, and neither will any frivolous lawsuits filed by disgruntled citizens. The will of the Austin electorate will be done.

[freerover]

Originally Posted by urbancore

I'd like to update my prediction from 10 years ago.

"New" rail in Austin will NEVER happen. Project Connect missed the window. It will drag out a long slow death, as the grifters sponge the last of the $ we appropriated.

Autonomous cars are here and they will quickly (within a few years) transform commuting and mass transit. People under 30 will adopt the new lifestyle, that will yield benefits we haven't even thought of....(send your car to run errands for you, while you sleep perhaps?) Will there be some issues, sure, some of them may even be tragic. But it won't be worse than the current situation of letting everyone who can fog a mirror on the road. Next time you get a chance, watch cars go by and count the number of drivers looking at their phones.

As an urbanite, I can't wait.

I will gladly wait another 10 years for the "you were right" comments. Sometimes you have to "take" credit.

Explain exactly how 500,000 people driving their own cars is different than 500,000 people inside 500,000 autonomous cars driving around. It's a problem of geometry. A robot car doesn't solve traffic.

[lonewolf]

i've always wondered why the AV revolution gets so little attention on this site. (on second thought not really lol) it's not an "if" thing, it's a "when" thing. and that when is ~10 years away.

when autonomous vehicles account for 20-30% of riders we will start to see major impact on traffic.

going to reshape infrastructure on major level.

50/50 on whether or not project connect happens. who knows. what isn't 50/50 is the fact that what gets built this go around is all that's gonna get built.

[lonewolf]

Originally Posted by freerover

Explain exactly how 500,000 people driving their own cars is different than 500,000 people inside 500,000 autonomous cars driving around. It's a problem of geometry. A robot car doesn't solve traffic.

AVs are much, much better drivers than humans. when you scale both sides up to 500k the difference goes from massive to astronomical.

AVs will shift virtually all "long haul" traffic to night time.

Will enable platooning. Right now on interstate you're 15-20' behind car in fron of you. same for behind you. that's 30-40' of unused space for just 3 cars. that will be reduced by 90%.

destinations are pre preprogrammed with AVs. you're not communicating with other drivers using your blinker. all cars in you vicinity know your route and exit miles before you make it.

accidents will be reduced 90%.

interstate traffic will be reduced in a major way with 20-30% AV adoption.
urban traffic will require much more than that. probably double.

intersections and street light will become "smart" in the next decade. rideshares are projected to go way up.

i could go on but i'm sure you get the gist

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

From a cost perspective (when costs are normal/reasonable and markets operating properly), in areas with high population density***, a thoughtfully* designed rail system will always outperform automated personal (or shared) vehicles.

Why? Because they are financed, maintained, and used en masse and on specific routes. They can simply carry more people at higher frequency at a lower price point when summing both collective and individual investments in transit. Automated vehicles will not replace rail unless the price point of rail becomes obscene because the market is not operating on free-market competition principles.**

Automated cars will beat rail IFF:

*system design and routes are not thoughtful—thoughtful means that the routes go where people live and work with as few transfers as possible.
**cost of rail is too high to compete with automated personal/shared vehicles due to a contractor bidding market that does not exhibit free-market competition principles.
***density of the broad inner swath of most major cities remains below ~10k ppsm.

As it stands, rail is losing the battle not because it is the inferior option but because government policy at all levels continues to inherently choose vehicles over rail by:

*designing un-thoughtful rail systems that are doomed to failure because they can’t and will never generate ridership.
**structuring a contractor market and bidding process that artificially reduces competition (and thereby artificially increasing cost).
***incentivizing peripheral development at low densities vis-a-vis infill development

A note: * and *** are getting better as time goes on, whereas ** seems to be getting worse: consolidations, mergers, etc. in the contractor industry have significantly reduced the number of realistic bidders on these projects.

… by all means, ignore me.

[Enghum]

Originally Posted by lonewolf

AVs are much, much better drivers than humans. when you scale both sides up to 500k the difference goes from massive to astronomical.

AVs will shift virtually all "long haul" traffic to night time.

Will enable platooning. Right now on interstate you're 15-20' behind car in fron of you. same for behind you. that's 30-40' of unused space for just 3 cars. that will be reduced by 90%.

destinations are pre preprogrammed with AVs. you're not communicating with other drivers using your blinker. all cars in you vicinity know your route and exit miles before you make it.

accidents will be reduced 90%.

interstate traffic will be reduced in a major way with 20-30% AV adoption.
urban traffic will require much more than that. probably double.

intersections and street light will become "smart" in the next decade. rideshares are projected to go way up.

i could go on but i'm sure you get the gist

Lots of assumptions that we're going to be banning non autonomous traffic in order to make room for more efficient autonomous vehicles. Essentially you're advocating for the removal of the drivers license privilege from just about everyone. You can't have laws that apply to one set of vehicles and other laws for other vehicles. Generally our streets are safe because there is a set of rules and expectations that we all share. When those are violated accidents are more likely to occur.

What I've been seeing is that autonomous vehicles work but are more cautious than standard drivers. There's also a lot of rule bending that drivers do on a day to day basis that autonomous vehicles will not be doing. On that busy right turn in your commute where you see people not quite stopping at the sign/light, following a vehicle too closely, or even cutting through the gas station parking lot what do you think the autonomous vehicle is doing instead? We may find that with autonomous vehicles mixed with regular traffic is that throughput on lanes is actually lower.

Another concern with increased rideshare is drop off and pick up. For those parking garages downtown you see the stream of cars at 9 am and 5 pm entering/exiting. Now imagine the pickup and drop off situation at the curb if even 20% of those cars stop a lane of traffic and then stack up looking for their pick up? Every tower sidewalk is going to look like the airport arrivals lane. Definitely some opportunity to reuse garage infrastructure for pickup/dropoff but lets not pretend that's more efficient from a traffic perspective.

I've also done some work with street light construction and management. No one is touching those to work with autonomous vehicles or smart grid in the next 10 years. It's basically a massive undertaking just for a little bit of bus line prioritization.

Autonomous vehicles are kind of like most recent economic developments. The majority of the benefits are shared by the top 20% of society while the costs are shared by the majority. I'm not likely to own an autonomous vehicles for a decade or two more but my car insurance cost will have to take into account that on the road there are cars with an extra $20,000 worth of sensors packed onto their bumpers.

[ILUVSAT]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

… by all means, ignore me.

100% agree with your assessment. I'm not ignoring you.

I think I read somewhere that the fare cost of riding in AV's was 5x - 10x that of light rail (in most cases and traveling to and from the same two points).

[Lobotomizer]

Originally Posted by ILUVSAT

100% agree with your assessment. I'm not ignoring you.

I think I read somewhere that the fare cost of riding in AV's was 5x - 10x that of light rail (in most cases and traveling to and from the same two points).

Valid point.

Dense, walkable, mixed-use, nodes connected by high quality transit is infinitely more cost effective in terms of dollars and society as a whole than auto oriented sprawl both for the individual and government.

Electric vehicles will not solve this issue whatsoever.

[drummer]

For what it's worth, I was at Central Market on Lamar yesterday and got stuck behind a Waymo that seemed stuck thinking a passenger was exiting its vehicle. It was in one of the main lanes of the parking lot with just a tiny bit of room for a handful of us to squeeze around. It was there in that spot for about 45 minutes (I saw it from the outdoor patio) and folks were doing the same thing.

I'm excited about autonomous vehicles for a lot of reasons, but it's not a solution to mitigating traffic for an exponentially growing population in and of itself. It's part of a much larger, multi-faceted solution, sure, but it won't take cars off the road, to others' point...and they've got a lot of bugs to work out.

[gillynova]

Airport from the South Terminal:

[ATX2030]

CapMetro's Red Line Station near the Domain is back on track, but now double the price

KUT 90.5 | By Nathan Bernier
Published May 15, 2025 at 5:03 AM CDT

https://www.kut.org/transportation/2025-05-15/austin-texas-capmetro-broadmoor-station-domain

Three years after a groundbreaking ceremony that led to no actual construction, Capital Metro is putting plans back on track to build a new commuter rail station near the Domain. But the project's price tag has ballooned, and the transit agency will pay more than triple what it had originally planned.

Broadmoor Station was originally expected to cost $24 million, split evenly between CapMetro and Brandywine Realty Trust, the developer of the massive Uptown ATX mixed-use development where the station will be located.

But after pandemic-related delays and rising construction costs, the total cost has climbed to $49.3 million. CapMetro is covering the increase, with its share jumping from $12 million to $37.3 million. Brandywine's contribution remains capped at the original $12 million commitment.

The station will be embedded in the 66-acre Uptown ATX development, within walking distance of restaurants, bars and shopping. The Domain's Rock Rose entertainment district is about a half-mile away. CapMetro expects the Broadmoor Station will be the second busiest stop on the Red Line after Downtown Station, according to pre-COVID forecasts.

CapMetro staff say the revised deal reflects post-COVID realities of a deal negotiated before the pandemic hit.

"As with most construction, costs have escalated significantly post-pandemic," CapMetro's Chief of Staff Cheyenne Conyer explained to the transit agency's board of directors in an email this month. "Additionally, Brandywine approached CapMetro to renegotiate the terms of the original agreement as their post-pandemic financial picture solidified."

The delay was tied in part to the broader slowdown in commercial development during the pandemic, which stalled Uptown ATX and delayed permitting. CapMetro's operations committee approved the revised agreement last week, with a full board vote expected Monday.

Construction is now set to begin this winter with Broadmoor Station opening by late 2027. It will replace the nearby Kramer Station, which will be decommissioned once Broadmoor is up and running. Broadmoor and the $60 million McKalla Station at Q2 Stadium just south of Kramer are part of the Project Connect transit expansion funded by a property tax increase approved by voters in 2020.

Brandywine will manage construction and be paid a 5% fee, capped at $2.25 million. It will provide more than 200 shared parking spaces for Red Line riders for at least three years. As part of the renegotiated deal, the park-and-ride could be extended by two years if the spaces are still available.

Five nearby landowners donated property for the project valued at about $20 million.

CapMetro board member Eric Stratton acknowledged some concerns about cost but defended the project.

"The two biggest things I hear from folks in Williamson County, my neck of the woods, 'If that train could just get us two places: the airport and the Domain,'" Stratton said at a meeting last week. "I can't get you to the airport, folks, but I can sure work to get you to the Domain on this train."

[ATX2030]

Originally Posted by chinchaaa

Tesla's "self-driving" taxis are a joke. We'll see if they even make it to the road on June 12th like they said. All of the tests have engineers in the car, so they are still LEAGUES behind Waymo, which is already doing hundreds of rides every single day. Tesla gets zero credit for any of this until they prove they are capable of actually delivering something to spec and on time.

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/robotaxi-stopped-for-no-reason-itll-move-again-soon/

Went to a UT baseball game a few weeks, Friday regional game, and a Waymo caused a huge traffic nightmare. For some reason it decided to stop and block the only entrance into the parking garage! Talk about some livid fans!

[gillynova]

Yeah, some Waymo's still act up. I saw 2 Waymo's facing each other at Loro and none would budge to go to the side of each other until one finally backed up and the other went to the side. It was funny to see