AUSTIN | Transportation Updates

[freerover]

Originally Posted by freerover

I assume that the segments listed in the items are 1st in line for construction.

I think I was wrong about this. I think the specific segments in council items have areas on state highways and the items just allow for a partnership between the city and TxDot so the city can work on those areas. It doesn't mean those will get worked on first.

According to city staff,

-Design work on all segments would start Thursday after council approval
-Bulk of Construction 2021-2024.
-William Cannon Reconstruction (Multimodal Improvement) scored 2nd highest in the value metric they used which is why it's listed to get funding for the design when the vast majority of multimodal improvements are completely unfunded.


http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=295112

[freerover]

Council discussed the corridor plan in the work session.....EEEK

-Kitchen wants to put the entire plan on hold until project Connect catches up in 2.5 years (that assumes a project connect bond passes in Nov 2020
-Garza wants to take money away from Riverside reconstruction and instead do William Cannon reconstruction because it scored higher on their value per mile matrix. That's because the cost is lower for William Cannon but the benefits for Riverside are much higher
-Garza and Kitchen want to take money out of areas that Project Connect will likely invest in because they'll get their own money. IIRC, both of them campaigned against Project Connect version 1 which would have highly funded 2 of the corridors. We have no idea of knowing what is going to happen with PC, if its ill go to voters and if it will pass.

-City Staff believes there is a way to leverage investments from private partners if they do the riverside reconstruction that wouldn't exist in other areas. I think that is likely connected to projects like Catalyst or potential VMUs along the corridor.

-City Staff is asking that council at least pass the items related to approving design firms so they can begin process of getting those firms on board while council debates which projects are going to be funded.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by freerover

instead do William Cannon reconstruction because it scored higher on their value per mile matrix.

That's because their scoring criteria was fundamentally broken.



Getting information on the selection process has been like pulling teeth, but there was a presentation to the council yesterday that at least had example scoring for 5 corridor segments, and showed what the scoring criteria at least were.

http://www.austintexas.gov/.../city....180320-wrk.htm

One scoring criteria is "change in delay" in minutes/person/mile.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, this would mean improving the delay by 1 minute in a corridor for 20k people would score the same as improving the delay by 1 minute in a corridor used by 5k people (hypothetically).

Similarly, another criteria is _percentage_ improvement in throughput. So again, doubling the overall throughput of a corridor used by 20k and one used by 10k would score the same here.

There's also an overall magnitude throughput improvement at least, but the two above (and other LOS measures), I'm guessing tended to favor cheaper to redevelop corridors on the fringes(even if they benefit fewer users). This could explain why the Howard segment of North Lamar bubbled up to the top in that corridor, the William Cannon scoring, etc.

[freerover]

Originally Posted by Novacek

That's because their scoring criteria was fundamentally broken.



Getting information on the selection process has been like pulling teeth, but there was a presentation to the council yesterday that at least had example scoring for 5 corridor segments, and showed what the scoring criteria at least were.

http://www.austintexas.gov/.../city....180320-wrk.htm

One scoring criteria is "change in delay" in minutes/person/mile.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, this would mean improving the delay by 1 minute in a corridor for 20k people would score the same as improving the delay by 1 minute in a corridor used by 5k people (hypothetically).

Similarly, another criteria is _percentage_ improvement in throughput. So again, doubling the overall throughput of a corridor used by 20k and one used by 10k would score the same here.

There's also an overall magnitude throughput improvement at least, but the two above (and other LOS measures), I'm guessing tended to favor cheaper to redevelop corridors on the fringes(even if they benefit fewer users). This could explain why the Howard segment of North Lamar bubbled up to the top in that corridor, the William Cannon scoring, etc.

Yea I guess they needed to emphasize the cost element because of how little money they have for the entire project. Garza campaigned against a bond that high and is now mad she isn't getting the most of that money. I'm interested to hear how doing the riverside multi-modal improvements could allow them to leverage private money for the project.

It'll be interesting to see how this all works out. It's interesting Kitchen wants to swap out the design segment of S. Lamar. Seems like staff went with the southern section because it would only require 15 mil in additional funding instead of the 40 of the northern sections so it's more likely to find money.

I hope the multimodal improvements stay on Riverside. That's where it should go based on current usage and anticipated growth especially as the VMUs expand eastward from the highway. It's a good showcase for corridor based investments.

Also,

[electricron]

Metrics for evaluation infrastructure projects are grand for planning purposes, but are not the final say on what actually gets done. The final say rests with our elected politicians who sway easily like branches in a strong wind.

And as usual, feed computers junk data you're going to get junk out.

[We vs us]

Capital Metro lays out ambitious rail and rapid bus plan for Austin

Capital Metro, once again grabbing the wheel of Central Texas’ potential transit future, revealed a long-term vision Monday that includes 11 corridors for rail service or “rapid” buses traveling on segregated lanes.
And the Capital Metro board voted unanimously Monday to ask the city of Austin to contribute up to $15 million for engineering and environmental analysis — by including that money in a probable bond election this fall — in effect, startup funding for a first round of projects early next decade.

Capital Metro, according to agency documents, believes it could kick in another $5 million for the first studies and will also ask Travis County to help pay for them. The money would be used for analysis of an initial group of highest priority projects, Capital Metro officials said. Precisely which projects won’t be decided by the agency’s board until late this year, they said.

The money from the city “is really critical to keep the ball rolling,” said Todd Hemingson, Capital Metro’s vice president of strategic planning and development.

That Capital Metro is asking the city for help at the beginning of what would be a “multigenerational investment,” in Hemingson’s words, underscoring the fundamental challenge of what the transit agency envisions. Building out the entire plan, Capital Metro officials said in a PowerPoint presentation on the draft “Project Connect” plan, would require $6 billion to $8 billion and up to 30 years.

But Capital Metro at this point has only enough money to run its bus routes and the one existing rail line, MetroRail, including a planned expansion of the commuter line — added cars, a new downtown station and siding track — and federally required signal system changes that together will cost close to $150 million.

“If we’re going to have transit in Central Texas of the scale we need, it’s going to have to be a great collaboration between our organization and cities and various other partners,” said Capital Metro board President Wade Cooper, an Austin lawyer. “We can’t do it by ourselves.”

Capital Metro is funded by a 1 percent sales tax that, while it grows over time, isn’t sufficient to make payments on billions in debt.

Rail lines

The draft plan, set for a Capital Metro board vote in June after some public meetings over the coming weeks, includes three proposed lines with “higher ridership and cost,” according to a map released at the meeting: a blue line from downtown Austin to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport along East Riverside Drive, a brown line on South Congress Avenue from downtown to Slaughter Lane and an orange line on Lavaca and Guadalupe streets and North Lamar Boulevard to far North Austin.

Would those most likely be rail lines?

“You could read that into the tea leaves,” Hemingson said.

An earlier draft of the transit plan emerged in February.

A second set of “high ridership and cost” projects would include expansion of the existing red line — MetroRail — as well as a purple line along Manor Road to the Travis County Exposition Center and a yellow line from downtown to Oak Hill along South Lamar Boulevard and U.S. 290.

The third category — “medium ridership and cost” — includes only a gold line that would go from downtown to the Austin Community College Highland campus.

A fourth set of “developing corridors” includes service from downtown to Manor, an east-west line in Austin’s core, service along South Pleasant Valley Road to the McKinney Falls area and on East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard from downtown to Decker Lane.

A familiar script

Randy Clarke, entering his fourth week as Capital Metro president and CEO, shied away from saying which of those corridors — the existing MetroRail aside — would have rail or some form of rapid bus service.

“Instead of worry about the specific type of wheel, whether it is steel or rubber,” Clarke said, the point is to decide where a much larger Austin in 20 years will need some way of moving large numbers of people quickly. That could include the option, somewhat cheaper than light rail, of putting buses in their own dedicated lanes to avoid the congestion enveloping the rest of the vehicle traffic stream.

Capital Metro, which began crafting the Project Connect plan two years ago, is following a familiar script in the transit industry. Other cities — and Austin during two previous, unsuccessful attempts to build light rail — have laid out a larger regional transit plan before introducing specifics of initial projects and cobbling together money to build them. The idea is that voters might approve an initial expenditure in other parts of a metro area, knowing that another line will eventually reach them.

Capital Metro in 2000 had a 52-mile system in mind when it put light rail before voters. That referendum lost by fewer than 2,000 voters. Then the city of Austin in 2007 took charge with what became an earlier version of Project Connect.

That led to the failed light rail election in 2014.

“We don’t have to build everything to own everything,” Clarke told the board. “But I think we should be the mobility manager for the region.”

https://www.statesman.com/news/trans...qGNBSYno7lqwO/

[papertowelroll]

I like seeing some ambitious plans, personally. The opposite approach used on the red line was largely a failure in my eyes. (Yes, we got a train, but it is a mostly useless one that was nonetheless quite expensive.)

Let's get a real proposal on the table that actually gets people excited, and if it fails again so be it.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by papertowelroll

Yes, we got a train, but it is a mostly useless one that was nonetheless quite expensive.

Getting a train is an accomplishment, and more than has been accomplished here yet. There is serious question about the funding, for the first steps much less $8B.

The Red Line is neither useless nor expensive. In terms capital cost /rider, it outperforms these light rail proposals. In terms of passenger miles, even more so.

Yes, it's small, and I wish it hadn't taken 10 years to see the first expansions. But remember, literally _any_ bigger, and CapMetro would have gone bankrupt before finishing it.


I'd love to have this system map. I just don't see how it can be accomplished however. Not with
1) Austin's electorate
2) A state that doesn't fund transit
3) An age of reduced federal support of transit.

[We vs us]

Originally Posted by Novacek

G
I'd love to have this system map. I just don't see how it can be accomplished however. Not with
1) Austin's electorate
2) A state that doesn't fund transit
3) An age of reduced federal support of transit.

I agree with you. But am glad to see at least a segment of local government trying to set down ambitious markers for transit. Need more of this stuff, even if it overshoots reality a bit.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Novacek

Why the Anderson Lane alignment (as shown in previous slides) is better:

1) Just from the slides we can't really tell the cross section of a 183 route, whether it's underneath 183 or one track on each side or both tracks to the north of 183. But I think I can conclusively state that any one of those is not really conducive to a true urban fabric.

In any of those permutations, you severely limit the walking shed and access to the stations. If they're truly proposing putting a station at 183 and Northgate (which is what I think that word in the slide is), then 180 of the station perimeter is blocked by this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.3684...7i13312!8i6656


Running it along 183 (or perhaps even worse, trying to wind it through the neighborhood north of that somehow) is basically the exact opposite of what they've said they did in the 2025 plan, that transit should run along the Imagine Austin/Mixed Use Corridors.

Anderson Lane is a Imagine Austin corridor. Burnet Road south of 183 is a Imagine Austin corridor. 183 is not.

2) By spurring off at an acute angle (if they're following 183), they're actually duplicating a lot of their coverage. NACA would have routes on 3 sides, while Wooten would have 1 (if you can accessibly cross 183) while North Shoal Creek would have none. They may feel the (current) demographics of NACA are more conducive to high ridership, but there's no guarantee that lasts.

Now, I'm in Wooten, so I'm biased . But reaching new areas rather than duplicating seems better even from an unbiased system planning perspective.

3) As mentioned, Anderson is an Imagine Austin corridor. But by reaching the Anderson/Burnet intersection, you also provide (some level of) service to the Northcross IA center. You also better provide service to the Crossroads area (183 and Burnet, s of the intersection). This isn't a named center in IA, but the IA map does seem to group that slice south of 183 with the NBG regional center.

4) There's room for it. Anderson Lane is a 4(5) lane road. I'm not sure of the exact RoW width, but that section of Anderson has a daily traffic count of about 20k. You should be able to take a lane each way, especially since some of that traffic will now be riding. Some today is also probably cut-through traffic that could instead that burnet/183 and would reroute.
While Burnet north of Anderson (if I'm remembering the Burnet corridor plan study) actually has a really wide 135' RoW, enough for the existing 4/5 lanes plus transit lanes.


Anyway, those are my arguments, and I hope to convince CM with them. Maybe I've convinced a few of you, and you'll join me.

CapMetro has put up a page for feedback on the plan.

Looks like the "Domain Spur" (mostly) follows 183 for now. I'm going to continue to argue for an Anderson/Burnet alignment (for the reasons I list above).

https://www.capmetroengage.org/en/provide-input

Hint, hint

[freerover]

Originally Posted by Novacek

CapMetro has put up a page for feedback on the plan.

Looks like the "Domain Spur" (mostly) follows 183 for now. I'm going to continue to argue for an Anderson/Burnet alignment (for the reasons I list above).

https://www.capmetroengage.org/en/provide-input

Hint, hint

I think I saw that m1ek guy complaining about you on Twitter. Small Internet.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Novacek

I'd love to have this system map. I just don't see how it can be accomplished however. Not with
1) Austin's electorate
2) A state that doesn't fund transit
3) An age of reduced federal support of transit.

I'm going to revise my previous statements. There may be a chance to get at least _some_ of this sort of system up and running If and only If :


CTRMA steps up and starts funding transit with their surplus.


From their most recent meeting (around page 27 and thereabouts)

https://www.mobilityauthority.com/up...esentation.pdf

In 10 years time CTRMA is projecting ~150M annual surpluses. Now, I expect they'll take on further projects, but presumably those projects will also generate further revenues.

Even part of that pot, bonded out, could put a dent in this huge price tag.

[ATXboom]

Originally Posted by Novacek

CapMetro has put up a page for feedback on the plan.

Looks like the "Domain Spur" (mostly) follows 183 for now. I'm going to continue to argue for an Anderson/Burnet alignment (for the reasons I list above).

https://www.capmetroengage.org/en/provide-input

Hint, hint

I'm all over the survey. Thanks for sharing!

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Novacek

The city posted some more details about cost estimates for the corridor work.

http://austintexas.gov/sites/default...ns20180216.pdf

It's not as fine grained as I was hoping for (how much does this intersection that was selected cost, vs. that intersection that wasn't selected). But it's something to read and discuss.

The estimate for Guadalupe seems really off to me. They estimate that the transit lanes for Guadalupe were going to cost $45M. Or 45M /mile. That's in addition to $20M for all the stuff on Nueces that was selected.

While CapMetro claims they can do _elevated_ Gold Class true-BRT for $50M /mile.

Someone is massively off.

Edit: Different compare. That's what, twice as expensive per mile as the Mopac toll lane, which added lanes and sound walls.

More details on this.

From the presentation from the traffic Jam (no link handy) CapMetro says they can do transit priority lanes on the drag for ~2M.

The city says it will cost $45M.


I know who I believe.

[freerover]

Originally Posted by Novacek

More details on this.

From the presentation from the traffic Jam (no link handy) CapMetro says they can do transit priority lanes on the drag for ~2M.

The city says it will cost $45M.


I know who I believe.

CapMetro also recommended AGAINST transit lanes for the drag in their short term benefits proposal.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Novacek

More details on this.

From the presentation from the traffic Jam (no link handy) CapMetro says they can do transit priority lanes on the drag for ~2M.

The city says it will cost $45M.


I know who I believe.

Link (with an overload of info)

https://www.capmetro.org/resources/#phase2

[freerover]

New draft of projects for next round of CAMPO TIP funding. They include grade separation for Red Line at Lamar as well as a study of the abandoned rail corridor that goes from the MOPAC line to the airport just south of 71. I guess the use would be to connect the South Congress Transit center to the airport via a commuter train. Cap Metro tried to get funding for the extension of their stations but they didn't. I don't think that is a total loss both the Kramer station and Highland station are eventually going to be relocated.

I'm a little unsure as to how they are going to grade separate at Lamar when the station is so close by. Also, how are they going to keep the train running while they build the bridge?


https://47kzwj6dn1447gy9z7do16an-wpe...port-Draft.pdf

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by freerover

I guess the use would be to connect the South Congress Transit center to the airport via a commuter train.

That seems unlikely. It's way to short to make it a worthwhile commuter line. It doesn't connect to the rest of the system, so you'd need a duplicate maintenance facility, etc.


I think the study would probably focus on either a light rail spur (if/when) SoCo gets a light rail, or for usage as a trail.


Found a story on it:

http://cbsaustin.com/news/local/trai...proposed-study

Originally Posted by freerover

I'm a little unsure as to how they are going to grade separate at Lamar when the station is so close by. Also, how are they going to keep the train running while they build the bridge?

I've seen multiple options described, one would be to depress the traffic lanes under the existing rail grade. That would simplify the station, but has its own issues.
I've also seen an option described for building an overpass for the rail. For that one, it indicated it would be for the DMUs only, and that the freight would continue to pass at-grade. If so, while they're building, the red line continues to run in the freight alignment.

[freerover]

Originally Posted by Novacek

That seems unlikely. It's way to short to make it a worthwhile commuter line. It doesn't connect to the rest of the system, so you'd need a duplicate maintenance facility, etc.


I think the study would probably focus on either a light rail spur (if/when) SoCo gets a light rail, or for usage as a trail.


Found a story on it:

http://cbsaustin.com/news/local/trai...proposed-study

Great point about the lack of a link to the commuter maintenance facility. Development into a trail makes the most sense.

Originally Posted by Novacek

I've seen multiple options described, one would be to depress the traffic lanes under the existing rail grade. That would simplify the station, but has its own issues.
I've also seen an option described for building an overpass for the rail. For that one, it indicated it would be for the DMUs only, and that the freight would continue to pass at-grade. If so, while they're building, the red line continues to run in the freight alignment.

The overpass for the rail seems problematic because of the extreme grade required to get it from the crest view station to a height suitable for traffic to pass underneath especially if the goal is to run combined trains once the stations have been enlongaged but I have no idea of the abilities of the trains when it comes to slopes. Another possibility is a raised station at Crestview but you're talking a lot of $$$.

Is the money just for the engineering or does it include the construction?

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by freerover

Is the money just for the engineering or does it include the construction?

just PE (preliminary engineering).


I've seen numbers of ~$50M.

And that seems to be about the number for the crestview intersection High Option here: https://www.capmetro.org/uploadedFil...ook_032818.pdf