To all Prop 1 opposers (Austin, Earth: tax, to live, professionals)

[scm53]

Originally Posted by Austinite101

I honestly wonder how much support a subway would get with Austinites. Although a reasonable route would be vastly more expensive and I doubt council would ever go for it, I actually do think it might do better at the polls because it wouldn't occupy existing lanes and there's a certain fascination factor that might entice more voters outside the core.

Recent subway costs in the US have ranged from .5 to .9B/mi - meaning the 9 miles proposed would have come in at 500M at a minimum. That would have raised the Austin homeowner's property tax from $300 to over $1,200/yr. in the council districts west of Mopac. There were multiple reasons this lost - but one of them is that the overlapping tax entities have exhausted the taxpayer.

"Fascination" is a great thing. It isn't worth $25,000 (over the life of the bonds) for just one project. Would lose by worse than 16%.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by AuburnAL

Yes! Why doesn't that train start running two or three hours before game time for Texas home games? And not just that, but any event when you can easily predict you'd have tens of thousands of people trying to go downtown on a Saturday. These are events where you know the train can be packed if they'd just run the thing. Instead the train doesn't run on Saturdays until 4:30 which misses two of the three most common kickoff times for college football.

They do run it early for special events (SxSW, ACL, Pecan Street, etc.). But not for games, because the train doesn't go to the stadium. It wouldn't get all that much extra ridership.

[LI2Texas]

Originally Posted by atxcio

Agreed, at least partly. I do think there is support for rail -- and I do believe that many people who voted against this proposal would have voted for rail in another form. I don't think this rail plan would have done "nothing", but I do think it was far from adequately addressing any of the transit woes of this city. The reasons this failed were not because it was rail, or even the pricetag alone. It failed because the starter route was not good, and the path to a complete transit system was not at all well defined. This was known to the planners for a long time, it was told to them repeatedly by the public and many urban transit activists. First and foremost, when you ask the public to fund something you have to show them value. Whatever the positive arguments for this particular route were, it was destined to fail if it couldn't show any benefit to the majority of voters.

The fact that rather than addressing the core problem, they chose to tie in road spending as a hostage and revert to scare tactics ("ignore the flaws -- if we don't pass this we're doomed forever") just strengthened the belief by the public that this was a really bad plan. It ended looking like an acknowledgement of what everyone suspected.

I do hope that a new council and new mayor will reach out to some of the transit supporters who opposed this plan, learn from this mistake and come up with a better plan. I actually don't think it will be long before another proposal comes up -- there is no way the new council will ignore the traffic issue. Remember that after the 2000 rail proposal was defeated, the red line vote came only a few years later in 2004. Of course, the red line itself (and the master plan they proposed then -- All Systems Go") then set us back 10 more years. It was very hard to put up a new proposal in 2008 or 2010, when the Red Line was suffering delays. Then after it finally opened, the ridership was too low for another rail proposal to stand a chance for another 4 years.

Honestly, when I'm stuck on Mopac tomorrow, I'll feel a lot better because I'm not going to have my already high property taxes skyrocket for a rail system that won't help Mopac traffic at all. And I'll be happy that a poorly designed plan wasn't rewarded with $1.3B of our tax money.

Well put, and this is my sentiment exactly.

[Roadking2003]

Originally Posted by scm53

The number is known. $1.25 to $1.91B, to improve 35 from Round Rock to Buda. Or roughly the same price as nine miles of rail. In comparison, seems pretty reasonable. And much more effective in improving mobility throughout the metro.

Exactly! And usage would far exceed any rail ridership. And you could offset some of the cost by making some of the lanes express toll. People would gladly pay a toll to get on an express lane north of Austin with no downtown exits or entrances and get off around Hwy 71..

[cBach]

Originally Posted by Roadking2003

Exactly! And usage would far exceed any rail ridership. And you could offset some of the cost by making some of the lanes express toll. People would gladly pay a toll to get on an express lane north of Austin with no downtown exits or entrances and get off around Hwy 71..

But who's going to pay for it?

[scm53]

Originally Posted by cBach

But who's going to pay for it?

Potential funding sources are discussed starting on page 67 of the link. And you can add increased funding from state Prop 1, approved by the voters Tursday.

Judged by the amount of Interstate highway construction going on in metros across the state, it isn't a lack of funding that is the issue in improving 35 in Travis county.

[Austinite101]

Deleted*

[austin-steve]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

I live in SW Austin, and while I will not benefit from SW45 (in fact, it might slightly negatively impact me), I can see the utility to the region at large and benefits that greatly outweigh the negatives. It isn't exactly a common topic of conversation, but when it does come up, I don't know of any of my neighbors that oppose it. Most either support it or are neutral. The 'large' community (imho) is more a 'loud' community and does not necessarily represent most of the general population in the area.

I live in SW Austin now also. My precinct 366 voted down the rail by 69% Against, 31% For. I'm in Villages at Western Oaks. Prct 367 just south of me, including part of CC was 74% Against.

I can't imagine all those same people would also be against SH 45. There would have to be a big disconnect in logic. I was against the rail plan because it doesn't help with local or regional traffic problems. SH 45 does.

Though I guess it's possible to be against everything and not want to do anything and just let traffic keep getting worse. So I could be wrong. That's how we got into this mess in fact.

Steve

[Tralfaz]

Originally Posted by verybadgnome

It's not just this urban rail proposal being shot that has got me so pessimistic. It is the huge number of people, especially native Texans, that are opposed to mass transit in general despite having a thimbleful of knowledge/experience on the subject. Case in point is a friend who just visited DC for the first time being amazed at how useful and efficient the subway there is, to the point of not needing a rental car. This proposal would not have provided that type of system, but was another phase in the process to providing alternatives to one person per vehicle mostly idling.

I have >20 years experience with urban public transit, and its costs. I'm much happier driving and riding myself 30 minutes each day than paying more in terms of time and ticket costs.

I wouldn't call a projected 14k riders a day for the rail component nothing either.

I'd call it pretty damn close to nothing, and it's certainly nowhere close to paying off the actual costs of the project.

I'd rather see electric buses and express lanes for them (and motorcyclists and EVs) than sink a bunch of money into an inflexible, expensive, and eminent-domainy bunch of right-of-way, rail, and rolling stock. Heck, an automated elevated monorail makes more sense, at least Vancouver has one of those (sans the mono part) that seems to work OK from my times visiting as a tourist.

[DCtoTejas]

Originally Posted by Tralfaz

I have >20 years experience with urban public transit, and its costs. I'm much happier driving and riding myself 30 minutes each day than paying more in terms of time and ticket costs.

This. I keep seeing the DC metro trotted out as an exemplary system. I will speak to this because I have a lot of direct experience riding it both for fun and as a commuter for multiple year stretches and it is a lot different riding as a commuter everyday than a visitor or occasional rider. My door to door transit time was always higher riding the metro to work than for driving, by at least 100%. Sometimes it was more relaxing than driving, but mostly not due to extreme lack of personal space - the trains, platforms and stations are extremely crowded and most of the riding time will be spent standing unless you are getting on at the end of the line. They also decided to cut air conditioning in the stations in summer as a cost reduction, that was fun while wearing a shirt and tie. For one job I had it was marginally more cost effective because the job location did not provide parking. Marginally means 2 dollars cheaper compared to driving and paying for parking. For the other job I had when I used Metro as a commuter it was much cheaper to drive, because parking was available at the destination.

For fun, going downtown to the mall, baseball games etc it is pretty nice to have. Other than getting stranded on the weekend because the metro closes way sooner than most of the nightlife it is a great alternative to driving and parking, because the getting to work on time pressure is gone and the system is much less crowded.

I'm not opposed to rail, in fact I think regional rail can be helpful and would like to see the LSTAR happen. But this trolley proposal was not going to do anything but drastically raise taxes and be a boon to the development interests behind the highland mall projects. Austin does not really have dense enough land use to justify urban rail.