Are new highways in the Plans for Austin or the upgrading of existing ones? (Crockett: transfer, buses)

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by mayfair44

Toll facilities coming to a road near you (take a good look at the MAP):

Austin Toll Road Projects & Programs

Check out the Planned Expressways too- 183-South, 45-Southwest and the Y:

Planned Central Texas Toll Roads

Roads that should have been built 10-20 years ago, especially the 183 South to the airport. That should've been finished by the time ABIA opened in 1999. Just another glaring example of the inept and incompetent "leadership" that has run the City of Austin for decades.

I wonder how much these loooong delays are going to cost the taxpayers?

Remember the Texas 45 Southeast nonsensical delay for two years? Increased the taxpayers' burden by $10 million or more, IIRC.

Better late than never, though.

[scm53]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

But lets go ahead and spend a half billion on a project that might benefit a couple thousand people a day.
OTOH, encourage the large employers to decentralize.

The largest employer, with the biggest number of people in the downtown core, plans on adding more, not less.

New vision for Capitol complex: More room for state workers, private development on state land

Besides, I still don't think you solve the river crossing bottle necks only by proper planning. Even if you encourage businesses out of the downtown core, you still have the problem of home to work crossing the river - transiting not destinating downtown. And even if you get it on the same side now, what happens if the office moves or you change jobs?

There are basically four crossings of the river now (not counting 620 or 130). 360 will never be expanded - enviros will lie down in front of the bulldozers. Mopac has HOT planned - one lane in each direction? 35? Not gonna happen. 183 will probably get the southbound done when it is all brought up to freeway standards, but how much help will that be? (One thought would be to variably toll 35 at rush hour starting at 290 on both ends to push through traffic off to 183 and 290, once it is totally freeway). The redesignation of 130 as I35 can help, but the furor over tolling the current 35 might be more than any politician can bear.

The only real solution is some kind of mass transit, or penalizing single occupancy vehicles. That has been beaten to death here, so no need to resurrect it. You aren't going to materially change the N-S commute patterns, and the State isn't helping with this plan.

[mayfair44]

Originally Posted by scm53

35? Not gonna happen. 183 will probably get the southbound done when it is all brought up to freeway standards, but how much help will that be? (One thought would be to variably toll 35 at rush hour starting at 290 on both ends to push through traffic off to 183 and 290, once it is totally freeway).

Dynamic rerouting and express lanes are the talk for 35, although it seems with all the other projects in motion around town, the inner corridor is the hot potato with no definite plans.

Check out 'downloadable resources' for illustrations:

Corridor Development IH-35 - Austin Mobility
http://www.austin-mobility.com/downl...t_06-14-12.pdf
http://www.austin-mobility.com/downl...020112.ppt.pdf

[jeffutsa2001]

Austin is underserved with highways...Living in San Antonio it's always a challenge to get through Austin. The amount of growth that has occurred it making it difficult to keep up with.

[mayfair44]

Originally Posted by jeffutsa2001

Living in San Antonio it's always a challenge to get through Austin.

SH45/SH130@80mph! Pay the tolls and hit the autobahn. If I was just "passing through," I'd gladly pay to avoid DT Austin.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by BevoLJ

How has this idea been working for Austin's traffic for the past 30 years? This is exactly what Austin has been doing. Even the tax part that you said, they have been increasing taxes downtown. Not as much as you suggested 2x-3x, but more so than in the burbs. When was the last time large office space was added downtown? 2002 with the Frost Building. When was the last time before that, 1980s before the S&L disaster. Less than 1/4th of Austin office space is now downtown. Austin has 8.6 million sq feet of space downtown. Outside DT, 35 million sq feet. In a city like Austin your "tax'em carpetbaggers till they leave" isn't even necessary. The city decides if anything gets built or not, and the city clearly has no problem finding some type of tree, shrub or patch of grass to protect when it wants to make sure no offices are allowed to be built downtown. Look at the property on 3 eleven Brazos at Brazos and 5th just behind the Tiniest Bar In Texas. That was to be a 400 ft office building. Everyone and their mothers showed up to protect the pecan tree and so they changed it to an apartment building, tree is still protected in the plan, and now no one has any problem with it. When was the last time anyone showed up to protect a pecan tree in the suburbs from an office building? lol

Since the 1980's Austin has been trying to created a reverse commute city. That is why places like SW Parkway were built. It was the plan for North Austin and Research. Just look at how much push back happens ever singe time a office is planned downtown, and why none of those that people try to build ever get built. It hasn't solved our traffic problems.

Rather than just having traffic going downtown, you have traffic from one burb to another all still going right through downtown and over the lakes. It solves nothing, and has only created a much worse problem. Building offices out in the burbs doesn't mean you are building them anywhere near where people are living. The suburban sprawl in Austin is massive. You still have to get people to where they need to go. Seen the traffic in RR recently? The Y? Been to SW Parkway recently? Bee Cave Rd outside 360? 360 itself?

Trying to spread everyone out doesn't save money, it cost a lot more money. More roads. More pipes. More sewers. More utility lines. Many more miles of everything is needed. And those on the road have to travel many more miles to reach their destinations, meaning they are on the roads longer causing more congestion, requiring more investments into bigger roads. All of which still go over the lakes and right through downtown regardless of if anyone is actually going DT or just from one burb to another.

Nice post. New urbanists want to create of bunch of little downtown employment districts and have everyone take mass transit. But when you spread employment, you make it impossible to serve by mass transit. It sounds like they want to recreate 1900 New York City when everyone lived within a couple of miles of work and were economically limited by that. People now often change jobs more frequently than they move and don't necessarily live near work.

A lot of these new urbanist ideas are just incoherent and inconsistent. Austin's head in the sand for 20 years refusing to build infrastructure to protect "fragile" east Austin and west Austin lead to massive sprawl to the north that can't be served well by mass transit coupled with people still moving in great numbers to the west and northeast and clogging roads. Austin's just now catching up.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

OTOH, encourage the large employers to decentralize.

Doesn't help substantially unless the employees also happen to live close. Virtually impossible to ensure that without some form of coercion.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by sxrckr

Yep. This isn't a popular idea with certain idealists, but it is a viable solution that helps. Also, more telecommuting.

Already been addressed in this thread. "Decentralizing" employers doesn't help much with transportation issues, unless you ensure somehow (coercion is the only effective way) that employees live close to their place of employment. In addition, dispersing development destroys agglomeration and concentration of capital that helps so much with prosperity; also, dispersed development is more expensive to serve with municipal services like fire, EMS, and so forth, while bringing in less tax revenues to pay for it. Unsustainable long term.

On telecommuting - it's been around for 30+ years; it's always the "next big thing", but as of today about 2% of the working population uses it. It's effectively a joke.

So neither of these methods will be effective, unfortunately. The projected demand in the Austin region by 2035 is 12 additional lane equivalents of capacity from the north, and 14 from the south. The methods you've proposed won't make a dent in that.

[mayfair44]

Originally Posted by jb9152

Already been addressed in this thread. "Decentralizing" employers doesn't help much with transportation issues, unless you ensure somehow (coercion is the only effective way) that employees live close to their place of employment. In addition, dispersing development destroys agglomeration and concentration of capital that helps so much with prosperity; also, dispersed development is more expensive to serve with municipal services like fire, EMS, and so forth, while bringing in less tax revenues to pay for it. Unsustainable long term.

On telecommuting - it's been around for 30+ years; it's always the "next big thing", but as of today about 2% of the working population uses it. It's effectively a joke.

So neither of these methods will be effective, unfortunately. The projected demand in the Austin region by 2035 is 12 additional lane equivalents of capacity from the north, and 14 from the south. The methods you've proposed won't make a dent in that.

jb9152, any thoughts on the proposed second metro rail line? Some of the arguments I've read mention that instead of Mueller, the Lamar-Guadalupe corridor would be better served (instead of rapid bus):

Austin, Texas - City's Urban Rail Plan Needs Major Overhaul [Light Rail Now]
Run urban rail up Guadalupe/Lamar - Austin Contrarian

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by mayfair44

jb9152, any thoughts on the proposed second metro rail line? Some of the arguments I've read mention that instead of Mueller, the Lamar-Guadalupe corridor would be better served (instead of rapid bus):

Austin, Texas - City's Urban Rail Plan Needs Major Overhaul [Light Rail Now]
Run urban rail up Guadalupe/Lamar - Austin Contrarian

There are good arguments on both sides. I do think that the investment has already been made in MetroRapid (the bus rapid transit - BRT - system that Cap Metro will be building imminently), so we should do all we can to make that successful in the near to medium term.

That said, there's nothing that would preclude dual operation of Urban Rail and MetroRapid in the Guadalupe-Lamar corridor (although there are a few technological hurdles to overcome - none insurmountable), or conversion one day of MetroRapid to Urban Rail (in that case, construction staging becomes the issue - how do you continue to operate BRT while constructing Urban Rail?).

On the other hand, Mueller has been designed since day one as a Transit Oriented Development. The provision of high capacity transit (in this case, Urban Rail) will allow the development to support higher densities, both from a practical and regulatory standpoint, which will make the property more valuable, which increases tax revenues. Those increased tax revenues, properly captured using Tax Increment Financing methods, could help fund the ongoing operations of the system.

So, there are compelling reasons for both options.

Now that capital funding Urban Rail is off the November bond issue and planning money is in, there is time to fully consider all of the alternatives.