Austin growth will absolutely overwhelm roads and highways starting in 2011 - new study (Houston: lease, new construction)

[courageinc]

For the first time, those downtown high rises seem to serve a purpose.

I came from St. Louis, where just about everyone moved OUT of the city, and then a few slowly started trickling back in. I now live in Kyle, about 20 minutes south of town, and the build there is starting to come up as well. If we could just get a damn entertainment district already.

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by courageinc

For the first time, those downtown high rises seem to serve a purpose.

I came from St. Louis, where just about everyone moved OUT of the city, and then a few slowly started trickling back in. I now live in Kyle, about 20 minutes south of town, and the build there is starting to come up as well. If we could just get a damn entertainment district already.

I hear the Dairy Queen is the happening place in Kyle.

[twange]

Originally Posted by AK123

I guess I'm just confused here.
Austin already seems this way, just on a much smaller scale than Houston. But same kind of overall layout. (I've lived in both cities.) Houston cannot expand east... there's water.
And Houston definitely has a downtown; it's where a large number companies, the main entertainment district, and several of the sports stadiums are located. Now, if what you meant was multiple business districts (downtown, Medical Center, Uptown, Energy Corridor, etc.) then I see what you're saying.

I see your point. I suppose in Houston's case "multiple business districts" would be a more appropriate description. They seem entirely disjunct from one another, actually giving the impression of multiple downtowns.

As for L.A., well it has a downtown as well, but it isn't really a destination. Most of the places people want to visit/live are spread out in every direction except for West. I find it remarkably dreary and mundane driving across, through or around L.A. trying to get to different points of interest. And there are plenty of beautiful places there, it's just too spread out as a city.

My point was that IMHO, Austin is NOT at that point yet, and there are still plenty of empty lots downtown where quality development - residential/retail/public space/office - can be added, increasing livability and vibrancy. Yes, there is low-density urban sprawl - every city above 50K seems to have that - but compared to larger cities, it isn't bad. And the thing Austin has going for it, is that downtown has not even remotely reached its potential - unlike many older Northern cities that have suffered MASSIVE population exodus to suburbs over the last 50 years. In those cases, people were fleeing cities for a multitude of social/economic reasons that while still present, aren't nearly as acute here in Austin. And gasoline was cheap back in the 50s! There has been a pattern (though in small numbers) of people moving back into decayed urban cores, renovating houses and neighborhoods and trying to reinvent the modern American city. Austin is still so young, that it doesn't face those hurdles and can essentially plan ahead and apply many new ideas and concepts learned from past American city failures, instead of retro-fitting and rebuilding. Major advantage.

[mimimomx3]

So much whining. Choose where you live and deal with it.

[thesonofgray]

All the angry/confused responses to my anti-feeder roads post is funny. Texans love their feeders.

It's slightly more complex than whatever I can explain in a forum post (and I'm by no means a super-duper expert).

Access roads affect so many things, including highway efficiency, growth patterns, and overall traffic movement.

For example, feeder roads reduce highway efficiency. They encourage the construction of access ramps in shorter intervals than without feeder roads. The more ramps on the highway, the more merging points, and therefore more conflicts and less efficiency.

Access roads also encourage development along and directed to the highway. This simple visual distraction reduces efficiency. And it encourages long corridors of big box retail development which encourages sprawl. And sprawl is never efficient when it comes to vehicular travel.

And the the most obvious negative about access roads - they take up a lot of space. Highway lanes process way more vehicles during rush hour than a feeder lane. Get rid of the feeder and fatten up the highway to increase capacity. The good news is TxDOT has the ROW, since they buy up such wide corridors to accommodate feeders (something other DOTs don't necessarily do).

Why do we have access roads? Business interests. TxDOT (and Texas in general) is very business friendly. An example of this is the two off ramps literally 100 feet from each other on south Mopac - the first one constructed simply to give access to the La Quinta. Businesses want highway users to be able to easily access their lot, and so TxDOT builds parallel feeder roads and plenty of ramps. That reduces highway efficiency. It's not something you can point a finger at and say "ah ha!" But you're feeling the effects from this during your daily commute on I-35 and other highways.

A road network should mimic a stereotypical tree. You should get good use of highway, arterial, collector, and local roads during your daily commute. But people want to go from highway directly to local - skipping either an arterial or collector and thereby reducing the benefits and purpose of all the road types. That might make some people's commute shorter, but it hurts the network as a whole - and therefore generally hurts the users of the network.

As for the comments about California and how awful the traffic is - remind me again how many people live in the LA metroplex? Of course LA has worse traffic than Austin, but their highways are more efficient (generally speaking) than ones with feeder roads. No matter how efficient your roads are, if the demand is greater than capacity, you're going to get gridlock.

Anyways, highways sans feeders isn't a silver bullet to Austin's traffic problem. But having feeders definitely isn't helping.

[twange]

Originally Posted by mimimomx3

So much whining. Choose where you live and deal with it.

Who's whining? That's pretty accusatory.

[kingugly]

Correct, THL, there are no looparounds on any of the Los Angeles freeways. What is such an easy, efficient solution requires two light changes and more gridlock.

Feeder roads are not the limiting factor to a successful freeway system. It's sad to say, but in a car culture like Texas, more freeways are! The more people in the system, the more arteries you need. Extending the freeways further out right and left works, until it doesn't. Soon homes and businesses will be your limiting factor. Then what? Get rid of them, too?

I'm not saying Austin is a model for efficiency - far from it. I'm simply saying that if anyone wants to consider Los Angeles as the way to do things, I encourage them to experience it for themselves.

I am a proponent of large-scale, highly integrated rail systems, for the record.

[orngkat]

they started biting and eating each other to death

Ooohh...that's what I feel like doing when stuck in traffic these days!!
A really dumb example of poor planning IMO is the recent vertical mixed use project going up on Burnet Rd just south of Koenig. Once completed, residents may only exit or enter off of Burnet Rd which has no turn lanes. This will add many more backed up cars to an already congested area.

[kingugly]

Originally Posted by mimimomx3

So much whining. Choose where you live and deal with it.

Excellent contribution, minimomx3! Can we call that, whining about whining?

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by kingugly

Correct, THL, there are no looparounds on any of the Los Angeles freeways. What is such an easy, efficient solution requires two light changes and more gridlock.

But really, why do we need to be wasting highway space and money building looparounds everywhere? Think about it, who do they help?

Sure, if you are lost and miss your exit, they come in real handy. But a typical resident is gonna figure out what the right exits are after a short amount of time. It's not like people are missing their exit every day. So what's the real problem about making it a two-light process that takes a little more time? Seems reasonable to me.

Of course, the other reason we have looparounds is because of the access roads themselves... to access businesses, etc, which only have entrances on an access road that goes one-way, and you're exiting on the opposite side. But, if we didn't have the access roads to begin with (and businesses were INSIDE the neighborhoods, where they belong), that wouldn't be a problem.

When you think about it, access roads pretty much create what most people look at and consider "sprawl". The retail chains and parking are all visible (and usually all you can see) from the highway. The neighborhoods off the highway end up looking even more cookie-cutter because this no retail/office space breaking them up.