South Lamar Plaza getting ready for teardown

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by Novacek

No, they aren't. Those projections are shown to _prove_ that sufficient roads _cannot_ be built, and that mass transit is the only possible alternative.

They're building such roads in Atlanta and Miami and elsewhere - don't think it can't happen here, there will be forces advocating for exactly this.

And the idea that mass transit is going to take care of this problem is DOA. The Redline took a couple of decades to build, carries like 1000 passengers a day and is rightfully seen as a disaster that set back the possibility of a good rail option by a decade or more. There is no viable option.

The Suburbs are choking on their own growth. Does anyone really like the fact that what used to take 20 minutes takes 40 now, and in a couple of years, that will be an hour, maybe a few more years after that an hour and a half. What are people's lives worth?

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Komeht

They're building such roads in Atlanta and Miami and elsewhere - don't think it can't happen here, there will be forces advocating for exactly this.

You said there was serious discussion in Austin, not that it's happening somewhere else.

1. Please link to any serious discussion of something like that in Austin.

2. Please point to where in Austin a 24-lane highway is going to fit, especially in the I35 corridor downtown.

Originally Posted by Komeht

The Redline took a couple of decades to build, carries like 1000 passengers a day

And by decades, you mean years. And by 1000, you mean thousands (approaching max capacity at peak times), with a record of over 7000 in one day.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by Novacek

You said there was serious discussion in Austin, not that it's happening somewhere else.

1. Please link to any serious discussion of something like that in Austin.

2. Please point to where in Austin a 24-lane highway is going to fit, especially in the I35 corridor downtown.


And by decades, you mean years. And by 1000, you mean thousands (approaching max capacity at peak times), with a record of over 7000 in one day.

1. The roads won't fit and wont get built, that's precisely my point. The people are still coming, and unless you find a way to grow the city from the inside, they will choke existing transit corridors.

2. By decades I mean decades. A cent sales tax was passed in 1985 with idea of building transit here in Austin. As you know very well know it was two decades before anything was build.

3. By a like a 1000 I guess I mean a little over a thousand at 1700/day. (record days show pretty numbers don't tell you anything about how much traffic is carried day in and day out). 1700/day is widely regarded as meaningless traffic easing. What did that cost? 60 Million dollars and another 14 Million a year to operate.

1700 riders a day. . .that's 35K/rider + 8.5K/rider/year. . .I guess we could have bought them all BMWs and paid for their gas for that much.

And BTW - just about everyone in the whole world now acknowledges the Red Line was a huge mistake and set rail in Austin back years - probably decades.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by Komeht

The Redline took a couple of decades to build, carries like 1000 passengers a day and is rightfully seen as a disaster that set back the possibility of a good rail option by a decade or more.

The Redline was conceived as a demonstration project to prove the viability of light rail in Austin, and is celebrated for the low cost of its implementation over other cities' pilot programs. It's running ahead of planned ridership, and in August CapMetro announced its ridership had increased 49% over the year previous.

In May it was already running at about 2,000 passengers a day, and for SXSW averaged 3,859 a day and hit a peak of 7,300. That kept an estimated 3,300 cars off the streets of downtown.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

Anything that wants to have a REAL impact on traffic, etc., needs to take that into consideration - it should not all be focused on getting people downtown, because (a) a larger portion of the population aren't interested in going or especially living downtown and have no need to do so and (b) imagine what downtown would look like with 820,000+ people stuffed into it! It would be a nightmare, if it was even possible taking the laws of physics into consideration.

Well, no. 30% of all of the employment in the 5-county region that CAMPO is responsible for is located in three zip codes downtown. When you look at a suburban city like Round Rock, for example, fully 70% of the working population leaves it every day to go to work. 60% of them are going somewhere in Austin, and most of that downtown or in the ring around the central business district.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by Komeht

They're building such roads in Atlanta and Miami and elsewhere - don't think it can't happen here, there will be forces advocating for exactly this.

Well, the projections that have come out of CAMPO for population and employment growth point to a need by year 2035 of the equivalent of 12 new highway lanes worth of capacity from the northern burbs into downtown, and 14 from the southern burbs.

That just ain't happening in any of our lifetimes. Picture adding 12 lanes to I-35 and what that means just from a physical space standpoint. Picture a bridge with 14 additional lanes over the lake. Forget the cost, even - do you think that that will fly in this town? I don't.

What's probably physically, fiscally, and environmentally feasible is exactly what's happening now on MoPac - squeezing one additional lane out of the existing right of way per direction. Maybe another lane or two...MAYBE...decades from now. But, maybe not - in the interim the infill that has 35 sequestered through town will only grow.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by Komeht

And BTW - just about everyone in the whole world now acknowledges the Red Line was a huge mistake and set rail in Austin back years - probably decades.

That's a huge claim. Let's see your evidence.

Meanwhile, in other news, at commute times the trains are running at "standing room only" rates, and the increase of ridership over planned levels was cited by CapMetro as the reason that they expanded weekend schedules much earlier than they had expected to.

http://www.capmetro.org/news-item.aspx?id=1432

And here's a fun piece from Railway Age about the successes of the Red Line to date

http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/...l#.UJmWiMXR6uI