"Austin, we have a problem" (San Antonio, Round Rock: university, place to live)

[CarnivalGal]

Originally Posted by Reggieray

Hold up man. I've been hearing for years a train and a bunch of us all on tricycles will all make this go away. At least that's what the city council says and it also seems to be the only resolution they care about pushing. Off with your head if you drive a car. You deserve traffic.

Yeah, I thought the trains and bike lane were supposed to solve all of this. At least that's what city counsel keeps telling us (the same city counsel that drives to work every day).

[HappyTexan]

Originally Posted by mm57553

Yeah, I thought the trains and bike lane were supposed to solve all of this. At least that's what city counsel keeps telling us (the same city counsel that drives to work every day).

Mass transit has to grow as a city grows.
To bring it in after the fact is very costly and limited in scope.

IMHO Austin should have just expanded their bus system, forget about trains, metro rails or whatever and stayed within the city limits.

[kavorka]

It's a bit of a paradox. Austin's efforts to protect the local environment and prevent highways from crisscrossing the urban core are a big reason why it's still such a beautiful and desirable place to live. San Antonio has lots of highways which make it easier to get around, but that has made it uglier in comparison, in my opinion.

Also, our geography is much more constraining in terms of having a nice concentric loop system.

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by kavorka

It's a bit of a paradox. Austin's efforts to protect the local environment and prevent highways from crisscrossing the urban core are a big reason why it's still such a beautiful and desirable place to live. San Antonio has lots of highways which make it easier to get around, but that has made it uglier in comparison, in my opinion.

Also, our geography is much more constraining in terms of having a nice concentric loop system.

I mostly agree. It's difficult to know if Austin would have developed the same way had we gone highway-crazy like other Texas Metros. Perhaps the character of the city would have diluted more quickly into the bedroom communities, as it did in the other cities.

As it stands, Austin is the fastest growing large metro in the country -- and has been for a few years. We're the benchmark for how fast any of the current metros can grow, according to the numbers. So it becomes a chicken/egg type question -- was it something we did (or didn't do) that made us expand the fastest? Or are we just expanding the fastest, and therefore should (or shouldn't) do something about it?

[atx1626]

Originally Posted by kavorka

It's a bit of a paradox. Austin's efforts to protect the local environment and prevent highways from crisscrossing the urban core are a big reason why it's still such a beautiful and desirable place to live. San Antonio has lots of highways which make it easier to get around, but that has made it uglier in comparison, in my opinion.

Also, our geography is much more constraining in terms of having a nice concentric loop system.

Wow, somebody else gets it!

[scm53]

Originally Posted by kavorka

It's a bit of a paradox. Austin's efforts to protect the local environment and prevent highways from crisscrossing the urban core are a big reason why it's still such a beautiful and desirable place to live. San Antonio has lots of highways which make it easier to get around, but that has made it uglier in comparison, in my opinion.

Also, our geography is much more constraining in terms of having a nice concentric loop system.

We were driving across Enfield the other night, and I was thinking how nice it was that the freeway across there was never built, which would have wiped out the Caswell house. So i understand that not every road ever proposed here was a good thing.

But at the same time, road building has been used for decades by a vocal element in Austin as a strategy to restrict growth. As anyone can see, that failed. These dedicated foes have presented - falsely - the situation as binary. Roads, or environment, when it isn't either or. The environment wasn't ruined when Ben White and 183 were turned into freeways. If 360 was made limited access - as it was planned from the start - the environment wouldn't suffer a whit. There are ways to build the roads we need with the lightest possible footprint. But some will never believe that, based on the constant bleating of these obstructionists. Part of it is a moralistic attempt to impose their way of life on others. Part of it is an attempt to capture Austin like a fly in amber. Problem is, that fly is dead.

That space picture - and the accompanying article - show clearly what three decades of obstructionism has begot. The growth hasn't occurred compactly, as it has in SA. It's been pushed out 183 and 71 beyond the obstructionists control - and it won't stop soon. Because whenever you arrived here, you weren't the last person to figure out this is a good place to live. The problem is, what do we do now? Bike lanes and sidewalks won't move goods from warehouses in S Austin to Cedar Park. A $1.5B rail from ERC through UT to Highland (which largely services the same corridor as our only existing rail) won't do a thing to relieve congestion on our major highways. At the same time, we can't build enough lanes if everyone moves in single occupancy vehicles. So we need a efficient, comprehensive, consensus based "some of all the above" solution.

I'm just not optimistic that the obstructionists will give an inch.

[scm53]

Yes. Even great cities have exurbs - known to some by the pejorative "sprawl". The question is, what is the blend, and how do you manage/accommodate it. Because if you have a great city, you won't stop it.

[sxrckr]

The photo appears to prove that the lack of real loop(s) here has caused sprawl to extend further northward. SA appears more compact overall.

[Devout Urbanist]

Traffic is the price you pay for living in a major city. Get over it.

Highway expansion won't solve anything. Congestion pricing and transportation alternatives are the only real solutions.

At this point, given the fundamental reality of human-induced climate change, cities should not be making it easier for people to drive.

[jb9152]

Originally Posted by scm53

What struck me about that picture from space was, just by appearances, how dense SA looked, and how spread out Austin looked.

Appearances can be very deceiving. SA acknowledges that one of their most pressing problems is that they are a "sprawl city".