Prop 1 Open Thread (Houston, Austin, Rice: neighborhoods, prices, bus)

[gpurcell]

No one will be diverted off of I-35 to the toy rail.

[Aquitaine]

Originally Posted by Novacek

1. I think the 9,000 (18k trips) is an intentionally pessimistic number myself.

...okay, but that is the official estimate that they are using as a basis to request this money from taxpayers. They have every incentive to be optimistic: they want to spend our money. Why would they intentionally sabotage their plan?

2. Dividing by the whole population of Austin to get 1% isn't the appropriate compare. The better number in my opinion would be the number of jobs in the central city area, which is like 180k. In that case, it's more like 5%, which is significant. 5% can be the difference between free-flowing traffic and gridlock.

This is a reconfiguration of my question to get a higher percentage. I am well aware that 100% of the population does not use roads; the unsettling number for me is that a city that is already very debt-heavy is asking for a huge pile of money for something that will not impact ninety-nine out of one hundred people who live here. A community park might only impact 1% of the population but it doesn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

But let's accept your number as 5% of commuters. That would mean we have only 180,000 commuters every day, which seems a bit low.

Looking at a list of major cities by mass transit usage (where 'usage' counts as 'commutes using mass transit'), the nearest city to us in terms of size is Seattle at 18.19% in 2010. So it's certainly worth adjusting one's expectations: only NYC gets above 50% (see below link). Any way you slice it, it's a huge pile of money for a small percentage of the population, particularly at first.

My question is just this: How is it that, given fifteen years and a large pile of money, our estimated utility of this plan is below Rochester, NY, and Milwaukee?

List of United States rapid transit systems by ridership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

...okay, but that is the official estimate that they are using as a basis to request this money from taxpayers. They have every incentive to be optimistic: they want to spend our money. Why would they intentionally sabotage their plan?

It's not sabotage, it's standard professional engineering and planning principals. The same reason the total number given is 1.4 billion (even though it's the pessimistic number, and includes a big cushion for possible overruns). The same reason the number for the effect on property taxes is given as if _no_ additional property goes on the tax rolls (which will never, ever happen).

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

the unsettling number for me is that a city that is already very debt-heavy

Except we're not. Austin is well under it's numbers for total debt.

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

is asking for a huge pile of money for something that will not impact ninety-nine out of one hundred people who live here.

This is the flaw in your reasoning. The assumption that it won't have an impact on non-riders. Every commuter that rides the system will be a commuter getting out of the way of _drivers_ on I35. It will be a commuter not causing damage to the Austin roads that needs repaired. it will be a commuter not putting Austin over the top for ozone non-attainment (which has big economic repercussions).
etc.
etc.

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

But let's accept your number as 5% of commuters. That would mean we have only 180,000 commuters every day, which seems a bit low.

That's the number of jobs in the central city. That's actually an overestimate, as it includes people who live downtown and walk/bike to their downtown job.

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

My question is just this: How is it that, given fifteen years and a large pile of money, our estimated utility of this plan is below Rochester, NY, and Milwaukee?

List of United States rapid transit systems by ridership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Um, neither Rochester or Milwaukee are in that list?

[scm53]

Originally Posted by Aquitaine

...okay, but that is the official estimate that they are using as a basis to request this money from taxpayers. They have every incentive to be optimistic: they want to spend our money. Why would they intentionally sabotage their plan?

This is a reconfiguration of my question to get a higher percentage. I am well aware that 100% of the population does not use roads; the unsettling number for me is that a city that is already very debt-heavy is asking for a huge pile of money for something that will not impact ninety-nine out of one hundred people who live here. A community park might only impact 1% of the population but it doesn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

You have to remember that only 6,500 of the 18,000/day ridership isn't currently using transit. By Project Connect's own numbers, 11,500 are mode shifting from bus to rail. So the idea that you will see a reduction in congestion is just more perfidy.

And why you identified that the numbers don't add up. They were hoping that you wouldn't notice.

[hillcountryheart]

Originally Posted by scm53

Wrong place. Rail MIGHT make sense - but for many reasons, not this configuration.

I agree. The bottleneck is always the river... anything that could cross the river might be worth that kind of money. Most of the designated rail corridors already have significant bus routes - south Austin does not.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by scm53

You have to remember that only 6,500 of the 18,000/day ridership isn't currently using transit. By Project Connect's own numbers, 11,500 are mode shifting from bus to rail. So the idea that you will see a reduction in congestion is just more perfidy.

And why you identified that the numbers don't add up. They were hoping that you wouldn't notice.

Those existing buses aren't contributing to congestion?

[IC_deLight]

Originally Posted by Novacek

..This is the flaw in your reasoning. The assumption that it won't have an impact on non-riders. Every commuter that rides the system will be a commuter getting out of the way of _drivers_ on I35. It will be a commuter not causing damage to the Austin roads that needs repaired.

First, commuters that might take the system may not have even been taking I-35 between destinations to begin with. Second, the same commuters that weren't taking I-35 are still on Austin roads. Third, where is there evidence of any significant volume of traffic being offloaded from I-35? Even if it were it would likely be temporary because folks deterred from I-35 due to congestion today might start using it again.

The only "thing" the vast majority of Austin non-riders will get is a higher tax bill.

[scm53]

Kinda wonkish, but pretty detailed on why the Project Connect route is a bad idea.

From a transit resource productivity perspective, light rail makes sense for corridors that already have transit-supportive density and ridership. This is because rail has high fixed operating costs (track and signal maintenance, expensive insurance) but low variable costs (drivers/conductors). Rail is for scale. From a mobility productivity perspective, East Riverside to Highland is a good bus corridor, not a rail one.

As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the low ridership potential of the Proposition 1 rail will eat up scarce operational dollars. This will mean less money to add service hours to highly productive bus routes, which in turn will mean a sub-optimal system-wide annual ridership count.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by IC_deLight

First, commuters that might take the system may not have even been taking I-35 between destinations to begin with.

Since half the line runs basically parallel to I35, it's a good bet many of the riders were previously taking I35.
(plus the two park and rides just off 35)

And if they weren't, they were taking some other Austin roads. My mentioning I35 was an example of a benefit to non-riders, not the exclusive list.

Originally Posted by IC_deLight

Even if it were it would likely be temporary because folks deterred from I-35 due to congestion today might start using it again.

Using that logic, we should never build anything, ever, as it will always be eventually overtaken by growth.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by scm53

Kinda wonkish, but pretty detailed on why the Project Connect route is a bad idea.

That author stopped allowing comments on his site, so I'll detail here how he's absolutely wrong in all respects.

"In Austin, the need to appeal to FTA’s New Starts (the federal pool of money for big transit projects) to receive a federal match has led to overlooking several highly productive initial rail segments allegedly too short for the FTA. "

Absolutely untrue. FTA requirement weren't part of the initial corridor selection criteria.

" Similarly, FTA’s existing funding of MetroRapid 801 & 803 is a prime reason for the lack of consideration of any segment in the Lamar corridor where the highly-productive ‘1’ bus line operates."

Again, absolutely untrue. The corridor selection didn't take this into account. Project Connect has explicitly stated they were planning to address this with the FTA if and only if the Lamar corridor came out on top.

" daily passenger trips would average about 16,000 riders"

18,000 (and again, that's probably a pessimistic estimate)

"Houston’s initial Red Line quickly arrived at 31,000 daily ridership the first year, which was 2004. It’s stayed there with a trend upwards into 36,000 daily riders, enabling line expansion. Houston’s Red Line was two miles shorter (7.5) than Austin’s proposed 9.5 mile line. They both have comparable costs at about $15-20 million."

And Houston is 3 times our size, with _6_ times the number of jobs in the central city. There is no place (including Lamar) where Austin could put a line with the same per-mile productivity as Houston.

"Austin’s Proposition 1 light rail line will have half the ridership of Houston’s even with the advantage of twenty six (26) years of Austin growth."

And after those 26 years of growth, Austin will still be half the size of Houston and with much fewer jobs.

"As it turns out, the 16,000 daily ridership estimate for 2030 light rail is a bit lower than what the ‘1’ bus line was pulling in 2013. "

The '1' is also like 3 times the length. And again, it's 18,000.

"As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the low ridership potential of the Proposition 1 rail will eat up scarce operational dollars. "

This claim is totally debunked on the discussion on that article. Even if you take all the worst-case assumptions he makes in that article, the number is $3M /year. Increased property tax revenue will overwhelmingly cover that much.