Will Wynn: Reaching for the Rail

As a general rule, if Gerald Daugherty is against it, I'm for it.

I'm preparing a post where I put you in a Dubya Cheney sammich, dammit.

I think Daugherty's main argument is that we need to clean up CapMetro before we give them free reign on expenses. He was probably quiet about the commuter rail issue because he figured this was the cheapest way to let them fall flat on their face. Given the increase in costs and delay in deployments I'd say it's working.

Are there bus routes running along these planned streetcar lines today? It would be worth a study to see the utilization rates on these routes. Based on my experience there are usually 3-4 people on the 100 Airport Flyer. Building a rail line for that capacity seems a little extravagant. Maybe that's why Daugherty is questioning the management of CapMetro.

Daugherty is fundamentally a bad person. He pushes the same know-nothing transit hack jobs that Skaggs does - and they are completely designed to preserve funding for suburban road users, NOT to help out people who ride buses.

And it doesn't matter how many people are riding the bus in a corridor - except as a FLOOR for possible rail ridership. Good light rail has advantages over bus service - poor streetcar doesn't; but Daugherty and Skaggs' ilk like to purposefully claim they're both the same.

There is only so good city buses can be. They're stuck in the same traffic as your car, and accelerate/decelerate worse, and can't go over a block to get around a traffic jam, and make stops your car won't. Requiring that a corridor demonstrate packed buses first before building rail is incredibly stupid - if the corridor is congested, bus ridership is likely suffering because of it. Light rail, unlike streetcar, holds the promise of actually beating the congested car/bus traffic (does successfully in many other cities, despite the lies of Skaggs and Daugherty).

The Austin airport averaged over 22,000 passengers a day last year, and is on track to surpass that figure this year. Given that many visitors would like to do without a rental car if they can, and many Austinites would like to do without airport parking problems if they can, it would be silly not to add a leg to the airport.

When I have traveled to other cities, rail to / from the airport has nearly always been convenient and crowded - often standing room only. Even the Airport flyer bus line has had a couple of dozen people on it the last several times I've ridden it.

Minor note; Shilli, right now the train in Houston doesn't go to the airport. But new lines have been voter approved, and eventually it will. A lot of the ridership in Houston is from the Med Center to Med Center parking lots, but there has also been a boom in high density residential and mixed use development along the line.

If it runs in shared lanes, it always will, because the only shared lane you can feasibly run in is the right lane (unless you don't want to have any stations/stops on the road in question or are doing a full rebuild a la the expensive flavors of LRT). And you can't turn the right lane into reserved guideway transit.

So ignore the naive optimistic fools who think you can upgrade to reserved-guideway later. Will never happen (doesn't ever happen). Gotta judge based on what you have in day one.

el_longhorn, Capital Metro will not build us the rail we need - they are beholden both to Austin-hostile state legislators (like Krusee) and anti-rail leadership at their own agency (BRT guys, not that Rapid Bus has gotten out of the gate either - it's now slipped to 'maybe someday'). Their "circulator" proposal was laughable - it ran through downtown, then through the end of UT nobody actually works at, then out through the same part of East Austin 'served' by commuter rail - completely ignoring the parts of Austin that actually need and want rail.

I don’t see how people can bitch that commuter rail will never work because people don’t want to take buses from the stops to their final destinations, and then bitch because a streetcar circulator line is planned to address just that issue. The planned streetcar would connect to the commuter rail at 51st and Airport. It would then go through the new Mueller development, serving shopping, fairly dense housing, and the Dell Children’s Hospital and adjacent doctor’s offices and businesses, it then jogs through a residential area in Eat Austin and hits the commuter rail again at the MLK stop. This stop already has new housing and development popping up around it. From there it cuts down Manor Rd, serving the theaters (Savage Vanguard, Vortex) and restaurants with new VMU developments being proposed along the route. Cutting through UT, it will be convenient to the Performing Arts Center, the football field which has been know to get a crowd from time to time, the UT maintenance facility which currently has a big parking problem of the exact sort commuter rail is supposed to address, east campus including the dorms, gym, swimming pool and Engineering and Science buildings, and any student /faculty capable of walking from East Campus to West Campus. It then goes past the Capitol complex and associated government buildings – a major employer, and gets close enough to Brakenridge Hospital for some of their employees (It goes down San Jacinto, which is across Waterloo Park from the hospital and so maybe a little too far to walk for some). Cutting down the middle of downtown, close to major hotels, employers and entertainment districts, it will hit the commuter rail a THIRD time, and extend it down 4th street (close enough to City Hall and the 2nd Street shopping district to be useful) and continue past all those huge condo project and end up neat the Whole Foods flagship store –a major destination in itself.

I mean, come on, unless the only way to define “completely ignoring the parts of Austin that actually need and want rail” is your personal front yard, this line will serve thousands of people without stepping foot on a bus.

5:45 Update: I got suckered, folks. I wanted to believe this was different, but after re-reading the Chronicle and Statesman coverage, it's clear that this is nothing more than Capital Metro's circulator route with the spur to the Triangle built in the first phase - meaning it doesn't go down Guadalupe where all the people are and where they all work, it doesn't go by West Campus, where all of the future non-downtown density is apparently headed, and it doesn't go by Hyde Park or North University, where all the people who wanted rail in the first place actually are. Instead, it runs through the part of east Austin already 'served' by commuter rail and which is violently opposed to more density - and to Mueller, whose modest density is already assured, with or without streetcar, and "to the Triangle", although anybody who would take this from the Triangle to downtown is a certifiable moron, since it would be several miles out of their way through Mueller and East Austin rather than straight down Guadalupe. Fuck. See, shilli? Even M1EK can be naively optimistic.

There's not enough money to build this and light rail down Guadalupe where the people actually are and where they actually want to go. As for the rest:

1. We're not Manhattan. Double our population and we still won't be. Neither will we be San Fran. And even in Manhattan, transfers drop ridership (see LIRR trying to extend farther into the island).

2. Commuter rail bypasses SOME of the worst traffic; and then the streetcar/bus runs right back through the rest of it. Meanwhile, the express bus runs straight to UT and the Capitol and to the part of downtown where people actually work - one seat, with the checking email and surfing the web built in just like on the train.

Allow me to suggest that somebody who is not at least familiar with those express buses is unqualified to offer an opinion on this particular commute. There's a reason CM is only projecting 1500 riders/day - and it's not because they're being conservative. In order to even get to 1500, they're likely going to have to do something to make those express bus rides less attractive.

(LRT, even in 2000, projected around 15,000 riders per day early on; and other cities starting lines similar to ours have easily done 25,000).

Oh, and most of the research on transit suggests that people will make one same mode transfer without much complaint. Commuter rail to streetcar will certainlyt be better than commuter rail to bus.

"Blue",

The ASG connections proposal had what they were calling the "question-mark" route as the primary circulator - they then decided that it would only be wise to push it as far as Mueller; but the full route had the Triangle being reached via 51st street (coming across I-35 from the east).

And "most of the research" does not suggest most people will make one same mode transfer without much complaint. What it suggests is that every transfer drastically reduces commuter preference - and that rail is better than bus, but this is largely due to the fact that in most implementations, rail is technically and objectively superior to the bus alternative. Streetcar won't be, if it runs in shared traffic, it'll actually be a bit LESS useful than bus (true light-rail in its own lane would of course be far better than either).

Even in New York, commuters who face a transfer, for instance from LIRR to subway, are far less likely to use transit to get to work than those who go all the way on one train. That's why, as I mentioned before, the LIRR is seeking a huge investment to move farther inland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Side_Access

Monorail is crackpottery combined with some opportunistic road-warrior support. Las Vegas and Seattle have shown that the claims that it can pay for itself and be built cheaply and safely are baloney.

Grade-level LRT has worked fine all over the country. Even in Houston. A collision once in a blue moon is not sufficient justification for spending additional billions of dollars to use a technology which presents additional problems (switching, elevators, evacuation).

The same-mode one-transfer connection assumes not just rail-to-rail but reserved guideway for both. Streetcar will likely not be that; and, no, you won't keep 80-85 percent in a city like ours (you will in Manhattan because the auto alternative is so unattractive).

Speedway is a disaster for streetcar. My neighborhood (NUNA) and the next one up (Hyde Park) could not be more irresponsibly opposed to density, even on Guadalupe but especially along Speedway.

Er, those garages house a lot of state workers. Like me, for example. And I live in NUNA. I don't see a problem with Speedway as a streetcar route; it doesn't mess as badly with the traffic on Guadalupe and brings in the whole Hyde Park/NUNA area in a whole lot better than a line along Guadalupe would.