Will Wynn: Reaching for the Rail

There's not enough existing density on Speedway to justify streetcar, and our neighborhood vigorously fights density (even existing density like garage apartments; even apartments on Guadalupe). Bad idea, even though I'd be thrilled (I'm a block away).

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.

And another problem with Speedway - blithely saying we can just remove the bike lanes - these are pretty much the most heavily used bike lanes in the city (and no, Duval isn't a realistic alternative given the density of bike riders and their skill/fitness levels).

People are going through all kinds of rhetorical and geometrical gymnastics to explain why it's not so bad to avoid Guadalupe, but the problem is that our existing density and our projected future density is ON GUADALUPE, NOT ON SPEEDWAY. Ever hear of VMU? The supposed bargain with these idiot neighborhood associations was that they let us densify on Guadalupe in return for McMansion and irresponsible neighborhood plans.

And if we're using the rest of the question mark route, remember that the northern downtown section runs right past nothing but parking garages and more parking garages - not ones that are open to the public, of course. This circulator was awful even when its only purpose was to distribute commuter rail passengers; it's ten times as awful for actually moving around central Austinites.

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.

Not true about transfers. As I recall when I was doing some modelling in grad school on this, you keep about 80-85 percent of the ridership with a same-mode, one transfer connection. Your ridership only really goes to hell if you introduce multiple transfers.

As far as the question mark routing, the airport route wasn't in the initial plan either. I have some hope that they'll see they can easily run a line up Speedway to add the Triangle into the system.

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).

What this city honestly needs is mass transit that is not even at the same level as the rest of traffic (a.k.a. "grade level"). Streetcars stuck in traffic, Light Rail that people accidentally hit with their car or drive into are all just accidents waiting to happen. It sounds a little silly, but elevating the mass transit infrastructure would take care of it.

These guys seem to have an idea, though it looks like it's been a while since their page has been updated: http://austinmonorail.org/

I would ride that in a heartbeat.

"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

Ah, one more thing. The Airport extension is actually a brilliant idea because it means a lot of the system can be financed by airport-backed bonds, not by general obligation bonds.

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.

I'm not so sure that the Triangle spur is the 51st Street connector. I suspect it would actually run up Speedway (where it could have a dedicated lane if you removed the bike lanes) to 45th Street, then across to the Triangle.

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).

Wait.

Streetcars suck because they are stuck in traffic and no one is going to build a dedicated light rail in its own right-of-way if they already have an expensive but inferior streetcar on that route

OR

Streetcars suck because I want a streetcar going up Guadalupe and through MY neighborhood in Hyde Park / North University and besides, East Austin ALREADY has commuter rail (which also sucks).

Why are you not singing the praises of this plan? It saves West Campus / Hyde Park / North University from the eternal damnation of streetcars.

It’s Win – Win!

Us po’ folk in East Austin get the inferior rail service that breaks the political ice and allows the Lexus of public transportation – dedicated right-of-way rail lines – to go in on the ritzy west side of town, dense with enlightened pro-rail progressives, and everybody’s happy.

“Because a transfer from commuter rail to streetcar (stuck in traffic) is no more attractive than a transfer from commuter rail to bus (stuck in traffic).
…
I have made this clear hundreds of times. Streetcar, if stuck in traffic, is no better for daily commuters than is shuttlebus.”

But what about a commuter rail ride that BYPASSES the worst traffic – 183 from Cedar Park to close to downtown, and then a short trip in traffic from Airport and MLK to downtown. You spend 10% of your commute stuck in traffic with the riff-raff, but even on that 10% you’re not driving. Instead you’re checking email and surfing the web. I would say that is a net positive.

“Even a transfer from commuter rail to light rail would likely drive away a large fraction of potential riders.”

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.

"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."

Alan,

Because a transfer from commuter rail to streetcar (stuck in traffic) is no more attractive than a transfer from commuter rail to bus (stuck in traffic). Even a transfer from commuter rail to light rail would likely drive away a large fraction of potential riders. I have made this clear hundreds of times. Streetcar, if stuck in traffic, is no better for daily commuters than is shuttlebus.

And, no, this doesn't go where it needs to go - assuming it's Cap Metro's circulator route with no changes. The San Jacinto side of UT is NOT where most people work. And the Manor Road area is about as dense now as it's going to get - while West Campus is an order of magnitude more dense and pulling even farther away, to say nothing of North University and Hyde Park. (And nobody at The Triangle is going to get on, just to head out through Mueller and East Austin, to get downtown when they could go straight there down Lamar/Guadalupe).

Optimism fading fast...

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.

After browsing a couple of lower-quality articles about this (fox7 and klbj) that mention Mueller, I'm getting the sinking feeling that "to the Triangle" doesn't mean "run up Guadalupe" like I assumed/hoped, but actually just fully completing the "question-mark" route of the proposed Cap Metro circulator (through Mueller than back to the west across I-35 via 51st), which would suck goat ass, since it would skip Hyde Park and West Campus, as well as the part of UT people actually work at. Sigh. I hope my first impression was right; no way to confirm now.

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.

My early thoughts are here.

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.

I'm hoping that the term "streetcar" is political posturing, which wouldn't be surprising given that the adjective most often preceeding the term "light rail" lately is "failed." My impression is that if this happens, it will have some mix of dedicated lanes and shared lanes. Hopefully we would eventually kick cars out of the streetcar lane (after a few dozen get smashed up).

I guess the Houston story I heard was medical center/medical center parking lot.

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.

I am very skeptical, but will wait to see the final plan. My guess is that they know that ridership numbers are not going to be good on commuter rail, so they better get this in front of the voters before that becomes a failure in the publics mind.

What's up with this piecemeal approach, too? Urban planning has its limits, but if you are laying out an urban rail system don't you want to do this in a comprehensive fashion? This will be the third rail "plan" in 7 or 8 years - the original light rail plan, the All Systems Go commuter rail plan (now abandoned, apparently), and now this new plan. This kind of stuff is too expensive to be dicking around with like this.

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.

In general, although many get this wrong, streetcar implies shared lane system. Light rail implies reserved guideway (dedicated lanes or its own ROW).

One of the many things Lyndon Henry and the "lightrailnow.org" crowd have to answer for is muddying the waters by calling our craptastic commuter rail line "light rail", "urban light rail", and other such bastardizations to try to make it sound better. Makes it even harder for me now to make sure people don't confuse streetcar with real LRT.

I'm assuming dedicated lanes and generally consistent service. If this is a shared lane system (or the service sucks), I think you are right, but then I think the whole system would be unpopular, not just the airport leg.

And shilli, light rail from the airport would snag a lot of business travellers. Streetcar, not so much. Please don't conflate the two. A passenger would only need to miss one flight because the streetcar was stuck in the same traffic that his rental car or cab would have been before he realizes the difference.

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 airport stop might have something to do with Wynn's plan to snag airport revenue to fund this. It would be nice to see something going south and east, and Riverside between Congress and Pleasant Valley could get pretty dense if all these condo projects go through (maybe more dense and ped-friendly if a streetcar was there), but Pleasant Valley to the Airport would be a lot of track in a pretty sparse area. I would think you would get decent ridership from tourists/conventioneers/business travelers between the airport and downtown. I imagine that has been demonstrated true or false in other cities. I hear that in Houston there is a big spike in ridership on the train between the airport and the airport parking lot, but that doesn't really count.

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.

It's sad to see the airport included in this proposal's list of destinations. I think it's pandering to the ill-informed. Polling shows that people think the airport would be attractive to voters because they hate paying for cab rides and parking fees. It's actually a rare destination for most people, though, so it doesn't make sense to dedicate a route out there until the rest of the lines have been mapped out linking residential populations to the more frequently-visited destinations. But I suppose you gotta present rail in ways the voters will find it appealing if it's gonna get built at all.

Seth

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

Oh, and, I'm pessimistic so far because the only spot they're talking about maybe having reserved guideway is the only part which wouldn't see much benefit from getting the streetcars out of traffic. The place it really needs its own lane is on Guadalupe near UT, especially down near UT, which presents the most difficulties since space is at such a premium, but 2000's LRT would have done it. If you're running long fast trains every 5 minutes, you can get away with eliminating one of the two through lanes, but if you're running a short streetcar, it's going to be hard to replace that capacity.

Downtown would be nice but not critical as long as they run somewhere other than Congress - on Congress it'd need its own lane to be worthwhile.

Love ya, Dahmus. I thought you would get a kick out of that.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T LUMP ME IN WITH DAUGHERTY. He's a complete and utter tool who is against any and all rail projects. The fact that he and his buddy Skaggs offered only token opposition to the commuter rail plan should tell you how shitty it is. Rail which actually might work is the thing that scares those Neanderthal far-exurbanites the MOST, because it would mean Austin voters might stop the suburban-roads-gravy-train that funds their constituents driving.

I don't have enough details about this project yet to be keen or not. There are some early indications that they're at least thinking about the need for some dedicated guideway (with the comments about running outside existing lanes on Riverside), but on the other hand, they're really pushing the word "streetcar".

Hint: If it's no faster and no more reliable than the bus, we're not getting anything we couldn't get more cheaply with the bus. If it doesn't have its own lane for at least a good chunk of the trip, it's a waste of time.

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