Downtown Plan Meeting Saturday

Oh, Wes. Welcome home.

I weep for Austin. The condos aren't the problem. The problem is the douchbaggy club people who live in them.

That story is exactly the kind of clap-trap which comes from the two-way side that made me sick. Consider the fact that you can slow down cars just as easily on a one-way street as you can on a two-way street, for instance, when judging the claim they make that one-way streets are less safe because cars drive faster.

And, of course, cars driving fast, moving straight, next to me, while I'm on the sidewalk, are less of a concern than slow-moving but turning cars on either one of the designs. Speed is not directly related to danger, in other words, unless you're a jaywalker.

Much of the motivation for two-way streets comes not from pedestrian advocates, by the way, but from shopowners who want to be able to capture the eyeballs of passing motorists (and show them where they need to park in many cases).

You'll never have a good enough controlled data set for a really reliable study on this - it's going to take engineering and common sense - and not listening to people with ulterior motives.

Crackplog ahoy!

I'm still torn about the one-way/two-way argument. It seems like there are reasonable anecdotal arguments on both sides, and not really any convincing empirical arguments on either side. This link is interesting:

http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/04/06/primeggias-one-way-safety-claims-are-based-on-1970s-studies/

A few ways to make two-way and one-way streets more pedestrian friendly: For two-way streets, prohibit left hand turns (only allow them at big intersections with protected left turn lanes). That keeps traffic moving and prevents the "GUN IT!" scenario that you describe. For one-way streets, switch the direction every few blocks (so that a given street would be north only for a few blocks, then south only for a few blocks). This slows down cars and makes the road unappealing to through traffic.

They got transportation nearly completely wrong:

1. Two-way SUCKS for "calm circulation". More likely is the "oh, here's a short gap for me to turn left, better GUN IT!" scenario.

2. Streetcar, as Cap Metro envisions, is completely useless, both as a circulator for commuter rail AND as an inner-city transportation network. People will quickly figure out it's even worse than the bus it replaced.

(Wynn/McCracken's streetcar/light rail MIGHT be better - but that's IF they ignore Cap Metro's route and instead run up Guadalupe where all the density is and is going to be in the future, instead of running up the ass end of UT and out Manor Road; and IF they manage to get a good chunk of reserved guideway to make it faster/more reliable than the bus).

More in a crackplog later today if time permits.

Well I guess it's inevitable since that will all be underwater after Greenland melts.

That's hilarious.

How nice that after the great plague, everyone in Futuraustin will be traveling by riverboat instead of car.

Yeah, all those big buildings killed New York too. What a boring vanilla city that is.

All I can say about the city in that poster is that we should all be thankful for Mary Doerr.

Uh, whachu talkin' 'bout Kenneth? The meeting is on Saturday. Today is Wednesday. That gives you a little over two days to work this into your calendar.

Hey, next time you might want to post this a day before the meeting, so we can make plans to attend.

Where is the Capitol?

I don't see all that many condo listings for sale, so the demand must still be there.

I wonder what the occupancy rate is at the downtown AMLI and the 404 Rio Grande. That would be a good indicator of demand for downtown living too.

Where are the "For Rent" signs that will be hanging in the condo windows of Future Austin?

other than the water, it looks like dallas to me

any why doesn't the future call for blowing up the raddison hotel?

the. scariest. future.

Holy moly, what city is that?