beautifulplanet
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Proponents for and opponents against a proposal for a new streetcar/light-rail line and road improvements in Austin, Texas, are presenting their views, less four weeks prior to November 4 with a combined rail and road plan on the local ballot called "Proposition 1".
One thing that might be surprising to many, is how rail advocates like the group Light Rail Now (basically Lyndon Henry, a former Capital Metro board member, and Dave Dobbs), who have been advocating for urban rail in Austin for so many years, after a urban rail proposal was narrowly defeated at the polls in 2000, are actively advocating against the urban rail proposal now, only because it does not serve the route they want it to (Guadalupe/North Lamar).
The current proposition includes $600 million for urban rail and $400 million for road projects. For some rail advocates, the criticism starts right there, and to some it might seem understandable that rail proponents could be unhappy with those $400 million for roads. To some it may seem like roads were included to get the support of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber represents the businesses in the greater Austin area, and the Chamber demands a comprehensive, multi-modal approach to alleviating traffic, including both high-capacity transit (Urban Rail) as well as road improvements. The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce stated that "transportation is our number one concern".
The road improvements that are part of this current plan do not to lead to any completely new roads being built. According to the Central Texas transportation agencies working together on the "Project Connect" plan, the improvements include reducing traffic jams on existing roads, by putting in new, intelligent traffic management systems, or by building road improvements and new interchanges on existing roads for better access. Even some environmental groups support the proposition 1 including road improvements, like the local Sierra Club, despite the roads component. Roy Waley, conservation chair with the Sierra Club, said: "But we did vote to support the plan. It's been 14 years (since the light rail vote). If we don't move forward with rail now, when will we be able to do it?"
The current urban rail plan as presented within the proposition 1 plan features an initial 9.5 mile route from East Riverside on the south side of Colorado River through downtown passing by the convention center and along the eastern end of University of Texas at Austin towards the north to Highland Mall, a shopping mall bought by Austin Community College as a future campus with up to 10,000 students as well as office space for companies collaborating with ACC, in addition to any continuing retail activity. As Project Connect documents state, the proposed 9.5 mile East Riverside-Highland route is estimated to carry an average of 18,000 weekday riders by 2030, eight years after a planned 2022 opening.
While supporters of the Guadalupe corridor made their own calculations about projected future riderships using census data, Project Connect states that "CAMPO 2010 demographics (as approved for use in modeling and development for the 2040 Plan), [...] are more accurate than raw Census data" and that "Census employment data, in particular, is commonly recognized by planning professionals all over the country as an imprecise source for local-level analysis". Project Connect continues by saying that in December 2013, a study process was finished that showed how the "East Riverside to Highland route consistently outscored Lamar and the other sub-corridors that were being evaluated". For a long time, it seemed to many as a the initial route would be selected in order to include the Mueller redevelopment area, still that the outcome that this route was not selected to some might indicate that there was no pre-set outcome to the study process, but actually the route with highest ridership projections were chosen. As the city of Austin and in the involved agencies are also looking for federal funding for urban rail, choosing the route with highest ridership could possibly increase the chances to receive this funding, especially as the former Guadalupe proposal already received a "Low-Medium Finance Rating" from the Federal Transportation Administration in the past.
Project Connect also published a system map, that include all plan regarding future transportation in the Austin area. Project Connect makes clear that the Guadalupe route as well as to alignments to Mueller, to East Austin and to the airport would be strong candidates for rail expansion, so that in conjunction with current CapMetro Rail's Red Line and future Lone Star Rail, many parts of the Austin metro area would be able to be served by rail. To some it might seem, that this is something that's missing from many of the Guadalupe supporters who oppose the current rail proposal; some of them still speak of Guadalupe being the corridor for an initial segment, still if and how all kinds of other places should be served by rail does not seem to be answered by them. To some it might seem like for many of them, rail Guadalupe to Crestview/North-Lamar TC is what matters, if and how other parts of the city get rail as well doesn't matter, and this logic might be another factor to lead to this peculiar sight of rail advocates making the case against rail (against the current proposal).
Here is the system map of planned rail services in the Austin metro area, according to Let's Go Austin, a PAC supporting proposition 1:
And in comparison, the alternative urban rail plan by the Texas Association for Public Transportation (TAFT), consisting only of urban rail from downtown via Guadalupe to Crestview, then using current Red Line right-of-way to just north of MLK Jr., where a new segment would connect to Mueller, no further rail is proposed for the rest of the city:
And another similar one, by the Central Austin Community Development Corporation (CACDC), offering urban rail from downtown via Guadalupe to Crestview and North Lamar TC - all other parts of the city are not included to have urban rail in this plan:
The detailed response to the idea of Guadalupe-Lamar urban rail as the initial segment (while endorsing it as a strong candidate for one of the segments to follow) can be found here:
Responding to Questions about the Guadalupe-Lamar Corridor
Thursday, June 26, 2014 - 1:00pm
Project Connect: Central Corridor Project Management Team
http://projectconnect.com/blog/responding-questions-about-guadalupe-lamar-corridor
To some it might be baffling, how Light Rail Now and other similar groups really seem to think, that by helping to vote this down, they are getting light rail in Guadalupe, which is what they want. To some it might be more likely, that by helping to vote this down, rail will get voted down again in Austin, and so for the next 10 or 20 years afterwards, there will probably not be another rail proposal, so the chances of ever getting rail in Guadalupe will be even lower then. Still of course it is legit for Light Rail Now and other similar groups to do whatever they want to do.
Another group called "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" also publishes public statements against the current proposal, like a few days ago by an UT student called Clad Smalley, called "Proposition 1 rail is expensive white elephant".
While meanwhile some in the Austin area by now might already be used to seeing rail advocates at public events sitting side-by-side in harmony with anti-tax folks opposing any new public spending, collectively opposing the current rail proposal, this new piece might be especially disturbing to some, as it seems not only to advocate against the current plan and for putting their own on the ballot as soon as possible (which everyone might see as something legit to do), still at the same time it seems to omit and/or misrepresent facts and use some of the exact language of the people rail advocates normally argue against.
Here is the link:
Proposition 1 rail is expensive white elephant
Published on October 8, 2014 at 10:28 pm
By Clay Smalley
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2014/10/08/proposition-1-rail-is-expensive-white-elephant
Here is how "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" describes the Phase 1 route of the current proposal, as "starting at the Austin Convention Center downtown, running north [...] to [...] Highland Mall":
It also may seem questionable to call Highland Mall "derelict" when the author probably knows that Austin Community College purchased it and the property is under redevelopment to become a major ACC campus with additional corporate locations (and even possibly still some retail) in the near future.
Some might think while misrepresenting the route of the current proposal, in the following the article is talking up the 2000 urban rail plan as a current alternative to look multiple times better in comparison, tweaking some numbers, like increasing the ridership number, and decreasing the cost:
http://www.fta.dot.gov/12304_2915.html
even the "14.6 mile Minimum Operable Segment (MOS)" of the 2000 proposal was supposed to cost $739.0 million, and that is including nearly half of the line operating along existing tracks that are used by the Red Line today, and no river crossing, no part south of downtown. So giving the impression that the total amount for a current alternative proposal would be $300 million, even with a shorter route than the former MOS might seem questionable to some figuring in both general inflation and additionally the cost increases in construction within the last 14 years. So the per-mile cost of the part of the 2000 urban rail plan just encompassing the completely new year urban rail right-of-way segment from approximately Crestview to downtown, the part not going along existing tracks, would probably be similar to the current proposal when figuring in the lower cost of the part of the route going along existing tracks. At the same time, while the FTA mentions that the 2000 MOS was to serve 37,400 average weekday boardings by the year 2025, that included the part north of Crestview, so the article mentioning only the part of the route "out to 183", and only some estimated lower price of a segment only, but then the full former ridership projection (while slightly increasing that as well) for the full route, to some might seem like a questionable way to deal with facts. Some might think, one can't have it both ways, instead either mention the lower cost of a segment of the former route in conjunction with the lower ridership of a segment of the former route, or the higher ridership of the former full MOS together with the higher full cost of the former full MOS.
While many may think that it is legit to advocate for or against any proposal, some might be surprised by the language used here by rail advocates. The headline calls the current rail proposal an "expensive white elephant". Then it goes into a lengthy explanation of why light rail in San Jose, California supposedly is so bad. The article then continues to advocate for buses and against rail by making an example out of Austin's existing Red Line commuter rail: "CapMetro’s Red Line commuter rail is running at full capacity, but still needs a whopping $18 subsidy for every boarding, or in other words, CapMetro loses $18 every time someone rides the Red Line. The commuter buses it replaced only needed a $3 subsidy for every boarding" Some readers might not only come away with the impression that San Jose light rail and Red Line commuter rail is bad, but that usually rail is a bad idea, as the only positive example of rail mentioned is Houston's light rail, and some readers might think that rail would be an especially bad idea in general because it takes a subsidy 6 times as big as buses do - so why not just let buses do the job? The article does not make any mention of how the public also subsidizes roads, or of the terrible external costs and effects of road traffic. While the authors might want to express their opposition to the current rail proposal, and advocate for their own (Guadaloupe-Lamar), the end effect might be that it just advocated against rail in general. It concludes saying "At least Austin will get a shiny choo-choo." To some, that might sound like an excerpt of any anti-rail textbook. And some might ask themselves: deriding urban rail as a choo-choo, still while at the same time, the author of the article wants to advocate for their own urban rail proposal?!?
Some might wonder: Even if things go like "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" or similar groups wants to, and in 4 years there is another vote on a urban rail plan along Guadalupe-Lamar, why wouldn't people say then "I won't vote for your proposal, you said yourself that urban rail is just a shiny choo-choo"? Why wouldn't people say "You said it yourself, rail was such a disaster in San Jose and rail needs so much of a higher subsidy compared to buses, why should we vote for rail now?" People in four years might say "We don't want this kind of rail that's an 'expensive white elephant'!" To some, it seems surprising, that "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" and those other groups don't criticize the current proposal in a more matter-of-fact way, saying "Current rail proposition includes wrong route, Guadalupe-Lamar needed" or something like that. Many might think, it might have been more effective also just working towards their own goal, to get it across that rail in general is a good idea, just it needs to be along a different alignment, and to not work for those anti-rail people who now they appear together on stage with, but who will fight them tooth and nail if their dream of having their own Guadalupe-Lamar vote ever comes true, while ironically now in 2014 the future advocates of their own rail proposal still seem to use their future opponents' anti-rail rhetorics.
Many - like the Austin Sierra Club and others - might think that Guadalupe-Lamar needs rail just as other parts of the city do, and so some might hope that a sufficient number of people agree to support proposition 1 and help make Phase 1 Riverside-Highland rail a reality, to then help with their continuing support to expand the system - just as indicated in the system map - to include Guadalupe and possibly other extensions like the last 4 miles from Grove St out to the airport, or to Mueller, as well as to other parts of the city.
One thing that might be surprising to many, is how rail advocates like the group Light Rail Now (basically Lyndon Henry, a former Capital Metro board member, and Dave Dobbs), who have been advocating for urban rail in Austin for so many years, after a urban rail proposal was narrowly defeated at the polls in 2000, are actively advocating against the urban rail proposal now, only because it does not serve the route they want it to (Guadalupe/North Lamar).
The current proposition includes $600 million for urban rail and $400 million for road projects. For some rail advocates, the criticism starts right there, and to some it might seem understandable that rail proponents could be unhappy with those $400 million for roads. To some it may seem like roads were included to get the support of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber represents the businesses in the greater Austin area, and the Chamber demands a comprehensive, multi-modal approach to alleviating traffic, including both high-capacity transit (Urban Rail) as well as road improvements. The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce stated that "transportation is our number one concern".
The road improvements that are part of this current plan do not to lead to any completely new roads being built. According to the Central Texas transportation agencies working together on the "Project Connect" plan, the improvements include reducing traffic jams on existing roads, by putting in new, intelligent traffic management systems, or by building road improvements and new interchanges on existing roads for better access. Even some environmental groups support the proposition 1 including road improvements, like the local Sierra Club, despite the roads component. Roy Waley, conservation chair with the Sierra Club, said: "But we did vote to support the plan. It's been 14 years (since the light rail vote). If we don't move forward with rail now, when will we be able to do it?"
The current urban rail plan as presented within the proposition 1 plan features an initial 9.5 mile route from East Riverside on the south side of Colorado River through downtown passing by the convention center and along the eastern end of University of Texas at Austin towards the north to Highland Mall, a shopping mall bought by Austin Community College as a future campus with up to 10,000 students as well as office space for companies collaborating with ACC, in addition to any continuing retail activity. As Project Connect documents state, the proposed 9.5 mile East Riverside-Highland route is estimated to carry an average of 18,000 weekday riders by 2030, eight years after a planned 2022 opening.
While supporters of the Guadalupe corridor made their own calculations about projected future riderships using census data, Project Connect states that "CAMPO 2010 demographics (as approved for use in modeling and development for the 2040 Plan), [...] are more accurate than raw Census data" and that "Census employment data, in particular, is commonly recognized by planning professionals all over the country as an imprecise source for local-level analysis". Project Connect continues by saying that in December 2013, a study process was finished that showed how the "East Riverside to Highland route consistently outscored Lamar and the other sub-corridors that were being evaluated". For a long time, it seemed to many as a the initial route would be selected in order to include the Mueller redevelopment area, still that the outcome that this route was not selected to some might indicate that there was no pre-set outcome to the study process, but actually the route with highest ridership projections were chosen. As the city of Austin and in the involved agencies are also looking for federal funding for urban rail, choosing the route with highest ridership could possibly increase the chances to receive this funding, especially as the former Guadalupe proposal already received a "Low-Medium Finance Rating" from the Federal Transportation Administration in the past.
Project Connect also published a system map, that include all plan regarding future transportation in the Austin area. Project Connect makes clear that the Guadalupe route as well as to alignments to Mueller, to East Austin and to the airport would be strong candidates for rail expansion, so that in conjunction with current CapMetro Rail's Red Line and future Lone Star Rail, many parts of the Austin metro area would be able to be served by rail. To some it might seem, that this is something that's missing from many of the Guadalupe supporters who oppose the current rail proposal; some of them still speak of Guadalupe being the corridor for an initial segment, still if and how all kinds of other places should be served by rail does not seem to be answered by them. To some it might seem like for many of them, rail Guadalupe to Crestview/North-Lamar TC is what matters, if and how other parts of the city get rail as well doesn't matter, and this logic might be another factor to lead to this peculiar sight of rail advocates making the case against rail (against the current proposal).
Here is the system map of planned rail services in the Austin metro area, according to Let's Go Austin, a PAC supporting proposition 1:
And in comparison, the alternative urban rail plan by the Texas Association for Public Transportation (TAFT), consisting only of urban rail from downtown via Guadalupe to Crestview, then using current Red Line right-of-way to just north of MLK Jr., where a new segment would connect to Mueller, no further rail is proposed for the rest of the city:
And another similar one, by the Central Austin Community Development Corporation (CACDC), offering urban rail from downtown via Guadalupe to Crestview and North Lamar TC - all other parts of the city are not included to have urban rail in this plan:
The detailed response to the idea of Guadalupe-Lamar urban rail as the initial segment (while endorsing it as a strong candidate for one of the segments to follow) can be found here:
Responding to Questions about the Guadalupe-Lamar Corridor
Thursday, June 26, 2014 - 1:00pm
Project Connect: Central Corridor Project Management Team
http://projectconnect.com/blog/responding-questions-about-guadalupe-lamar-corridor
To some it might be baffling, how Light Rail Now and other similar groups really seem to think, that by helping to vote this down, they are getting light rail in Guadalupe, which is what they want. To some it might be more likely, that by helping to vote this down, rail will get voted down again in Austin, and so for the next 10 or 20 years afterwards, there will probably not be another rail proposal, so the chances of ever getting rail in Guadalupe will be even lower then. Still of course it is legit for Light Rail Now and other similar groups to do whatever they want to do.
Another group called "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" also publishes public statements against the current proposal, like a few days ago by an UT student called Clad Smalley, called "Proposition 1 rail is expensive white elephant".
While meanwhile some in the Austin area by now might already be used to seeing rail advocates at public events sitting side-by-side in harmony with anti-tax folks opposing any new public spending, collectively opposing the current rail proposal, this new piece might be especially disturbing to some, as it seems not only to advocate against the current plan and for putting their own on the ballot as soon as possible (which everyone might see as something legit to do), still at the same time it seems to omit and/or misrepresent facts and use some of the exact language of the people rail advocates normally argue against.
Here is the link:
Proposition 1 rail is expensive white elephant
Published on October 8, 2014 at 10:28 pm
By Clay Smalley
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2014/10/08/proposition-1-rail-is-expensive-white-elephant
Here is how "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" describes the Phase 1 route of the current proposal, as "starting at the Austin Convention Center downtown, running north [...] to [...] Highland Mall":
While many might think it might be legit to oppose any policy or ballot measure, many might still think it is questionable to misrepresent the facts, as Phase 1 of Urban Rail will not only start at the Convention Center going north to Highland Mall, it will start on East Riverside Dr, and cross Texas' Columbia River's reservoir called Lady Bird Lake towards the Convention Center. The proposals by many Guadalupe supporters do not feature a rail crossing over Lady Bird Lake, neither did the MOS of the 2000 plan, which of course also helps to explain a different in cost. So the current proposal will serve the south side of the city as well and provide additional utility by offering another river crossing, but describing the route "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" omitted that half of it, while at the same time mentioning the cost for the full Phase 1 route.Fast forward to now — Project Connect, a partnership between the City of Austin, Cap Metro and other transit agencies, will be putting a questionable light rail plan to the vote in November. Phase One of the construction would consist of light rail starting at the Austin Convention Center downtown, running north along San Jacinto Boulevard and Trinity Street to pass by the east side of UT, then jogging over to Red River to the Hancock Center, crossing the existing Red Line with an expensive bridge or tunnel and following Airport Boulevard to the derelict Highland Mall.
This line would carry half the passengers per day that the 2000 proposal would. At a hefty price tag of $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars, though, it’s not much more than a shiny, expensive version of the bus route 10[...]
It also may seem questionable to call Highland Mall "derelict" when the author probably knows that Austin Community College purchased it and the property is under redevelopment to become a major ACC campus with additional corporate locations (and even possibly still some retail) in the near future.
Some might think while misrepresenting the route of the current proposal, in the following the article is talking up the 2000 urban rail plan as a current alternative to look multiple times better in comparison, tweaking some numbers, like increasing the ridership number, and decreasing the cost:
As the FTA document shows here,In 2000, there was a ballot proposition for a light rail line in Austin. If the measure had passed the vote, Austin would have a robust light rail system running from downtown all the way out to 183 along the Drag and North Lamar Boulevard. It was, and still is, the most heavily traveled bus corridor in Austin, at the time carrying the 1L, 1M, 101 and bits and pieces of other routes that happened to pass by UT and downtown. And with good reason: The corridor has the highest population density and job density of any in the city. If built, the line would carry 40,000 passengers each day and cost $300 million [...]
http://www.fta.dot.gov/12304_2915.html
even the "14.6 mile Minimum Operable Segment (MOS)" of the 2000 proposal was supposed to cost $739.0 million, and that is including nearly half of the line operating along existing tracks that are used by the Red Line today, and no river crossing, no part south of downtown. So giving the impression that the total amount for a current alternative proposal would be $300 million, even with a shorter route than the former MOS might seem questionable to some figuring in both general inflation and additionally the cost increases in construction within the last 14 years. So the per-mile cost of the part of the 2000 urban rail plan just encompassing the completely new year urban rail right-of-way segment from approximately Crestview to downtown, the part not going along existing tracks, would probably be similar to the current proposal when figuring in the lower cost of the part of the route going along existing tracks. At the same time, while the FTA mentions that the 2000 MOS was to serve 37,400 average weekday boardings by the year 2025, that included the part north of Crestview, so the article mentioning only the part of the route "out to 183", and only some estimated lower price of a segment only, but then the full former ridership projection (while slightly increasing that as well) for the full route, to some might seem like a questionable way to deal with facts. Some might think, one can't have it both ways, instead either mention the lower cost of a segment of the former route in conjunction with the lower ridership of a segment of the former route, or the higher ridership of the former full MOS together with the higher full cost of the former full MOS.
While many may think that it is legit to advocate for or against any proposal, some might be surprised by the language used here by rail advocates. The headline calls the current rail proposal an "expensive white elephant". Then it goes into a lengthy explanation of why light rail in San Jose, California supposedly is so bad. The article then continues to advocate for buses and against rail by making an example out of Austin's existing Red Line commuter rail: "CapMetro’s Red Line commuter rail is running at full capacity, but still needs a whopping $18 subsidy for every boarding, or in other words, CapMetro loses $18 every time someone rides the Red Line. The commuter buses it replaced only needed a $3 subsidy for every boarding" Some readers might not only come away with the impression that San Jose light rail and Red Line commuter rail is bad, but that usually rail is a bad idea, as the only positive example of rail mentioned is Houston's light rail, and some readers might think that rail would be an especially bad idea in general because it takes a subsidy 6 times as big as buses do - so why not just let buses do the job? The article does not make any mention of how the public also subsidizes roads, or of the terrible external costs and effects of road traffic. While the authors might want to express their opposition to the current rail proposal, and advocate for their own (Guadaloupe-Lamar), the end effect might be that it just advocated against rail in general. It concludes saying "At least Austin will get a shiny choo-choo." To some, that might sound like an excerpt of any anti-rail textbook. And some might ask themselves: deriding urban rail as a choo-choo, still while at the same time, the author of the article wants to advocate for their own urban rail proposal?!?
Some might wonder: Even if things go like "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" or similar groups wants to, and in 4 years there is another vote on a urban rail plan along Guadalupe-Lamar, why wouldn't people say then "I won't vote for your proposal, you said yourself that urban rail is just a shiny choo-choo"? Why wouldn't people say "You said it yourself, rail was such a disaster in San Jose and rail needs so much of a higher subsidy compared to buses, why should we vote for rail now?" People in four years might say "We don't want this kind of rail that's an 'expensive white elephant'!" To some, it seems surprising, that "Austinites for Urban Rail Action" and those other groups don't criticize the current proposal in a more matter-of-fact way, saying "Current rail proposition includes wrong route, Guadalupe-Lamar needed" or something like that. Many might think, it might have been more effective also just working towards their own goal, to get it across that rail in general is a good idea, just it needs to be along a different alignment, and to not work for those anti-rail people who now they appear together on stage with, but who will fight them tooth and nail if their dream of having their own Guadalupe-Lamar vote ever comes true, while ironically now in 2014 the future advocates of their own rail proposal still seem to use their future opponents' anti-rail rhetorics.
Many - like the Austin Sierra Club and others - might think that Guadalupe-Lamar needs rail just as other parts of the city do, and so some might hope that a sufficient number of people agree to support proposition 1 and help make Phase 1 Riverside-Highland rail a reality, to then help with their continuing support to expand the system - just as indicated in the system map - to include Guadalupe and possibly other extensions like the last 4 miles from Grove St out to the airport, or to Mueller, as well as to other parts of the city.
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