Austin rail and the 1/4 mile rule

[M1EK]

The 1/4 mile rule of thumb (the maximum distance the majority of people will walk to/from a rail stop every day) was met with derision here when I brought it up in relation to the abyssmal Austin-screwing commuter rail debacle. Maybe the same transportation whizzes who took such issue with it need to go check out this link in Houston, too; since he's fallen prey to the same rule of thumb I did.

I link to him with commentary, and using aerial from this site. Anybody remember who took these (from the plane)? I wanted to credit him but the thread appears to have aged off this page.

[KevinFromTexas]

The person who took those aerials from a jetliner is: Mopacs.

[Mopacs]

Yep, that is my shot from an October flight to Los Angeles...Thanks for the credit. Very good illustration, and gives you a good perspective on the distances from the rail stop to the downtown core.

FYI... this is the original aerial thread, from the City Photos forum:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=121603

[M1EK]

Originally Posted by Mopacs

Yep, that is my shot from an October flight to Los Angeles...Thanks for the credit. Very good illustration, and gives you a good perspective on the distances from the rail stop to the downtown core.

FYI... this is the original aerial thread, from the City Photos forum:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=121603

That explains it; I was looking for a specific thread here and had forgotten it was just mentioned in one of the other threads. Thanks.

[JAM]

Yeah, I was one of those people who disagreed with the 1/4 rule, which is a lousy 3-4 minute walk. Europeans walk further than this distance all the time. I guess I just don't want to believe that Texans are actually that lazy. The Houston area that this link was discussing is a bit different scenario, having to cross a major freeway (12 lanes in this area), it's feeder roads and the given neighborhood. Some bad dudes hang out under those freeway bridges. Non-rush hour traffic moves at 65-100 mph. Downtown Austin is a cream puff compared to this area of Houston.

A recent comment here was that Austin bit off too much at once for the light rail. This seems very plausible. Should have just tried putting in light rail from downtown to somewhere a few miles north and see how that went first.

[M1EK]

Originally Posted by JAM

Yeah, I was one of those people who disagreed with the 1/4 rule, which is a lousy 3-4 minute walk. Europeans walk further than this distance all the time. I guess I just don't want to believe that Texans are actually that lazy. The Houston area that this link was discussing is a bit different scenario, having to cross a major freeway (12 lanes in this area), it's feeder roads and the given neighborhood. Some bad dudes hang out under those freeway bridges. Non-rush hour traffic moves at 65-100 mph. Downtown Austin is a cream puff compared to this area of Houston.

The distinction is that in Europe (as well as NY), there's a very large population of "non-choice commuters", i.e., people who can't feasibly drive to work even if they wanted to. That's not true in any non-NewYork city in this country, including Austin, Houston, and all the successful light-rail starts.

The key thing all the successful light-rail starts had in common was delivering people with this 1/4 mile rule to major destinations. In all cases, the rail start was competing with relatively easy automobile access into downtown (even if people had to pay to park), which, again, doesn't apply in Manhattan or various European cities.

So unless you can wave a wand and make 90% of Austin's downtown parking vanish (and reduce the capacity of the roads downtown by a similar amount), you HAVE to be within a SHORT walk of the train station, period.

[Trae]

Originally Posted by JAM

Yeah, I was one of those people who disagreed with the 1/4 rule, which is a lousy 3-4 minute walk. Europeans walk further than this distance all the time. I guess I just don't want to believe that Texans are actually that lazy. The Houston area that this link was discussing is a bit different scenario, having to cross a major freeway (12 lanes in this area), it's feeder roads and the given neighborhood. Some bad dudes hang out under those freeway bridges. Non-rush hour traffic moves at 65-100 mph. Downtown Austin is a cream puff compared to this area of Houston.

A recent comment here was that Austin bit off too much at once for the light rail. This seems very plausible. Should have just tried putting in light rail from downtown to somewhere a few miles north and see how that went first.

Greenway is like Austin's Downtown.