AUSTIN | Transportation Updates

[electricron]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

Memphis is a pretty horrible example of a failed pedestrian mall. Except for Beale Street, their downtown is pretty much dead.

It was pretty much dead long before they gave the old trolley tracks a new lease on life. It still is pretty much dead. Just about all the new buildings in or near downtown Memphis the last 40 to 50 years has been built by the government, or heavily subsidized by government.
Take the Pyramid as an example, not even in use less than a decade before it had to be replaced by a newer, better arena. It's been lying vacant for all practical purposes for many years. Bass Pro Shops has recently taken it over - looks like a monster box store will be its future.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against cities and counties building or subsidizing real estate projects. But I would like to see private enterprise participating in rebuilding neighborhoods too.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Komeht

2. I'm not proposing a pedestrian mall. I'm proposing a complete and complex street built on a human scale for the humans that inhabit it that allows for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, transit, artists, tourists, spectators, cafes, street performers, etc. etc.

There is an immense amount of ROW on S. Congress, 90% devoted to single occupied cars - that's an absurdity that should be changed.

A 5 lane street isn't an immense amount of ROW for an inner city arterial street.

If you're not proposing converting South Congress into a pedestrian only mall, why present us with photos of a pedestrian mall in Barcelona? Why use bait and switch tactics?

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by electricron

A 5 lane street isn't an immense amount of ROW for an inner city arterial street.

If you're not proposing converting South Congress into a pedestrian only mall, why present us with photos of a pedestrian mall in Barcelona? Why use bait and switch tactics?

That isn't a pedestrian only mall. It had multiple lanes of traffic...

[AusTex]

Originally Posted by electricron

The pedestrian street mall length of Las Ramblas in Barcelona is less than one mile in length, equivalent to the distances of Congress Street from the Texas State Capitol to the Lake...

South Congress is multiple times longer than either. It's a feeder street into downtown Austin from the south, while Las Ramblas isn't even a feeder street.

Barcelona's main train station sits just off Las Ramblas, something Austin lacks an equivalent completely.

Las Ramblas lies within Barcelona's old city center where pedestrian traffic was the norm when it was built hundreds of years ago...

I Agree; South Austin does not have, nor will ever have the density to make Las Ramblas work. South Congress is a major roadway; the old "San Antonio Highway" and US Highway 81, [I think that number is right] serving all of South Austin. These two big issues as well at the rail option there will negate SoCo ever being a Ramblas.

Originally Posted by MightyYoda

I do think this could be done from the capital to the lake or something similar to 16th St in Denver... Biggest problem with Denver's were the free buses whizzing by though all other traffic was blocked... I do think taking Rail up South Congress with a station near AAS site and veering left to Lamar and right to Red River or whatever the bridge would go to wouldn't be bad. You would have the commuter rail, urban rail, and eventually LS Rail with stations near by. I think when urban rail is implemented, we can make Congress north of the river purely pedestrian. I do agree that keeping South Congress as is with urban rail down the middle is probably best. It allows inner Austin to easily bring people to downtown where we can continue to improve the pedestrian environment.

A major inter-modal connector road is what SoCo needs to be. The "Las Ramblas" concept for Congress from the river to the Capital has been talked about for years. The BIG difference is that the "rambling" has been considered along the sides...not along the center. The bus lines have been proposed to be moved off Congress altogether and I remember the consideration of reducing the number of lanes to 5, including the left turn lane.

Originally Posted by Komeht

1. Stop spinning. No one is proposing moving downtown to south side. There is not a single sky scraper along Las Ramblas. Not a single one.



Lots of four and five story buildings though - exactly think kind of thing we should be doing along a street like Congress.

2. I'm not proposing a pedestrian mall. I'm proposing a complete and complex street built on a human scale for the humans that inhabit it that allows for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, transit, artists, tourists, spectators, cafes, street performers, etc. etc....

Old Barcelona where Las Ramblas is located is a century's old area with blocks of 5 to 7 story building that are occupied and filled with your #2. above. Not one major road crosses Las Ramblas allowing for a very pedestrian street. SoCo could not become that. Maybe the 11 blocks in downtown could become the Austin version, however, the many major and wide cross streets will always be an issue.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by electricron

The Memphis trolleys connect their Amtrak Station to their Main Street street mall, about 1.8 miles in distance. It uses modern heritage trolleys. Much like the MATA in Dallas, they using old tracks buried under newer asphalt for many decades. It's not like they laid brand new tracks and spent years reconstructing it.

Memphis has two lines, the latest one was built like 5 years ago and it goes down Madison(I believe). It was completely built from scratch.

[jtown,man]

Correction, Memphis has three lines. Two run on existing lines while the third(Madison) is completely new.

From Wiki:

The system's third line, running east from Main Street along Madison Avenue for about 2 miles (3.2 km), opened on March 15, 2004. It was completed at a cost of about $56 million, which was about 25 percent below the original budget forecast for the project.[9]

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by AusTex

I Agree; South Austin does not have, nor will ever have the density to make Las Ramblas work. South Congress is a major roadway; the old "San Antonio Highway" and US Highway 81, [I think that number is right] serving all of South Austin. These two big issues as well at the rail option there will negate SoCo ever being a Ramblas.



A major inter-modal connector road is what SoCo needs to be. The "Las Ramblas" concept for Congress from the river to the Capital has been talked about for years. The BIG difference is that the "rambling" has been considered along the sides...not along the center. The bus lines have been proposed to be moved off Congress altogether and I remember the consideration of reducing the number of lanes to 5, including the left turn lane.



Old Barcelona where Las Ramblas is located is a century's old area with blocks of 5 to 7 story building that are occupied and filled with your #2. above. Not one major road crosses Las Ramblas allowing for a very pedestrian street. SoCo could not become that. Maybe the 11 blocks in downtown could become the Austin version, however, the many major and wide cross streets will always be an issue.

Cross streets aren't an issue at all if you keep the crossing narrow. There is not major crossing between North of Oltorf or South of Riverside. That's just a non-issue altogether.

This is central Austin and we should be pushing up the zoning density. That is the primary way that we can address the problem of affordability in Austin. Until you do this - everything else - all the affordability programs are window dressing.

You have to plan for a future that doesn't exist yet - otherwise you will never get there. If we preserve the status quo now we'll have the status quo 50 years from now and the ball will not have been advanced. Austin should not think itself so great that it has reached a stage worthy of preservation. We are not Paris or Rome or Vienna or even San Francisco or Boston.

If we continue to the current course of auto-dependent land use then we'll continue to be auto-dependent - that is until we run into a brick wall and be forced to change when it's very very painful.

I'm not saying a Las Ramblas is the only model that will work on South Congress, but it is the kind of thing that we should be thinking about and toying with and not dismissing out of hand because we think we can never lose a traffic lane - think great, do great things and one day we can be great. Preserve the mediocre and we will be mediocre. I'm just not going to get excited about dropping the speed limit on South Congress when there are so many better things that we could be doing with this street - a street that should be the gateway to downtown and a street that we can be proud of.

[electricron]

The last posted photo of Las Ramblias shows 6 lanes of traffic with an wider center median.
Golly, the 5 lanes of South Congress corridor isn't wide enough for 6 lanes, much less an extremely wide median. Which block bordering South Congress are you suggesting needs to be bulldozed, the east or west side? It'll take an additional 300 feet, a whole city block, of real estate to build anything approaching what they have done in Barcelona.

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by electricron

The last posted photo of Las Ramblias shows 6 lanes of traffic with an wider center median.
Golly, the 5 lanes of South Congress corridor isn't wide enough for 6 lanes, much less an extremely wide median. Which block bordering South Congress are you suggesting needs to be bulldozed, the east or west side? It'll take an additional 300 feet, a whole city block, of real estate to build anything approaching what they have done in Barcelona.

OMG...you are just sharp as a tack aren't you? That's exactly what I was advocating - taking the size shape and exact dimensions of a street half way across the world and superimposing it as is on top of Austin.

Hard to keep up with such blistering brain power you have there.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by electricron

The last posted photo of Las Ramblias shows 6 lanes of traffic with an wider center median.
Golly, the 5 lanes of South Congress corridor isn't wide enough for 6 lanes, much less an extremely wide median. Which block bordering South Congress are you suggesting needs to be bulldozed, the east or west side? It'll take an additional 300 feet, a whole city block, of real estate to build anything approaching what they have done in Barcelona.

It has two lanes of traffic in almost all of the section. It some areas it has three lanes of traffic... But it NEVER has 6 lanes. I have no idea what you're talking about and I just spent awhile on google maps streetview verifying this.

[Desperado]

Originally Posted by AusTex

A major inter-modal connector road is what SoCo needs to be. The "Las Ramblas" concept for Congress from the river to the Capital has been talked about for years. The BIG difference is that the "rambling" has been considered along the sides...not along the center. The bus lines have been proposed to be moved off Congress altogether and I remember the consideration of reducing the number of lanes to 5, including the left turn lane.

At the last BAC meeting, CapMetro reps gave a presentation on the Transit Priority Lanes that are being installed on Guadalupe and Lavaca this fall, and IIRC they did say that all the bus lanes would be moved off Congress downtown next year.

EDIT: Capital Metro to move bus routes off Congress Avenue in 2014

[ATXboom]

http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/bl...illion-to.html

[M1EK]

Originally Posted by Novacek

Supporting wild claims with actual facts aren't "homework". And yes, claims that are directly _contradicted_ by your own links are wild.

No, son, they aren't. You're misinterpreting the claims.

As for the general principle here, why don't you take issue with all the other cycling experts who make the same claims - that intersections are the problem, and not overtaking accidents?

As for DWI, I was referring to bicyclists being under the influence, i.e., people who got enough DWIs that they were forced to ride a bike and just kept on going to the bar every night. Yes, this is a real thing, and yes, it's a non-trivial contributor to bicycle fatalities (they also tend to be the ones who ride the wrong way at night without lights).

Try contributing to society instead of tearing down those who do. Otherwise, you're about to go on ignore, or as close as I can get in this forum.

[KevinFromTexas]

Really the only time that a bicyclist is rear ended is when it's by someone who is DWI. Otherwise they'd have to be doing something equally as stupid like running from the cops or racing. ALL of the bicycle accidents I've read about where the bicyclist was hit from behind was because the driver was drunk.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by M1EK

No, son, they aren't. You're misinterpreting the claims.

Your claim (repeated below): intersections are the problem.
Your link: intersections are 39% of fatalities, non-intersections are 61 % of fatalities.

Directly contradicted.

Originally Posted by M1EK

As for the general principle here, why don't you take issue with all the other cycling experts who make the same claims - that intersections are the problem, and not overtaking accidents?

Once again, those aren't binary choices. There are other types of mid-block/non-intersection accidents besides direct overtaking accidents. Again, according to your own link/your own experts.

Originally Posted by M1EK

As for DWI, I was referring to bicyclists being under the influence, i.e., people who got enough DWIs that they were forced to ride a bike and just kept on going to the bar every night. Yes, this is a real thing, and yes, it's a non-trivial contributor to bicycle fatalities (they also tend to be the ones who ride the wrong way at night without lights).

Where's the support for this claim? As I linked, the recent Austin fatalities were caused by driver DWI, not biker BWI.

Originally Posted by M1EK

Try contributing to society instead of tearing down those who do. Otherwise, you're about to go on ignore, or as close as I can get in this forum.

I am contributing. I'm correcting the misinformation you're spreading. With real facts.

[kingkirbythe....]

OMG! You're both pretty. Now shut up!

[KevinFromTexas]

I really hope you guys aren't texting all this while you're driving.

[the Genral]

Yeah, there's a 39% chance you might collide with someone drunk on a bicycle, at an intersection, unless you're in the middle of the block in which case you are 61% likely to kill the dwi bicycler from the rear, during the afternoon, on a tuesday, unless of course its under the shade of a tree or building then you can add another 7.8% possibility of a collision unless you are in a school zone then the percentage goes down due to lower speeds, let's just say for the sake of arguement, 16%, but then add the distraction of changing the radio station, add 11%, and the cyclist sneezing while trying to navigate around a grease spot, then the possibility of a collision goes up to 87% according to my calculations. In the improbable event that the driver of the car gets stung in the eye by a bee while driving directly into the sun after downing 8 shots of Yokan Jack, and the cyclist stops his bike before the intersection to tie his shoe, then there would be a 100% chance of continuous blah, blah, blah...

[wwmiv]

both of you should kiss and make up now.

[BevoLJ]

Isn't Sabine being made into a pedestrian only as part of the Waller Creek Project?

Also a few times I have seen mentions of possibly also making Neches St pedestrian only as well. Having Red River flanked by pedestrian streets would be pretty cool. Especially right there starting at the convention center & the Red Line and then up past 6th.