AUSTIN | Transportation Updates

[Armybrat]

Originally Posted by austlar1

That is the consensus around here. Any good solution to the rail log jam or the mess that is IH35 is quickly labeled a "fantasy". Real viable rail transit within the city and a redesigned IH35 could be built. Doing this would probably allow Austin to become a real "World Class City". it is what "World Class" cities do. They address problems, fund solutions, put up with huge amounts of construction and inconvenience, and end up with something special that enhances the city's ability to function. Here in Austin we just poke along complaining about the traffic while trying to patch together some kind of half baked rail solution or highway improvements that will not accomplish squat in the long run. We put all the fantasies on the shelf because of the cost or the inconvenience or the political impracticality involved. Austin needs to build a real subway line that crosses the city from north to south and goes where it needs to go. Expensive? You bet. Worth it in the long run? You bet. Austin needs to continue to develop commuter rail options and street car options along certain corridors. Austin needs to put IH35 below grade or below ground from Ben White to 183. That's a quarter of a century's worth of expense and inconvenience. Would it be worth the price? I certainly think so. It would transform this city during the period when it probably has its best shot at making it to the big leagues. Is it a fantasy? Yes. It might happen in more truly dynamic places in North America, but it seems like Austin is just stuck on being Austin, the place where things don't get built because it is just too darn complicated.

Things don't get built because the no-growth/NIMBY crowd doesn't want to accommodate the motorist.

It's been that way for 40 years.

[Cloud92]

as much as i want it to happen underground just doesn't seem to be an option the ground and ecosystems here just seem too sensitive to be disturbed that way, I don't know.

[hismasterplan]

Originally Posted by Cloud92

as much as i want it to happen underground just doesn't seem to be an option the ground and ecosystems here just seem too sensitive to be disturbed that way, I don't know.

I've heard that argument before and in fact I've told people the same thing in the past, but recently I've started wondering; is that actually true, or just Austin's excuse to scare people away from supporting the idea of a subway system? I understand parts of Austin are untouchable, but someone doesn't have to go far before the earth below changes. Also, it's not like cities have never tunneled under lakes or rivers before either.

[Cloud92]

its like what they did to the Barton creek area they made the tunnels under there and now every time there's a bust we get a contaminated creeks. I mean also with the mall probably the worse area to build the place.the aquifer is just to sensitive in my opinion maybe now theres ways to be very eco friendly with digging underground and not disturbing much? if so than im all for a subway

[Cloud92]

http://twitpic.com/8jigo7
is there going to be a new bridge over the river?

[austlar1]

There is NOTHING about the Austin environment that would make the building of a below street subway tunnel impossible or even especially difficult. Most this system could be built directly under the street using cut and cover technology which basically involves digging up the street and covering the roadway with planking while the tunnel and stations are constructed. It is very low tech for the most part. Any deep tunnels could be engineered without breaking a sweat. This would all cost a fortune, but it is the only way Austin is going to be able to have a rail system that goes where it needs to go. It could be built assuming there was a real consensus to get it built. It would have to be part of a plan that brought city dweller and suburbanite into allignment. I think $7 or $8 gasoline might do the trick. Until then it is just more of the same. A gimmick here and a cheap fix there. Yadda, yadda. Austin lurches into a future looking a lot like Dallas or Houston unless it gets its act together.

[KevinFromTexas]

Originally Posted by Armybrat

Things don't get built because the no-growth/NIMBY crowd doesn't want to accommodate the motorist.

It's been that way for 40 years.

I'm so glad some of those things didn't get built way back in the 60s and 70s when they were planning to slice up Austin and divide it with highways. The idea of a freeway just south of downtown makes my stomach turn. As I stood there at Auditorium Shores this weekend with downtown as the backdrop for the music, and was easily able to get there by bicycle and find a place to lock up, it made me think of how different things might have been if those plans had turned into reality.

That said, I love what the city has become. I love all the new things that have been built that have made Austin even better. And this is coming from a native who's parents grew up here in the 60s.

[hookem]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

I'm so glad some of those things didn't get built way back in the 60s and 70s when they were planning to slice up Austin and divide it with highways. The idea of a freeway just south of downtown makes my stomach turn. As I stood there at Auditorium Shores this weekend with downtown as the backdrop for the music, and was easily able to get there by bicycle and find a place to lock up, it made me think of how different things might have been if those plans had turned into reality.

That said, I love what the city has become. I love all the new things that have been built that have made Austin even better. And this is coming from a native who's parents grew up here in the 60s.

I totally agree. And you know what? I don't even think traffic here is really that bad. Locals tend to blow it out of proportion because they don't know what real big city traffic is like.

Anyway, our short but intense rush hour is really a small price to pay for our central areas to have remained as good as they are... and if someone doesn't like it, they can either move closer to their job or try one of the metros with that "we've never met a road we didn't like" attitude... say, Houston or DFW.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by austlar1

There is NOTHING about the Austin environment that would make the building of a below street subway tunnel impossible or even especially difficult. This would all cost a fortune, but it is the only way Austin is going to be able to have a rail system that goes where it needs to go.

I'll agree, it is possible to build subways under Austin. But it is not financially. Every subway in the world is built under neighborhoods with far more density than Austin. Even New York's subways under Manhattan are above ground when the reach the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. You really need far more density than what Austin has now, or will in the near future. I would like to point out that even Dallas and Houston light rail run in city streets in their central business districts. DART has a tunnel under North Central where they ran out of right-of-way, to make it more affordable DART has ran three different colored light rail trains through it. Higher density with trains vs the actual population density above it.
I'm not going to suggest that Austin couldn't afford building a small subway where needed like Dallas, but I am suggesting that the entire system be built as a subway is unaffordable. In many ways, Austin is more like Seattle than Dallas or Houston when it comes to transit geography, and even Seattle is limiting its subway to downtown and uptown Seattle. Even so, Seattle is averaging over $150 Million per mile of light rail, vs the $50-60 Million per mile in Dallas or Houston (up to tripling the capital costs). If CapMetro can't afford at grade light rail, it surely can't afford subways.
The Feds will only contribute 50% of the capital costs for light rail lines today, and have influenced with a heavy hand several transit agencies from building subways to airports because they're too expensive, by threatening to refuse Federal funds. You must have a very, very valid reason to build subways....

[austlar1]

Nobody is suggesting building a vast underground subway. i am merely suggesting that in order to get the system we need in Austin it is going to be necessary to run it under street level downtown and up north past UT and on up towards Highland Mall. It probably would be nice to run it south of the river under Congress until it could emerge above ground and branch out from there. I am not really interested in any conventional wisdom about costs, etc. it would cost a LOT of money. It could be financed locally with enough consensus and a concerted lobbying effort at every level of government. I especially don't want to get into a pissing match about this. I am just expressing a long held conviction that Austin stews in its own juices. The population is exploding and anybody who has watched traffic congeal here in the past five or ten years is kidding themselves if they think that it won't just get a whole lot worse. Right now we have a north/south freeway system that was largely built circa 1965-70 when the METRO population was around 350,000. There are about FIVE TIMES that many people in the region today and the population is slated to perhaps double in the next 30 years. I don't see any alternative to building a rail system to keep things moving around here, and the only way it will work is to put it underground in the central part of town. Dallas and Houston have all kinds of abandoned or underutilized rail right of ways to use in building light rail into the city. We are going to have to take ours below ground or build something totally second or third rate that will be about as useful as our current Toonerville Trolley (aka the Red Line) in solving transportation problems.

[East7thStreet]

I think going underground would only be feasible for 1st through 15/19th street. There should be plenty of room on Rio Grande or San Jacinto above 15 or 19th street. The costs are already outrageous so it might not even be feasible at all.

[migol24]

i wish that austin were set up to where it was only contained from within 290 and ben white. it would probably be the only way that a decent subway system can be planned serving the entire city. it still wouldn't reach all neighborhoods, but even san francisco's muni and bart systems don't reach all neighborhoods. so if a subway system were implemented even with the way austin is set up, it still would most likely be lacking.

[hismasterplan]

I've also heard the idea of elevated rail thrown around which if done right, could be just as effective as underground. An elevated rail could run along the less busy streets downtown, a block or two away from a major road. But is it less expensive than underground? The structures supporting the rails would be one of the challenges; building them without being in the way or blocking lanes. Traffic can still flow underneath train tracks if Wabash Ave in Chicago says anything. Though with advances in construction and technology, I don't think an elevated rail in Austin would have to be as clunky as Chicago's El Train... which brings up price again.

[The ATX]

This means I'll be driving 90mph down that stretch. I can't wait!


TxDOT accelerates speed limit on 130, 45 Southeast

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/conte...eed_limit.html

[electricron]

Originally Posted by austlar1

Dallas and Houston have all kinds of abandoned or underutilized rail right of ways to use in building light rail into the city. We are going to have to take ours below ground or build something totally second or third rate that will be about as useful as our current Toonerville Trolley (aka the Red Line) in solving transportation problems.

While Dallas may have had abandoned or underutilized freight rail lines available for use, Houston has not. Just about every inch of light rail in Houston has been built within city streets. Austin can do the same if their isn't any underutilized freight rail lines available.
Subway lines are very expensive to build. Seattle's costs for its new subway extension to the north currently under construction, called the University Link, is averaging over $600 Million per mile per the existing construction contracts.
http://projects.soundtransit.org/Pro...rsity-Link.xml
$1.9 Billion / 3.15 miles = $603 Million/mile for subway.
Meanwhile, a partial surface and above grade guideway construction costs for DART's Orange line currently under construction is $93 Million/mile.
http://www.dart.org/about/expansion/...ter2012eng.pdf
$1.3 Billion / 14 miles = $92.86 Million/mile for light rail
And, as a refresher to some, CapMetro's Red Line commuter rail construction costs averaged over 3 Million/mile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_MetroRail
$105 Milllion / 32 miles = $3.28 Million/mile for commuter rail

DART's 14 miles of Orange Line is not being built within an abandoned or underutilized freight rail line, so its costs should reflect light rail costs in the Austin area. I would also like to point out that CapMetro didn't have to completely replace the gracks in their commuter rail corridor, they mostly reconditioned the existing tracks, although some new tracks were laid. That's why their costs/mile was so low.
Which type of rail Austin should built really depends upon how much money Austin has, and how many miles of rail Austin wants. I suggest taking a multimodal approach, build cheaply where less services are required, built expensively where more services are required.
I would also like to note that both Dallas and Houston did not choose to build subways under their central business districts, mainly due to very high costs. Both cities chose more corridors that were longer than a subway just servicing their downtown area.

If you think the naysayers are correct about the Red Line, wait until they start to pipe in for rail projects that costs 30 to 200 times per mile more....

[austlar1]

Well, Electricron, I am not the expert on these matters, but it seems to me that Austin needs 3 to 4 miles of underground or mostly underground rail built through the center of the city from south of the river to somewhere up north where trains (light rail I would imagine) could surface and go where they need to go. Looks like that would cost in the neighborhood of $2 billion by your reckoning (or Two Instagrams by the Wall Street Journal's reckoning which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand but I could not resist). I say let's go for it. Great cities take on great projects and figure out ways to pay for them. Probably this kind of proposal is a non-starter, but if it is seriously considered as an option, it might begin to take on a reality that it lacks at present.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by austlar1

Well, Electricron, I am not the expert on these matters, but it seems to me that Austin needs 3 to 4 miles of underground or mostly underground rail built through the center of the city from south of the river to somewhere up north where trains (light rail I would imagine) could surface and go where they need to go. Looks like that would cost in the neighborhood of $2 billion by your reckoning (or Two Instagrams by the Wall Street Journal's reckoning which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand but I could not resist). I say let's go for it. Great cities take on great projects and figure out ways to pay for them. Probably this kind of proposal is a non-starter, but if it is seriously considered as an option, it might begin to take on a reality that it lacks at present.

Why not instead build an elevated guideway over a city street for those two miles and save over a $1 Billion in capital costs? Has TXDOT proposed building a tunnel under the Lake between north and south Austin anytime in the past or future? Why treat rail differently? Even all powerful LA and NYC are having problems digesting the high capital costs of building new subways. Honolulu is building an elevated light rail line over an entire stretch over 20 miles in length, including through its downtown area. You can see images of the rail line at this web site. It's not going to look like Chicago's elevated lines at all.
http://www.honolulutransit.org/
http://voteben2012.com/2012/01/24/th...honolulu-rail/
There's some elevated guideways in Dallas on DART's modern light rail system that Austin taxpayers can look at, if traveling to San Francisco, Seattle, or Vancouver is too far away. Building underground will always be the most expensive way to run light rail by far.

[austlar1]

If you could get an elevated line approved by folks in this town, you might be on to something. I don't ever see that happening. I think rail should cross the river on a bridge, probably a new one, and then go underground through downtown, the capitol area, and past UT under Guadalupe until it makes the famous curve at 29th ST. It could emerge somewhere out in Hyde Park or maybe past the Triangle where it would become a more conventional light rail system spreading out in various dirctions. I think something similar should happen on South Congress with tracks going below grade maybe until Oltorf or possibly all the way out to Ben White and then emerging to go to points south, southeast (airport), and maybe southwest too.

Little Old Austin added almost 70,000 residents since the 2010 census. It is going to continue to grow like this for a long time I suspect. That would double the population by 2030. Austin needs to build now and in the immediate future to become the city that it aspires to be in 25 or 30 years. An underground rail transit through the heart of town is the only genuine solution to the rail tranportation dilemna faced by Austin. Dallas needs to bite the bullet too and get their trains underground downtown. That is what the big boys do with their trains. It could be funded, if the state would permit special tax districts devoted to the projects, but I admit that getting the public on board to support this kind of solution would be a mighty tough sell. As it is, the legislature is not going to grant permission for this kind of funding, so here we are looking a a patchwork of half assed solutions that will leave Austin (and possibly Dallas and Houston) mired in traffic with a trolley system that really does not get the job even half done.

In terms of cost per mile, I suspect that doing a basic cut and cover light rail tunnel on a street like Guadalupe (or even Congress Ave) would be a lot less complicated and expensive than building a state of the art heavy rail line down Wilshire Blvd. in LA or Second Ave. in NYC. I suspect whatever they are doing in Seattle is likely more complicated than what I envision for Austin. I know it would not be cheap, but I bet it could be done for less than the figures you are suggesting.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by austlar1

If you could get an elevated line approved by folks in this town, you might be on to something. I don't ever see that happening. I think rail should cross the river on a bridge, probably a new one, and then go underground through downtown, the capitol area, and past UT under Guadalupe until it makes the famous curve at 29th ST. It could emerge somewhere out in Hyde Park or maybe past the Triangle where it would become a more conventional light rail system spreading out in various dirctions. I think something similar should happen on South Congress with tracks going below grade maybe until Oltorf or possibly all the way out to Ben White and then emerging to go to points south, southeast (airport), and maybe southwest too.

Little Old Austin added almost 70,000 residents since the 2010 census. It is going to continue to grow like this for a long time I suspect. That would double the population by 2030. Austin needs to build now and in the immediate future to become the city that it aspires to be in 25 or 30 years. An underground rail transit through the heart of town is the only genuine solution to the rail tranportation dilemna faced by Austin. Dallas needs to bite the bullet too and get their trains underground downtown. That is what the big boys do with their trains. It could be funded, if the state would permit special tax districts devoted to the projects, but I admit that getting the public on board to support this kind of solution would be a mighty tough sell. As it is, the legislature is not going to grant permission for this kind of funding, so here we are looking a a patchwork of half assed solutions that will leave Austin (and possibly Dallas and Houston) mired in traffic with a trolley system that really does not get the job even half done.

In terms of cost per mile, I suspect that doing a basic cut and cover light rail tunnel on a street like Guadalupe (or even Congress Ave) would be a lot less complicated and expensive than building a state of the art heavy rail line down Wilshire Blvd. in LA or Second Ave. in NYC. I suspect whatever they are doing in Seattle is likely more complicated than what I envision for Austin. I know it would not be cheap, but I bet it could be done for less than the figures you are suggesting.

Wrong. Doing a tunnel here would be significantly more expensive due to our limestone foundation.

[The ATX]

Building gondola rides all around downtown and campus would be cool.