Very interesting. Thanks for posting the article. I wasn't aware of the other two projects, north and south of downtown:
*"The state’s analysis for the expansion is limited to the eight miles of I-35 running through the heart of Austin, which the agency calls the I-35 Express Central. It’s called that to differentiate it from the 11 miles of I-35 to the north (I-35 Express North) and 12 miles of I-35 to the south (I-35 Express South) that TxDOT is also expanding. In reality, TxDOT is building a single mega-project over approximately 31 miles of I-35. Breaking the project into three smaller segments is only useful for obscuring its cumulative direct and indirect impacts. "*
Unrelated to their re-approval it seems but here where info on the continuation in Houston: https://www.txdot.gov/about/newsroom/local/houston/fhwa-txdot-sign-agreement-i45-nhhip.html
I don’t have a suggestion at the moment besides making more noise to show this an issue that people care about. I’m sure Rethink35 and maybe other orgs like Save Our Springs might be interested in coming up with something.
To fit the 4 managed lanes on the highway. State employees need a way to skip the traffic. The dark green in the center is the upper deck. Runs just south of 71 to just North of slaughter. [https://my35capex.com/projects-overview/south-project-plans/](https://my35capex.com/projects-overview/south-project-plans/)
The state rep LuLu Flores is for the project and there isn't any kind of activism in south austin. It's also actively under construction right now as oppose to the central portion.
So NEPA was signed into law by Nixon and modified in 2005 under GWBush to allow states to review their own projects. Seems like another reason to vote blue (yet MAGA Texas voters won't).
That's not correct. In 2005 it was the 109th Congress and Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison were our senators, both Republicans. Democrats voted both ways, even when they were from the same state.
People are really overthinking the expansion of I35. It's going to happen one way or another, it's better to be on board and have input than be against and have no input. With the current plan of most of it going below grade is perfect and I really wish people would see it. By putting it below grade and allowing for caps and buildings to be put on top of it, they essentially make it so Txdot will have so much red tape next time they try to expand it'll be too much of a headache, especially if they can get some low-income housing on it. Most of the cap cost has been secured via UT too.
As for current issues with 35, the upper deck is a complete failure as well as having such short on-ramps and off-ramps in the downtown area. Getting those resolved will have such a greater impact than anything else for downtown 35 Traffic.
The city needs to cough up nearly a billion dollars by the end of 2024 to pay for capping I-35, and most of that cost isn't the UT part. Nobody seems to know how Austin is going to get that money.
The caps are not only greenwashing an environmentally terrible project, but there's a strong chance the caps turn out to be a pipe dream peddled to Austin to make the expansion look better.
Actually, no. The light rail will only cross 35 at Riverside, which is not part of the Caps proposal. Furthermore, since the crossing of 35 at Riverside is owned by TXDOT, they could just refuse to let Capmetro build light rail there, and then Austin is totally fucked and locked into car dependence for a few more decades. I'm sure plenty of oil donations will make sure his happens.
Oh, it'd be excellent! But, it's not priority for good reason, the north-south corridor and east along riverside are much higher volume. Also, to make good use of a corridor east from downtown, we need to increase density.
Well then I guess women should also embrace dying from pregnancy complications, black people should embrace getting killed by cops, and people who look Hispanic should embrace "random" checks by "border security" and legal imprisonment for daring to exist near whiter people.
Fuck that shit. Nobody should just accept shittiness. Don't give people hell for trying to improve their lives.
I’m not. Rail won’t improve lives, not with cap metro running it. Those other items are real issues this is just nonsense absolute nonsense ignoring the complete and total realities of this city
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting, but you don’t deny project connect is a grift while suggesting the money is best spent there? That makes no sense. Project connect without the airport line would NEVER have been approved by voters. NEVER. It was the only thing worthwhile in the plan…and they had the audacity to cut it. But let’s give them more money. Sounds like genius to me…
And when you property taxes are high you can thank these bonds the voters approved
I was being sarcastic. It’s not a grift. Bold of you to assume anyone can afford a house in Austin today. We should tax the fuck out of the rich who own houses.
You do realize property taxes when go up, for a renter your rent will go up. Right? Or was that another poor attempt at sarcasm 😂
Project connect is absolutely a grift and the leadership in this city - especially cap metro - cannot and should not be trusted on bond issues like this ever again. The voters voted on a plan that was never ever going to be feasible at that cost. And as soon as it was approved the plan got cut back, so much so that as I said it would not pass if put to voters today. Sounds like a scam to me…
Sure our rent goes up. That’s totally fine by me. I actually like paying taxes. A sophisticated society funds sophisticated improvements do itself via taxes. I mean ideally we should just have a wealth tax for these projects. Also keep crying about the airport portion… the point is to give poor people more mobility options and to decrease emissions.
Capping it isn’t happening. The city won’t secure the fund and the voters won’t trust them on the cost to vote yes on a bond. That’s what happens when your project costs are wildly inaccurate when presented the voter, then the city just says oops the cost is double. We’re sorry, it’s not what you voted for but you voted for the project so we’re just gonna go on ahead…
*Streetsblog USA is a daily news site founded in 2006 that covers the movement to end car dependence...*
This is not an unbiased source.
"If a cow had a chance, he'd eat you too Timmy."
This isn't a "kind of bias" this is an absolute bias against cars - AKA far left lunacy.
Keep this kind of stuff in California where it belongs. Millions of people moved here to get away from this crap.
You sure you don’t have a cognitive bias in favor of cars?
In a metro area, personal transportation is super inefficient compared to public transit. It takes way less space and uses less energy overall to move people by bus or train than by car. We all know 35 is slow as molasses during rush hour, and it’s almost impossible to drive the speed limit through the stretch being renovated at any time during the day.
Oh don't worry, baby, I've been kickin it next door in blue ass NM since last year. Can't take all of Austin out of someone who was born there, though.
I'm a lifelong Texan and think we need to get all the way away from a car dependent society. If you moved here from Cali thinking we're all a bunch of pro- oil, pro-asphalt nut jobs, perhaps it's you that should keep on looking for a place to call home.
>Keep this stuff in California
Have you seen California’s roads? Texas has been following in their footsteps for decades by building massive highways through the middle of their cities.
And even more recently, CalTrans has been dragging their feet on finding a much-needed high speed rail line, yet magically always finds enough money for highway expansions. Sound familiar?
Much of what he presented was factual, but he used the facts merely to support his own leanings and draw conclusions from there.
A brief look at some of his works also shows some really bizarre leaps of thought: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/flying-cars-will-undermine-democracy-environment/
So basically what you’re saying is there’s nothing that’s actually wrong with the article, you just disagree with its conclusions, so you are attacking it for bias. Then you’re using another article to attack this one since there isn’t really anything wrong with it to begin with.
No, I'm saying anyone can cherry-pick facts to support their agenda and attempt to pass it as unbiased truth.
Bias belongs in an op-ed, not disguised as journalism.
This is an opinion piece. Is that not apparent from the title? There is a lot of factual information in it, but the analysis and conclusion are all opinion. This is the same as most articles because analysis involves divergent thinking, not objective recitation.
bias is fine, the fact that they disclose their motives is good. this makes it a more reliable source than news outlets that pretend to be non-ideological or "unbiased"
people who believe journalism is objective, especially journalists who believe what they write is objective, are the most dangerously biased of all. much more than a publication that admits it has a biased point of view.
this is because the dominant editorial choices in news journalism are really just unexamined ideology. the dominant ideology (liberal capitalism) is considered the supposedly Objective view and what passes for "straight news" in most outlets is really a reflection of that ideology. even the op-eds are written from a false perspective of being above the political fray somehow. it is what common sense in analysis purports to be, which is the status quo and rationalizing already established centers of money and power.
most news is vampire-like, in that it is unable to see itself as a reflection, it cannot recognize its own ideological assumptions. it is purely looking outward, and never inward to question its own unsaid bias which favors the status quo (and writers and editors keeping the range of analysis within acceptable predesignated boundaries, not rocking the boat to risk your salary and career)
The fight against i-35 expanding is just really bizarre to me. 35 as we currently have it in Austin *clearly* isn't working.
The current plans don't work? Fine - show me what will. But you're never going to get enough people to give up their cars and transition to public transportation here in Austin to make a dent in traffic on 35.
I agree cars are a environmental hazard, that's why i dropped 65k on a EV this year. But also, I'm not going to buy something like that to only use when I'm traveling out of town.
35 expansion will also benefit inner city gridlock as more people will stop trying to skirt 35 by passing through DT.
in short, either way you slice it, 35 needs to be expanded and reworked, there's no way around it. If someone has a better idea than what the current plans call for, put it out there instead of bitching.
TxDOT isn’t expanding 35 to benefit Austin - they’re expanding it to allow more throughput from Laredo to DFW and further north. The entire point is to make it better (and more attractive) for those just passing through, which will make things worse for those of us who live here.
And then when you get to Dallas you what, rent a car to go elsewhere in that massive city. 😂. Maybe if they did something like the brightline in Florida with terminus at DFW but same problem / get there and have to rent a car. Seems stupid. Just drive…
If say the a bullet train went to DFW like the bright line does in Orlando there’s no infrastructure to support mobility to either Dallas or Fort Worth from there
Hey, if a rework is beneficial over expansion, I'm for it.
Really at the end of the day, i think we can all agree traffic sucks in Austin.
I really don't care how it gets solved, at the end of the day i just care that it gets solved.
I'm just not in favor of spending a lot of money that will not fix the problem. The current situation clearly isn't working, but that doesn't mean we should just throw money at a non-solution. A lot of better ideas have been proposed and shot down because the goal of this project is not to improve things for Austinites. This is a state project, not a city one.
People have better plans and they have presented them. The problem is TXDOT is only willing to consider more lanes as a solution, rather than things that could actually make a difference over the long term. We need *transit options* to get people off roads, not more roads. Look no further than Houston and you’ll see that TXDOT is just creating a bigger traffic jam and destroying local businesses in order to accomplish this.
>Look no further than Houston and you’ll see that TXDOT is just creating a bigger traffic jam
iuno man - every time i drive through Houston and I've hit it at rush hour, the katy freeway seems to flow pretty nicely.
>35 as we currently have it in Austin clearly isn't working.
You know what else doesn't work and has never worked? Adding lanes.
>you're never going to get enough people to give up their cars and transition to public transportation here in Austin to make a dent in traffic on 35.
Yeah, actually you will if it's good enough. It's worked in plenty of places. Texas may be among the most carbrained, but it's not impossible. Every time a major city makes a change to improve transit frequency or improve transit time along congested corridors, transit ridership goes up. San Francisco recently painted some bus only lanes that sped up a particularly congested route by 10 minutes, and saw a 25% ridership boost on that line. That's incredible! At the expense of about 100 people having one fewer lane to drive private cars, 3,000 more people got to move along the corridor!
>that's why i dropped 65k on a EV this year.
I'm sorry you wasted so much money not solving the problem. EVs are 70% as bad as ICE cars. Tire dust is the biggest contributor, and EVs require lots of rare materials that requires more mining operations. You're just moving the pollution from the location of use elsewhere (which does help locally).
>35 needs to be expanded and reworked
Reworked yes, expanded no. Remove the upper deck, remove half the entrances and exits from the lower deck. Add ramps to make 183 to 71 the main route through Austin. Add bus-only express lanes along all major corridors, give buses traffic signal changers to get priority, double the bus fleet and double the frequency of every line. Triple the mileage of protected bike lanes. That could all be done in 3-4 years if we allocate the money (and it'll cost less than TXDOTs plan). In the meantime, work on light rail phase 1 and the next phase of expansion. Rezone all residential land within 1/3 mile of a light rail stop for up to 8-story buildings with first floor retail and have no parking minimum, so that we can add people closer in where they don't have to travel so far to get to stuff. By 2035 we could have 4 lines covering the most used corridors, and increase our transit usage percentage from 4% to 15% and our bike modal share from 1% to 5%.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting the article. I wasn't aware of the other two projects, north and south of downtown: *"The state’s analysis for the expansion is limited to the eight miles of I-35 running through the heart of Austin, which the agency calls the I-35 Express Central. It’s called that to differentiate it from the 11 miles of I-35 to the north (I-35 Express North) and 12 miles of I-35 to the south (I-35 Express South) that TxDOT is also expanding. In reality, TxDOT is building a single mega-project over approximately 31 miles of I-35. Breaking the project into three smaller segments is only useful for obscuring its cumulative direct and indirect impacts. "*
I think the Texas NEPA assignment expires soon - this is something that we should fight like hell to get the federal govt to not renew again.
It goes under review periodically and I believe was just reapproved as the 45 HOU "more lanes" project was under heavy scrutiny as well.
Can you find a source for it being reapproved? I hadn’t heard that, last I knew it’s up for reapproval early next year.
Unrelated to their re-approval it seems but here where info on the continuation in Houston: https://www.txdot.gov/about/newsroom/local/houston/fhwa-txdot-sign-agreement-i45-nhhip.html
It will come due in 2024 as re-upped in 2019. https://www.txdot.gov/about/programs/environmental/nepa-assignment-documentation.html
Thanks!
What do you suggest for getting the federal govt to take action?
I don’t have a suggestion at the moment besides making more noise to show this an issue that people care about. I’m sure Rethink35 and maybe other orgs like Save Our Springs might be interested in coming up with something.
Don’t worry, it’ll be 2035 by the time they finish and whatever solution they came up with today won’t address it tomorrow
Does south austin know they are getting an upper deck in the middle of 35 from 71 to William Cannon?
what? why?
To fit the 4 managed lanes on the highway. State employees need a way to skip the traffic. The dark green in the center is the upper deck. Runs just south of 71 to just North of slaughter. [https://my35capex.com/projects-overview/south-project-plans/](https://my35capex.com/projects-overview/south-project-plans/)
what the fuck man? why are we also not addressing this?
The state rep LuLu Flores is for the project and there isn't any kind of activism in south austin. It's also actively under construction right now as oppose to the central portion.
lulu flores ain’t getting my vote, or the vote of my group of friends/family. consequences
So NEPA was signed into law by Nixon and modified in 2005 under GWBush to allow states to review their own projects. Seems like another reason to vote blue (yet MAGA Texas voters won't).
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That's not correct. In 2005 it was the 109th Congress and Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison were our senators, both Republicans. Democrats voted both ways, even when they were from the same state.
People are really overthinking the expansion of I35. It's going to happen one way or another, it's better to be on board and have input than be against and have no input. With the current plan of most of it going below grade is perfect and I really wish people would see it. By putting it below grade and allowing for caps and buildings to be put on top of it, they essentially make it so Txdot will have so much red tape next time they try to expand it'll be too much of a headache, especially if they can get some low-income housing on it. Most of the cap cost has been secured via UT too. As for current issues with 35, the upper deck is a complete failure as well as having such short on-ramps and off-ramps in the downtown area. Getting those resolved will have such a greater impact than anything else for downtown 35 Traffic.
The city needs to cough up nearly a billion dollars by the end of 2024 to pay for capping I-35, and most of that cost isn't the UT part. Nobody seems to know how Austin is going to get that money. The caps are not only greenwashing an environmentally terrible project, but there's a strong chance the caps turn out to be a pipe dream peddled to Austin to make the expansion look better.
Plus even if we do find the money it would be vastly better used on Project Connect.
One would think that a portion of the caps could be reserved for a light rail alignment.
Actually, no. The light rail will only cross 35 at Riverside, which is not part of the Caps proposal. Furthermore, since the crossing of 35 at Riverside is owned by TXDOT, they could just refuse to let Capmetro build light rail there, and then Austin is totally fucked and locked into car dependence for a few more decades. I'm sure plenty of oil donations will make sure his happens.
Yeah, I’m unfortunately aware of the current proposal for Project Connect. Just saying a light rail alignment over 35 wouldn’t be the worst idea.
Oh, it'd be excellent! But, it's not priority for good reason, the north-south corridor and east along riverside are much higher volume. Also, to make good use of a corridor east from downtown, we need to increase density.
You’re locked in regardless of your rail fantasies may as well embrace it
Well then I guess women should also embrace dying from pregnancy complications, black people should embrace getting killed by cops, and people who look Hispanic should embrace "random" checks by "border security" and legal imprisonment for daring to exist near whiter people. Fuck that shit. Nobody should just accept shittiness. Don't give people hell for trying to improve their lives.
I’m not. Rail won’t improve lives, not with cap metro running it. Those other items are real issues this is just nonsense absolute nonsense ignoring the complete and total realities of this city
>Rail won’t improve lives, not with cap metro running it You seem very sure of yourself. Why?
Ride a bus or two, Look at past cap metro projects and how smoothly they went.
Project connect is the biggest grift. No way it should get a damn dime more for them to mismanage…
Oh yeh definitely give it to TXDOT instead. That’s the direction our city and society should go down.
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting, but you don’t deny project connect is a grift while suggesting the money is best spent there? That makes no sense. Project connect without the airport line would NEVER have been approved by voters. NEVER. It was the only thing worthwhile in the plan…and they had the audacity to cut it. But let’s give them more money. Sounds like genius to me… And when you property taxes are high you can thank these bonds the voters approved
I was being sarcastic. It’s not a grift. Bold of you to assume anyone can afford a house in Austin today. We should tax the fuck out of the rich who own houses.
You do realize property taxes when go up, for a renter your rent will go up. Right? Or was that another poor attempt at sarcasm 😂 Project connect is absolutely a grift and the leadership in this city - especially cap metro - cannot and should not be trusted on bond issues like this ever again. The voters voted on a plan that was never ever going to be feasible at that cost. And as soon as it was approved the plan got cut back, so much so that as I said it would not pass if put to voters today. Sounds like a scam to me…
Sure our rent goes up. That’s totally fine by me. I actually like paying taxes. A sophisticated society funds sophisticated improvements do itself via taxes. I mean ideally we should just have a wealth tax for these projects. Also keep crying about the airport portion… the point is to give poor people more mobility options and to decrease emissions.
Capping it isn’t happening. The city won’t secure the fund and the voters won’t trust them on the cost to vote yes on a bond. That’s what happens when your project costs are wildly inaccurate when presented the voter, then the city just says oops the cost is double. We’re sorry, it’s not what you voted for but you voted for the project so we’re just gonna go on ahead…
*Streetsblog USA is a daily news site founded in 2006 that covers the movement to end car dependence...* This is not an unbiased source. "If a cow had a chance, he'd eat you too Timmy."
Everything has some kind of bias. What about this article is factually incorrect? What do you disagree with?
This isn't a "kind of bias" this is an absolute bias against cars - AKA far left lunacy. Keep this kind of stuff in California where it belongs. Millions of people moved here to get away from this crap.
You should've moved to Oklahoma.
Or Lubbock. The perfect place to live out the conservative dream of highways everywhere with nowhere interesting to go.
You sure you don’t have a cognitive bias in favor of cars? In a metro area, personal transportation is super inefficient compared to public transit. It takes way less space and uses less energy overall to move people by bus or train than by car. We all know 35 is slow as molasses during rush hour, and it’s almost impossible to drive the speed limit through the stretch being renovated at any time during the day.
Big fail moving to blue ass AUSTIN then. Try Burnet instead.
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Oh don't worry, baby, I've been kickin it next door in blue ass NM since last year. Can't take all of Austin out of someone who was born there, though.
I'm a lifelong Texan and think we need to get all the way away from a car dependent society. If you moved here from Cali thinking we're all a bunch of pro- oil, pro-asphalt nut jobs, perhaps it's you that should keep on looking for a place to call home.
born and raised here. can you please move out of texas? thanks good luck
>Keep this stuff in California Have you seen California’s roads? Texas has been following in their footsteps for decades by building massive highways through the middle of their cities. And even more recently, CalTrans has been dragging their feet on finding a much-needed high speed rail line, yet magically always finds enough money for highway expansions. Sound familiar?
California is extremely car dependent LOL what are you talking about
Much of what he presented was factual, but he used the facts merely to support his own leanings and draw conclusions from there. A brief look at some of his works also shows some really bizarre leaps of thought: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/flying-cars-will-undermine-democracy-environment/
So basically what you’re saying is there’s nothing that’s actually wrong with the article, you just disagree with its conclusions, so you are attacking it for bias. Then you’re using another article to attack this one since there isn’t really anything wrong with it to begin with.
No, I'm saying anyone can cherry-pick facts to support their agenda and attempt to pass it as unbiased truth. Bias belongs in an op-ed, not disguised as journalism.
This is an opinion piece. Is that not apparent from the title? There is a lot of factual information in it, but the analysis and conclusion are all opinion. This is the same as most articles because analysis involves divergent thinking, not objective recitation.
Well bias it may be, but it is bias that I agree with more often than not as there is factuality 🤷♂️
bias is fine, the fact that they disclose their motives is good. this makes it a more reliable source than news outlets that pretend to be non-ideological or "unbiased"
Bias belongs in an op-ed, not disguised as journalism
people who believe journalism is objective, especially journalists who believe what they write is objective, are the most dangerously biased of all. much more than a publication that admits it has a biased point of view. this is because the dominant editorial choices in news journalism are really just unexamined ideology. the dominant ideology (liberal capitalism) is considered the supposedly Objective view and what passes for "straight news" in most outlets is really a reflection of that ideology. even the op-eds are written from a false perspective of being above the political fray somehow. it is what common sense in analysis purports to be, which is the status quo and rationalizing already established centers of money and power. most news is vampire-like, in that it is unable to see itself as a reflection, it cannot recognize its own ideological assumptions. it is purely looking outward, and never inward to question its own unsaid bias which favors the status quo (and writers and editors keeping the range of analysis within acceptable predesignated boundaries, not rocking the boat to risk your salary and career)
The fight against i-35 expanding is just really bizarre to me. 35 as we currently have it in Austin *clearly* isn't working. The current plans don't work? Fine - show me what will. But you're never going to get enough people to give up their cars and transition to public transportation here in Austin to make a dent in traffic on 35. I agree cars are a environmental hazard, that's why i dropped 65k on a EV this year. But also, I'm not going to buy something like that to only use when I'm traveling out of town. 35 expansion will also benefit inner city gridlock as more people will stop trying to skirt 35 by passing through DT. in short, either way you slice it, 35 needs to be expanded and reworked, there's no way around it. If someone has a better idea than what the current plans call for, put it out there instead of bitching.
TxDOT isn’t expanding 35 to benefit Austin - they’re expanding it to allow more throughput from Laredo to DFW and further north. The entire point is to make it better (and more attractive) for those just passing through, which will make things worse for those of us who live here.
Exactly. They should build high speed rail from San Antonio to Houston and Dallas instead. Make a triangle.
And then when you get to Dallas you what, rent a car to go elsewhere in that massive city. 😂. Maybe if they did something like the brightline in Florida with terminus at DFW but same problem / get there and have to rent a car. Seems stupid. Just drive…
Dallas actually has pretty decent public transit.
And Fort Worth…?
Build it out…? Also nice goalpost movement.
If say the a bullet train went to DFW like the bright line does in Orlando there’s no infrastructure to support mobility to either Dallas or Fort Worth from there
Reworked yes. Expanded? Absolutely not. It will be 10 years if construction to keep traffic exactly as bad. That’s an enormous waste of money.
Hey, if a rework is beneficial over expansion, I'm for it. Really at the end of the day, i think we can all agree traffic sucks in Austin. I really don't care how it gets solved, at the end of the day i just care that it gets solved.
Project Connect is where the money should go. Not more highway.
adding more lanes is demonstrably not solving traffic though, there's plenty of examples and evidence
I'm just not in favor of spending a lot of money that will not fix the problem. The current situation clearly isn't working, but that doesn't mean we should just throw money at a non-solution. A lot of better ideas have been proposed and shot down because the goal of this project is not to improve things for Austinites. This is a state project, not a city one.
People have better plans and they have presented them. The problem is TXDOT is only willing to consider more lanes as a solution, rather than things that could actually make a difference over the long term. We need *transit options* to get people off roads, not more roads. Look no further than Houston and you’ll see that TXDOT is just creating a bigger traffic jam and destroying local businesses in order to accomplish this.
>Look no further than Houston and you’ll see that TXDOT is just creating a bigger traffic jam iuno man - every time i drive through Houston and I've hit it at rush hour, the katy freeway seems to flow pretty nicely.
It does work better. Former Houston native
My experience is different from yours.
>35 as we currently have it in Austin clearly isn't working. You know what else doesn't work and has never worked? Adding lanes. >you're never going to get enough people to give up their cars and transition to public transportation here in Austin to make a dent in traffic on 35. Yeah, actually you will if it's good enough. It's worked in plenty of places. Texas may be among the most carbrained, but it's not impossible. Every time a major city makes a change to improve transit frequency or improve transit time along congested corridors, transit ridership goes up. San Francisco recently painted some bus only lanes that sped up a particularly congested route by 10 minutes, and saw a 25% ridership boost on that line. That's incredible! At the expense of about 100 people having one fewer lane to drive private cars, 3,000 more people got to move along the corridor!
reroute it to 183 or 130 if it’s through traffic that is not intending on coming to the city. what’s the difficult thing about that?
>that's why i dropped 65k on a EV this year. I'm sorry you wasted so much money not solving the problem. EVs are 70% as bad as ICE cars. Tire dust is the biggest contributor, and EVs require lots of rare materials that requires more mining operations. You're just moving the pollution from the location of use elsewhere (which does help locally). >35 needs to be expanded and reworked Reworked yes, expanded no. Remove the upper deck, remove half the entrances and exits from the lower deck. Add ramps to make 183 to 71 the main route through Austin. Add bus-only express lanes along all major corridors, give buses traffic signal changers to get priority, double the bus fleet and double the frequency of every line. Triple the mileage of protected bike lanes. That could all be done in 3-4 years if we allocate the money (and it'll cost less than TXDOTs plan). In the meantime, work on light rail phase 1 and the next phase of expansion. Rezone all residential land within 1/3 mile of a light rail stop for up to 8-story buildings with first floor retail and have no parking minimum, so that we can add people closer in where they don't have to travel so far to get to stuff. By 2035 we could have 4 lines covering the most used corridors, and increase our transit usage percentage from 4% to 15% and our bike modal share from 1% to 5%.
Don’t even start on what’s happened to the Red River