4 ms·

It does, if you're going from Leander/Cedar Park to downtown it's useful. It takes about the same amount of time as driving in rush-hour, but without the bs. T

It does, if you're going from Leander/Cedar Park to downtown it's useful. It takes about the same amount of time as driving in rush-hour, but without the bs. Texas generally sees public-transport as something for poor people and the state is full of armchair libertarians..

dkarl 7y ago
Yep, that's almost the only scenario it covers, along with commuting from east Austin to the Domain. I was at a lecture recently about the things cities do right and wrong when planning public transit, and the speaker used Austin's rail system to illustrate what happens when cities route public transit around political opposition. The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable, and Austin's Red Line is the perfect example: it barely sticks its nose into one side of downtown and then manages to dodge the capitol area, the university, and the dense residential neighborhoods of north Austin. Even the station that seems intended to serve the Domain is actually a ten minute walk from it, twenty minutes to most of the shops and restaurants.
- NathanKP 7y ago
  I mean its not like they really had much of a choice for the route. They didn't build new tracks, just reused old existing tracks and built stations along the way. I lived in Austin when they were voting to build the rail line and there was so much opposition that they never would have been able to get funding for any serious development of new tracks. There was a proposal for a while to run trains up Mopac, along the train line in the middle of the highway there, but apparently that wasn't possible because there is too much freight traffic on that line. > The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable That actually wasn't the case either. The original proposal was for a roughly $2 billion project, and while it had lots of support in the central city the suburbs voted against it. In the end they got the proposal passed, but with a drastically reduced budget, and were only able to spend about $100 million to build a rail system. So they just slapped together the red line on existing rail tracks
  - dkarl 7y ago
    They could have found the money if people weren’t opposed to the route the money would have enabled. The university was very strongly opposed, NIMBY residents in north Austin were opposed to having nearby transit, and lots of people who owned or rented commercial land along the route were opposed because businesses would lose a lot of business during construction. Many of the people who were opposed found cost to be a convenient grounds for opposition, and the cheaper alternative happened to conveniently coincide with making the least number of people upset.
    - NathanKP 7y ago
      Haha yeah, I rememeber the NIMBY's in North Austin. I was living out near the Domain area back then, so I was glad to at least get the Kramar station. Honestly the biggest shame is still no rail line out to Austin Bergstrom.

dkarl 7y ago

Yep, that's almost the only scenario it covers, along with commuting from east Austin to the Domain. I was at a lecture recently about the things cities do right and wrong when planning public transit, and the speaker used Austin's rail system to illustrate what happens when cities route public transit around political opposition. The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable, and Austin's Red Line is the perfect example: it barely sticks its nose into one side of downtown and then manages to dodge the capitol area, the university, and the dense residential neighborhoods of north Austin. Even the station that seems intended to serve the Domain is actually a ten minute walk from it, twenty minutes to most of the shops and restaurants.

NathanKP 7y ago
I mean its not like they really had much of a choice for the route. They didn't build new tracks, just reused old existing tracks and built stations along the way. I lived in Austin when they were voting to build the rail line and there was so much opposition that they never would have been able to get funding for any serious development of new tracks. There was a proposal for a while to run trains up Mopac, along the train line in the middle of the highway there, but apparently that wasn't possible because there is too much freight traffic on that line. > The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable That actually wasn't the case either. The original proposal was for a roughly $2 billion project, and while it had lots of support in the central city the suburbs voted against it. In the end they got the proposal passed, but with a drastically reduced budget, and were only able to spend about $100 million to build a rail system. So they just slapped together the red line on existing rail tracks
- dkarl 7y ago
  They could have found the money if people weren’t opposed to the route the money would have enabled. The university was very strongly opposed, NIMBY residents in north Austin were opposed to having nearby transit, and lots of people who owned or rented commercial land along the route were opposed because businesses would lose a lot of business during construction. Many of the people who were opposed found cost to be a convenient grounds for opposition, and the cheaper alternative happened to conveniently coincide with making the least number of people upset.
  - NathanKP 7y ago
    Haha yeah, I rememeber the NIMBY's in North Austin. I was living out near the Domain area back then, so I was glad to at least get the Kramar station. Honestly the biggest shame is still no rail line out to Austin Bergstrom.