M1EK's Bake-Sale of Bile

Why Krusee Supported Rail, Part One

Round Rock doesn't pay Capital Metro taxes. They decided a long time ago that they didn't want to be part of the system. Great. I wish we Austinites could similarly exempt ourselves from paying taxes which build their roads for them, but here we are.

So where does Krusee and rail come into this, then?

CAMPO is about to approve using Federal money to build an "intermodal transit center" in downtown Round Rock, which will include a new bus line which connects to a Capital Metro Park-n-Ride in far North Austin.

Let me repeat again: Citizens of Austin subsidize bus rides on Capital Metro by paying a 1% sales tax. Citizens of Round Rock pay nothing to Capital Metro.

These park and rides (and the express buses which stop there) are fairly attractive today for a small subset of commuters who have to pay money to park at their office (mainly UT employees; a few folks downtown). So some people, even when not in the Cap Metro service area, drive to the park and ride and then hop the bus (paying the same low fare as an Austin resident would). Until recently, the main places this 'freeloading rider' problem occurred were Pflugerville (which voted themselves out of the system - Cap Metro responded by moving their park and ride what seemed like 500 feet further down the road towards Austin) and Cedar Park (who can freeload on either Leander or Austin).

Now we've just opened one of these at the far north fringe of the service area (near Howard Lane).

I have asked Cap Metro in the past (when I was on the UTC) whether they realized that building more park-and-rides at the far fringes of their service area would lead to this 'freeloading rider' problem; and they said, yes, it would, and no, they didn't intend to do anything about it.

So now, to add insult to injury, we're using area-wide tax revenue to build a project which will make it easier for Round Rock residents to ride Capital Metro, where they will be heavily subsidized (far more than Austin riders) by Austin taxpayers. This will further drive down Cap Metro's fairly abyssmal "farebox recovery ratio". And Cap Metro is enthusiastic about this.

Is Round Rock going to institute a 1% sales tax to pay for Capital Metro service? Hell no. They can't, even if they wanted to; they're maxed out. Is Cap Metro going to demand that passengers provide proof of residence inside the service area before getting the heavily discounted fare? Hell no. They won't, even if they wanted to.

But could Capital Metro build light rail for urban Austin where most of their tax revenue comes from? No, that was 'too expensive'. If you're appropriately slavish in your praise, Kaiser Krusee might deign to bless you with some streetcars which are stuck in traffic behind his constituents' cars. Just don't point out that by the time we've built a bunch of worthless commuter rail lines and a streetcar loop, we might as well have just built the 2000 light rail plan - it would have been no more expensive and far more effective.

Anybody see anything wrong with this picture?

More to come.

Use Cases Part Three: Reverse Commutes

In case you thought I'd never pick one which works well with commuter rail, we've got one (although light rail would have worked a little bit better).

Analyzing a couple of reverse commutes:

Case 1 is a young downtown resident (of one of the condo buildings now under construction, for instance) who works at IBM (which as the draft environmental impact assessment states, will be right next to one of the stations). Parking up at IBM is free, of course.

Most of the residential development downtown is on the west side of Congress (except for the Milago and the 555, which are within walking distance of the train station). This puts the majority of housing units within a 5 minute walk of the 2000 light rail line with a short shuttle bus ride for the commuter rail station; with the Milago and 555 being the opposite.

For a minor variation, my own commute when I was working at IBM was from my condominium in Clarksville, from which I could have ridden a bus to either rail station from a couple of bus options - add 10 more minutes for extra bus travel for those trips.

Numbers indicate "seats". IE, if the number gets up to 3, you had to ride in 3 vehicles to get there. T indicates transfers. W indicates wait. P indicates pedestrian trip.

Unless you live in Milago or 555, this commutes would be better on light rail than on commuter rail, but the car still kicks both to the curb during the morning commute and probably always will. The afternoon is where this commute really gets competitive - this is the route I used to have to drive when I worked up north and lived in Clarksville, and it's not pretty. You can sometimes save a bit of time by using alternate routes, but it's never quick; the problem is that the express bus on Burnet isn't going to be quick or reliable either since it's stuck in stoplight and slow-speed traffic conditions. Rapid bus isn't an option for this commute (at least, not initially - the long-term buildout indicates a route up Burnet). Both commuter rail and light rail allow passengers to at least obtain a more reliable commute, and in some cases even a faster one.

Having lived this commute, I'd pick light rail and MAYBE commuter rail over the car - a comfortable transit ride which took on average 5 minutes longer but was reliable and allowed me to work or read would have been a big winner. The scary thing about the commuter rail trip would be (of course) the bus transfer (if your shuttle is running late due to traffic, you're on the next train ride 30 minutes later). Light rail would have run about every ten minutes during the peak hours; so the penalty for missing a train would not be as scary.

Either rail line could pick up a small number of passengers who match this travel pattern (small because most workers at the IBM-area complexes live in Round Rock and other north/northwest suburbs; only a handful live central). The other thing this travel pattern has going for it is that the car trip is only going to get worse; while both the light rail and commuter rail trip are unlikely to get much slower since neither one relies heavily on a bus component.

Case 2 is the same downtown resident but he now works at one of the tech businesses on the 183 corridor (let's not even talk about the apalling amount of office space on Loop 360).

I've worked in several offices along this corridor while living in central Austin, so I know the area very well. An interesting fact about the light and commuter rail plans is that despite claiming to be alternatives to the 183 corridor, neither one goes anywhere near a parallel line to US 183 until they approach Cedar Park from the east. This means that the predicted rerouting or elimination of the 183-corridor express buses is really going to hurt transit in this area.

Numbers indicate "seats". IE, if the number gets up to 3, you had to ride in 3 vehicles to get there. T indicates transfers. W indicates wait. P indicates pedestrian trip.

I'm picking the first office I had at S3 in 1998 - because it happens to be located directly across Jollyville from the Pavillion Park and Ride (I would take the express bus up many mornings and ride my bike home).

Unfortunately, neither light rail nor commuter rail is going to work for this trip, even if you brought your bike along and wanted to ride from the station to your office. (There are no good bike routes from either the prospective Howard Lane-area station or the IBM-area to the Jollyville corridor). Express buses today aren't horrible (you'll spend a good deal more time in the morning and be nearly competitive in the afternoon), but might be going away as part of this rail plan. Clearly neither rail line would gain a non-trivial number of passengers falling into this travel pattern.

Another Tri-Rail mention

Since I'm being assailed again by Lyndon Henry for being anti-rail-transit, I spent a bit of time looking for additional Tri-Rail mentions in the press, and found this one from the Orlando Press:

The greatest hindrance to Mica's rail, however, could come from the failure of a predecessor, South Florida's Tri-Rail, which runs from Palm Beach County south to Miami. Tri-Rail has proven costly; it has drained $433 million so far, and reports say it needs another $327 million to stay alive. Despite the investment, Tri-Rail averages only 60 percent of its projected ridership, and governments subsidize more than 70 percent of the operating costs.

The problem? Essentially, Tri-Rail doesn't go anywhere. For most of its 11-year life, Tri-Rail delved only into northern Dade County. "That's like taking a train from Volusia and dropping people off at the Seminole County line," Mica says. Connections to major workplaces and airports rely on unreliable bus systems. Moreover, Tri-Rail only runs once an hour, and is frequently late at that.

Could rewrite this as:

The problem? Essentially, All Systems Go doesn't go anywhere. It delves only into the southeastern edge of downtown. Connections to major workplaces and airports rely on unreliable bus systems. Moreover, ASG only runs twice an hour, and not at all at mid-day.

Use Cases Part Two: Central Austin to Central Destinations

This use case analyzes a typical central Austin resident.

Let's consider a lawyer who lives in one of those expensive houses in Hyde Park and wants to get to his law office downtown. Mister Law-Talkin'-Guy probably has free parking available in his office building, but many downtown workers don't (they would have to pay to park). Today, Mister LTG doesn't take the bus, because it's a lot slower than his car, and he can park for free in his building.

Numbers indicate "seats". IE, if the number gets up to 3, you had to ride in 3 vehicles to get there. T indicates transfers. W indicates wait. P indicates pedestrian trip.

To me, the only transit option which seems remotely palatable to Mr. LTG is the light-rail trip, because it could save time over his drive through rush-hour traffic. None of the other options are likely to be remotely competitive in time or reliability - in fact, the light rail trip might be a BIT slower than his car too. But if you're a downtown worker who has to pay to park, or parks a few blocks away from your office, the light-rail option would be a clear winner. The light rail trip might even win Mr. LTG over since he'd have a smooth comfortable ride where he could read the Wall Street Journal, which of course he can't do when he's driving, and probably not on the bus, unless he's unusually carsickness-resistant.

Note how unreliable the trips are which involve navigating traffic. On a good day, the car would beat even the light rail trip; but on a bad day, light rail would be faster. Light rail's speed doesn't change, in other words, because it has its own lane. The bus and the shuttle-bus both suffer from this worse than even the private car does, since you can always change your route when you're driving.

This particular passenger type maps well to UT students who live at the Triangle, or to UT staffers who live anywhere central, etc. Essentially, the entire central Austin residential market could have been very well-served by light rail, but will not be served at ALL by commuter rail.

Most people in Central Austin are transit-positive. That is, even if they own a car, they're willing to seriously consider using public transportation. A good number of these folks take city buses today; but the idea that Rapid Bus is going to get a non-trivial number of the remainder to leave their cars at home is ridiculous.

What about streetcars? The Future Connections Study, as I previously noted, has settled on a route which winds from downtown up to UT, then east to Mueller, so it won't be of much use for actual residents of Central Austin. Even if it DID go "straight up the gut" as intelligent folks asked for, it wouldn't be able to beat the city bus (or Rapid Bus) - unlike light rail vehicles, streetcars share lanes with cars.

Use cases Part One: From Leander / Northwest

Start of a new series - for those who are still optimistic about this commuter rail line. A "use case" in my business (software) describes how a customer might perform a certain task using your product - in this case, we'll describe how a few prospective transit customers would get to work using 4 transportation products.

Today's example is a Leander resident who works at the University of Texas or the State Capitol. Both locations don't provide much in the way of free convenient parking, so workers at both locations currently provide a good deal of business for the 183-corridor express buses. Leander residents are much more suburban and conservative than Central Austin residents, so the performance and reliability gap between transit and the car would need to be smaller, in my opinion, to attract new riders to choose transit than it would be for the analogous central Austinite. I expect most of those who are motivated by expensive or inconvenient parking are already taking those express buses, in other words. (and the express buses are actually pretty nice; most of the time I can read in them without getting carsick).

Numbers indicate "seats". IE, if the number gets up to 3, you had to ride in 3 vehicles to get there. T indicates transfers. W indicates wait. P indicates pedestrian trip.

"Current" is indicated next to the bus trip because there are some indications that Capital Metro might eliminate some of the 183-corridor express buses in order to induce more commuter rail ridership.

Note that the "shuttle bus" portion of this trip will, even if made on a streetcar, still have the same traffic characteristics (i.e. a streetcar running in mixed traffic will still be as slow and unreliable as a shuttle bus).

See notes after the table for more.

In general, I assumed you would get to the express bus stop and wait 5-10 minutes for the express bus, and I was charitably assuming it would be on time. The remainder of that trip is from the 7:25 route in from Leander, and assuming a 5 minute or less walk from the stop. The drive is me estimating what I suppose it would take that time of day (I'd like to hear from a Leander resident that makes this trip in their car for a more accurate estimate). The commuter rail time has such a wide swing because of the shuttle bus component - buses fare worse than cars in heavy traffic due to their acceleration characteristics and the fact that they can't change their route to get around heavy traffic. In general, I assume that the more time you spend on a bus, the less reliable your trip (could be faster or slower than the average). (The express buses don't try to slow down to avoid hitting stops early on the way in in the mornings, unlike city buses, so you actually could get dropped off earlier than schedule indicates).

Note that one of the key attractions to the 2000 light rail route is its reliability. A route which doesn't require that you take shuttle buses can dependably get you to work at the same time every day. The train isn't stuck in traffic, and you don't have to make any transfers.

What Can Work

Seattle's light rail line just got a rating of "high" from the Feds meaning it's very likely they'll get the maximum possible financial contribution. Why? From the posting:

King County Executive Ron Sims said a big factor in the rating was the travel time savings. A bus from University Hospital near Husky Stadium to downtown takes 25 minutes during the afternoon rush hour compared with a projected 9 minutes for the light rail line. A bus from University Hospital to Capitol Hill takes 22 minutes compared with 3 minutes for light rail. And a bus from downtown to Capitol Hill takes 14 minutes compared with 6 minutes on light rail.

Compare and contrast to the route a rider of Capital Metro's commuter rail route would take to get from one of the northwestern park-and-rides to their office at UT or the Capitol. When you add in the shuttle bus trip through traffic (from the commuter rail station to the campus or capitol), it is doubtful that any time will be saved compared to the existing 183-corridor express buses (which also operate in traffic, but at least don't go out of their way on a dogleg through East Austin, and don't require a transfer to a second, much slower, vehicle).

Of course, Austin's 2000 light rail route would have gone from those park-and-rides straight to UT and the Capitol and then down Congress Avenue. But, sure, this will work just as well, and the Feds will be just as happy. Right.

Another Summary on Why All Systems Won't Go

I posted this to the hydeparkaustin yahoo group and didn't want it to go to waste.

The moderator asked me to provide additional background on this.

I write on this stuff voluminously at:

(category archive)

You may want to read that category archive bottom-up (chronological
order).

During 2004, I was the standard-bearer for the "pro-rail-transit but
anti-commuter-rail" side. I was strongly in support of light rail in
2000; remained in support of such a system in 2004; and still support
it today; but this commuter rail system shares none of the aspects of
that plan which made it likely to attract new riders to public
transportation - it neither goes by neighborhoods which want to use
transit (such as mine, NUNA, and yours, Hyde Park), nor goes TO
destinations to which people want to walk, i.e. most of downtown, the
University of Texas, and the Capitol.

Capital Metro claims to be ready to solve this problem through "high
frequency circulators" (Future Connections study previously linked) -
i.e. a vehicle you would board at the commuter rail stop way out in
east Austin which would take you to UT, for instance. The problem is
that this has been tried elsewhere and never works - all you have to
do is go through the 'use case' of the prospective rider, i.e., a guy
who lives in Leander and works at UT.

Car trip: Get in car and drive there; park; walk to work.
Light rail trip: Drive to park-and-ride; take train to UT; walk to
work (probably shorter walk than car trip).
Commuter rail trip: Drive to park-and-ride; take train to east Austin;
transfer to shuttle bus; ride through backed-up traffic to UT; walk to
work.

And of course the Hyde Park resident 'use case' is even worse, since
taking commuter rail is not even remotely feasible - you (and I) would
be stuck taking the "Rapid Bus" which is an even worse scenario than
the above.

My fear was that a badly designed starter system (which this is) will
show Austinites that rail doesn't work - meaning that we won't get any
more rail, not even GOOD rail. And this system is VERY badly designed
- it almost exactly matches Tri-Rail in South Florida (where I come
from) in its reliance on shuttle buses to get passengers anywhere
worth going, rather than doing what all successful light rail starter
lines have done, which is go straight to a few major employment
centers without requiring transfers.

Anyways, I spent the year pushing this position all over town, in
events at UT and at the ANC, and was constantly attacked by my
pro-transit friends for risking getting 'no rail at all'. The
pro-transit establishment claimed that we could pass commuter rail and
then quickly get light rail put back in the plan, i.e., running down
lamar and guadalupe, past the Triangle and Hyde Park, to UT and the
Capitol and then downtown.

I never bought the snow-job; but unfortunately, many people in the
center-city DID buy it. It ended up getting me kicked off the UTC by
councilmember Slusher, as a matter of fact, but I thought that,
regardless of the consequences to me, SOMEBODY needed to raise the
position that bad rail could, in fact, be worse than delayed rail.

And now here we are. Guadalupe will not see light rail from Future
Connections. (I don't think it will for decades, since this commuter
rail plan is so bad that it will destroy the public's desire to try
any new rail lines for years and years to come once they see that
nobody wants to ride it since it's so uncompetitive even compared to
existing express bus routes). In fact, no rail of any kind will be
headed up our way, since even if you take the most optimistic reading
possible of the Future Connections study, they would be building
streetcar (still stuck in traffic, but hey, it's on rails in the
pavement) out to the Mueller project; not up this way.

If anybody has any questions, you can ask me in the forum, or via
private email, and I'd be happy to fill in any more details.

Update: Unpaid blog QA intern "U. Nidentified Cow-orker" alerted me that the "voluminously" link didn't work. Thanks, U.N.!

Letter to Chronicle about FC

Just sent this:

Many well-intentioned people, including most of the staff of the Chronicle, advised Central Austinites to hold their nose and vote "yes" on the All Systems Go commuter rail plan, despite the fact that it goes nowhere near existing and proposed residential density, and nowhere near minor employment centers like the University of Texas or the Capitol Complex (to say nothing of most of downtown). In fact, the pro-rail-transit but anti-stupid-rail position fell all the way down to me, whose sole qualification was serving on the UTC for a few years. I was attacked quite viciously for daring to suggest that perhaps the right response was to vote No, as in "No, this isn't the right rail plan; come back with something like the 2000 plan, scaled back to get us over the top".

Well, now, the other shoe has dropped. The "Future Connections Study", on which those credulous folks based their hopes for adding back rail for central Austin, has released their draft technology review, which has now ruled out any mode requiring a reserved guideway. Meaning: no light rail; no bus rapid transit. You get either a shuttle bus or a streetcar; but either way you're going to be stuck in the same traffic you would be if you just drove.

More on my blog at: http://mdahmus.thebaba.com/blog/

The majority of the pro-transit establishment owes Austin an immediate apology for being part of this snowjob.

More Future Connections Stuff Is Up

The "Library" has a bunch of documents up from the most recent set of meetings for the Future Connections study, i.e., the "let's pretend like we considered rail to get central Austin off our back for screwing them with a commuter rail plan that doesn't go anywhere near them or minor destinations like UT and the Capitol Complex" exercise.

I'm only partway through and don't have time for full analysis now, but I will note that it is disappointing (but not surprising) that NONE of the objectives for this service include the simple one:

make it MORE ATTRACTIVE to ride transit than it is today, i.e., close at least some of the gap between the private automobile and public transportation in one or more of the following: (reliability, speed, comfort).

These guys still don't get it - you can't just rest your hopes on build it and they'll come; you also have to make sure that what you build is GOOD. And shuttle buses operating in mixed traffic aren't "good" unless you're somebody who can't afford their own car. Capital Metro already owns all of THAT market.

Update: One thing I notice is that in the Draft Technologies Report, they have already eliminated light rail and any other technology which uses a reserved guideway. I have to admit I'm not surprised at this decision (which I believe was made before this study even started), but AM surprised at the speed at which they've come to admit it semi-publically.

Rail, TOD, etc.

Responding to a comment on this old entry:

Jonathan, that's not accurate.

1. There ARE more lines in the "long-range plan", but NONE of them go anywhere near UT or the capitol or Mueller. There's one that might go down Mopac to Seaholm, where it will have the same exact problem that the starter line does; namely; that it's too far away from any destinations for people to walk; they'll have to take shuttle buses. And the starter line will be such a visible example of rail's supposed "failure" that no follow-on lines will be built for a very very very VERY long time. The whole reason I opposed the '04 plan was this danger - if you build a crappy enough starter line, it will become, as one of my UTC colleagues put it, a "finisher line".

2. TOD can't work if the line doesn't have good ridership without the TOD. Otherwise, real estate investors are going to be leery about spending more money for TOD than they would for traditional development.

3. These projections DO take into account all prospective density in east Austin, which has generally OPPOSED such projects. In fact, the TOD ordinance had to be watered down to nearly zero because of that part of town's virulent opposition to what they see as gentrification.

4. The only other area in this country which chose to run a rail line through a low-density area instead of running one from where the people are to where they want to go is: South Florida, whose 20-year experiment with Tri-Rail has plumbed new depths of failure. Shuttle buses are so unattractive to the "choice commuter" that even most of the transit-dependent in South Florida don't use Tri-Rail; they just stay on the normal bus; and NOBODY rides it who could have chosen to drive.

Compare/contrast to light rail, which is what Dallas, Portland, Houston, Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City did; and what we almost did in 2000. We could easily have passed a scaled down version of the '00 plan in '04, but Mike Krusee kneecapped Capital Metro into this abomination instead.

Relevant entries in my blog which you might want to look at:

TOD and East Austin
TOD and commuter rail
How you'll use the starter line
Tri-Rail

Possibly The Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard From Capital Metro, And That's Saying A Lot

I just heard from an acquaintance with the Austin Streetcars group that, at Tuesday's meeting for Future Connections, the Capital Metro consultant pointed at the ends of the UT shuttle bus line as examples of "Bus TOD" to presumably answer the complaint that I (and nearly everyone else in the world) state about TOD (transit-oriented development) and buses, namely, that it simply doesn't happen in this country unless you have frequent rail transit, not just buses. In Europe, where gas is six bucks a gallon and there's no parking anyways, you can get it with a bus station, but even there, the focus is on rail transit.

Good lord. I don't even know where to begin with this, but I'll try anyways. While I expect Capital Metro to continue with bogus claims that they can get TOD from the commuter rail line and maybe even the Rapid Bus line, I didn't think even they would go so far out into left-field as to claim you can get TOD from regular, crappy, city buses.

1. I'm pretty sure the apartment complexes predate the shuttle bus lines, at least some of them did, and their density is, if anything, lower than apartment complexes elsewhere (some are only two stories instead of the typical three you get in MF-3 zoning, for instance).
2. Those apartment complexes have just as much parking in just the same places as similar apartment complexes do along Jollyville, or Metric Blvd. In fact, transit coverage of the Far West area is poor, except if you want to go to UT during classtime. Riverside, at least, has decent transit coverage, but you have to walk a long ways to get to them. In NEITHER place is there EVER any incentive to use transit other than to get to class - it's going to be FAR easier and FAR quicker to use that car conveniently (and freely) parked in the lot next to your door. The very OPPOSITE of TOD.
3. There's no mixed-use development of any kind in the vicinity of either 'student slum'. If you dodge driveways and walk a long ways one direction to get out of the area where there's only apartments, you get to an area where there's only single-family houses. If you walk a long ways the other direction, you get to an area where there's only strip-malls. NOWHERE do you find a place where there are buildings with offices or apartments on top and retail on the bottom.
4. Neither area is remotely pedestrian-friendly. You have to walk a long ways to get to those strip malls, and then cross a huge surface parking lot to get to the stores. Again, this is the very OPPOSITE of TOD.

Any more? Man, I'm flabbergasted that they could sink this low. It's one thing to claim that buses can generate TOD (some people claim that BRT, at least, can do it). It's quite another to point to two student slums as your example.

Buttheads at Capital Metro still calling it Urban Commuter Rail

Capital Metro's On The Move E-Newsletter is still calling this thing "urban commuter rail".

It's not urban. It's arguably commuter. It's definitely rail. One and a half out of three is not enough to justify this misleading terminology. This thing goes nowhere near the urban parts of Austin. Even its just-barely-inside-downtown last station is in the part of Austin where surface parking lots are more common than buildings.

Cut it out, you buttheads. Just cut it out. It's commuter rail, not "urban rail", and adding more stations in 2020 isn't going to make it any more urban.

If it doesn't go anywhere near the densest residential neighborhoods or anywhere near the densest employment centers, it isn't urban, by any stretch of the imagination. If your stations are only in locations to which you have to drive, take a bus, or be dropped off by somebody who drove, it's not urban; not even close.

CUT IT OUT DAMMIT.

Can YOU spot the right corridor for rail?

A photographic exercise by M1EK. All pictures obtained from the 9/24/05 Future Connections steering committee presentation.

This is a bit misleading since it makes it look like Hyde Park and the neighborhoods around Airport Blvd are equally suitable for rail transit - the problem is that you can't walk to stations along Airport from any residential developments of consequence; the area is fairly pedestrian-hostile.

Note that all of the existing and future high-density residential and employment centers are going to be served by "high-frequency circulators", i.e., shuttle buses stuck in traffic. While the incredibly important Airport Boulevard corridor gets rail. Here's one example of a circulator movement they envision; this one is planted right on Speedway near my house. Note: there's already high-frequency bus service to campus and downtown on this street, so it's doubtful they'll be doing anything here other than publicity:

Now, for comparison's sake, I took the two 2017 maps, and using my awesome drawing skills, drew the 2000 light rail proposal, in blue. The jog from the Guadalupe corridor over to Congress Avenue might have happened as far north as 11th; I chose 9th as a compromise. Some versions even had it running around the Capitol on both sides -- but this is a simpler drawing that still hits all the same major spots. A short distance north of this map, the 2000 light rail line would have converged with the red "All Systems Go" line and continued northwest on existing rail right-of-way towards Howard Lane, so this picture captures most of the "difference" between the proposals.

Gosh, which one would have a better chance at delivering ridership? I really can't tell the difference. I guess Lyndon IS right - this commuter rail plan IS just as good as light rail!

More on Tri-Rail and why shuttle buses matter

The current brou-ha-ha with Lyndon reminded me to go check if anything's up with Tri-Rail in South Florida. As I've previously written, they're the best example out there of the kind of rail line Capital Metro is going to build here in Austin, in that

• they don't run trains very often
• most destinations require a shuttle bus ride
• they chose to run on a cheap existing track rather than building lines closer to those destinations (like light rail systems usually do)

Well, in the process I found an updated version of an old article I think I already used, but I hadn't noticed one important paragraph before. The context is that they're finally talking seriously about moving to the FEC corridor - which is where the service should have been built all along, since it allows passengers to walk to a non-trivial number of office and retail destinations. We're even worse off here, though, since building this commuter rail line basically prevents us from building anything like the 2000 starter line. Here's the quote:

Without a FEC/TRI-Rail alliance, McCarty sees the need for continued subsidy because of the "inherent fear of feeder bus reliability." The buses "are often late," she explained.

Since Tri-Rail trains only run about every half-hour during the commute peak and less often the rest of the day (like Austin's commuter rail trains will), missing your train on the way home from work is a big deal. The "feeder" buses they're talking about are the same kind of shuttle buses we're going to be stuck with here in Austin, if you work downtown, at the Capitol, or at UT. And guess what? They're going to be unreliable too - they'll be stuck in the same traffic as your car.

Even if streetcars are used for the "high-frequency circulators" which will take you from your office to the train station, the same problem exists - since streetcars won't have their own lane and won't be given green lights over cross traffic. The chance that light rail will come out of the Future Connections Study is zero, since commuter rail precludes it from being built in the 2000 alignment, which is the only one good enough to merit Federal funding.

So just like in South Florida, people will experience a couple of missed trains and then, if they have any other options, will stop riding. Nobody wants to sit around for even a half-hour waiting for the next train home. And if all you're doing is catering to riders who don't have a choice, you might as well just dump the money into more buses.

Lyndon loses it

Lyndon Henry just called me "anti-rail". I'm so mad I could chew nails.

His "bend over for Mike Krusee side" has destroyed any chance at urban rail here in Austin for a generation, since the starter line implemented by Capital Metro will not be able to garner significant ridership due to its reliance on shuttle buses to get anywhere you might want to go.

After this failure, predicted by South Florida's experience with a commuter rail plan which is almost identical to Capital Metro's, Austin voters will not be willing to vote up any more rail for decades.

If anybody's "anti-rail", it's him and his ilk; since their collaboration with Mike Krusee will prevent urban Austin from seeing rail until my children are middle-aged.

Update: my cow orker pointed out that lightrail_now doesn't have public archives. Here's the offending opening paragraph of Lyndon's comment:

Let me just point out that, if Mike Dahmus's anti-rail side had won last November's vote - i.e., the rail plan had failed - the Road Warriors would be celebrating the "final" demise of rail transit in Austin and picking the bones of Capital Metro for more funding for roads - highways, tollways, etc. - in this area.

he then goes on to tell people how wonderful the commuter rail plan is, how it might be upgraded to electrified LRT (continuing his misleading crap about how sticking an electrical wire on it makes it "light rail"), and mentions the people trying to get streetcars running through downtown and an unnamed bunch of "rail advocates" trying to get light rail to run on the Rapid Bus corridor, failing to say anything about the fact that this commuter rail plan effectively precludes running light rail down that stretch of Lamar/Guadalupe.

Regionalism as the enemy of urban transportation

I couldn't put it any better myself. This is how Mike Krusee's killed Austin's hopes at getting intracity transit back from the dark ages of slow jerky buses.

Still At It

The folks who basically wanted us to suck it up and enjoy what crumbs we got from the All Systems Go plan are still at it, even today. On the Austin Streetcars group (for people who are trying desperately to salvage some kind of rail, even if it's stuck-in-traffic streetcars, for central Austin, which is otherwise going to only be served by "high frequency circulators" in the form of shuttle buses and, of course, Not So Rapid Bus), Lyndon Henry just called the ASG starter line an "urban light railway", to which I just had to respond with this old gem which now that I look back, is probably the best thing I wrote about this whole commuter rail debacle. Unfortunately, it was nine months after the election.

Update: Lyndon responded with:

They've ordered non-FRA-compliant light DEMUs for this line. It qualifies as a "light railway" by all standards I know of within the transit industry. However, since it's non-electrified, it is NOT LRT. Operationally, it will be somewhat similar to the Camden-Trenton RiverLine light railway and the Sprinter light railway currently under construction in Oceanside (north of San Diego - which they're calling "light rail").

to which I answered:

Pop quiz:

1. What are the headways it will run at during peak times when it opens?

2. How will the passengers get to their final destination?

The answers to those two questions are:

1. 30 minutes, at best

2. Shuttle buses

Neither of those answers is compatible with the concept of "light rail". As you know. It's a pretty shoddy effort to claim that it's light rail because it's using a slightly less heavy, but still non-electrified, locomotive.

This project is commuter rail, and not a very good one at that (most commuter rail lines at least penetrate a major downtown area; this one does only by the most generous definition of the term, and doesn't come remotely close to any of the 3 or 4 other activity centers of the region).

Your insistence on applying the adjective "light" to it as frequently as you can suggests to me that you might be uncomfortable with your role in selling Mike Krusee's Austin-screwing transit-killer to the citizens and are trying to convince yourself that this pile of garbage really is a stack of roses.

Again, I refer you to this:

and then I inserted the original blast that this isn't light rail by any reasonable definition of the term.

Lyndon is one of the "good guys" which is why I hate so much that he's helped, as I mentioned, sell Austin down the river for Mike Krusee (whose constituents by and large aren't even Capital Metro taxpayers).

You don't get TOD with buses (or commuter rail)

I still have the RealVideo from the City Council Meeting up (was following the Shoal Creek debacle) and there's a well-meaning guy from Oak Hill trying to get the Council to approve a TOD out there on a Rapid Bus line. Time to dispel a few illusions:

1. You don't get TOD without the perception of permanence. Rapid Bus ain't it. Even BRT ain't it. Only rail works. People don't buy into a development where getting to their cars is expensive or inconvenient UNLESS the transit alternative is clearly going to be there for the long-haul. Buses' infamous "flexibility" works against them here.
2. You don't get TOD with commuter rail. You need frequent headways (which this line won't have) and one-stop rides to some major destinations (which this line won't have). So even on our commuter rail line, TOD ain't gonna happen.

What CAN you put on the ground to stimulate TOD? Something like our 2000 light rail plan (which would have been a one-stop ride from northwest Austin through the center-city to UT, the Capitol, and downtown) works, in city after city after city after city after city. Subways and monorails would work too - there's no chance those rails are going away next year. Buses don't. Not even fancy buses with nice signs at their stops which tell you how much delayed your next bus is since it's stuck in traffic behind everybody else's car.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Shuttle Buses

Here's what those of us who live or work in Central Austin are getting out of commuter rail. Stations in far east Austin and the Convention Center, with a handy transfer to a slow, stuck-in-traffic shuttle-bus to get you to where you might actually want to go. Image below is from one of two new documents up at the Future Connections Study site:

Capital Metro is starting rail service here in Austin in a couple of years NOT by doing what success stories like Portland and Dallas did (light rail straight through and to the densest parts of town) but what South Florida did (commuter rail where tracks already exist, requiring transfers to shuttle buses to actually get anywhere). Fifteen years later, Tri-Rail in South Florida is an unmitigated disaster: no choice commuters despite heavy promotion by an enthusiastic community, no transit-oriented development despite heavy subsidization (below-market attempts at land sales around stations and the like). Unlike in Dallas and Portland (and Minneapolis and Houston and Denver and Salt Lake...), drivers in South Florida aren't trying Tri-Rail because they know that transferring to shuttle buses every day for your commute overwhelms any speed advantage the train might have bought you up to that point.

In short, commuter rail as your starter line just plain doesn't work. And the picture ought to make it clear why - even the nominally downtown station is too far from the 6th/Congress intersection for most people to walk, and all other major activity centers in our area will require people to say hey, I'll drive to the park-and-ride, board a train, get off the train, get on a bus, wait in traffic with all the other cars, get off the bus, and walk to my office. Even promotional images used in the pro-commuter-rail campaign show that they expect downtown workers to have to transfer to shuttle buses, as seen below.

Notice in the handouts that they're still pretending that all options are on the table. But believe me, there is zero chance that light rail will end up as the circulator, and near-zero chance that streetcars will make it, not that streetcars would work anyways. It's going to be shuttle-buses in mixed-traffic. Mark my words.

Future Connections Has Started

Capital Metro's Future Connections Group is now, finally, up on the web. This group was tasked with figuring out how to get people from the commuter rail stops, which are far away from where people actually want to go, to the places they, those wacky commuters, actually want to go. Like, say, their office. Or the University. Or the Warehouse District.

This is basically going to be a waste of time, since those of us who operate in the reality-based community all know Capital Metro's going to end up delivering shuttle buses in mixed traffic. The streetcar guys like Jeff are holding out hope, but I don't see Capital Metro going that way, and even if they did, streetcars are only marginally better than mixed-traffic buses for those choice commuters. Streetcars might help make downtown redevelopment even more palatable, in other words, but they aren't going to fix the speed and reliability problems of the All Systems Go route for people who live outside downtown.

Terminology lesson: In most cases, "streetcars" means "vehicle on rails in a traffic lane which shares its lane with cars, or is otherwise 'sharing traffic' with other vehicles and stops at a lot of red lights". "light rail" in this case bumps you up to "has its own lane; always gets a green light". So a streetcar is basically a Dillo on an embedded rail - it still is stuck in traffic just like your car or other buses are.

History lesson: The 2000 light rail plan, or any one of ten easily passable scaled-back versions thereof, would have delivered passengers (in ONE train trip) from their dense center-city residential neighborhoods or from their suburban park-and-rides, directly TO the University of Texas, the Capitol Complex, and downtown, without requiring a transfer to anything else, bus or streetcar in a reasonably fast and very reliable amount of time. Capital Metro didn't even try to bring something like this back before the voters, and most of the pro-transit people here in Austin didn't have the guts to tell them otherwise.

It's Not Light Rail

Many people, including Lyndon Henry (who of all people ought to know better) are continuing the misleading practice of calling Capital Metro's All Systems Go plan "light rail" or "light rail like" or "light 'commuter' rail", etc. This has done its job - most laypeople continue to call what ASG's building "light rail" even though it couldn't be further from the truth.

So a couple of days ago, a story showed up in Kansas City extolling the virtues of what turns out to be a similar "Rapid Bus" plan to the one being foisted on Central Austin as our reward for rolling over for Mike Krusee. The lightrailnow.org site which is at least somewhat affiliated with Lyndon has often published vigorous attacks on efforts to sell "rapid bus" schemes as "as good as rail" to the public. Lyndon was angry at this Kansas City effort, and I replied with a reminder that the politicking of himself and Dave Dobbs helped get the same exact thing for central Austin by his support of the ASG plan. Lyndon replied with his typical ASG cheerleading, and I just sent this in response:

--- In LightRail_Now@yahoogroups.com, Nawdry wrote: >Instead, it passed, and we have a rail project under way and planning for additional rail transit installations now under way.

What we have underway is a commuter rail line which doesn't and will NEVER go near the major activity centers of the region, doesn't and will NEVER go near the major concentrations of residential density in the region, and doesn't and will NEVER get enough choice commuters out of their cars to provide enough public support for expansions of the system.

What we have underway are some lukewarm half-hearted plans for expanding that rail network if Union Pacific can be convinced to leave their freight line behind, but, of course, it will all be moot, since the original line will be such a debacle that we'll never get to the expansions.

This is a "one and done" line.

It skips the Triangle. It skips West Campus. It skips Hyde Park. It skips North University. It skips the Capitol. It skips the University. It skips most of downtown. It does not provide any service to the neighborhoods in Austin that most WANTED rail in 2000, nor will it EVER do so (even if the entire ASG plan is built).

It is NOT ANYTHING LIKE LIGHT RAIL. I don't know how you can sit there and claim that it is. I know you're not stupid, and had hoped you weren't a liar.

_HOUSTON_ built light rail. _DALLAS_ built light rail. _PORTLAND_ and _DENVER_ and _SALT LAKE_ and _MINNEAPOLIS_ built light rail.

This plan is NOTHING like what they built. For you and Dave Dobbs to continue to call it light rail is dishonest, bordering on maliciously false.

What DOES it do? It goes past suburban park-and-rides (as the light rail plan would have). It allows fairly easy access to stations for the far suburbanites who LEAST wanted rail. It requires that all of those passengers, who are the MOST SKEPTICAL about transit, to transfer to SHUTTLE BUSES at the end of their journey if they want to go anywhere worth going.

There is zero chance that this line will garner substantial ridership, and thus, voting for this plan doomed Austin to no additional rail for a very long time, since it will have been 'proven' that rail 'doesn't work'.

As for your claims that Rapid Bus isn't being sold here, bull. It was featured in the paper just a week or two ago, and is the ONLY service improvement being provided to the parts of Austin that want, and in any other city, would have gotten rail.

Mike Dahmus
Disgusted At Lyndon's Dishonesty

Rapid Bus Ain't Rapid, June 2005 Update

Today's Statesman article continues their tradition of blindly accepting whatever Capital Metro says about the transit plan (which was, not coincidentally, innocuous enough not to piss off the real estate interests who largely shape the Statesman's editorial content).

For background on what Rapid Bus really is, and why it's a rip-off for central Austin taxpayers (who get nearly nothing out of the commuter rail plan but pay most of the bills) check the links at the bottom.

Short summary: The people in the densest neighborhoods (including the about-to-open Triangle) who actually WANT to use transit are getting nothing more than a lousy stuck-in-traffic slightly-fancier version of the #101, i.e., a BUS which is MUCH SLOWER THAN THEIR CARS. NO, holding a green light for a couple of seconds ISN'T GOING TO MAKE MUCH DIFFERENCE. It'll be the cars IN FRONT OF THE BUS, sometimes stacked up through several intersections up ahead, that most affect its speed, not the traffic lights.

The people out in the suburbs who don't really want transit and don't pay most of the bills anyways are getting a commuter rail line which, as long as they don't mind changing to a SHUTTLE BUS at the end of the trip, will take them downtown. Oh, and if they're lucky enough to work directly at the Convention Center, it'll be competitive with their cars.

All this instead of a scaled back version of the 2000 light rail plan, which would have served BOTH suburban AND urban residents with transit which was competitive with their cars AND dropped them off directly at UT, the Capitol, and downtown.

• The entire category for this stuff
• A similar "bus is as good as rail, trust us!" debacle in Boston
• More Rapid Bus Ain't Rapid background

On rail success and how not to get there

Excerpted from a post I just made to the excellent Cyburbia Forums:

Actually, from what we heard from the Feds in 2000, Austin's development pattern was nearly ideal for a successful light rail line - the one which would have gone straight down Guadalupe past UT and the Capitol, I mean. Huge suburban catchment area served well by big park-and-rides followed by transition through inner-city residential neighborhoods with thousands of residents within walking distance followed by three mega-employment-centers (UT, capitol, downtown) all with parking issues which encourage transit as long as transit is reasonably competitive.

The reason commuter rail won't work is that it doesn't run through those inner-city neighborhoods (you know, the ones where people actually LIKE mass transit) _AND_ it requires a shuttle-bus transfer for UT and Capitol and most downtown employees. You can't come up with a better way to shoot yourself in the foot than to first lose your best customers (inner-city people) and then tell your remaining customer base of skeptical suburbanites that the last mile or two of their trip is going to be on a shuttle-bus stuck in traffic with everybody else's car.

TOD isn't going to help ASG

This weekend, the Statesman (link coming later if I can locate the story online, which so far is not happening) ran a story summarizing the current state of the TOD (transit-oriented development) ordinance(s) centering around the stations for the commuter rail line being built by Capital Metro in their ASG (All Systems Go) plan.

Summary:

• Neighborhoods are against it in every case.
• Up north, where there's a ton of space around the station, neighborhoods mainly just want the area covered by the ordinance to shrink.
• Down southeast, they want affordable housing targets which are going to be too onerous to be practical, AND they want reductions in height and density.
• Nearly all mandates or requirements in the ordinance, other than affordable housing set-asides, have been watered down to suggestions and incentives.
• Maximum height and density levels originally proposed around stations will likely be drastically reduced in the final ordinance.

Remember what I told you last month - unlike the light rail plan in 2000, this commuter rail line operates down right-of-way which runs through neighborhoods that don't want any more density (and there's not enough political will to do it against their wishes). And, of course, they don't have (much) density now either. Compare to the Lamar/Guadalupe corridor, where neighborhoods that do irresponsibly fight density end up losing anyways -- because there IS political will to stand fast and tell them that single-family-only low-density sprawl doesn't belong in the central city. And, of course, substantially more density currently exists there than anywhere along the commuter rail corridor. Hyde Park and North University and West Campus already have the kind of density that TOD would bring to these commuter rail line neighborhoods.

So this rail line relies much more heavily on future development around stations to produce its intended passenger load than did the more traditional light rail line proposed in 2000 (that line had enough current residents within walking distance of stations to make the Feds very enthusiastic about its prospects - TOD would have just been an added bonus there).

Thus, the additional ridership generated by TOD is a critical piece of the 'business case' for this commuter rail line. Unfortunately, thanks to the Council basically rolling over and dying for these neighborhoods, there won't be much TOD at all when the thing's finally done. Capital Metro can only hope that the Feds ignore the technical wording of the ordinance which eventually passes and instead responds to the meaningless empty words promoting it. Unfortunately, the Feds have shown little willingness to get this deep on other projects around the country (meaning that they give money to projects that don't merit it, and don't give money to projects that do).

Why Central Austinites Should Support Toll Roads

Excerpted from a discussion on the austin-bikes email list, where one of my self-appointed burdens is to be the voice of reason towards those who live in the center-city echo chamber (where everybody bikes; where nobody wants sprawling highways; etc).

The last paragraph of my response is the most relevant piece, and the one that the person I was responding to and many other wishful thinkers just don't get. I, thanks to moving here with suburbanites, and working with exclusively suburbanites, have learned the following painful truths:

• There are more suburbanites around here than urbanites. A LOT more. And the most recent election, they finally WON a seat in our city council (McCracken over Clarke) DESPITE much higher turnout in the center-city.
• Outside Austin, there are no urbanites. CAMPO is now 2/3 suburban, for instance.
• Suburbanites cannot conceive of any lifestyle other than the suburban one. Really. I get blank stares when I tell them I rode the bus to work today, or when I say I walked to the store.
• The sheer population and geographical coverage of suburban neighborhoods means that even if gas gets really expensive, they're still going to be living there. Resistance to their redevelopment in ways which aren't so car-dependent and the cost of such modifications means we're stuck with what we have now for at least a few more decades. Yes, even at $5.00/gallon.

Here's the thread:

Roger Baker wrote:

> On Mar 4, 2005, at 9:34 AM, Mike Dahmus wrote:

>

>     Roger Baker wrote:

>

>         McCracken is the immediate hero here, but he likely wouldn't

>         have done it without Sal Costello, SOSA, and all the

>         independent grassroots organizing.

>

>         On CAMPO, McCracken's resolution got defeated about 2 to 1,

>         with Gerald Daugherty on the bad side, along with CAMPO

>         Director Aulick. TxDOT's Bob Daigh deserves a special bad

>         actor award for expressing his opinion just before the CAMPO

>         vote, with no reasons given, that any independent study of the

>         CAMPO plan would be likely to threaten TxDOT funding for our

>         area. -- Roger

>

>

>     Just like the transit people in Austin with Mike Krusee, you've

>     been completely snookered if you think these people are your friends.

>     The goal of McCracken et al is NOT to stop building these roads;

>     it is to build these roads quickly as FREE HIGHWAYS.

>     In other words, McCracken and Costello ___ARE___ THE ROAD LOBBY!

>     Keep that in mind, folks. Slusher and Bill Bunch don't want the

>     roads at all, but pretty much everybody else who voted against the

>     toll plan wants to build them as free roads.

>     And these highways built free is a far worse prospect for Austin

>     and especially central Austin than if they're built as toll roads,

>     in every possible respect.

>     - MD

>

>

> All that is easy for Mike to say but, as usual, lacks any factual basis or 

> documentation. Furthermore, he does not appear to read what I have previously 

> documented.

As for factual basis or documentation, it should be obvious to anybody with the awareness of a three-year-old that McCracken's playing to his suburban constituents who WANT THESE ROADS, AND WANT THEM TO BE FREE, rather than Slusher's environmentalist constituents, who don't want the roads at all.

As for reading what you've previously documented; oh, if only it were true. If only I hadn't wasted a good month of my life reading your repeated screeds about the oil peak which have almost convinced me to go out and buy an SUV just to spite you.

POLITICAL REALITY MATTERS. The suburban voters who won McCracken his seat over Margot Clarke WANT THESE HIGHWAYS TO BE BUILT. AND THEY DON'T WANT THEM BUILT AS TOLL ROADS BECAUSE THEY'LL HAVE TO PAY (MORE) OF THE BILL IF THEY DO.

Here's what's going to happen if Roger's ilk convinces the environmental bloc to continue their unholy alliance with the suburban road warriors like McCracken and Daugherty:

1. We tell TXDOT we don't want toll roads.
2. TXDOT says we need to kick in a bunch more money to get them built free.
3. We float another huge local bond package to do it (just like we did for local 'contributions' for SH 45, SH 130, and US 183A).
4. The roads get built, as free highways.
5. Those bonds are paid back by property and sales taxes, which disproportionately hit central Austinites, and especially penalize people who don't or only infrequently drive.

Here's what's going to happen if the toll roads get built, as toll roads:

1. TXDOT builds them.
2. The current demand for the roadway is large enough to fill the coffers enough to keep the enterprise going without the bonds defaulting.
3. (Even if #2 doesn't happen, we're at worst no worse off than above; with the added bonus that suburbanites still get to finally pay user fees for their trips on the roads).

Here's what's going to happen in Roger Fantasyland:

1. McCracken, Gerald Daugherty, et al have a Come To Jesus moment and decide that we Really Don't Need Any More Highways In The 'Burbs.

Now, be honest. Which one of the three scenarios above do you find least likely?

YES, EVEN IF GAS TRIPLES IN PRICE, SUBURBANITES WILL STILL DRIVE. THE OIL PEAK IN THIS SENSE DOESN'T ****MATTER****. The people out there in Circle C aren't going anywhere in the short term, and it'll be decades before their neighborhoods are redeveloped in a less car-dependent fashion, assuming we can afford to.

- MD

What Rapid Bus Looks Like In Practice

While researching the last entry, I discovered a site which is a fairly harsh critic of Boston's transit agency, and this gem of an update on their "Silver Line" BRT project (which restored transit service on a corridor which had elevated rail years before).

I urge anybody interested in transit to read this, especially if you're tempted to believe that Rapid Bus is going to be a big improvement over current bus service.

(also added them to my links).

Rapid Bus Ain't Rapid

Earlier this week, Capital Metro included a flyer in copies of the local newspaper which touted Rapid Bus down Lamar/Guadalupe, opening late 2006 or early 2007.

Coincidentally, Wednesday night I had to drop my wife off and pick her up at an appointment which allowed me to travel down Guadalupe from 30th to 6th streets at the extreme tail end of rush hour (6:40 PM). I paid special attention to the ability of cars and buses to navigate through this congested corridor.

First: a short re-hash of what Rapid Bus is:

• Rapid Bus is not "bus rapid transit". "bus rapid transit" or BRT in short picks from a set of items off a menu which will supposedly improve the speed, reliability, and attractiveness of bus transit. The hopes are that it will bring bus transit up to the level of a good urban rail line. In practice (in the United States), this has been far from the case - mainly due to the reluctance to set aside dedicated right-of-way for the bus vehicle, which results in poor speed and reliability compared to rail (and poor relative performance compared to the private automobile). Even when bus lanes are created, the fact that they are typically in-street makes them worthless in practice since cars just use them anyways.
• Capital Metro is certainly moving towards BRT with this line, but even they admit that it's not good enough to call it BRT yet. (That's even with the slip-shod definition of BRT which allows for it to be declared even with only a few improvements over normal bus service).
• In fact, both the existing express buses (which travel down US 183, Mopac, and I-35) and limited buses (which run down normal corridors with fewer stops) already implement some features of BRT. (fewer stops and improved vehicles).

So what characteristics of BRT is Capital Metro including in the design of this new service to make it "Rapid"?

• Signal prioritization - i.e. the ability to hold traffic signals green for a few seconds as the bus approaches
• Off-bus fare payment
• Longer (probably articulated) buses
• Fewer stops

That's pretty much it. Items that might help make the service more like a light rail line which are not being included:

• Dedicated right-of-way
• Full control over traffic signals - i.e. lights turn green when the vehicle approaches
• Electic power (overhead "caternary" wires or in-street power)

So how does "Rapid Bus" look to improve service along Lamar/Guadalupe? Like I said, I drove the most congested part of the route just yesterday, and it doesn't look good.

• The ability to hold the next light green for 5 or 10 seconds isn't going to help during rush hour at all! At almost every single intersection with a traffic light, I waited through at least one green cycle before being able to proceed, since traffic was always backed up from further down the road. And this was at 6:40 PM! That means that while the bus can hold the signal at 27th green for a while longer, it doesn't matter because the backup from 26th, 24th, 23rd, 22nd, 21st, and MLK is preventing the bus from moving anyways.
• Off-bus payment is going to be irrelevant. Now that Capital Metro is using SmartCards for everything short of single-fare rides, very few people are having to take more than a second to pay when they get on the bus (this is from my own bus rides on the 983 and 3 lately). Basically, paying is no longer slowing the boarding process.
• Fewer stops is already possible with the #101. This bus is still woefully slow and woefully unreliable compared to the private automobile, to say nothing of quality rail service (which could in fact beat the automobile on both counts).
• The ride is going to be uncomfortable. The pavement along Guadalupe simply can't stand the beating it gets from heavy vehicles like buses and trucks - and this is not going to change anytime soon. Rather than running down the middle of the street on rails (as light-rail would have done), the Rapid Bus vehicle will run in the right lane of the street on the same pavement abused by trucks and other buses. There is no evidence that the city is willing to pay the far higher bills required to keep this pavement in smooth-enough condition to provide a decent comfortable bus ride.

In review: The commuter rail line is being built on a corridor where only a handful of Austin residents can walk to stations, and only a small percentage of Austin residents can drive to a station. The primary beneficiaries, assuming shuttle buses don't just kill the whole thing, are residents of Leander (who at least pay Capital Metro taxes) and Cedar Park (who don't). On the other hand, the thousands of people in central Austin who could walk to stations along the Lamar/Guadalupe corridor are being presented with a rank steaming turd which barely improves service over the existing #101 bus.

(publically opposing this Mike-Krusee-designed Austin-screwing debacle is the basic reason I was booted from the UTC, for those arriving late).

So, shut up and take it, Austin. Rapid Bus is all you're getting, and you'd better ride it, or you'll be experiencing the fun that Honolulu is currently going through with their own BRT debacle. Big ugly long buses that aren't attracting any new riders don't do transit users any favors.

References:

• Honolulu Star-Bulletin: "With BRT dead, get going on rail"
• Capital Metro Rapid Bus fact sheet
• Light Rail Now BRT analyses
• Bad Transit Silver Line update

What We Could Have Had

From Minneapolis, an update on their light-rail line that opened in 2004 and runs along and in city streets when necessary (goes directly into downtown rather than relying on shuttle buses to reach its primary destinations).

This line is similar in many ways to what a scaled-back version of the 2000 light rail plan could have brought to Austin. That's not what we voted on in 2004 (many people are still confused on this topic - what we voted on was an el-cheapo commuter line which uses shuttle buses to get you to your office or UT, and precludes the development of true urban rail later on).

Note that running the line in the street and straight into downtown appears to be a horrible failure (NOTE: THIS IS SARCASM).

On with the story:

STRONG JANUARY RAIL RIDERSHIP;
MORE THAN A THIRD OF TRAIN RIDERS ARE NEW TO TRANSIT

Rail ridership for January - the first full month with Hiawatha Line
service from downtown Minneapolis to the airport and Mall of America -
was strong with customers boarding trains 441,846 times.

Nearly 40 percent of those riding the Hiawatha Line are first-time
transit users, according to a customer survey released this month. It is
the first onboard research Metro Transit has conducted specific to rail
service.

Of those new to transit, two-thirds said they would have otherwise
driven alone for their commute, illustrating the line's initial impact
on reducing traffic congestion.

More than half (55 percent) of customers said they take the train for
their weekday commutes. Three in every five customers are riding during
rush hours. A third of customers ride on weekends as well as weekdays.
More than half of those surveyed (57 percent) ride the train five or
more times per week.

The main reasons for riding were cited as convenience (23 percent) and
enjoyment of the train (23 percent). Those who ride because they don't
own a car, want to avoid driving or have environmental reasons accounted
for less than 4 percent of respondents. Those who chose the train over
bus service did so overwhelmingly (43 percent) due to convenient rail
schedules.

More customers (31 percent) reach a train station by bus than any other
way, while 26 percent walk and 24 percent use park-and-ride lots along
the line.

Thirty-seven percent pay their fares with cash, more than any other
payment method. Of those who used passes, 41 percent purchased them
through their employer, 39 percent of them using their company's
payroll deduction program.

Demographic information provided by customers shows that the average
Hiawatha Line customer is 25-54 years old (69 percent), Caucasian (84
percent), female (52 percent), speaks English as a primary language (96
percent) and has a household income of more than $70,000 (34 percent).

The research was conducted Nov. 14 through Dec. 2 by Periscope. Later
this year, a more comprehensive study, encompassing both bus and rail,
will allow Metro Transit to compare the two modes and gauge customer
satisfaction with train service for the same time.

I'm a Goner

Today when I came home, my wife showed me the mail, and there was a letter from Councilman Slusher which noted that my term on the UTC has expired (it did on 1/1/05) and that he did not wish me to continue serving until I was replaced. No further information was given.

This is not a big surprise; although the timing is at least a small surprise. Many months ago when I first spoke on the commuter rail issue, one of my fellow commissioners told me that Councilman Slusher was apoplectic with rage over the idea that I'd say the things I was saying (and this was before I really got going; at this point all I had done was write one letter to the Chronicle). He supposedly said that he was mad enough to remove me from the Commission, but didn't want to provide more attention for my supposed cause by doing so.

I was very shocked by this information at the time (and still am) - first of all, the idea that one couldn't publically be against the commuter rail plan (but still be rabidly pro-rail and rabidly pro-transit) and still serve on the Commission is quite offensive to me even today. Second, the idea that a commissioner on the UTC could have a large enough public effect to be worth such spiteful comment as was supposedly given is just ludicrous - in other words, I can't believe that I was ever big enough to be worth any bile from a City Council member at all.

At that time, I asked (quite nicely, I thought) for a meeting with him to discuss what he'd like me to do (implicitly offering to resign from the Commission if that's what he wanted - to be honest, there's little point in continuing to be on the Commission without support from your appointer). He never responded.

To this day, Councilmember Slusher has not spoken to me at all since we met a couple of years ago (when he indicated that he was fairly happy with the status of the UTC).

After the election, I missed the two remaining 2004 meetings of the UTC due to vacation and illness. The January 2005 meeting, which I had planned to attend, was canceled for lack of a quorum. The Februrary meeting is next Tuesday, and I had planned on attending.

I don't know why the decision was made (suddenly) to remove me from the Commission. Councilmember Slusher is being term-limited out of office - elections are in May. I had assumed that the fact that he didn't bother to replace me with another appointee meant that I would probably last until the new councilmember took office.

Anyways, for those reading this blog who knew I was on the UTC, that's the full scoop as of now.

To my fellow commissioners - thanks for serving with me for all these years. Your dedication to improving the transportation situation for the public at large is an inspiration, even when I disagreed with you. I hope you'll continue to do the great job you have been doing.

To city staff - please understand that I (and my fellow commissioners) appreciate the hard work you do even when we disagree. Thanks for all the night hours you had to put in to be at our meetings, and thanks for doing your part to make Austin better.

Regards,
Mike Dahmus
Got Another Free Night Per Month Coming Now

Letter in Chronicle

Letter from me in today's Chronicle. Text at the end of this dispatch.

and today's Statesman takes up the same subject (Transit Oriented Development - commonly abbreviated as TOD) again - using East Hillsboro Oregon (suburb of Portland) as their model. When are the cheerleaders going to get it - you get TOD IF AND ONLY IF your rail line has demonstrated a year or three of high ridership from people who CHOSE to ride rail, not from people who HAD to ride public transit?

For the I Told You So watch:

A fight is looming: The neighborhood plans that already exist for Plaza Saltillo and the areas around the Lamar and MLK stops don't call for the kind of intense density city leaders want around rail stations.

As I pointed out several times during the run-up to the election, one of the many problems with the routing of this commuter rail line is that it runs through neighborhoods that don't want any additional development, rather than down Lamar/Guadalupe where additional development is regarded as inevitable (although my own wildly irresponsible neighborhood does their best to counteract city-wide sanity on this regard).

(Chronicle Letter):

Cold Water on TOD

Dear Editor,

I hate to throw cold water on the frenzy over TOD (transit-oriented development) ["Here Comes the Train," News, Jan. 28], but it's worth remembering that no commuter rail start in the U.S. in recent memory has generated any transit-oriented development worth noting. In fact, all of the TOD that has occurred in the U.S. in most of our lifetimes has been around light rail starts which had to first demonstrate a high level of ridership from new transit customers (i.e., not just those who used to take the bus, but new customers to transit).

This is how Dallas, Denver, Portland, Salt Lake, and Minneapolis have gotten and are continuing to get great new urban buildings around their light-rail lines.

The key here is that thanks to Mike Krusee and naive pro-transit people in Austin, we're not getting a rail line like those cities got (which goes where people actually want to go from day one); we're getting one like South Florida got (which requires shuttle buses to get anywhere worth going). South Florida's commuter line has yet (after 15 years) to generate one lousy square-foot of TOD.

Regards,

Mike Dahmus

Urban Transportation Commission

More on What We're In For

Tri-Rail, the commuter rail line which parallels I-95 through most of South Florida, is the transit start most like Austin's proposed commuter rail line, for good and ill. Read the archives for the whole story, but here's the short version: It was cheap to get started (used existing track), just like ours will be; it doesn't go near any downtown areas, just like ours won't; and it relies exclusively on shuttle buses for passenger distribution, just like ours will. Since then, a hugely expensive double-tracking project has nearly finished without any corresponding improvement in ridership. (The double-tracking has proceeded in phases; portions complete are already in use with their corresponding speed/reliability improvements).

My own observations from my trip home follow the excerpts and comments from this article in the Boca Raton News which appeared recently.

Critics, who suggest that Tri-Rail should be shot and put out of its financial misery, grudgingly admit that railroads are closely linked with the state’s continued development and growth. Resigned to Tri-Rail’s financial reality, but resolute about its future, Palm Beach County Commissioner Jeff Koons admitted Tri-Rail “will never, never, ever pay for itself” operationally. He nodded when asked if this will mean millions upon millions annually in continued local, state and federal subsidy. He continued to nod slowly when told that critics are outraged that it’s costing taxpayers about $46,000 each and every day so that about 9,000 persons per day on average can ride the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (SFRTA) commuter rail service.

That kind of talk ignores the reality that automobile commuters are incredibly subsidized too, but it bears repeating that Tri-Rail's economic performance is far worse than most light-rail starts in this country. So you can't get rid of transit subsidies, but you CAN do a hell of a lot better than that.

And note "9,000 people per day". After 15 years. On a line much much longer than the one proposed for Austin.

Luksha is among the many South Floridians who derisively note that not a single Tri-Rail train goes through a single ‘downtown’, and only indirect services via, bus, taxi or Metrorail will get you to the region’s airports after getting off Tri-Rail.

Yup, just like Austin (nearly zero downtown workers work within the typically considered 1/4 mile walking distance of the station at the Convention Center, so don't even try me).

Koons sighs: “It’s tough trying to promote a railroad in the middle of I-95 construction.”

No, it's not. It should be even easier to get people to take grade-separated transit when the highway option gets worse. It's not, because the grade-separated transit option in this case has the fatal flaw of relying on shuttle buses to get people where they actually need to go.

“We’re too suburban,” according to Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty, who says Tri-Rail’s financial health in fact may depend on whether SFRTA can negotiate an agreement with Florida East Coast Railroad (FEC) for use of the FEC line that wanders through most of Florida’s urban areas. Without a FEC/TRI-Rail alliance, McCarty sees the need for continued subsidy because of the “inherent fear of feeder bus reliability.” The buses “are often late,” she explained.

The FEC railroad runs right through all of the major downtowns in the area -- meaning riders of a service there could actually walk from the train station to work.

They've learned from painful experience what we're going to learn because we fell for Mike Krusee and Fred Gilliam''s snow-job.

Now for my observations:

I saw half a dozen Tri-Rail trains (while driving on I-95). All were emptier than Capital Metro's worst bus routes. I got to see the line from Boynton Beach down to I-595 (Fort Lauderdale), and did not see one lick of transit-oriented development anywhere -- the same low-density warehouse sprawl that used to be around the line is still around the line.

A brand new station is under construction (nearly done) in Boca Raton on the old IBM property (where I used to work). This old IBM site was purchased by a company which has subleased to a ton of smaller firms about 5 years ago. The property is also currently full of new construction which seems mostly to be retail uses -- interestingly enough, they are oriented as far away from the rail line as feasible -- i.e. they do not view proximity to the train station as even slightly desirable. (And the existing offices in the old IBM buildings are a good hike from the train station - especially given South Florida's weather most of the year). This station's location was chosen after about five years of failed work trying to get a station built farther south as part of a new transit-oriented development.

Lesson: You don't get transit-oriented development around a failed rail line. Meaning: the developer contemplating building a project which will incur more cost and potentially less access for motorists is going to want to see people riding the train now who fit their economic profile - i.e. people who can afford cars, but are choosing to ride the train; not the people who ride the train because they have no other choice.

This does not bode well for the Capital Metro backers who think that transit-oriented development can make up for the poor routing of our own starter line.

New observations from South Florida, Part One

I've just returned from South Florida and will be assembling a few observations over the next couple of entries. This one focuses on bicycles - the transit article (mostly about Tri-Rail and its implications for Austin) comes next.

Delray Beach, the town immediately north of Boca Raton (where I grew up and where we stayed with my parents during most of the last 3 weeks), is obstructing a plan by the state highway department to rebuild state route A1A with standard bicycle lanes on each side. A1A is the main (in most parts the only) north-south route on the barrier islands which separate the ocean from the Intracoastal Waterway. In other words, this is the beach road, and not surprisingly, this is where the rich people mostly live. This is also where most people want to ride their bikes, for obvious reasons.

The state highway department in Florida seems to be very progressive, at least compared to TXDOT. On previous visits home, I've noticed a lot of (narrow but usable) bike lanes painted on major arterials throughout the region (this area, being mostly suburban, gets most major roads built and paid for by the state, as is the case here in Round Rock but not in Austin). In fact, A1A throughout Boca Raton was granted nice new bike lanes a few years ago, and they enjoy heavy use. This has resulted in a much saner trip for both drivers and cyclists on this road.

Anyways, the folks up in Delray who live on the road aren't happy with the plan to extend this facility further north; and they got their city commission to listen. The city came back with a proposal to build 3-feet wide mini-shoulders on the road, combined with 10-foot car lanes. Sound familiar? It's even worse when applied to South Florida, where so many drivers are marginally skilled and elderly. If the state bows to the wishes of the locals and builds this facility, people will be far worse off than with the current shared lane -- it will appear to drivers that it is safe to pass cyclists without crossing the double-yellow line, and people will get hurt and killed. There is some hope that the Florida DOT will overrule the local decision, and the local mainstream press has some opposition being heard in op-eds (which doesn't happen here thanks to the gutless Statesman), so it's all not yet lost, but I wouldn't say I'd bet on a positive outcome there.

This is a timely development since the restriping specified in the Great Shoal Creek Debacle of '00 is about to finally be implemented here in Austin -- the local neighbors, who glibly assert that "curb
extensions and lane stripping will be installed finally under a compromise
agreement between the Allandale and Rosedale neighborhoods, the city, cyclists,
pedestrians and emergency services." while participating in a process which showed that neighborhood thuggery will still beat sound engineering and progressive politics any day of the week, are going to see 10-feet "shared parking and bike" lanes next to 10-feet travel lanes. In other words, the most important bicycle route in the city (a "bicycle arterial" as I like to call it) is held hostage to on-street parking, and rendered less safe than it was before. This is a compromise in the sense that a deer and a wolf "agree" that the wolf will eat the deer.

This "compromise" (which I voted against at the UTC, all on my lonesome) was nothing more than a slap in the face to reasonable cyclists who want to coexist with drivers and parking -- as demonstrated by the original plan (with on-street parking preserved on one side of the street). And anybody who voted for this farce should be banned from ever claiming to be pro-bicycle-commuting for the rest of their life. It shows that you can't expect to get good results when you sell your basic principles for the sake of getting along, or, as an anonymous contributor to Michael Bluejay's list put it:

I am dismayed that Mike Dahmus was so damned right about this whole debacle from the very beginning. Although originally, I was very hopeful that a community consensus could be reached that could benefit everyone (and possibly even improve relations amongst the diverse users of SCB), I see now that I was completely naive. What we have now is little better than what we had originally: parking in bike lanes. I'm still hopeful that traffic will be a little calmer, but I doubt that drivers will remain in their lanes, and cyclists riding near the stripe will be at risk of being struck. Any possibility that a mutually beneficial result could emerge from a consensus-based process -- however slight -- was completely dashed when the whole process was hijacked by Paul Nagy. There was a point where Gandy had hood-winked everyone into thinking a panacea solution existed, when he should have known better that his "solution" would never make it past city engineers. (I actually don't feel bad at being deceived by this snake oil, as so many others -- except Dahmus -- were also taken in, including many from the bike community.) I place full blame for that on Gandy for playing politics by trying to please everyone when it's clear that that is impossible. We hired him as an "expert," and clearly he is not.

Observations from a car-less week

So I've spent all week without the car - on Monday, I biked to work (my stepson and I rode our bikes west to Casis, and then I rode all the way in to work - and boy was it tiring; I'm very out of shape); so out-of-shape that I ended up taking the bus home. Then, Tuesday, the car wouldn't start. Since then, we've learned that the alternator broke and supercharged the (nearly dead) battery and nearly done blowed it up. The garage still hasn't figured out how to make it work, so I've been busing it ever since (including today).

Big deal, huh? Well, son, I work in northwest Austin in the software bidness. (My last job had two offices; both about 5 miles west of 360 on 2244 and 2222 respectively; this one is at least in the 183 corridor).

This is my second long stretch in Austin without a car - I went for two weeks without my old convertible at my last job and had to bike in 8 days in a row (a much more difficult bike commute than I have now, but I was in better shape then too) - the bus is not an option in that part of town - closest bus stop to the office was more than five miles away. The office at my current job is far more favorable for bus use - I can use either the express buses or the #3, both of which I board at 38th and Medical Parkway. The express bus drops me off 5 minutes (by foot) to the north of my office and the #3 drops me off 5 minutes south - when I'm early to the bus stop I'll often take a #3 which takes longer but arrives slightly earlier, for instance.

Most days this week, I took the "express" bus (983 or 983 depending on which way). The trip into work consists of a 15-minute walk to the bus stop (except for the day my wife dropped me off on her way to Casis); a 20-minute bus ride; and the 5-minute walk to work. Not too bad compared to a 15-minute drive -- basically the walk makes it worthwhile. The problem is the trip home - the bus takes considerably longer due to Mopac traffic, and is even less reliable than the car (and of course in the car you can escape Mopac at a couple of places and try to make up some time).

Anyways, the work commute: not bad. Could I do this every day? Yes. I'd use the bike more (if nothing more than to get home quicker from the bus stop). I'd have to get better rain gear (I got rained on the most the day I biked, ironically).

But am I saving money on the work commute right now? Not unless we completely get rid of that car. The fare for the express bus is $1.00 each way ($0.50 for the slower #3 bus which I could also take). Half-price ticket booklets bring it down to $1.00 round-trip. This calculator shows how much this daily trip really costs in my car, once you dispense with the fiction that you should amortize fixed costs like insurance and maintenance over each trip. Even with half-price tickets, I save a whopping eight cents a day.

Now, what about getting rid of the car entirely? Now we're talking, especially since the cost of repairs (so far) are almost what I consider this car worth in total. Well, experience from this week shows that we're almost, but not quite, ready to be a one-car household.

Work commute: See above. No problem, basically; I could do it.

School trips: Every other week, my stepson lives at our house, and has to be taken to school in the morning. I could bike more often with him, but not every day (we can't even do two consecutive days now since my wife picks him up in a car which can't take his bike home). Next year? Probably stops being an impediment as he moves on to middle school at either O'Henry or Kealing, both of which lie on the combined 21/22 bus route (which he'll be taking anyways even if we remain a 2-car family). I f we had planned ahead a little more, he could probably be doing this now (the bus runs right by Casis too), but I plan on riding with him at least a few times first, and haven't done it yet.

After-work appointments: This was the big problem. My wife has a weekly meeting at 5:30 on Wednesdays, for which I have to be home at 5:10 to watch the baby. There's no way to do this feasibly taking the bus - I'd have to stop my workday at about 4:00, which is simply not going to happen in my line of work. Also, we both have a weekly meeting on Thursdays at 5:10 - same problem. This week, I went home at lunch on Wednesday and worked at home -- this works for occasional emergencies, but not as a regular thing. On Thursday, she had to get the babysitter earlier than usual and come pick me up. Also not going to work as a regular thing.

We've failed on the Thursday meeting in the sense that we acquired a regular engagement which I can't get to on the bus. I could theoretically bike there in about 20 minutes -- but this is not the type of thing I can do all sweaty. I don't know if anything other than opting out could fix Wednesday.

So we're repairing the car this time, and I'll continue to wish I didn't have to. We're looking at at least $500 in repairs (on a car I figure is worth $500-$1000), about $400/year in insurance, about $200/year in various other fixed costs. All for two lousy meetings a week.

That's what you get when you have a half-assed transit system -- people who in other cities could live with just one car (and wouldn't mind doing so) can't even do it. Unfortunately, nothing but massive densification of the urban core could solve this problem for us, and even then, Capital Metro hoodwinked enough people with the commuter rail debacle such that the urban core of Austin won't have competitive transit service for essentially ever. C'est la car.

11:00 update: Now the engine computer needs to be replaced. Bare minimum, if we do it through the shop and use refurb parts: another $500 for a total of $1000. Argh. My wife is checking now to find out how much we're already on the hook for if we bail, and then I get to go price cheap used cars. Hooray for economic disaster! Man, I hate cars.

Commuter rail photo essay

Prentiss has put together a brilliant photo essay showing where the stations for Capital Metro's commuter rail starter line are going to be. I highly recommend checking it out.

Plans for the blog

Well, now that the election is over, and I waited a week to cool the electrons, here's where this blog is going to go:

1. More emphasis on other transportation-talk (I had a bit of this sprinkled through the early articles here - see these categories for some examples). I took up the pro-transit but anti-commuter-rail flag because nobody else would, not because it's my only interest). I have a couple of long articles ready to write once I get some time - one about TXDOT's pedestrian-hostile highway construction, and one about the Jollyville Road severing.

2. I'll be evaluating any proposals made to "fix" the commuter rail line. Some mumblings in the press right now indicate that they think they're going to get a proposal or two before the voters for the 2006 election. I sincerely doubt this will happen - there was far too much political capital spent on the "let's build this one and then see how it does" position, and the kind of studies they need to do in order to get to the ballot-box are not likely to be quick.

3. I'll be commenting on the election results if and when the Chronicle does a precinct analysis (like they did for the 2000 light rail election).

Evaluating my campaign and my predictions: I thought the rail plan would pass, but I did not think the margin would be this great. I'm surprised at the margin in unincorporated Williamson County (according to today's Statesman, it was fairly large). As mentioned before, I don't know how it did in the central city compared to light rail.

I had hoped that I would get enough traction with the press that it would be difficult to forget (in 2010) that there was at least one guy who knew what he was talking about who predicted that the starter line was fatally flawed (to shorten the rail transit interregnum that will occur when the line fails). I don't think I met my goals here - got some early coverage, including a good spot on KXAN where I was able to articulate the main failure, but most of the other press coverage misrepresented my position to "it doesn't go far enough" which is too easy to counter with "well, we'll just build streetcar or go to Seaholm" which only solves one of the ten or so problems with this line.

The success of the starter line is now in the hands of people in Cedar Park and far northwest Austin. If they enjoy riding shuttle buses every day from the station at MLK (crossing I-35 on MLK to get to UT and the Capitol) or from the Convention Center to 6th and Congress, then the plan will survive long enough to build extensions and expansions. Note, however, that none of those extensions or expansions provide rail service for the residents of the center city - they are other commuter rail lines headed from shuttle-bus stations out to other suburban areas.

I'm prepared to make a limited number of ridership bets for more steak dinners (hi Patrick!). You know where to find me. Otherwise, I may have the sidewalk article up in a week or so.

My final pre-election note

(Thank God, say the readers)

Sent by me a moment ago to the austin-bikes email list:

David Dobbs wrote:

> At 08:25 -0600 11/1/04, Mike Dahmus wrote:
>
>> So I don't buy the argument that the money's only going back if the election fails. I think the money's also going back if the election succeeds but the starter line fails.
>
>
>
> Well, clearly we can be virtually certain that, save for a half-cent bus system, Capital Metro's funding will be gone if commuter rail doesn't pass tomorrow.

No, clearly we can't be virtually certain of that.

I expect the 1/4 cent diversion to local governments to continue if Capital Metro were to lose the election. This diversion is easily rectified, unlike the permanent diversion that would happen if they win the election and build the virtually guaranteed failure of a commuter rail stub.

The fact that the ROAD guys aren't fighting this very hard should tell you all you need to know about their feeling on the matter. But if you don't believe THAT, consider the fact that this plan comes from Mike Krusee, no friend of Austin and definitely no friend of public transportation. He and Fred Gilliam have come up with the cheapest possible way to show once and for all that rail "doesn't work in Austin" - at which point I'm sure their common cause evaporates as Krusee seeks road funds and Gilliam seeks bus rapid transit. Either way, central Austin in particular gets nothing but the back of the hand.

There is no way I can see in which urban rail can be salvaged if this election passes. David is parroting the dubious party line that this commuter rail line can be turned into "light rail" by running the trains more often and through TOD - ignoring the fact that TOD won't occur if nobody is riding the line when it opens (real estate developers will shy away from such development if the line looks like a failure AS HAPPENED IN SOUTH FLORIDA). And NOBODY has explained how Austin is going to be SO DIFFERENT from South Florida that the shuttle-bus liability won't be a huge problem here for building choice commuter ridership. High-frequency shuttle buses waiting for you when you get off the train? Check. Speedy rail portion of commute? Check. Cheap because they used existing track? Check. Now planning on shifting emphasis over the next decade to a much better rail corridor after 15 wasted years? One down, one to go.

Let's recap:

- This line delivers rail + shuttle-bus commutes to Leander and far northwest Austin. It does not deliver ANYTHING to central Austin. It does not deliver rail service to ANY OF THE THREE major attractors (downtown*, UT, Capitol). It will be relying on far-out suburbanites to form the bulk of the daily ridership - and those are PRECISELY the people who are LEAST likely to accept a shuttle-bus as part of their daily commute. The progressive parts of town where residential density is at its highest get nothing but bus service under the LONG-RANGE plan (NOT just being skipped by the starter line, but SKIPPED ENTIRELY).

- The idea that the plan can then be saved by streetcar is also naive and foolish. While streetcars are more attractive than buses for a single transit trip:

1. The transfer penalty still applies. A three-leg trip (car, train, shuttle-bus) is much much worse than a two-leg trip (car, light rail) or a one-leg trip, as a Hyde Park resident could have had with 2000 LRT.
2. Unlike light rail (and the rail portion of the ASG commute), streetcars are stuck in traffic just like shuttle buses. You lose so much speed and reliability that the private car becomes competitive again.
3. Streetcars (and any other rail extensions or expansions) must be voted on under the same rules - only in November, only an even-numbered year, and they won't be ready to take it to a vote in 2006 since they've committed to a long study process. November 2008 would be the first chance to VOTE on these saviours, at which point the daily ridership numbers of the initial line WITH SHUTTLE BUSES will be public knowledge.

- The reason we're not getting to vote on light rail this time around has NOTHING to do with light rail's viability. EVERY CITY THAT HAS SUCCEEDED WITH RAIL IN THE LAST 20 YEARS HAS DONE SO WITH A LIGHT RAIL STARTER LINE, NOT COMMUTER RAIL. Light rail in 2000 was forced to the polls early by Mike Krusee, and still only narrowly lost in an election where suburban turnout was disproportionately high. The idea that we couldn't have taken out some of the objectionable parts of the 2000 LRT proposal and gotten a winning result is just a COMPLETE AND UTTER LIE.

I can't believe so many intelligent people fell for this snow-job pulled on you by Krusee, who hates Austin with a passion, and Fred Gilliam, who wants bus rapid transit and is pushing commuter rail as a way to get it. If I'm still living here in Austin in 2008, I expect to see many more comments a la Shoal Creek of:

" I am dismayed that Mike Dahmus was so damned right about this whole debacle from the very beginning."

- MD

* - by the 1/4 mile rule, no major downtown office buildings are within walking distance of the "downtown station". Nearly every major office building downtown, as well as the Capitol, UT, West Campus, most of North University and Hyde Park, and 38th/Guadalupe would have been within 1/4 mile of a light-rail station in 2000.

If "not going far enough" was the only problem...

I wouldn't be campaigning against this thing.

This entry is good for people seeking back-story; the linked articles form a "best of" collection from this blog explaining various supporting arguments for the Pro-Transit But No vote on Capital Metro this time around.

Today kicks off with another Chronicle mention in which they say:

Opponents like Mike Dahmus, a member of the city Urban Transportation Commission, say the current commuter rail plan does not go far enough.

The real problem here, as I've covered again and again and again, is that this line (unlike light rail) will require shuttle-buses for all commuters every single day and will thus fail miserably at attracting passengers from the suburban (non-bus-riding) population. Since this line, unlike light rail in 2000, doesn't run anywhere near the areas of central Austin where transit enjoys high use and overwhelming popularity, it can't make up the difference with progressives either.

Simply not going "far enough" could be fixed with some hard work. But this plan not only goes the wrong way, it precludes light rail from being built to "fix" it. Additionally, it's SO INCREDIBLY CRAPPY that it's going to "show" pretty conclusively that Austinites "don't want rail". Which, I think, is what Mike Krusee and Fred Gilliam had in mind the whole time....

The Crappy Is The Enemy Of The Good

Jeb Boyt throws back one of the most effective sound bites on commuter rail. I'm disappointed he didn't have the guts to link to me; I will certainly allow you to read his own words directly and make up your own mind.

I responded in his comments with:

Again, I disagree. Rail systems which attempt to provide starter line service by requiring shuttle bus transfers are universally failures at pulling people out of their cars (unlike light rail lines in the last two decades).

And Guadalupe/Lamar was completely feasible - the 2000 election lost by such a small margin that any number of minor changes to the plan, or heck, even a more concrete plan (remember we voted without knowing the downtown routing!) could have put it over the top.

The spin that Guadalupe/Lamar is impossible comes straight from Fred Gilliam, who DOESN'T WANT RAIL AT ALL. Hint: He's teamed up with Mike Krusee here to build commuter rail because it's the cheapest way to show that it "doesn't work".

And it "won't work" because it doesn't run through neighborhoods where people actually want to use it, and the only people who COULD use it are precisely those who would be the LEAST willing to take shuttle buses every day.

The real problem here, folks, is that a starter line which is this horrible will be, as one of my colleagues on the Urban Transportation Commission put it, a "finisher line". It will end rail transit in this area for decades. Please don't fall for this baloney that the commuter rail line is good enough for a start, and that we can work on improving it later. As Jeb's entry points out, Lamar/Guadalupe is not even under consideration as one of the possible "improvements" anyways, even if I end up wrong and suburbanites eagerly flock to daily shuttle-bus trips as part of their Leander-to-Austin commute.

Commuter Rail Is Not Light Rail, Part 851

Or: A letter I just wrote to the Statesman which they probably won't publish:

Many of your readers and a significant number of public boosters of the commuter rail proposal on the ballot November 2nd appear to be confused as to the nature of the project. Referring to cities such as Salt Lake City and Portland as rail success stories is misleading in this context, since those cities are succeeding with LIGHT RAIL (like we narrowly voted down in 2000), not COMMUTER RAIL. The only recent example of a system like the one we're voting on comes from South Florida - it relies exclusively on "high-frequency circulators" (shuttle buses) while all the success stories mentioned have stations within walking distance of existing offices and shops. South Florida's line has been an unmitigated disaster that after 15 years still carries only 12,000 passengers a day on a far longer corridor than the one we're contemplating building.

Posted by m1ek at 07:52 AM | Comments (0)

A Yes Vote for this plan kills Light Rail, Part XII

In early versions of the All Systems Go literature, the Rapid Bus line on Lamar/Guadalupe was described as a "placeholder for possible future urban rail". This corridor is the only one in our area which has sufficient existing residential density to support urban rail (light rail or otherwise).

Many of the people who are holding their nose and voting yes on the commuter rail plan appear to still think that they can get light rail on this corridor even if this commuter rail plan passes. I've discussed on several occasions the technical problems with that idea - in short: the original 2000 route would be out due to vehicle/track incompatibilities, and a route continuing north on Lamar instead of bending northwest would be out due to speed and demographics (far fewer northeast Austin residents work at downtown/UT/capitol than do northwest residents).

More simply, though, one can simply look at the language of Capital Metro themselves. The current version of the ASG plan drops the "placeholder" phrase entirely - and recent quotes from Fred Gilliam are particularly damning:

What Capital Metro does not intend to do, at least in the foreseeable future, is have lanes of city streets dedicated solely to bus traffic. When that occurs, the system is called "bus rapid transit." Lacking those lanes, Capital Metro calls its proposal rapid bus. But Gilliam made it clear he'd like to reverse those two words in the long run.

"My hope is that . . . eventually we will get to bus lanes," Gilliam said. "But
our plan is not designed around having to have them."

Back when Fred took over from Karen Walker, he made some pro-BRT and anti-LRT statements which I have been unable to locate. Thankfully his recent comments remove the need for me to do so - it's pretty clear which way Fred intends to go for Lamar/Guadalupe, and it's going to be Bus Rapid Transit.

What is Bus Rapid Transit, you ask? Well, it's Rapid Bus with bus lanes. You get most of the reliability and speed of light rail, but you get none of the comfort, perceived quality (suburbanites don't like buses, remember?), and perceived permanence. Studies in this country have shown pretty conclusively that you get redevelopment and infill with rails that you don't get with buses - even Rapid Buses. If that doesn't make sense to you, consider what it takes to move Rapid Bus service to a different road versus moving rail service.

Reason to vote no on commuter rail

The picture below is my son, Ethan. He wanted me to tell you that by the time he's ten, he wants urban rail service (dedicated right-of-way; not streetcars) running down the real urban rail corridor (Lamar/Guadalupe), not "Rapid Bus". He also wanted me to add that if you vote for commuter rail, and his dad is right about the negative effects, he's coming for you.

If I were you, I'd do what he wants.

8 down, 19992 to go

My wife and I voted (early) on Sunday. And this weekend, Jonathan Horak endorsed this blog's position. Also, Chip Rosenthal declared his opposition and used very similar reasoning to that used by this author.

In the meantime, Ben Wear wrote about commuter rai again on Sunday in the Statesman, this time using my colleague Patrick Goetz for the lone pro-transit and oh-my-god-does-this-plan-really-stink perspective. I think I've fallen permanently off his radar.

Finally, in the twenty minutes or so since I submitted this post, a blog I've not read before called Grits For Breakfast added their endorsement, and the author made a very good general point about how perplexing it is that Austin voters don't fight these Austin-bashing initiatives harder.

Which possible outcome should scare you more?

a response to Dave Dobbs on the austin-bikes list, in which Dave ended with:

There will be no options if this doesn't pass.

In fact, it will be difficult to defend Capital Metro's money if this election doesn't pass. However, it will be even MORE difficult to defend Capital Metro's money if this election does pass, and the rail service meets my expectations (matching the performance of South Florida's Tri-Rail, the only other new start rail plan relying exclusively on shuttle buses for passenger distribution). At that point, we will have SHOWN that "rail doesn't work in Austin", and the long-term justification for at least 1/4 cent of Capital Metro's money will be gone.

The position, however, that we will definitely lose the money after an election failure fails to compel on two counts:

1. We didn't permanently lose the money in 2000
2. Even if we do 'lose' the money, it's going to be easier to get it back if we don't have a pathetically poor rail line on the ground SHOWING people that "rail doesn't work in Austin".

Keep in mind, if you doubt me that commuter rail won't work, that:

1. Most of the people in 2000 who said they wanted light rail get no rail service from the starter line, and most of that most don't get rail service in the long-range plan either.

2. The people who ARE being delivered rail service are the people who, in 2000, were most against light rail.

3. Those lucky few being delivered rail service are precisely the people who have been the LEAST WILLING to ride buses, and yet in order to use this rail line, they're going to have to ride a bus every single day.

4. In order to improve this line in any way, shape, or form, a follow-on election must be held. Does anybody think that's going to be easy to sell, what with the pro-rail PAC telling everybody that we're following a "vote on every step" plan so they can evaluate rail's performance each time before approving more?

At worst, I urge all of you to remember the Great Shoal Creek Debacle Of Aught-Aught. Is anybody willing to argue with me NOW that I was wrong back then? Want to bet against me again?

Three down

19,997 to go.

Kellyd from activitystory.com has endorsed this blog's position on the All Systems Go referendum and linked me. Thanks, Kelly.

Send Krusee Cruisin'

If like me, you're disgusted at Mike Krusee's role in destroying any chance that Austinites will be able to enjoy rail transit, and you live in his district, please check out Karen Felthauser's campaign.

If I win, what do we do

Phil Hallmark from the austin-bikes email list asked for a clear description of what my "next referendum" would look like, since I'm asking people to vote no on this one. A good point; while I've made some recommendations scattered through this blog, I haven't ever written it down in one place.

My referendum would be, legally, the same language as this one (since ballot language just says "operaton of a rail system") but the notice of election would state that the starter line would be a light rail line running from Leander to downtown Austin (sound similar?). I don't know if it's even legal to state "running past UT and the Capitol", but I'd give it a whirl.

The difference is that the routing would follow the 2000 election's route. I would drop South Congress completely from the long-range plan; the starter line would use the existing rail right-of-way from the northwest; entering Lamar Blvd at its intersection with Airport Blvd (as in 2000); switching to Guadalupe; running by the Triangle, Central Park, West Campus. It would run next to UT on Guadalupe.

The line would transition to Congress Ave. around 11th; then run down Congress to 4th St., terminating there (for the time being). The long-range plan would continue that line west to Seaholm and then south on the UP right-of-way into south Austin (this solves the South Congress opposition in 2000). (Is there enough space for the train to turn on/off Congress at 4th? I think so; but I'm not sure).

The long-range plan would also include spurs to Mueller and Bergstrom. But as wth commuter rail, you only vote on the starter line.

Isn't this a small change? Well, my position on the 2000 election is that you could put the EXACT SAME PACKAGE up for a vote again, and there'd be a 60% chance of passage (with Dubya voters energized in 2000, it lost by less than 1%). With the South Congress change made to avoid opposition from that sector, I'd estimate an 80% chance of success with my plan.

Shouldn't Capital Metro have tried something like this? Any one of a few changes could have brought the 2000 light rail line over the top, after all (another option is avoiding Crestview/Wooten). Well, as I've said, they weren't motivated by the voters, but by one particular state legislator.

If this sounds good to you, you'd better vote against commuter rail; because light rail on this corridor is effectively precluded by the implementation of commuter rail.

Another opinion

In the spirit of "get something posted today with a minimum amount of time", I also present an email from a friend of mine who works in the business (transit) who commented a while back to me on Capital Metro's plan. Note that he's more sanguine about streetcars than am I; he also mentioned in a follow-on that streetcars on both 4th and Congress wouldn't necessitate a transfer in all cases, since there are models out there that could easily navigate that turn.

Here's his note to me (this was a couple of months ago):

Hey M1EK,

Good stuff about the Cap Metro plan. I agree with you: it's flawed.

The transfer penalty for choice riders is significant regardless of the type
of transfer - if it's not a one-seat transit ride to work, it's usually not
going to compete, in the mind of the choice rider, with driving to work.
Some folks will tolerate having to transfer between trains (which is how
commuter rail generally works), but much fewer will tolerate transferring
from a bus to a train to get to work. For example, the park and ride bus
that used to run from north Houston to the Texas Medical Center was
truncated when the rail line opened, and people who used to ride the bus all
the way to the TMC are now forced to transfer to the train in downtown.
Needless to say, ridership on that route has fallen.

As you correctly note, almost nobody will tolerate a rail-to-bus transfer to
get to work.

About eight or so years ago, when TxDOT was doing the Major Investment Study
on the Katy Freeway (I-10 west), they looked at using the existing MKT
railroad right-of-way running parallel to the freeway as a possible commuter
rail corridor. It would have been a quick and smooth trip into the central
city, but there was no way to distribute the passengers to major activity
centers such as downtown or the Texas Medical Center once they got there
(because Bob Lanier the highway lobby whore was still mayor, the Main Street
rail line wasn't even on the drawing board at the time). Passengers would
have been forced to get off the train at the Amtrak station just northwest
of downtown Houston and continue their journeys by bus. Even if the bus trip
from the train station into downtown was relatively short, you can imagine
what the ridership models looked like when the transfer penalty was factored
in. The commuter rail idea was dropped and the MKT right-of-way was used to
expand the freeway itself instead.

What kind of ridership predictions is Cap Metro making for this system?

The streetcar idea intrigued me. This plan might work if a downtown
streetcar network were implemented to distribute passengers. People might
not transfer from trains to shuttle buses, but they'll transfer from trains
to streetcars. Such is the nature of mode preference.

The real danger

I've been busy at work and playing landlord, so I haven't had time to write any new material, but I will share a response I just wrote to Fred Meredith on the austin-bikes list. Fred's among the people who wants good mass transit in this area, but believes that voting yes on commuter rail is the best way to do it.

Fred Meredith wrote:

I will vote for this plan for the following basic reasons.

1.) We need a "first step" project in order to have any further advancement in mass transit through consideration of rail or other option to the single-occupant motor vehicle that increasingly gridlocks Austin. It may not be the best beginning, but it would be a beginning rather than a mandate to keep all rail plans off the horizon and just throw money at more lanes of concrete in a misguided attempt to overcome congestion. Once a first step is taken, I feel it is more likely that better plans can be brought to bear on the issue. I think it is a foot-in-the-door situation.

I don't know how many more times I can take this argument without assuming that I've become invisible or inaudible (fat chance, huh?), but I'll try to remain calm once more.

The danger here is that a starter line that is bad ENOUGH will completely destroy the momentum among the public (that actually WANTS rail right now by at least a slim margin, in Austin itself). This is what happened in South Florida with a system which is identical in every way that matters to the one proposed by Capital Metro. (Their demographics are a bit more liberal than ours, if you include the entire Capital Metro service area, but still far more conservative than Seattle or Portland).

Aspects of Tri-Rail's service which are important:

1. It doesn't go anywhere people actually want to go, but relies on high-frequency circulators (shuttle buses) to take people to their final destinations.
2. What happened was that people who were potential new transit customers stayed away, in droves, when they heard about the shuttle-bus transfer. (This transfer makes the entire trip noncompetitive with the private automobile - i.e. not even close).
3. Hundreds of millions have been spent and are being spent to double-track the corridor, but now after 15 years of no real penetration among new transit customers, the people in charge are finally talking about moving or adding service to a far better rail corridor which actually goes through the major downtowns. (This is in their new long-range plans - meaning next decade or two).
4. In the meantime, nothing else could be done (in terms of transit) for 15 years, and for at least another 10-15.
5. Transit-oriented development has been pursued vigorously along Tri-Rail's corridor for at least ten years now with no results whatsoever (no construction; only some plans, most of which died on the vine).

Compare (and contrast if you can) to Austin. Here's the danger:

1. We're exactly the same as Tri-Rail. Unless you think drivers in Leander are in love with transfers to shuttle buses. I don't.
2. Capital Metro comes back to the voter in 2008 with plans to "expand" (either build the next commuter line down Mopac; build a streetcar system downtown; or if you don't believe me that commuter rail precludes light rail, even rail down Lamar/Guadalupe).
3. The voters, who were told in no uncertain terms back in 2004 that they should evaluate the line's actual performance before voting on extensions/expansions, see that basically the commuter rail line is handling the old express bus riders (Capital Metro closed down the 183-corridor express buses in 2007 as commuter rail came online).
4. The voters come to the (understandable) conclusion that "we tried rail, and it didn't work; so we're not going to spend any more money on it".

So no, the position that "Once a first step is taken, I feel it is more likely that better plans can be brought to bear on the issue. I think it is a foot-in-the-door situation" is not an accurate representation of what we face. It's more like "once a first step is taken on rail, it is very unlikely that better plans can be brought to bear on the issue unless the first step is a success in the minds of the voters. It is an out-on-a-limb situation".

Two down

Adam Rice, another of Austin's best bloggers and a fellow center-city cyclist, has kindly linked to this blog with an endorsement.

So I've won two votes so far - only about 20,000 to go! Well, also, since my cousin, wife, and father-in-law said they liked my presentation at the LBJ school last week, I probably have their votes too. My mom would probably also have liked my presentation, so there you go.

Adam also came up with a great title - All Systems Whoa. If I wasn't running my quixotic campaign on a budget of exactly zero, I'd go buy the domain name allsystemswhoa.org to match the monorail guys at allsystemsno.org (not an endorsement by me - remember I support light rail, which runs in the street and would also be hated by these guys).

How you'll use commuter rail

Or won't, if like most people you don't like shuttle buses.

At the last panel at which I spoke (LBJ school), Scott Polikov claimed that the commuter rail line DOES stop within walking distance of most of downtown. I've cut and pasted the image off the flier for New Ways To Connect, showing the downtown station for commuter rail. Notice the labels on the shuttle buses on the right. From front: CAPITOL, DOWNTOWN, UT

This also marks the first post to this blog where I've included a picture. Man, I'm slipping.

Chronicle mention

Today's Chronicle has a piece by Mike Clark-Madison which to its credit remembers that there are people (well, A person anyways) willingly to publically oppose the ASG plan on the grounds that it's a crappy rail system, rather than the Neanderthal view pushed by Skaggs & Company that we need to build more freeways instead.

Unfortunately, the tone of the article basically matches the endorsement at the front, that being that you Must Vote Yes Or Capital Metro Will Die.

This ties into my yet-as-unwritten piece which explains why this very real fear should not make you vote Yes this time around - because the fear that an implemented starter line which doesn't pull in any new transit customers will be even worse for the long-term future of rail transit in this city.

I've not had any trouble making this case in public - with the exception of Scott Polikov, I think the pro-ASG guys treat it with respect and not with the disdain showed in the endorsement section today. Unfortunately, that's not making enough headway to win the day. The approach currently proposed by the pro-ASG-but-we-know-it-sucks crowd is to pass it and then work to fix it. That falls short in two ways:

1. As I keep saying, this commuter rail line precludes light rail in the urban Lamar/Guadalupe corridor so the only "fix" you could do would be streetcars, which aren't enough of a fix to make any difference

2. Since this plan has been sold as an isolated step, after which all expansions involving rails must come up for additional votes, the poor performance of the initial line (unless I'm wrong and suburbanites fall in love with shuttle buses) will make it impossible to even get #1 off the ground.

The end.

Link from Prentiss

Prentiss Riddle, who won the award this year for Best Blogger in Austin, has written about Capital Metro's commuter rail proposal, and has referred to arguments made here.

What do we do about this?

Two people so far have commented on the "why Mike Krusee and I aren't going to be hoisting beers together" screed.

Addressing both of them:

Clockwork Orange is right. Most of the people who should be fighting Mike Krusee haven't yet realized that he HASN'T turned into their friend, and as a result, he's winning. I'm a friggin' flea compared to this guy and the people he's snowed, and yet I'm the most prestigious pro-rail-transit but anti-commuter-rail guy that people are able to find to speak at these panels. THIS DOES NOT BODE WELL! I'm no heavyweight, folks, I'm just the heaviest one who was willing to fight.

Jonathan is right too. What do we do? My tack is to keep fighting so that the historical record is NOT "everybody liked this and we built it and it failed so obviously rail doesn't work". At a MINIMUM, I need to replicate the Shoal Creek experience and have it be "at least Mike Dahmus wasn't snowed by Mike Krusee; he pointed out how STUPID this plan was, and he was right". This might shave a couple of years off the Dark Ages For Rail that South Florida went through because of the Tri-Rail debacle.

MORE PEOPLE SAYING THIS PLAN IS DUMB FROM A PRO-RAIL PERSPECTIVE WOULD HELP DRAMATICALLY! Right now, it's way too easy for the Capital Metro guys to say "he's the only one" or "he's a crackpot" or "he's on crack and pot". And the media, with the exception of KXAN, has bought into the even worse theory that only Jim Skaggs' band of anti-transit fund-raiders opposes this plan. Even the Austin Chronicle hasn't done well here, which is truly disappointing.

I'm basically spending all of the forty-eight cents of political capital I have on this - since my councilmember wouldn't return my emails after the very FIRST time I even started talking about this plan, I'm 99% sure that I'm not going to be reappointed in January. It would be helpful if people with more than my slightly-more-than-squat amount of power would speak up, but that's not the world we're living in. It would also be helpful if regular citizens would start to ask informed questions of the media here - like "how exactly is an individual going to get from point A to point B under this plan" and then when "high-frequency circulators" are mentioned, they'll at least have had to say it.

At least I know that at the end of this process, I'll have one more night a month free to do what I like!

The Mike Krusee Story

Adam asked in comments for some background on Mike Krusee. Here it is:

In 2000, Capital Metro was preparing for a push for light-rail on a corridor which, on objective measures, was the best suited for an urban rail starter line in this city. It would have hit all three major attractors, ran through the densest residential neighborhoods, and hit the big suburban park-and-rides. The FTA loved this line. It would have given transit service to Leander as well as urban Austin, and it would have been competitive enough with the car to be a successful starter line for a future rail network, based on similar experience in cities like Dallas, Denver, Portland, and Salt Lake City.

Mike Krusee did not like this.

Capital Metro was, in my opinion based on our meetings with them at the time, preparing for an election in 2001, possibly in May.

Mike Krusee did not like this.

Virtually none of Capital Metro's constituents are in Mike Krusee's district.

This did not stop Mike Krusee.

Mike Krusee forced an election in November, 2000 on light rail. This was:

• Too early - Capital Metro hadn't finished figuring out what roads it would run on, or how much support there would be for various parts of the route (for instance, in retrospect, running on South Congress was a non-starter and should have been dropped, but there wasn't time to figure this out well enough beforehand; others complained that it was impossible to evaluate the proposal since CM still had five or six proposed routes through downtown).
• Bad timing - Dubya was running for President, which pulled in a disproportionate number of suburban voters disinclined to give transit a chance.

That election failed, by the closest margin ever seen in a rail ballot. In fact, it passed inside Austin, and passed overwhelmingly in central Austin. The cities now viewed as light-rail success stories generally had to run multiple votes after their first vote failed by a much larger margin than did Austin's. This should have demonstrated a mandate in favor of rail, within the city limits of Austin.

This wasn't enough for Mike Krusee.

He then wrote a bill which was passed by the state Legislature which required that Capital Metro only hold rail elections in November of even-numbered years (basically stacking the deck against transit - common local issue elections typically happen in May and would draw out people more interested in local issues than national ones; Krusee forced the reverse).

Keep in mind that most of Mike Krusee's constituents do not pay taxes to Capital Metro.

This restriction was not placed on transit systems in general (i.e. Dallas' DART system, Houston's METRO system, or proposed VIA rail system in San Antonion). It was placed only on Capital Metro.

The people of Austin demonstrated they wanted rail, and Mike Krusee made sure they wouldn't get it.

Now, fast forward to 2004. The guiding force behind Capital Metro's switch to commuter rail is..... Mike Krusee. Capital Metro is understandably scared to death of Mike Krusee, since he holds some powerful levers at the State. Mike Krusee wants commuter rail instead of urban rail, and that's what Capital Metro is giving him.

Why does Mike Krusee support this plan? Take a look at the long-range plan. Where does the second commuter rail line go?

Round Rock and Georgetown.

Where do Mike Krusee's constituents live?

Round Rock and Georgetown.

Who doesn't pay Capital Metro taxes?

Round Rock and Georgetown.

Who DOES pay 93% of Capital Metro taxes?

Those Dirty Hippies In Urban Austin.

Who gets NO RAIL under the All Systems Go plan? Not with the starter line, not with the full system, (and definitely NOT with wink-wink we-don't-mention-it-but-we're-gonna-give-it-to-you light rail, since if you've been reading my blog, you know that it's precluded by the construction of this commuter rail system)?

Those Dirty Hippies In Urban Austin.

Mike Krusee is not a friend of Austin. He's not a friend of Capital Metro. He's not a friend of rail transit. He's getting transit service for his constituents (who don't pay) at the expense of the people of Austin who have been consistently demanding urban rail service for decades. Yes, at the expense of the same people who consisently subsidize suburban sprawl through property taxes, sales taxes, and gas taxes. People in Austin now get to pay for BOTH the roads AND the transit of Round Rock, while they get nothing more than a glorified express bus for the actual sensible rail corridor in Austin.

This is why I don't like Mike Krusee.

Any questions?

Today's panel

Some observations from today's panel at the LBJ school:

I was the only one talking about the actual alignment of the route, the location of the stations, and unimportant stuff like that, for obvious reasons.

I did not enjoy my exchanges with Scott Polikov(from the pro-commuter rail contingent, a former Capital Metro board member). Jim Skaggs was his usual self, and Jim Walker was about the same as he was at the Austin Neighborhoods Council panel a few weeks ago.

David Foster (with whom I shared a panel last week at the UT planning school as well as the first panel at the Austin Neighborhoods Council) understands that I want rail and just have some experience which leads me to believe that we should be even more scared of a successful election + unsuccessful ridership than we should of an unsuccessful election (he disagrees, but he at least keeps it on that level). He and Jim Walker both admit that this plan is about as far from ideal as you can get while still calling it "rail"; they disagree with me about the idea that it precludes light-rail down the original corridor, but they do it honestly; David a little more than Jim. If I could summarize their position as charitably as possible, it would be "they know we need rail, and they think that this is the only way to get it". I think David would honestly summarize my position, and I hope Jim would as well.

Scott, not so much.

One of Scott's points was that it was unfair to compare this starter line to Tri-Rail as I've done, because this line "enters downtown" and is only "4 blocks from Congress Avenue". He scored a point on me here since this ended up as a "gotcha" comeback to my quote that Tri-Rail's first route was a stupid idea because "Unlike most commuter rail systems, it doesn't serve even one downtown area."

This ended up being my biggest missed opportunity today. I failed to point out that in their own literature the pro-RAIL PAC talks about shuttle buses downtown, and not only that, has a picture of a shuttle bus with the sign "DOWNTOWN" on it, at the supposed downtown rail station. If they expect that downtown workers will think that a station at the Convention Center is close enough to walk to their office, why do they need a shuttle-bus at all? Why talk up the "quick and easy transfer"?

Take a look at their literature - the picture on the front cover is a rendition of the Convention Center stop ("downtown"), illustrating the "quick and easy transfers" to shuttle buses. Note the second bus back (on the right) is labelled DOWNTOWN.

This is still burnin' my biscuits even tonight. I'm sure David thinks I'm crazy for being more scared of B than A when everybody else is more scared of A than B, but he presents his position honestly without misrepresentation. Scott, not so much.

Quickie

While replying to somebody who was nice enough to give feedback from the ANC meeting I spoke at a couple of weeks ago, I ended up with this chestnut:

"Trying to fix this plan with streetcars is like trying to fix a gaping chest wound with a band-aid".

Meaning: It's still going to be a 3-seat ride (or even a 4-seat ride if you don't take an extremely charitable interpretation of the route proposal); the last part of it will still be stuck in traffic; and the dense residential neighborhoods of West Campus and Hyde Park still won't have any service of any kind whatsoever beyond the ludicrously misnamed Rapid Bus.

Shine On, You Crazy Diamonds.

More on our Commuter Rail Model, Tri-Rail

http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2004-04-15/news/news_print.html

Again, this system is about the closest analogue out there to what Mike Krusee's puppets at Capital Metro are proposing this time around. It serves primarily suburban areas; doesn't reach any downtowns or other activity centers; has high-frequency "circulators" at every station; etc.

One key difference, though: Tri-Rail's 15-year experiment with the horrible route doesn't preclude them, at least technically, from going to a much better route (down the FEC railroad which DOES run through the major actviity centers of the region). In Austin's case, if commuter rail is built, you can't technically OR politically build light-rail on the 2000 corridor, and I don't think you can even do it on the modified "keep going north on Lamar" corridor proposed briefly in 2003. In other words, we're worse off - if we're making a mistake here, we not only waste a decade or more and a hundred million bucks, we ALSO prevent ourselves from building the rail right.

Excerpts:

A week's worth of trips on the Tri-Rail, South Florida's poky, 15-year-old commuter railway, recently confirmed the conventional rat-racing wisdom: The train serves not the region's most populated areas but the fringes. It doesn't offer riders destinations they truly need or desire, nor convenient times to get there. It's underutilized, even during rush hour. It's not located where people like Nick -- an unemployed construction worker who says he's "between cars" -- are most likely to use it.

[...]

Since its start, Tri-Rail has operated on the CSX tracks, west of I-95. After about $1 billion of expenditures on its current line, transportation officials are considering shifting their main focus to the more desirable Florida East Coast Railway line, which links the region's coastal city centers. The FEC, long resistant to the idea, now says it's willing, maybe. The state has applied for $5 million in federal funds to analyze options along the FEC corridor where, critics say, Tri-Rail should have been located all along.

"Was this the best investment?" asks Steve Polzin, director of public transit research at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "You wonder what could have been accomplished if they had not rushed into it. If, for example, they'd waited a few years and bought the FEC." Tri-Rail began operating in January 1989 to alleviate traffic during construction on I-95. As the highway project continued unabated, though, the commuter train became a permanent fixture. But Tri-Rail officials never took their eyes off the far-preferable downtown route -- even now, in the midst of its largest overhaul ever, including the construction of a second track along the 72-mile line and a new bridge over the New River, both of which are under way to the tune of $340 million.

Is a second track to nowhere really the answer? "It'll be nice to have," Polzin concedes. "There's value in having a corridor in good condition with double-track capacity. But is it worth that much money, especially if something happens with the rail farther to the east? When you think of the expenditure, you could argue that a marginal demand necessitated it."

Joseph Giulietti, executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, acknowledges that the new plan may render the current Tri-Rail obsolete. "But when you've invested a little over a billion dollars to make this one functional -- which it is," he says, "you have to look at how to support that function."

[...]

Tri-Rail runs through a metropolitan strip that's now home to 5.2 million people. In February, it carried just 10,151 passengers a day (the highest average since April 1994). Unlike most commuter rail systems, it doesn't serve even one downtown area. "It's unique nationally in the sense that it doesn't penetrate a downtown," Polzin notes. "It's an anomaly. You scratch your head and ask, 'Could they have done more with it?'"

[...]

But Polzin isn't quite ready to call Tri-Rail a failure. "It's certainly not a raving success," he says, "but the community seems comfortable with it. At least you feel good that you tried. But you have to ask how much additional investment, if any, makes sense. Perhaps there will be a greater appreciation for commuter rail in the future, but it's not a slam-dunk by any stretch of the imagination."

Tri-Rail wants to boost ridership to 68,000 a day by 2015, which would reduce the cost per rider from a current $8.81 to $5.06. Back in 1999, the agency's then-director, Linda Bohlinger, gave the commuter system five years to accumulate 20,000 riders a day, opining that if that goal weren't reached, "either we don't know what we're doing or the public doesn't really need it."

Again, this is what Mike Krusee wants for Austin: a rail line which requires that you transfer to shuttle buses if you want to get anywhere, and that doesn't go anywhere near the densest residential parts of the city. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone?

Lessons from South Florida

I can't believe it took me this long to find this link, but I finally got it.

http://www.floridacdc.org/articles/030930-1.htm

Excerpts:

Some South Florida leaders are itching to introduce something new to the region's commuter rail service: a train that takes people somewhere they want to go.

As it stands, Tri-Rail rides on tracks beside Interstate 95. The agency's trains go through no downtowns, and provide only indirect service to the region's airports. Getting where you want to go generally involves a second trip via bus, bike, taxi or Metrorail.

The CSX line currently being used by Tri-Rail requires transfers to shuttle buses to get anywhere useful, just like the proposed Austin commuter rail line.

This article talks about efforts to get Tri-Rail service on another existing rail line which actually runs through the downtown areas of the major cities in the region (allowing people to walk to offices, basically).

Another excerpt:

In a telephone interview, Winton said the FEC line would offer a serious alternative to driving for the growing number of people who commute between counties.

Now, a Broward commuter who works in downtown Miami would have to drive to a Tri-Rail station, take the train to a Metrorail station, take Metrorail to downtown, and possibly take Metromover after that.

In contrast, a passenger service on the FEC line would link downtown Miami with, for example, downtown Fort Lauderdale, which has thousands of new apartments and condominiums either built or on the way.

In hindsight, the decision to put Tri-Rail on the CSX track was probably unwise, Winton said.

''I think it was a huge mistake,'' he said. ``It doesn't seem logical to me. It clearly hurts ridership by a ton.''

"Pass commuter rail and then work for light rail"

Excerpted from a comment I made on David Nunez' site:

I've explained a couple of times why you can't get light rail after this plan is passed. From the technical obstacles (incompatible trackage prevents original '00 route up the existing rail ROW to northwest areas) to the political (a revised northeasterly route continuing purely in-street up Lamar would suck for speed AND would necessitate essentially shutting down the intersection of Lamar and Airport).

Please don't keep misleading people, whomever you are.

As for the success of the starter line - again, every first line which has succeeded in this country has delivered people within walking distance of their destinations. Once you have the choice commuters used to using rail transit, you can start hitting them with transfers, but NOT at first; they'll stay in their cars.

Here's the rub: If this first line, with shuttlebuses and all, doesn't pull a lot of car-drivers out of their cars, THERE WILL NOT BE ANY MORE RAIL IN THIS AREA IN OUR LIFETIMES. The voters will vote down any expansions of a system which already "showed" that people "don't want to ride trains in Austin".

I can't make this any more clear, folks. The starter line absolutely MUST pull in a bunch of choice commuters for it to succeed. Buffalo and Miami showed what happens when it relies on transfers - car owners stay away, and then voters aren't interested in more rail.

Lessons from the Shoal Creek debacle

Michael Bluejay, who runs the largest and most comprehensive site on bicycling in Austin, wrote a letter which appears in this week's Chronicle. The letter refers to the infamous Shoal Creek debacle.

Lessons can be learned here.

Lesson 1: Don't bet against Mike Dahmus. He'll lose, but he'll be right. :+) This comment comes from an anonymous contributor whose missive is stored for posterity on Michael's site on the Shoal Creek debacle:

I am dismayed that Mike Dahmus was so damned right about this whole debacle from the very beginning. Although originally, I was very hopeful that a community consensus could be reached that could benefit everyone (and possibly even improve relations amongst the diverse users of SCB), I see now that I was completely naive. What we have now is little better than what we had originally: parking in bike lanes. I'm still hopeful that traffic will be a little calmer, but I doubt that drivers will remain in their lanes, and cyclists riding near the stripe will be at risk of being struck. Any possibility that a mutually beneficial result could emerge from a consensus-based process -- however slight -- was completely dashed when the whole process was hijacked by Paul Nagy. There was a point where Gandy had hood-winked everyone into thinking a panacea solution existed, when he should have known better that his "solution" would never make it past city engineers. (I actually don't feel bad at being deceived by this snake oil, as so many others -- except Dahmus -- were also taken in, including many from the bike community.) I place full blame for that on Gandy for playing politics by trying to please everyone when it's clear that that is impossible. We hired him as an "expert," and clearly he is not.

Lesson 2: Don't negotiate away your core positions. On Shoal Creek, car-free bike lanes should have been non-negotiable. (They were, for me).

Lesson 3: Don't dig yourself in a hole. The Shoal Creek neighbors successfully (against my vote) got Shoal Creek downgraded to a residential collector (from a minor arterial) which then made it easier for them to make misleading claims like "this is a residential street so we have to have on-street parking on both sides of the street". ("residential collector" is not the same thing as "residential street" in technical terms - the former is expected to maintain traffic flow and access over parking). Shoal Creek is, by objective measures, a minor arterial (it's almost 5 miles from 38th st to Foster, the length which was downgraded; and has no intersections where cross-traffic does not stop or have a light). So in an effort to be nice, the UTC supported the downgrade, which made it easier later on to mislead some people into thinking that restricting parking on the road was an unreasonable imposition.

Applications to the current commuter rail situation:

1. Obvious. :+)

2. Non-negotiable positions should be that at least one and preferrably two major employment attractors should be reached within walking distance without a transfer. IE, no change to shuttle-bus; no change to streetcars. Center-city folks should have fought Capital Metro when it came to running rail down corridors where people wanted it in '00 rather than where Mike Krusee wants it in '04. This is the most critical error in my estimation - people who really want rail to succeed in Austin got snookered into thinking that they could negotiate it with Capital Metro when Capital Metro already had its own non-negotiable position (i.e. do what Mike Krusee wants). The result was: no rail to Mueller; no rail to Seaholm; transfers to all major attractors; no service in the center-city residential areas.

3. Mike Krusee won here, big-time. Capital Metro's allies should have fought the early election he forced in 2000 (making CM go to the polls with a rail plan they weren't really ready to discuss - they hadn't even figured out what streets it would run on downtown yet; they were clearly shooting for a timeframe of May 2001 or so until Krusee wrote the infamous bill).

Now, for the big finish:

What damage was done?

This isn't a silly question. There are those who think that the Shoal Creek debacle didn't do any harm, since we started out wth parked cars in bike lanes and are ending up with parked cars in marked shoulders.

Damage in the Shoal Creek case: Precedent was set that car-free bike lanes can be vetoed by neighborhoods. The previous bike coordinator had already made it city policy not to build new (or support existing) bike lanes on residential streets; and it was commonly understood BEFORE this debacle that any city changes to collectors and arterials would, while soliciting neighborhood INPUT, NOT be subject to an implicit VETO. IE, collectors and especially arterials serve the needs of far more than the immediate residents.

Now, not so much. Notice that Michael correctly points out that the media now thinks the SCB process was a model of new consensus-based charette-including everybody-holding-hands everybody-won neighborhoods-centric bike-friendly delicious-candy-flavored planning that resulted in sunshine and butterflies for all.

In addition, at the city level, because so many smart people in the bicycle community were part of this process (snookered by it, you might say), the city thinks that the end-result was what the cyclists and the neighbors wanted. Basically, the cycling community (except yours truly) is now implicitly linked to this plan, in the minds of the people who matter.

In short: their names are on this piece of garbage.

As for commuter rail - the same lesson holds. The groups who lobbied so hard to work WITH Capital Metro before the final ballot proposal was set were fighting very hard for some minor improvements to the ASG plan, but made it clear from the beginning that they'd support it anyways. Now, these center-city groups are linked to this plan irrevocably - if I'm right, and it doesn't attract riders, then they'll have been on the record as supporting a plan which will have been found to be a stupid failure. Do you think that'll affect their future credibility?

Don't sign on to something you can't support. The end.

The pro-commuter-rail covering fire gets closer

I just had to write a response to a note written by former light-rail advocate Lyndon Henry in the Yahoo Group "LightRail_Now" in which I was mentioned in a patronizing and dismissing fashion. I've stored it here as well to guard against the possibility that the posting will not make it through the moderation process.

Here it is:

--- In LightRail_Now@yahoogroups.com, Nawdry wrote:
>

> One LRT proponent (a bicycle activist) has emerged as an opponent of the
> regional rail proposal.

Lyndon, I'm disappointed that you would do this.

He's referring to me, folks. What Lyndon left out is that I'm a member of the Urban Transportation Commission in Austin; and a frequent user of transit. Our commission, by the way, was so underwhelmed with this proposal by Capital Metro that we unanimously voted to ask the City Council's members to force them to hold a referendum at the same time on alternative and additive plan elements (two or three additional or improved rail services of various types).

My opposition to this plan is not based on Neanderthal-thinking like that put forward by the Jim Skaggs' of the world (rail transit bad; highwas good) but rather based on the fact that no urban area in this country has succeeded with a starter rail line which required nearly every passenger to transfer to shuttle buses at the work end of the journey. In other words, I WANT rail, but I want rail that people will actually ride (which the 2000 LRT proposal would have been) so that public perception of the system will be positive (see Dallas, Portland) rather than negative (see South Florida, Buffalo).

And the lack of other opposition to this plan is based firmly in the theory (obviously one with which I disagree) that once we pass this very very bad starter line, that we can go back and "fix it" later but that if it doesn't pass, that we're out of attempts (obviously untrue since the 2000 loss didn't prevent a different plan being floated this year). I've expounded on many of the reasons why that's fundamentally untrue in my blog (http://mdahmus.thebaba.com/blog) if anybody's interested.

Lyndon, please don't descend to the level of the Jim Skaggs' of the world. I have a lot more in common with you than I do with them; and I'd like to continue to respect you more than I do them.

Mike Dahmus
Urban Transportation Commission

First pro-rail lie of the campaign

I had hoped the pro-rail guys wouldn't sink to the depths of the ROAD wingnuts from the '00 election, but am rapidly being disabused of that notion.

From the news page of New Ways To Connect, the pro-commuter-rail PAC:

Q. What does the Urban Commuter Rail Line do for the Central City?

Transit supports pedestrian-friendly communities. Eight of the nine stops are in the City of Austin ; five of these are in the Central City. It provides the backbone of a system that includes nine stations where commuters can connect to fast shuttle service to get to popular destinations around Austin . In addition, Capital Metro's All System's Go proposal calls for more bus and express bus routes, as well as the introduction of 133 miles of new rapid bus technology to help get people to popular destinations quickly. There are advantages for the entire community.

Rebuttal:

NONE of the stops are near high-density residential areas commonly referred to as the central city (NO, AIRPORT BOULEVARD IS NOT CENTER-CITY AUSTIN). NONE of the stops are in pedestrian-oriented areas. NONE of the stops are in areas which have indicated through neighborhood planning that they are willing to accept additional infill (in fact, the stations in what passes for dense areas in this plan are in neighborhoods which are vigorously fighting infill). NONE of the stops are within walking distance of the biggest pockets of transit-oriented development in this city both present and future (Mueller, West Campus, Triangle, Hyde Park, 38th corridor).

Rapid Bus is nothing more than modest improvements to existing Limited service on the true urban corridor (Guadalupe/Congress). It's not what ANYBODY asked for. Shuttles aren't "quick"; they're stuck in traffic just like existing buses. And requiring people to transfer in order to get anywhere useful (which this system does) does not attract people who can choose whether or not to drive.

This is almost, but not quite, as bad as the '00 ads run by Skaggs and Company which misled voters into thinking that Capital Metro was still under a cloud with the Feds (by putting up old Statesman articles while not making it clear how old they were).

Clarifying future of rail

A lot of the people who, like me, are disgusted with the pitiful attempt at a rail network being foisted on ys by Capital Metro have decided, tactically, that their best course of action is to hold their nose, vote yes, and then work to extend and improve the plan after the starter line is built. This basically sums up the positions of the two guys who presented on the panel with me last Wednesday at the Austin Neighborhoods' Council meeting.

They believe that if this package is supported, that we can then go back and get real urban rail service down the real urban rail corridor - that being Lamar/Guadalupe. And of course we'll get rail to Mueller (which is being touted as a transit-oriented development). And probably to Seaholm and the Capitol while we're at it.

I'm going to demolish that idea right now, as if you couldn't guess.

1. Capital Metro is no longer even pretending that light-rail will ever happen on that corridor. Early versions of the All Systems Go press included comments that Rapid Bus could be a "placeholder for future rail service". This is no longer being said, not even off the record. I've mentioned before that there are practical obstacles to implementing light-rail in this corridor if commuter rail is built, even up the Lamar corridor to northeast Austin, and that's nowhere near as good a line as the initial 2000 path would have been (and of course THAT path is absolutely precluded by commuter rail).

2. Building the entire ASG network does nothing for urban Austin that the starter line doesn't already do (that being nearly nothing). The additional commuter line down Mopac won't have any stations near any walkable residential areas - in fact, it's even worse than the starter line in that regard.

3. Other proposed improvements such as downtown streetcars will only make a minor dent in the transfer problem. Keep in mind that streetcars don't get their own lane - so if a lane is full of cars, the streetcar is going to be going just as slowly as your shuttle bus. Some naive pro-transit people think they can solve the "three attractors" problem with streetcar as well as '00 light rail would have - but you're still stuck with a 3 (or even 4, if you need to go to the Capitol or UT) seat ride; and it's still stuck in traffic.

4. None of the proposed expansions or improvements bring rail to any of the high-density residential areas in town. Not to Mueller. Not to West Campus. Not to South Congress. Not to Hyde Park.

Folks, I can't make this any clearer: if you vote for this plan, you are voting AGAINST rail for Hyde Park, for North University, for West Campus, for South Congress. You are voting AGAINST rail to the University of Texas, to the State Capitol, and to the center of downtown.

What you're voting FOR is rail from Leander to the Convention Center. If that seems like a good idea to you in isolation, go for it. But don't hang your hat on winks and nods; the fact is that even if Capital Metro WANTED to help you, they're not going to be able to do it.

Two more comments

from David Nunez' site:

(in response to the typical "we have to pass this now, it's our only hope for light rail in the future" argument):

Commuter rail PRECLUDES light rail.

It's a nice fantasy that if we get commuter rail passed, we can go back and get light rail down Lamar/Guadalupe. The problem is that even CM isn't hinting at that anymore because they know it's not practical.

1. You couldn't put LRT on its original '00 alignment (up Guadalupe/Lamar to Airport and then following existing track to the northwest) because commuter rail is ALREADY THERE.

2. You couldn't CROSS these tracks without turning Lamar/Airport into a nightmare. Thus, you aren't going to be able to run light rail further up Lamar.

3. If you run LRT from JUST Lamar/Airport to the downtown area, you're losing 1/2 of the residential component of the '00 line (FOLKS, LISTEN TO ME: MOST CAR DRIVERS WILL _NOT_ ACCEPT A TRANSIT TRIP IF IT INVOLVES TRANSFERS - NOT EVEN TO OTHER RAIL LINES). You also lose the connection between the two UT campuses which would have provided an automatic hundreds-of-passengers-per-day.

I can't be any more clear here: Vote on ASG. Don't vote on phantom light-rail which Capital Metro won't even hint at anymore - they originally called Rapid Bus a "placeholder" for rail, but they have since removed ths language.

ALL you will get with this vote is the starter line - running from Leander to the Convention Center. NO STREETCARS. NO RAIL DOWN MOPAC. This is IT.

(now, in response to a section which talked about Dallas' combination of commuter rail from Fort Worth, DART light rail, and a heritage streetcar):

Your example, Dallas:

1. They built DART _FIRST_. It ran from suburbs into downtown and stopped within walking distance of most riders' final destinations.

2. They had a streetcar running for other purposes; and only AFTER building DART did anybody use the streetcar for anything other than tourism; even then it's an extension to a part of town which isn't traditionally office-oriented.

3. Commuter rail was added AFTER the light-rail urban spine.

Compare and contrast to Austin.

We're contemplating building the commuter line first, and requiring that people get on shuttle buses to get to their offices. Not to go to bars, or football games, as with the Dallas lines.

Dallas commuters get on light-rail to go to work; very few daily workers use commuter rail there. The same will be true here - people who can drive will be willing to hop on a shuttle bus if it's to a UT game or to 6th St., but if you have to do that as part of your DAILY WORK COMMUTE, it's a deal-killer.

This is not conjecture, folks. This is what happened in South Florida with a system that couldn't be any more identical to Capital Metro's proposal.

ANC meeting notes

outline from Austin Neighborhoods Council panel, which included myself (in opposition), Sam Archer from Cap Metro, David Foster and Jim Walker on the pro-plan side, and ROAD guy Jim Skaggs also in opposition (but presenting the Neanderthal anti-rail-yes-even-light-rail opposition):

1. Didn't get to use half-bridge analogy. Time was my enemy.

2. Pro-transit people continue to swallow the "if we don't pass this we'll never get another chance" kool-aid - mention 2000 failed and we're here in '04, so obviously a different rail plan could be put up in '06 or '08

3. Despite that, preparing for loss and documenting historical record (ala Shoal Creek) to try to slightly reduce rail's forthcoming dark ages in Austin

4. Feeling very very dirty at sharing a podium with Jim Skaggs and getting occasional nods from Gerald Daugherty, whose bald-faced lies contributed to light rail's 00 defeat. Their ability to good-ole-boy it up with the pro-transit guys reminds me of why I'll never succeed at a higher-level in politics.

More to come when I eat lunch at desk.

A combination of small pieces from comments on another site

David Nunez started talking about transit, and I wrote a few comments there which might have general utility. Here they are, with some additional context provided where necessary.

Doesn't have to be complicated.

I can sum up the entire thing in one sentence:

If your starter line for a rail network is really bad, you will never get a chance to build your full network, so you'd better make sure your starter line is attractive to a lot of people.

All of the rest of the talk is just explaining WHY this system doesn't qualify (and the 2000 light rail line DID). (For instance, transfers to shuttle buses to get to downtown, UT, capitol = unattractive).

Regards,
MD

Transfers and whatnot

Experience in other cities has shown that requiring a bus transfer at the end of a rail trip drastically reduces the number of "choice" commuters who will take the transit trip. This is something that's well-enough known in transit circles that arguing with it is akin to asking a geographer to prove that the Earth isn't flat. (In other words, it's common-enough knowledge that people don't even bother to prove it anymore).

The current express buses are, to me, a bit BETTER than the ASG plan. Yes, they're stuck in traffic on both Mopac AND the city streets; but they allow two-seat travel (car, then bus). The ASG plan is a three-seat trip (car, then train, then bus) *AND* the last portion is stuck in traffic.

It's important to emphasize again that your transit "spine" (i.e. the highest-capacity route) must deliver a bunch of passengers to within walking distance of their destination to be successful. Once you have a few of these, you can start talking transfers, but even then, the transfers to shuttle-bus will always do much worse than transfers to light-rail (for instance, Dallas' commuter rail line from Fort Worth ties into the DART light-rail system. Since DART's been on the ground for a long time now attracting its own choice commuters, people are more willing to transfer to it than they would have been to shuttle-buses or even a brand-new rail line).

The "incented somehow" talk is basically the point of using rail - get around the traffic rather than being stuck in it in a bus. That's why the 2000 light-rail plan was such a good starter line (and note: the citizens of Austin passed it; which is something that almost never happens the first time in a rail election) - it used existing separate rail ROW up to Lamar/Airport; then travelled in-street for the last 4 miles or so in order to drop people off where they actually want to go.

In this political climate, the only "incentive" you can promise with transit is reliability/speed - and the ASG plan craps all over this with the shuttle transfer.

(David asks for clarification on three points - #1 being that I support building the light-rail spine first and then commuter rail to the 'burbs; #2 being that Cap Metro is operating on a "build as much as we can afford and hope they will come" philosophy; and #3 being that my point is that if the first line is bad, that ends everything)

I'd say you're right on the f I'd say you're right on the first and right on the third. On the first I'd also add that it's incredibly stupid to provide rail to the people who hated the idea of rail in 2000 while providing buses to the people who loved the idea of rail in 2000. (This plan, even if it ever makes it to its completed state with all of the expansions and whatnot, delivers nothing more than slightly enhanced BUS SERVICE to the densest parts of town - you know, where in most cities you'd be delivering the RAIL service).

Capital Metro's real reason for doing the second is political - and it's spelled Mike Krusee. I think I have some backstory on this in my blog; let me know if you want a condensed version.

They also suffer from the typical disease here of overreliance on macroanalysis and underreliance on microanalysis. By this I mean that, like with air quality initiatives, they think you can "encourage" people to do something; but they never look at individual choices and the existing structures of incentives/taxes/whatever that lead to the behavior we observe today. Like how they do press releases touting the fact that Motorola or IBM are going to encourage carpooling - this doesn't do anything in the real world since the individual's incentive to carpool is still negligible.

Response to naive person

A well-meaning but critically naive person wrote in response to a post on one of the many local discussion groups that the attacks on Capital Metro were not fair. I've posted my response there and here:

In ANCtalk@yahoogroups.com, (Cap Metro defender) wrote:

I think it's great that there is so much discussion going on around
the commuter rail proposal. but the information included in Tom's
message is not accurate [...]

In fact, most of Tom's information was fairly accurate.

Ridership it will serve: estimated 17,000 by 2025 based on the federally required and created ridership model that does not account for reverse commute,

This will only happen if the system is drastically expanded, which it
cannot be without an additional election. Our leadership have declared
"let's ride and then decide" - so if the initial line doesn't do well,
there will be no expansions, because the voters have been instructed
to watch the performance of the first route (with only rush-hour
one-way trips ending in shuttle-bus distributors).

Length of time for the trip: 55 minutes (it takes over an hour in the car during peak time according to a friend that makes the samem commute daily during peak commute time)

This does not include the shuttle-bus transfer, which will be highly
unreliable (some days it might be fast; others quite slow). It also
does not include drive-time to the park-and-ride and waiting time at
the station.

Will people ride it if it takes this long? the ridership model takes into consideration length of trip, as well as many other factors

Capital Metro has not modeled ridership on this route in the way that
most people would consider appropriate - that being a direct
comparison to an individual's car trip.

Number of riders to break even: fact of life - all transportation modes are subsidized, including roads, buses and rail

Will fares cover the operating costs? see above

One needs to ask this question, and not accept the answer glibly given
above. Note: I'm a strong supporter of light rail (i.e. a starter
system which delivers passengers where they actually want to go
instead of to a shuttle-bus), so the typical response won't work
against me.

The subsidy per rider on Tri-Rail's South Florida commuter line and
Seattle's commuter railroad is huge compared to that on recent
successful light rail systems. Guess which one this ASG plan is more like?

Also, there are 9 stations, 8 of which are IN THE CITY OF AUSTIN.

This is true but extremely misleading. There are no stations in the
urban core of Austin; and most of the stations within the city limits
will function as drop-off only (i.e. there aren't a lot of people
within walking distance of the station, and they won't have big
parking lots for drive-in commuters).

Realistically, the major stations where people will get on in the
morning are at the big northwestern park-and-rides. Since this ride
doesn't go near any dense residential areas such as West Campus or
Hyde Park, virtually nobody will be walking to the station - and
nobody who can choose to drive will accept taking a bus to the rail
station just to ride the rail a couple of miles back around to
downtown only to get on ANOTHER bus to get to where they're going.

And remember that reverse commutes aren't going to be an option
without further expansion of the system (i.e. the initial line only
runs inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening).

This line is nearly useless for Austin, especially for the urban core.

And yes, I hope that people from Cedar Park and Williamson county ride it in droves, less people on 183 and MoPac (no matter who they are) is good in my book.

This is a good thing if those people are willing to get back into
Capital Metro and pay the sales tax. If they're not, I don't think
it's appropriate to subsidize their transit at the expense of the city
of Austin, which has always been a strong supporter of transit both
economically and at the ballot-box.

Regards,
Mike Dahmus
Urban Transportation Commission

The Wrong Track

The former and current mayors, along with notable light-rail-killer Mike Krusee, were filmed yesterday by anybody and everybody for the launch of their pro-commuter-rail PAC "The Right Track". KXAN actually did a bit of digging and came up with one opponent of commuter rail other than the knuckle-dragging ROAD Neanderthals.

Let's go to the video tape

Half A Bridge

A reasonable person replied to a posting I made about Capital Metro's commuter rail plan (in particular to its requirement that shuttle buses be used for the last leg of their journey):

"A very good point Mike, and important one.
Isn't this something that will be phased in as ridership grows, if possible."

This pretty much sums up the reason Capital Metro has succeeded so far in maintaining what urban support they currently have. Most people aren't looking at the rail system as a potential passenger - they're buying into the "build anything and people will use it" theory pushed so ineffectively in voluntary air-quality agreements that always end up with the same set of city officials behind them. If you believe some non-trivial set of people will ride it just because it's there, then this attitude makes sense.

However, there's another way to look at the line (and its extension to Congress Avenue). Let's suppose that we decide to build a new bridge halfway across Town Lake. Why only halfway? Well, the first half of the bridge is going to be pretty cheap because a bunch of old but serviceable pylons (supports) happen to already be there - all we need to do is lay decking on top of them. (The pylons for the second half of the bridge do not currently exist). Certain unidentified crackpot transportation writers claim that this isn't enough; and that nobody will use the bridge (except for a couple of people who like to dive into the water for the end of their commute).

Would you say that building such a bridge is a good idea, just because it's so cheap? Would you say that we should build the first half, and then see how many people use it, before we bother to build the second half? "Let's ride and then decide" indeed.

Letter to 590 KLBJ morning show guys

I just sent this letter to the 590 KLBJ morning show.

Mark and Ed,

I heard the interview of Councilmember Slusher this morning and had a couple of comments for you to keep in mind if you talk to him again. (I've been on your show twice now - I'm the guy from the Urban Transportation Commission - actually, I'm Slusher's appointee, and he's not real happy with me these days for obvious reasons).

I know you guys usually attack this from an anti-transit perspective, and I'm firmly pro-transit (and especially pro-rail transit). Most people in the media are inaccurately depicting this as a repeat of 2000 - where central Austin transit people voted overwhelmingly in favor of light rail, and the suburban voters voted overwhelmingly against. That's not going to be the split this time - a lot of people who know and support transit are not happy with this plan from a pragmatic perspective.

Ed, you tried to raise a good point with the question about lack of service to south and central Austin. When Mr. Slusher responded with the Highland Mall (and other Austin stations), I think he knows that's not what most people mean by "central Austin" - we mean "the highest density residential areas" such as West Campus, North University, Hyde Park, etc. None of the places where there exists sufficient density to support rail transit are being served by this plan.

I'm also disappointed that nobody brought up the biggest problem with this plan - the fact that it requires riders to transfer to shuttle buses to get to UT, the Capitol, or downtown office buildings. In other cities in this country, it is very clear that your first rail line must deliver most of its passengers to stations which are within WALKING DISTANCE of their final destination, if you want to attract any new passengers to public transportation. People who can choose whether or not to drive (i.e. they own a car and don't have to pay a lot of money for parking) will not ride a service which sticks them on shuttle buses for the last leg of their journey. This is why South Florida's commuter rail line, after a decade, is viewed as an expensive failure.

Even without stops in Central Austin, the line could be a moderate success if it delivered passengers to at least one of those three big destinations without a shuttle-bus transfer (this is why so many center-city people were pushing so hard for the line to be immediately extended to the Seaholm power plant with a stop at 4th and Congress).

Without any modifications, the anti-transit people should be very happy with this rail plan, because after people see empty trains running down this route, it will become conventional wisdom that rail can't work in Austin. In fact, I believe that if this plan passes, it's going to be the end of rail transit for the area for a generation or two, as it was for South Florida.

Regards,
Mike Dahmus
Urban Transportation Commission

Letter to Editor

This letter was just sent today to the Statesman (registration required to view):

In Monday's column, Ben Wear places the population in two categories - those who oppose rail transit in general, such as Gerald Daugherty, and those who support Capital Metro's current plan. However, it's my experience that a growing number of urban Austinites, after taking a look at the plan, are realizing that it's a poor attempt at a starter system that will be, as a colleague on the Urban Transportation Commission aptly described it, a "finisher" system rather than a starter line.

Any first attempt at rail transit for a metropolitan area must deliver passengers to stations within walking distance of their office in order to attract a non-trivial number of people who can choose whether or not to use transit. Capital Metro's plan requires nearly all riders to transfer to shuttle buses for the final portion of their journey and will therefore, like South Florida's Tri-Rail line, doubtllessly be a huge disappointment from day one.

The Urban Transportation Commission at its last meeting unanimously voted to ask Capital Metro to include a referendum on the rail ballot asking the voter to indicate their preference among a set of 4 options, including several plans which solve the "circulator" problem.

In the future, please do not pigeonhole the entire area into the categories of "against all rail transit" and "for Capital Metro's 'finisher' system". The residents of the city of Austin (who voted FOR light rail in 2000, by the way) deserve better.

Regards,
Michael E. Dahmus
Urban Transportation Commission

Rapid Bust: The R Still Stands For Un"R"eliable

Metablog: I'm now posting entries on the temporary location for this blog, maintained by a friendly cow orker, until I get my hosting situation resolved.

After dropping off my wife's old car at the Jiffy Lube, I rode my bike to the bus stop at 38th and Medical Parkway. I had planned on picking up the 983 (express) bus if I made it in time for the 7:48, since this is a much more comfortable ride than the other option (the #3 herky-jerky).

This 983 bus has some of the characteristics of the proposed Rapid Bus solution which is all that the urban core of Austin is ever going to get out of the All Systems Go plan (longer article on last weeks' happenings coming possibly later today or tomorrow).

So I got there at 7:42 and noticed that the usual suspects (2 other bikers who ride this bus every day , far up the 183 corridor, as far as I can tell) were still there. Good sign. A #3 showed up right about then (the 7:36 running late). l passed.

7:55 rolled around and the next #3 showed up. l passed again (if the first #3 was running late, maybe the #983 was stuck too).

8:15 rolled around. No next #3. 8:30 rolled around. No #3 or #983. The first cyclist waiting for the 983 gave up and pedalled away, to where I have no idea (both of these guys stay on the bus long after I disembark, so the #3 isn't an option for them).

Finally at about 8:40, I got on the 8:36 #3 and herky-jerkied my way (late) up to work. The 983 never showed. The other biker had called somebody on the phone but was still stuck there.

Need I say: This Doesn't Happen (Well, Hardly Ever) With Rail?

Chronicle Letter

Mine is the first letter in this week's PostMarks in the Austin Chronicle.

Can Streetcars Save All Systems Go?

Today's Statesman finally has an article on one of the improvements being floated to the All Systems Go plan which attempts to address the vast gap between the commuter rail line's terminus east of the Convention Center and the actual destinations of center-city workers (Congress Ave, State Capitol, University of Texas).

So would this plan, assuming they could get Capital Metro to go for it, work? I generally evaluate transit competitiveness on three simple metrics: comfort, reliability, and speed.

Comfort: Streetcars win out over shuttle buses big-time. However, they're still not as good as staying in the same seat the whole trip (as 2000's light rail route would have allowed, and as commuter rail extended to Congress Avenue could theoretically do). Transfers are uncomfortable - there's no way around this; even transferring from one great ride to another great ride is a pain. But again, compared to shuttle buses, streetcars win.

Reliability: No difference. Some people think there's some magic in those rails, but unlike light rail, these railcars would be sharing a lane with cars. Stuck in traffic, just like the shuttle buses would be. Both the streetcar and the shuttle-bus lose out here to light rail (or a more sensibly routed commuter rail). What that means is that one day, your trip from the commuter rail station to your office might take 5 minutes, and the next day it might take 25 minutes. A transit alternative that is more reliable than the car (easy to do if it has its own right-of-way) is fairly attractive even if it has a small deficit in speed.

Speed: Worse (with proposed routing). If they were running in a street with higher average speeds, the streetcar might actually have an acceleration advantage, but the Dillo doesn't have much trouble keeping up with cars now on downtown streets. Both light rail and more sensibly routed commuter rail would win here. The two routes that are proposed for this system would require a Capitol or UT worker to take two streetcar trips after getting off the commuter rail line. That's not one, but two transfers. For transit to be competitive on speed does not mean that it must be faster than your car, especially downtown, but the overall trip must not be much slower than your car. This route fails that metric, especially if you're going to UT or the Capitol.

So it looks pretty bleak, right? Well, actually, I like streetcars. Cities which have already developed a high-capacity high-performance transit "spine" (like Dallas and Portland) can get additional distribution benefits from a streetcar. (The key, though, is that the high-performance transit spine must be an attractive choice in and of itself, which the commuter rail line Cap Metro is pushing is definitely not). And the streetcar as a downtown distributor (ignoring the linkage to commuter rail) is more attractive than the Dillo, because the psychological effect of seeing rails in the street is more likely to make dense residential and commercial development attractive. As a matter of fact, one could argue that Cap Metro should build a streetcar like this on a couple of streets where there's little possibility of light or commuter rail first and then go for light rail.

So in conclusion: Streetcars are neat. They're good for Austin. But they can't really make the All Systems Go plan any more competitive. Sorry, folks.

Jeff Ward, Fred (Gilliam?) and Commuter Rail

Yesterday's Jeff Ward show which I caught about an hour of was a predictable frenzy of transit-bashing, with a cameo by Fred, a Capital Metro board member who I assume is Fred Gilliam.

Some easy softballs to whack which were pitched by both sides on that show:

1. (from a caller) "The 986 express bus already takes about 50 minutes to get downtown, so why would we need a rail line?". Answer: First of all, it takes a lot longer than 50 to get from Leander to downtown even in non-rush-times. The route the caller mentioned only runs at 6, 6:20, and 6:30 AM, by the way. According to the 986 schedule, in those severely off-peak times it takes 62 minutes to reach downtown.

A more representative line, the 987, which doesn't hit the inner park-and-rides either, takes 75 minutes to reach downtown (Guadalupe and 8th). The 983, which is the only route which has a departure time from Leander after 7:20ish, takes 85 minutes to reach downtown.

2. (from Fred): (paraphrased): "Well, Jeff, you're a genius for noting that people won't walk 5 miles from the drop-off at the Convention Center to get to their job at the Capitol or UT, so we've designed this great distributor service which will run at very high frequencies and take you straight there". This "high-frequency distributor" exists today; it's called The Dillo, and it's dog-slow.

From experience with other areas which have tried the approach of building a rail line where it happens to be convenient to lay tracks (or use existing tracks) and then distributing via shuttle buses, most people won't be willing to take this transfer. In Tuesday's posting I noted that the city is as skeptical as I am of Capital Metro's idea that this won't drastically hurt ridership.

For comparison, the 2000 light rail plan would have taken passengers from the same park-and-rides up in Leander and NW Austin, but it would have dropped UT passengers off at Guadalupe (without a transfer). It would have dropped state passengers off within a block of the Capitol (without a transfer). And it would have dropped downtown office workers off within a block of Congress Avnue (without a transfer).

This plan is nothing more than Capital Metro's attempt to build what they think Mike Krusee will let them get away with. It serves only far suburban passengers, and it serves them poorly.

3. (from Jeff and others): (paraphrased): "people won't leave their cars behind for transit, or they'd be doing it now". Baloney. Cities which develop rail systems which are competitive (not even faster, just close) on time with the automobile and are reliable (same time every day) always siphon away a lot of car drivers. This has been the experience in Portland, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Salt Lake City, etc. Rail does things that buses can't, namely, get out of traffic, and provide a comfortable ride. None of those cities were experiencing any success with getting people out of their cars with their bus systems (which were more extensive than ours), but all of them are now (with rail) delivering people to their jobs via transit who actually had the choice of driving and chose not to.

The problem is that this rail plan won't do it. Capital Metro, again, is building what Mike Krusee will let them build rather than building what needs to be built.

City confirms: No connection to Seaholm with initial commuter rail line

Another wishful thinking balloon has been punctured, this time by the CIty of Austin in a semi-public transit update. Focus on pages 4 and 5:

1. The initial line from Capital Metro will not make it to Seaholm. No way. It won't even make it to Congress. And the eventual line going to Seaholm has some serious problems navigating the transition from 4th to 3rd streets which are going to be expensive to solve.

2. The city agrees with me that requiring a transfer to distribute passengers to destinations other than the Convention Center (where the proposed line terminates and where nobody actually works) is going to be the kiss of death for ridership.

It's time for center-city people to wake up and smell the coffee. This commuter rail line does not serve the needs of downtown workers, state workers, or university workers. And modifying it so that it serves the needs of downtown workers is going to be expensive enough that it will absolutely NOT happen on the initial line. When you combine that with the fact that it doesn't go near any of the densest residential neighborhoods, it's clear that this plan is a huge loser. Running empty trains from Cedar Park to satisfy Mike Krusee might make it easier for Capital Metro to fend off attacks from the state legislature, but it's not going to do anything for downtown Austin.

And for those who say "build it now and improve it later" - you're being incredibly foolish. Areas which followed this plan (San Jose, South Florida) by developing "easy" starter systems that were unattractive ended up with a much tougher row to hoe with expansions than did areas which made sure their starter lines were going to be a success (Dallas, Portland, Denver, etc.). You run the risk of the "build half a bridge" syndrome - building a bridge halfway across a river is often half as cheap as building the whole bridge - but it doesn't provide half the utility, does it? Additionally, this system, as I discussed earlier, eliminates the possibility of rail lines which could service the UT and Capitol areas which are the two largest pockets of possible transit riders in the city.

Don't Kid Yourself: Commuter Rail Precludes Light Rail

A lot of the effort to mollify center-city people like me who are disappointed that Capital Metro's All Systems Go plan does nothing for the densest residential neighborhoods of the city and doesn't deliver passengers to the two largest potential attractors (UT and state capitol) has gone into two messages:

The first message is "commuter rail is just like light rail" - relatively few people have bought this, outside the suburbs, since they know that rail going down Airport Blvd. isn't going to do anything for any corridors where there's any real density today or where density in the future is even remotely attractive. This has morphed into "once we double-track and build more stations, you center-city folks can just catch a quick bus to or from the commuter rail station" which I have a hard time believing is fooling anybody, but you never know. I've talked a bit about this and plan on doing more in a later article, but not today. Capital Metro's words are: Commuter Rail
Urban Service
Operating on existing freight tracks, this line from Leander to Downtown could provide convenient service for both suburban and central city passengers.

The second message, and the one I'll talk about today, is the idea that we can get light rail in the urban core "later" if we approve this plan now. The genius of this message is that it does a fairly good job of lumping opponents like me in with kooky pie-in-the-sky non-pragmatists who are unwilling to get something running on the ground because of the pursuit of the perfect solution.

The problem is that this message is misleading at best, and a lie at worst. The reason to oppose this plan is because it's deadly to future transit operations in this city. IE, not just because it doesn't do enough right away, but because it will actively prevent more effective solutions from ever happening.

Two of the strongest constituencies for ridership in the original (2000) rail plan (which was destroyed primarily through legislative manuevering by Mike Krusee) were state workers and university people.

With the 2000 plan, the state workers who live anywhere in the northwest corner of the metro area could have driven to a station, boarded the rail, and rode it straight to the Capitol. Roughly the first 2/3 of the length of this trip would have been on what is now the commuter rail line; i.e., completely separate right-of-way. The remaining third would have followed the Lamar/Guadalupe corridor with prioritization far exceeding that which the new Rapid Bus will get.

The university was going to be a huge attractor for ridership in two ways. Like state workers, university workers (or students) could board anywhere along the route and get delivered directly to the destination (at least, on Guadalupe St., which is close enough to walk to anywhere at UT). A second group of riders would be travelling to the UT satellite campus on Burnet Rd. north of US 183. The mere fact that a rail link would exist between the two campuses (again, walking distance on both ends) was going to provide a powerful core of riders on day one.

The current commuter rail plan, for reference, requires both of these constituencies to transfer to shuttle buses to reach their final destination. This, as I've pointed out before, means that anybody who has a car and can afford parking will never ride this route.The shuttle transfer kills the performance of the transit trip to the point where only people who don't own cars or have difficult parking situations would consider it, as is the case with today's express bus lines.

So what about a future light rail line, as Capital Metro winks and nods might someday fill this gap? There are at least three obvious reasons why this won't happen (at least, in a way which solves these constituencies' travel problems).

1. A new light rail line down Guadalupe/Lamar, if commuter rail is built, cannot follow the original 2000 path northwest on the current rail right-of-way. The two vehicles have completely incompatible trackage, even if scheduling issues could be resolved. In fact, I have a hard time believing it's feasible to even have a light rail line on this corridor cross the commuter rail line, making even transfers an incredibly difficult proposition. Thus, the areas where we were counting on the most long-distance residential travel cannot be served even if we get a new light rail line down the Guadalupe/Lamar corridor.

2. The operation of the commuter rail line, in my opinion, will swamp Capital Metro with enough additional operating costs that they will be unable to resume saving even 1/4 cent of their sales tax money (as they could today). See previous articles by me for why I think this system is not going to attract significant ridership compared to the light rail model - in short, no area like us in the last ten years has started with commuter rail for a very good reason: they saw what happened in South Florida.

3. The investment in the so-called rapid bus vehicles is going to be difficult to abandon, both financially and politically. There aren't many corridors in Austin where these vehicles could be shifted (physical constraints). The pressure to keep this crappy part of the system running is going to be very very hard to beat.

So, I think anybody who's tempted to vote for this plan with the 'understanding' that we can come back later and solve the needs of actual Austin residents rather than pandering to Cedar Park ought to think twice.

Cap Metro Almost Lies

This presentation incorporates some responses to people (including myself) who have yet to swallow the "building commuter rail for people who don't pay into Capital Metro while giving the center city a rapid bus line" plan.

The most egregious is on this page, where Cap Metro makes this claim:

"Could serve central city passengers, as well as suburban passengers in our northwest service area"

WRONG. No "central city passengers" will live anywhere near a station proposed for the initial route of this line, by the accepted definition of "central city". Airport Blvd. is not "central city". Hyde Park is "central city". Rosedale and North University and West Campus are "central city". Only somebody living out in Round Rock would look at the 1960s era neighborhoods of Crestview that the line slices through and consider it "central city".

This line does not go anywhere near the densest residential parts of Austin, unlike the 2000 light rail route. Nobody living along Lamar or Guadalupe is going to hop a bus to go north to the commuter rail station (if one is built anywhere between Mopac and I-35) only to ride the commuter rail back downtown only to hop a shuttle bus to their ultimate destination.

And then, they make this claim:
"Over time, more stations and service in urban areas"

MISLEADING. This rail line isn't going anywhere it doesn't currently go. Yes, Capital Metro could knock down a bunch of businesses and homes to build more stations in the 'central city' by their generous definition, but even then, not enough residential density exists near those stations to make them feasible.

Commuter Rail #48: It's Not Light Rail, No Matter What You Say

I had a good lunch with Dave Dobbs about two weeks ago. Dave's a stand-up guy who is really working hard to get more mass transit on the ground in Texas cities, including Austin. So, any disagreements exposed in this article are honest ones; both Dave and I want more mass transit, not less. In fact, we both want more rail transit, too.

One of the things being floated in the face of center-city opposition to Cap Metro's new long-range plan is the idea that commuter rail is practically the same thing as light rail, except cheaper, so why would any of you light-rail guys oppose it anyways. Dave, in particular, was exasperated by my insistence in calling this plan "commuter rail" and comparing it to other commuter rail lines, such as Tri-Rail's disaster in South Florida. Let's analyze the things that were good about light rail, and see if that holds up:

The primary positive aspects of the 2000 light rail proposal, in my opinion, are (were):

• Very short headways (initially only moderately short; but double-tracking the entire length of the corridor meant it would be easy to go to very short headways).
  
• Opportunity for dense transit-oriented redevelopment in the Robinson Ranch, the Burnet/Metric corridor, and the Lamar/Guadalupe corridor
  
• Electrified runningway (means that the vehicle can accelerate and stop fairly well, runs fairly quietly, and does not pollute at source).
  

• Park and Rides in far northwest Austin and suburban areas
  
• Robinson Ranch
  
• Metric Blvd / Burnet Rd tech employers (including IBM)
  
• University of Texas Pickle Research Campus
  
• Huntsman site (near Airport/Lamar)
  
• Central Market / Central Park (38th/Lamar)
  
• 38th St medical complex
  
• University of Texas main campus
  
• State Capitol complex
  
• Congress Avenue
  
• City Hall / CSC
  
• South Congress
  

Evaluating the commuter rail proposal on the same metrics, we have:

• Very long headways initially (every 30 minutes). Most bus routes in the city operate this frequently or more frequently, and yet one of the most common complaints from passengers is that they have to wait too long for a bus. This is unlikely to improve without double-tracking the whole corridor, and even then, I doubt whether headways could be improved beyond 15 minutes due to the performance characteristics of commuter rail vehicles.
  
• Dave thinks the same opportunities for redevelopment exist (of course, in different corridors in some cases). l disagree - in no city in the USA has commuter rail ever resulted in the type of transit-oriented redevelopment you see with light rail, and it's not a simple terminology difference. I'll address this component in a later article. Even if Dave is right, the Lamar/Guadalupe corridor (and hence the near-UT areas which would be most obviously ripe for transit-oriented development due to their demographics) are not served by this plan.
  
• These vehicles are going to be diesel locomotive-driven. At best, they might be similar to the RegioSprinter which was run around town a few years ago for a demonstration. These vehicles are likely to be far noisier, more polluting, and have worse acceleration and deceleration characteristics than would a typical light-rail vehicle.
  

• Park and Rides in far northwest Austin and suburban areas
  
• Robinson Ranch
  
• Metric Blvd / Burnet Rd tech employers (including IBM)
  
• University of Texas Pickle Research Campus
  
• Huntsman site (near Airport/Lamar)
  
• Convention Center
  

Some might argue that Cap Metro's map shows this line going to Seaholm, and that a station at 4th and Congress is likely. I disagree:

• Adding commuter rail trackway in the street is much more difficult than it would have been to built a LRT runningway. It will also interfere with plans for the Lance Armstrong Bikeway. Expecting this rail to be built anytime soon is a fool's hope. And if reasonable headways (less than 30 minutes) are to be delivered, this will require double-tracking the entire downtown stretch. Keep in mind that this rail will be wider than the light rail trackway would have been.
  
• Even when built, the idea that downtown can hang its hopes on a station that will definitely be at 4th and Congress is foolish. That's too close to the station at Seaholm to be feasible (ironically, this is true even though the station at Seaholm is too far away to make pedestrian access to Congress feasible for most - IE, it's too close for the vehicle but too far away for people).
  

Unfortunately, instead of opposing the plan on its (lack of) merits, most of the center-city people are wasting their time pushing for a quicker path to Seaholm (again, on the questionable principle that they can get a station on Congress by doing so). They then make this extraordinary claim:

"A rail line through the middle of downtown would allow a high
frequency circulator to quickly and efficiently carry commuters north,
to the Capitol complex and the University of Texas, and south, to the
South Congress District."

We have that high-frequency circulator already. It's called the Dillo, and nobody who has free or cheap parking ever uses it, because it's dog-slow, because it's stuck in the same traffic as your car would be.

Statesman on board?

Today's Statesman featured a sidebar on page 1 of the Metro section which picked up on the "running a poorly designed commuter rail system to suburban areas which don't pay Cap Metro taxes may increase operatng costs to the point where the urban core will never be able to get rail service" meme I'm working so hard on.

relevant excerpt:

A figure of $1 a ride, identical to what it costs now to ride express buses, has been kicked around but is by no means certain. But the train line probably would create a new operating deficit to add to the red ink.

With all that in mind, the Capital Metro staff has been looking at its entire fare structure. Staff members, with the aid of graduate students from the University of Texas, have been running economic models to see how higher fares might affect services, looking to find the number that optimizes revenue. The staff will make a recommendation to the Capital Metro board in July.

What emerges will no doubt still be a bargain. The board will not want to give its mostly urban bus riders -- and rail election voters -- the impression that they are subsidizing suburban train riders.

Cap Metro update

My motion last night failed for lack of a second. This is less than I expected (I thought I'd likely lose 6-2 or 7-2). Like I said, long uphill battle (most people are willing to take Cap Metro's word on performance rather than thinking critically and/or looking at peer cities).

Oh, and even though Cap Metro didn't bother to send somebody to talk about the long-range plan, not one other commissioner had the guts to go out on a limb and call them on this plan's lack of support for Austin's needs. Rather disappointing.

I've now finished a rough draft of some Qs and As about my opposition to this plan. More to come when I get spare moments.

Commuter Rail Fact Sheet

Today at lunch, I wrote this commuter rail fact sheet. Short on time, I made the hopefully correct assumption that relatively few readers would need a detailed introduction to the technology and terminology, so most of the page actually analyzes Cap Metro's plan.

Bus Reliability

This morning, after I finished a short interview with KLBJ-AM's morning news show (despite being well-meaning in their attempts to cover local issues, the format isn't very helpful - I only spoke about ten sentences total), I rode my bike to the bus stop at 38th and Medical Parkway. Since I was up extra early, my choices were to take the #3 bus at 7:16 (arriving up near my office at 7:44) or take the more comfortable and quicker express bus at 7:48 (arriving near my office at 8:08).

I arrived at the bus stop about 5 minutes early (late for me), and waited. And waited. And waited. The bus finally showed up at about 7:30.

It's now 8:03 and I'm finally at my desk. And by the way, thanks to the motorists on Jollyville who were relatively understanding of my slow cycling due to the water. I didn't get splashed once.

The bus wasn't late because it makes a lot of stops. That's factored into the schedule.

The bus wasn't late because it travels on city streets instead of the freeway. That's factored into the schedule.

The bus was late because of unpredictable traffic downtown. And because there's no transit priority (bus lanes or other) anywhere downtown, the bus suffers when cars jam the streets.

Now, compare and contrast to Capital Metro's so-called "rapid bus" proposal. Their bus would run through downtown in shared lanes with cars, just like today's #3 did. In downtown and through UT, it is unlikely that it would have been able to hold any lights green (without destroying the sequencing of the lights on that corridor). It would have been able to hold a few lights green outside downtown (but, when I got on the bus at 38th/Medical, we didn't hit more than 2 red lights all the way up to my stop at Braker and Jollyville - and at one of those, we had stopped to pick up passengers anyways).

In short: the "rapid" bus wouldn't have been any more reliable than the city bus I took this morning. And that's not good enough for the taxpayers of Austin.

Rapid Bus Fact Sheet

Over lunch today, I produced this Rapid Bus Fact Sheet which attempts to (before the conclusion) analyze some common BRT treatments and objectively specify which are being used in Capital Metro's proposal, and what impact they might have on competitiveness with existing bus service and with the car.

Game On

Today's Statesman (registration required) contains the first non-gushing comment about Capital Metro's plan to screw the center city in favor of Cedar Park and Round Rock (who don't even pay Capital Metro taxes) in order to curry favor with Mike Krusee.

But the agency will have to win over some lukewarm Austinites.

"I absolutely reject it on its own merits because of the benefits for people who don't pay and the lack of benefits for people who do pay," said Mike Dahmus, a member of the Urban Transportation Commission, an advisory board for the Austin City Council.

He said the plan would shortchange the large number of city residents who provide the agency's tax base in order to serve residents of the suburbs. Plus, he added, "the commuter rail doesn't go anywhere near the University of Texas or the densest urban core."

The bulk of Capital Metro's budget comes from a 1-cent sales tax levied in Austin and a few surrounding communities that are part of the agency's service area.

News 8, on the other hand, interviewed current bus passengers. Even Capital Metro isn't quite stupid enough now to think that the opinions of current bus users should shape a rapid transit line, although they're still attacking the issue from the angle of cost, which is not a winner with rail or bus.

Today during lunch, I hope to get the first fact page up (this one about the proposed rapid bus line). This will be an uphill struggle at best.

Redevelopment and rapid transit

In today's Salt Lake Tribune, the most explicit explanation yet of why rail is far superior to buses in urban areas seeking redevelopment:

"Unlike buses, rail transit can have tremendous land-use impacts," D.J. Baxter, Anderson's transportation adviser, said Tuesday. "Since a bus can be rerouted at the drop of a hat, no savvy investor is going to make development decisions based on bus routes. But streetcars are fixed, permanent. And a streetcar, combined with the right kind of land-use policies and zoning, can lead to very aggressive private investment in urban development -- particularly in terms of housing."

It's Rapid Bus, Folks

Short entry: I went down to Cap Metro at 11 for a briefing on the new different long-range transit plan (they're not ready for open-records stuff yet so they were only willing to talk to 4 people from our commission at a time) and yes, the urban core of Austin is getting screwed. Rail for people in the densest parts of town is now gone; replaced with "rapid bus" lines, which do not include plans for any knd of prioritization beyond the "keep the green light a few seconds longer".

In other words, the far suburbs, many of whom don't pay taxes to Cap Metro, are getting commuter rail; and the urban core, where most of the money comes from, is getting a slightly better version of the #101.

Cap Metro just got a new worst enemy. I don't expect to have any influence over the outcome, but I can and will make the people responsible for this decision as miserable as possible.