In this episode, Louis and Chris discuss the upcoming expansion of I-35 through the heart of Austin, Texas. Join us as we interview folks who are passionately fighting this TXDOT project.
In this episode, Louis and Chris discuss the upcoming expansion of I-35 through the heart of Austin, Texas. Join us as we interview folks who are passionately fighting this TXDOT project.
Well, welcome back to transit tangents our fourth episode on the podcast. We've been excited to see some of the reaction to folks so far, the couple of you who've been leaving comments and everything.
Chris Jones:For the handful that I can count on one hand.
Louis:Yes. And it's it's, uh, we truly do like it. You'll see anytime someone leaves a comment. We're like, screenshotting it and sending it to each other like, oh, somebody watched it, somebody listened to it.
Chris Jones:So not just mom.
Louis:Yeah, if you're, if you are watching or listening, we do read the comments, please leave some for us. And we're actually starting on this episode. At the end of the episode, we're going to kind of go through and read any of the comments that stand out to us. Whether it be on the actual podcasts themselves, if you're watching them on YouTube, or if you're listening somewhere, and you can't leave a comment any of our social media as well. We'll keep an eye on him. And we're gonna start it at the end of this episode. So stick around, it's a reason to stick around to the end for that.
Chris Jones:If you have any stories that you want to share that you don't wanna share on social media. We also have the website transit tangents.com, totally, which has a contact page, and we'd love to hear your stories or if you have any ideas for the show. Absolutely.
Louis:Without further ado, though, today, we're gonna be talking about kind of an interesting topic. It's been a hot topic in Austin. I mean, kind of since I've, I've only lived here for two and a half years or so now, but I'm sure since even long before that everyone always hears about sitting in traffic on i 35. You know, it's it's basically bad for everyone. As it stands right now. There's no doubt that doing something to it needs to happen.
Chris Jones:Every Austinite has an i 35 story. And when he first moved to Austin, it's one of the first things that kind of gets ingrained into you is don't use 35 as much as you can. Don't use 35.
Louis:Avoid it at all costs. Yeah, but you got to go to this event that rethink 35 Put on the wider won't work rally. We're actually gonna have some footage from that later on. In the episode, I spoke to a couple folks who were attending there just to get their thoughts on it all. And it kind of sparked the idea for this episode. So to kind of kick it off, though, we wanted to start off with the history of I 35 and Austin on its own. Do you want to you want to start us off there?
Chris Jones:I do. First I'm curious, what are what are your like deep opinions on on i 35? How did and what is your relationship with 35 today?
Louis:Yeah, so my specifically the second apartment I lived in in Austin, I had to use i 35 more I lived for those of you familiar off of East Riverside. My partner Jerry would take the one of the commuter buses to work at UT that will go up i 35 every day. So I had to spend a lot more time on it if I was going north at all or even south. And most of the time, you just sit in traffic of some variety. It's rare to be going more than 35 or 40 miles an hour on it. I feel like it could be at rush hour obviously you're gonna have traffic but it might be Sunday at noon, and you're more than likely going to be sitting in some sort of traffic on it. It's also just like very stressful road to drive on. Like the the exit ramps are like really close to each other or Yeah. And then the other experience I have with my 35 as a an E biker, which as you know, if you've listened to any of these podcasts, I've worked it into every possible part of the conversation I can
Chris Jones:The cult of the call to the E bikes.
Louis:Yes. Crossing i 35 is also a major, major point that of contention even in the areas where it's supposedly like a good place. There's a lot of issues with it. We could do an entire episode of crossing i 35. In fact, there's somebody on Tik Tok I noticed who's who's rating the crossings of I 35 on their bikes, and I'm blanking on the name right now, but I'm gonna pay This is Louis while editing this the person's name on Tik Tok is Travis stone. Their username is at band geek 41. So you should totally go give them a follow.
Chris Jones:would be fun to see the ratings for sure.
Louis:Yeah, what about you? Um,
Chris Jones:I have a love hate relationship with it. When I first moved here, I actually thought it was really cool because one of my favorite features like 35 is we have these double decks which will we will talk about a little bit and where those came from. So I was always really neat. Like if I was driving sort of later at night, and there's no traffic which is really rare nowadays. I just sort of like speed through those those double decks I thought was really cool. But I also used to live in South Austin off of William cannon and 35 So for those familiar For the city, it is pretty far south, it's only like an exit or two from the city line. And I worked near the domain. So in North Austin, a wind every morning, I would drive from William cannon to to basically break a road. And it would take me an hour and 20 minutes in the morning,
Louis:that sounds horrendous, I can't beleive you put yourself through that.
Chris Jones:It was really bad, it got better when my start time at work moved up to like 10 o'clock and so then I got to get a little bit of break. But yeah, but then coming home, it would still take me over an hour to get home. And what I would do not infrequently is I would actually go to the closest train stop by the domain and take the train to downtown East Austin and I'd go like get happy hour with friends. And then I would go back on the train to get the car and then drive back at like 10pm
Louis:that is also like the most you thing ever, it's like you found an excuse to use the train a little bit right there, which is kind of fun.
Chris Jones:It was just an excuse. I could have just left work earlier. Probably. But that's that's my relationship with 35. I've used it a lot. I'm very grateful that I live on the west side of the city now. And so we have Mopac, which we call locals highway.
Louis:What's funny when I when I actually like got my when we were moving, part of the reason that we were moving to was like, we don't have to deal with 35 anymore make like Jerry's commute to work a lot easier. And then unfortunately, what we'll kind of get to in a second I 35 Might just be like a giant construction site for like the next decade on
Chris Jones:it's gonna be really painful. We'll somewhere yeah, it's not going to be regardless, it's not going to be good. But yeah, so that's my relationship with it. I love and hate it. I'm looking forward to some changes to the roadway. We'll talk about what those changes look like and what changes we sort of agree with. But yeah, the fact is, I 35 is reality for the city, everyone relies on it in some form or fashion. And we'll we'll see what happens in the future with it.
Louis:Totally. What's been kind of fun to look at, though, like kind of looking back in history is as the screen just changes away from it right now, which is pretty funny. Are some of these like really cool old images? We're not sponsored by lazy actually. Here's our first sponsorship, adaptive sleep. Oh, god, that's hilarious. Okay. Anyway, looking at these really cool photos of of what is now 35. But back in the 1950s. And before that was just East Avenue. Yeah. When
Chris Jones:you look at the original grid of the city of Austin, it was bordered by West Avenue to the west, and obviously, East Avenue to the east, obviously. But East Avenue was this really wide sort of grand avenue that had these huge medians in the middle that were kind of park like, and it became a gathering place for the people on that side of the city. Especially as the city started to grow. And in the later years, it became really, really important for Mexican American families, African American families. We had a big Lebanese population in town. So So basically all minority families in early Austin, they sort of gathered along that stretch of I 35. And they would use these big medians as meeting places and marketplaces, and play games and picnics. And it was actually probably a really nice amenity to the community at that time, right.
Louis:And then as the kind of federal highway program started to occur, there were plans and all sorts of cities across the United States of where are you going to put these highways? We're gonna get into this in a future episode. So we're gonna kind of gloss over for now, obviously, this is where there's all sorts of history tied to, you know, trying to divide, you know, neighborhoods of color from, like more affluent parts of town. There's issues with redlining and all the like, we are going to talk about that weigh more in depth with somebody who's going to come on for us to kind of talk about that. So we're not just skipping it, just to skip it. That is a major part of the history of i 35. But also, so many highway projects across the country, but we're going to do a much more in depth dive into that at a later date. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, and I mean, eventually into the 60s to actually start construction. If you're watching this, you're gonna see a photo that looks like I mean, it's, it's the same, it looks very similar to i 35. Today, yeah. And it's from this photos from 1961. And it's kind of like a cement wall angling up to one of the on ramps to i 35. And it just shows you how old some of this infrastructure really is, again, 1961 This is during some of the construction of it. So I think that's pretty an interesting thing to kind of look at, yeah,
Chris Jones:a grid. The highway itself was, I think, mostly built around the 50s. And what was really unique about i 35, through Austin, Austin at the time, very sleepy, sleepy little town. I mean, just like It just like today, nobody I miss Austin. Oh, God. You've been here five minutes.
Louis:I know that. It was just sarcastic. I miss the old when I moved here was so much better here.
Chris Jones:For those who those of you who live in Austin, you know, you hear all the time the people who've been here, just like five minutes longer than you were like, if you knew the Old Austin Yeah.
Louis:Oh, when I moved here, oh.
Chris Jones:But, but Austin was a sleepy little town, it was really just government and university town. Not a huge population. So when the highway came through here, it was really kind of like the frontier of the highway system like it was very sleepy. So sleepy, in fact that I 35 had one of the only railroad crossings across the highway, as in, you were driving at highway speed, and the little arms would come down and you would have to slam on the brakes and stop and wait for the train to cross the interstate
Louis:Amtrak while correct me if I'm wrong. Is that crossing where the red the red line is on that crossing now? Or is it a different one?
Chris Jones:Yeah. So though the one commuter train we have in Austin right now the red line crosses under 35. But that is where the the the infamous i 35. railroad crossing was. As far as I'm aware, I could be wrong about it. But I'm pretty sure that's where it was? Well, that's a fun fact. Yeah. So so from the beginning, I believe I was sort of plagued with problems and things like this railroad crossing caused a lot of congestion. We saw in the late 60s 70s, TxDOT, sort of come up with a plan to fix that problem. This was the sort of early early I 35 solution was to to expand out like they want to do today and take over some of the land adjacent to the highway, it was too expensive back then, you couldn't quiet eminent domain at all. So TxDOT had another solution, which was to go up. And what you see today, as a result is they went above the railroad crossing, which is a good thing. But the highway also then splits into two decks. So you have a lower deck that goes below grade with some like street level crossings over it. And then you have these two upper decks which kind of go up and act as a originally which was to act as an express lane, right, to go over the Cherrywood neighborhood and pass new T and then to downtown.
Louis:It's an interesting setup. And for those of you not from Texas, the highways here when I moved to Texas, I was kind of like shocked. They were very weird. So first you have like on the far out ends of it. For those of you listening, the like frontage roads is what you all call them here. And it's basically like a highway alongside a highway that has stoplights at them. And the speed limits on them are probably supposed to be 40 or 45. But everyone drives much faster than that, because it's basically a highway speed limits went that low in Texas. Yeah, yeah, basically. And then inside of these frontage roads, which have all of the kind of like entrances and exits, you then have the main part of the highway. So in this part of the highway there, Chris is describing with the upper decks, you have the frontage roads on the outside, and then which are three lanes, three lanes each. And then inside of that you have the lower deck, which is two lanes in this area with some kind of entrance and entrances and exits onto the the frontage roads. And then above that you have street level where there'll be crossings over for the like regular cross streets. And then above that you have two more lanes in the upper deck, which is like yeah, you mentioned express lane at one point I think it would probably it was there was probably some plan to have it continue through in every day. And then it just kind of like merges back in. Yeah. And then it turns into a an even more of a cluster and calling
Chris Jones:it an express lane is so laughable because there's no one has ever taken the upper deck and said, Oh, this is faster. Every time I take the upper deck and I avoid them every single time I used to love them. It's like I'm taking you could see downtown like university is very capital with the lovely view corridor. Yeah, it's beautiful. And you will have plenty of time to take in the view, because you're not moving on the upper decks. So I always take the lower because it's just insistently faster. But at the time, it was a pretty innovative highway solution, instead of expanding out and taking over this property, you could go up and take up less space. And in that era, this was the future right. Austin was one of the first cities in the country to implement this sort of double deck solution for the interstate system. And then shortly after we saw projects in Dallas and New Orleans and a couple other cities around the country, also take this design and
Louis:while it was innovative, you know it's easy to look at now and be like this is super ugly. It's loud. I mean it's like a It's the the emissions and everything coming off it like that. There's not a part of town you want to just be like, Ah yes, I live near this. Yeah, it's it's rough.
Chris Jones:I actually have some experience of that. My cousin lived in the cherry wood neighborhood just next to the highway and they were blocked in from the interstate. But because the double deck is so high when the sun was setting, you could be in the kitchen and see the shadow of semi trucks on the kitchen wall. Beautiful Yeah, that's wonderful.
Louis:Yeah, so that's a little bit of the history of what we're talking about here. And right now we're basically in the situation where the traffic is bad. The infrastructure is really old. Again, a lot of it is is like 1960s, those bridges maybe a little bit later, 70s. We're proud of those double decker bridges. But we're talking a bunch of infrastructure that's like 50 plus years old. 50 being like the newer stuff. Yeah. At some point, there's going to need to be some sort of update to this. And in Austin, there's definitely a divide of what that looks like. Is it the plan that TxDOT the Texas Department transportation is pushing, which we're going to kind of go over first? Is it the plan that everything 35 wants to do, which we're gonna go over right after that, or something in between is still kind of up in the air. As of right now. TxDOT is supposed to be breaking ground on this project in 2024, there are likely going to be lawsuits over this, maybe there already is one. Yeah, there are lawsuits going on over this there will likely be more, it's definitely gonna be interesting. But first, let's start with tech stocks plan here. So I'll I'll flip this up. And for those of you listening, we'll kind of do our best to describe some of this. But these are essentially maps of like different cross sections of, of what the plan is going to look like. And in general, kind of one of the biggest changes here is we're getting more lanes, which is interesting, because when you kind of look at any highway widening projects, basically anywhere, adding more lanes might fix the problem for like the first couple of months after construction. But induced demand then occurs, rethink 35 sites that's quite a bit later on. But like when they expanded the Katy Freeway and Houston gave it more lanes, you know, a year to two years later, the traffic time or that your your travel time is actually increased by over 50% loves widening highway. So basically, they're talking about adding one car lane to each side and the main lanes of the highway. So like kind of the main driving lanes now the frontage roads will mostly stay about the same size, the main lanes, they're gonna add one on each side. And then on top of that, they're going to be adding to manage the lanes in quotes on either side, managed lanes being like an HOV lane. And depending on where you're where you live in the country, it's basically like Express Lanes, something of that nature, where you would only have certain entry and exit points so that the hypothetically the traffic will continue to keep moving on that these
Chris Jones:are non told, manage lanes, if it stays non toll, but I thought that was really interesting that they weren't going to add any type of tolling. One
Louis:main thing is like these managed lanes, in my opinion, and I mean, it's basically to get people through Austin, not to Austin.
Chris Jones:Because what we found out in the process of doing a research for this episode was that the American statesman published an article that was talking about traffic through town, and it was about 80% of all trips on i 35, are actually local trips. So what we hear a lot when we talk about 35, and expansion and how to better manage traffic, everyone says, we'll get the people who are passing through off the highway, send them to sh 130, which is this big toll road to the east of town that bypasses from like San Antonio, beyond Austin, it's a very big road, push all the traffic that way and get them out of the city. That's great. But that's 20% of the traffic, we still have 80% of traffic to deal with. So something still has to be done in the middle of the city.
Louis:Yeah, totally. And I think we have slightly differing opinions on like what that is, and we'll get to that a little bit later on. But yeah, I think no one disagrees that like something has to something has changed. One other element that I want to point out on tech stocks plan, and I don't have it right in front of me here, but we'll put it up and we enter we both seen this. Right now the plan is that certain sections of the highway and this is kind of like a way that TxDOT is trying to sell this to local politicians and local residents. Sections of the highway will be lowered below grade. So that caps can be placed on top. So this has been successfully done in a lot of places, including Dallas is like a place in Texas. Clyde
Chris Jones:Warren Park in Dallas, if you haven't been to Dallas to check it out. It's actually really nice. It's
Louis:also like similar. It's a little bit different style than what they did in Boston, because Boston wasn't kind of like cutting cover, but like the area around the Big Dig where they have like green space above the route I 93 through Boston, they're trying to make it look like yes, this is this is what can happen here,
Chris Jones:which if we take a step back, that was not TechStars plan or suggestion to add the capsule, when TxDOT notified cities and said, Hey, we are moving forward with this project. That's when the city of Austin said well, this is a good opportunity we can if we're going to lower the highway we might as well reconnect to downtown and East Austin, which again, we're going to talk about that in the redlining episode coming up. In a few weeks, but there's a huge disconnect between the central business district of downtown Austin, and the historically minority, East Austin, which, you know, it's always been a big scar on the landscape. And here's an opportunity to repair that scar, right. So the city of Austin has sort of jumped on this, there was a lot of back and forth negotiation, I think between the city and the state. But now, as of today, as of this recording, the city of Austin has successfully lobbied TxDOT to build the foundations of this lower highway, deep enough and strong enough to support upper level decks. decks that are also strong enough to support buildings up to like two
Louis:storeys. Yeah, something like that. The caveat is that TxDOT won't pay for or build the caps, that would be on the city. And the estimates are that it would cost somewhere over a billion dollars.
Chris Jones:I think it's 800 million is what the city is trying to raise for the cat. Okay, so
Louis:around a billion dollars, so
Chris Jones:200 million shot. Yeah, yeah. But it's now up to the city to figure out how to pay for this. And they're moving forward with it, and they're gonna, they're gonna figure out how to do this, in downtown Austin to repair that landscape. We're also looking at potentially two other decks on i 35, to sort of hide the highway expansion. One of them is at the University of Texas in Austin, which they are going to pay for their own.
Louis:That's nice when you have the largest endowment. Because of all the oil and gas money, you can pay for it, I will maybe they can, as the city have asked them to pay for them. They've got like a $50 billion endowment or something crazy like
Chris Jones:that. But it's an awesome idea for the University of Texas to because right now the highway divides sort of the sports entertainment district where you have baseball and softball and I think tennis on one side. And then on the other side, you have the Giants, right? Football, was it Darrell K stadium? So I don't even know I don't know, I go
Louis:the caps in general, which would be an improvement from from what is there now. Now? If if the solution of like keeping a highway running through your downtown core is is like the the solution that you think is the right one, but that's a Yeah.
Chris Jones:And then there's another third deck in the Cherrywood neighborhood, which I don't know how it's gonna get funded or where that right now it's basically not getting funded. I don't think it's gonna happen. Sorry. Jerwood. Yeah, but again, it like it should but that's okay.
Louis:Yeah, there's also a couple renderings. So like with this, you know, they're also trying to sell, hey, we're gonna have much better pedestrian connectivity, biking, connectivity. And that might be true in some areas. But at one point, TxDOT released this video, and I think that they thought that the response was going to be really good. And it's a crossing at, I believe this is Airport Boulevard, and I 35. So for those of you not from here, Airport Boulevard is like a classic strode, basically, that doesn't go to the airport anymore. It doesn't go to the rest of the old airport. It's a road that is like, generally terrible for bikers and walkers. They're trying to improve it actually. And like, I think when Airport Boulevard is done, it will it will actually be decent. But this is the rendering. Chris has never seen this before. We might speed this up. So I'm curious how this is gonna go. But Chris has never seen this before. I'm just curious, your thoughts. I'm going to kind of talk through it. So for those listening, it's basically like at the start here, it's a pedestrian bridge with lots of artsy stuff set up, and you're crossing kind of the main lanes are crossing on a single point interchange.
Chris Jones:I'm sorry, I like the rendering of people sitting on a bench and in the middle of a section like reading the paper,
Louis:it gets better. So then this path, you have to cross two lanes of traffic first, and then it turns into a winding path to go underneath the road. So the car traffic isn't interfered with without a lot of zigzagging basically to get you through.
Chris Jones:Famously, I hate switchbacks. Yeah. It's I mean,
Louis:they're clearly like thinking, Oh, look at this person just sitting here under the highway. They're sitting there because they're exhausted from doing 50 switchbacks. Yes, you're from somebody biking people just hanging out under the bridge. Again, this rendering for folks, just listening has a bunch of like cartoon people kind of in the areas here. My favorite one is coming up though. And it's these like, you know, they're showing some like nice looking gardens and art and whatnot, but they're not really paying for it. That's my favorite part. So he's doing a push up to somebody exercising under the highway.
Chris Jones:If you made this rendering, I need you to reach out to him. So we have questions. Yeah,
Louis:just if there's somebody on a wheelchair who spent a half an hour trying to like zigzag their way through the whole park to go sit next to the highway and talk with their friend. It's just it's a little bit ridiculous. If I'm being honest, I appreciate the effort of like, okay, we're going to try to make this like a nice looking place and everything but despite like regardless of what you do to it, it's not going to look it's never gonna stay looking like that, unfortunately, and you're making it really inconvenient to get a Chromebook, you know, in a car. You're okay to like do a little bit Have like zigzagging out of the way if something's not having to, like physically walk there, this will make crossing this area much more slower and difficult for folks in a lot of cases.
Chris Jones:Now, I agree. At the end of the day, they tried to make this into this nice community gathering place. But at the end of the day, you're just sitting under a highway. Literally, nobody wants to sit under a highway, when there's semi trucks, you know, zooming by, we'll take it back. It's like 35, they're not going to be zooming, you're gonna have all of this car exhaust in this noise from the highway of vehicles just sitting above you, right? Doesn't matter how beautiful the garden is, nobody's going to enjoy that and not going to go to push ups. And
Louis:also, not to mention, like Airport Boulevard is. You know, even if you weren't next to the highway, you don't want to hang out on the side of Airport Boulevard either. So yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting. Now, you know, there are probably some spots where the crossings are gonna get safer. I hope they would, because a lot of the crossings of i 35, as I mentioned before, are not ideal. Yeah, some of them are okay. But they're not ideal in a lot of places. So, at the
Chris Jones:end of the day, though, you want you want if we're going to put this below grade, which that, for the most some of that wasn't below grade in this video. But if you want to put the highway below grade, just cap it, right. Nobody wants to see the highway. No one wants to hear the highway, right? You can make the space so much nicer if you just have this nice, pleasant green space on top.
Louis:And the the issue is, is with these frontage roads, it just like makes it so that like sure you're capping the highway. Great, the frontage roads are still above the cap. So you're now still crossing six lanes of traffic going through. And there's still a highway there, right. Like it's not it's not a great rendering,
Chris Jones:I counted. I think it was three crossings. So you still have to cross traffic like three times and wait for that traffic. So it's still not an ideal solution. And I'm definitely
Louis:not I just thought that was interesting, because I think they were expecting like wow, people are gonna love this. Like look at how beautiful it looks. And then they just got this was like this is a couple of months old. They got roasted and I'm sure someone basically somebody probably Yeah, the the contractors who are gonna get the bids to build it are gonna like that. That's a lot, a lot of hilarious coverages and concrete. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a whole lot you can dive into with the plans. We'll try to like make sure links and stuff are available. But yeah, it's, it's it's a it's a big expansion. It's not like a small change. We're adding one or two little things. It's it's quite a bit. Yeah,
Chris Jones:I think to sum it up TxDOT extra lanes, that's their plan, putting the highway below ground but not necessarily covered with caps. And they're just going to sort of force this on the community, which, as we know, there are a lot of people in the community that are are against it. Right, Louis? And I said a couple weeks ago, you got to go to this rally of people who were very passionate about the interstate expansion right? At the wider won't work rally. Yeah. Thank you for going and doing the hard work. I think while you were talking to people on the street, I was at Disney World. So literally,
Louis:and thank you to my partner Jerry for for tagging along with me. He helped out pointing the camera and all that sort of stuff.
Chris Jones:Resident microbiologist and cameraman. Yes.
Louis:many talents. Yeah. But yeah, so for some context, what wider won't work for some context, rethink 35 is an organization that is pushing to instead of sending i 35, through downtown Austin like it is currently they want to use this opportunity to essentially reroute the highway traffic that's going around Austin to highway 130, which Chris mentioned before kind of goes out and around the downtown core of Austin. And they want to see the kind of downtown stretch of I 35 be converted into something like a boulevard kind of restoring it back to like what it was at at one point except you know, that a lot of the renderings that they put out have bus lanes and bike lanes. There'll be a lot of land reclamation so you can now have new developable land in downtown in the city core to make it a space that is still having car travel on it, but also making it a place that is friendly for bikes and walk pedestrians and all this sort of stuff through the area,
Chris Jones:basically make it make it a community amenity again, right because like we said earlier on in early Austin, this was such a vibrant part of the community, this this area of East Avenue, it was sort of a Main Street for so many communities in the area. And now it's just this concrete wasteland. So if we can do anything to restore East ave to what it was, we should absolutely pursue that. And that is essentially their plan. Right? 335
Louis:Yep. And they've kind of highlighted a lot of concerns a lot of them we've kind of touched on before already in this interview. But if you want to learn more about their organization, we're going to keep talking about it but rethink 30 five.org Is their is their website, you can kind of go see all of their plans and rationales for what they you know what and why they're so passionate on this issue. But yeah, I got to go to this rally that they had I think it was in November. It's been a little bit now. And it was really interesting. There were a lot of politicians present. We had I think three or four city council members spoke in support. One of our, the congressman, US congressman who represent the area, Greg Kozar. Was there. The highway splits the congressional districts actually in a lot of places, which is also kind of notable.
Chris Jones:Yeah, such a dividing line and Austin, you have the congressional districts on either side of historic communities on either side. Yep. It is really like that seam that runs through the middle of so much of Austin politically and demographically.
Louis:Yeah, and there was a lot of a lot of like, really interesting speeches that folks gave kind of outlining a lot of the different reasons from from, it's not going to solve traffic to discussing the, you know, historic Redline and kind of like racial inequities along with the highway. There were conversations about the environmental side of it. Among, you know, if you live within a quarter of a mile of a highway, there's all sorts of statistics about, you know, lung cancer and other sicknesses and illnesses, just from all of the exhaust fumes, and all of this sort of stuff. So kind of a wide range of different voices on this. But I was really interested to talk to folks who were actually like going and attending this rally, and kind of a fun thing that happened to us on the way so Jerry and I rode our bikes there, as you do, I mean, you can't drive on the highway for going to this rally, you know, a little sacrilegious, but so we were biking down and very quickly on our ride south we were we were found to other people on their bikes. And we were kind of like, kept going with them. We're like, are you guys going to the rally? And they're like, yeah, and then we go a little bit further. And then we ran into two more people, we ended up with this, like little posse of six people. And we all rolled up on our bikes, and I have never seen so many people riding their bikes to something in my life, like the amount of bike parking that they had, they brought in extra stuff, because they knew it was gonna happen. Yeah, there was. There were a well over 100 and 100 150 bikes there, maybe it
Chris Jones:was like, the colt, the ebike. cultists are totally against highway expansion.
Louis:Yes, I'm here. Yeah. And you'll, I mean, some of the people that I talked to, you definitely rode their bikes there, they talk about riding their bikes and everything. So it was a, it was a really cool event, I think we should just kind of move into like listening to some of those clips. And so we're gonna we're gonna play a couple clips here, and we'll talk about them on the other side.
Chris Jones:Sounds good. For me, I think so much of it has to do with how long it's gonna take. They're just gonna, like completely wreck the trail over here for like, six years or something. And, and it's just like, I don't know, it's like, this is where we live, and they're just like, gonna be miserable until even once they are done, it's gonna make traffic, even worse. So certain,
Unknown:yes. And I think we would rather see more investment into like, but more bike lanes and just pedestrian crossing over 35 or under 35. We live just down the street from here. So like, we love to walk, and we love to bike everywhere. And it just feels like cars are more prioritized than biking and pedestrians, like,
Chris Jones:I mean, I 35 It's like the artery of the city almost to get anywhere you gotta get on it. It's already kind of nightmarish to go down and the thought of five more lanes on each side that's, like, madness maddening to even consider and then the damage that that will do to pretty much everything around. Just doesn't seem like a good thing to happen for almost anybody. Yeah,
Unknown:I think I think this issue encompasses a lot of different issues that we're worried about climate change, gentrification, like equity, and often coming out like in person and sort of digitally is like, just like a, it's a great way to like build community with other people, like really see the faces of the other people that support what you support. And also just as like, a lifelong Austin, I born and raised, like, it's just nice to come out here and like, be with like minded people just because like, I feel like the city is kind of becoming unrecognizable to me in some ways. And so it's like, nice to like, just be around other people who have the same like values that I do, because that's kind of disappearing from the city, I guess.
Chris Jones:So when I watch this, what I see is the community coming together, which is pretty awesome. There's a couple of comments in there, like what we mentioned earlier about Well back in my day in Austin, but I think those are valid. I really do. And one thing I like about that sort of section of videos is that it's brought up that this is really a flashpoint for a lot of different issues in Austin. Austin is a city that's growing so fast, and with that our traffic's increasing our environmental impact is also increasing for the worse, but it's also about zoning and gentrification and just mobility in general. So it's all of these issues really tied in to this flashpoint of this highway expansion. So it's interesting to see the people who did come out to support. Totally,
Louis:yeah. And you got some note there have a couple of bikers, too, that I mentioned that before a couple of folks riding their bikes there. And really though talking about one thing that they pointed out was, like car travel is like, clearly the only priority. And while at like the state level of your TxDOT, I can understand that, because there aren't other ways to really get around the state, like, sure there's Amtrak and whatever, but it's like we're talking once a day trains and places is not real. It's like, fictional at this point. Shouldn't be but it is. But at the city level, you know, people are recognizing, like, the focus is not on public transportation, the focus is not on, you know, making places more bikable and whatnot, even though like the city is trying to do those things. But that focus really isn't there. Yeah.
Unknown:And I would say I'm kind of more on like, the more extreme side of like, literally just wanting a train to go through the city and not a highway. And I'm kind of of the opinion of like rerouting people outside of the city, which I realize is almost impossible ask in Texas or in Austin. So
Louis:you kind of support the rethink 35 plan of like,
Unknown:yeah, get him out of out of the city and invest more in like a train, the train that we have Metro like, that's not totally reliable, and people don't use it, which I understand. But like, make more stocks for the train, you know, make that easier to to like access, I think for people rather than build it, making the highway bigger. Yeah, I think it's a terrible, frankly, because 26 lanes, like we saw how that worked in Houston with the Katy Freeway, and how much traffic it created, how Houston is one of the most like traffic like ridden cities in the world possible, not just in the US, but also the world. And I just think, yeah, like, it's a very bad idea, it's gonna cause so much pollution, because so much displacement more so than there already is in Austin. So that's why I'm against it. My thoughts are just a lot of areas where the highway expansion kind of directly goes against different various values and things that I'm really passionate about. I think as it relates to climate change, and you know, this notion of like, induced demand and pushing suburbs further out and building a form of physical architecture of our society in our city, it's just not how I would like to envision it. And I think it's really harmful to the environment, then the impact on the community, the impact of just like, cutting our community further in half. I don't actually like a combination of things, which I'm not all that I don't like that it's gonna be like taking away like all my favorite, like businesses, like stars, cafe and everything else. And also like, it's gonna make Austin like pretty, like almost uninhabitable, like the 22 lanes is just a monster. And they've already had like, proof of like, what happened with Katy, Texas just not working. I just feel like it's further gonna ruin the culture of Austin. And like, everyone's working so hard to preserve it. Yeah. Yeah, it just kind of feels like a slap in the face to people who were actually, you know, like, part of this culture that's kind of dying in Austin, like, you know, I kind of like grew up and, you know, like, around here and just like, you know, like, all these businesses that we hold so dearly, like disappearing, just, you know, so we can get more lanes of traffic that like, won't actually make the traffic any better. Like, it just seems like really, like faulty to me, like, what we actually need is like better infrastructure that, like, reduces the amount of cars on the road. Like, that's, that's not what this is doing. I just, I know, I find it almost offensive that like, people would think that this is like a good idea or that we would support it like real Austin does not support the expansion of i 35 periods. And also notes have like, worked so hard for like, just good public transport for like, decades. And it's time we've been saying, We've been like passing money to build this fucking train, like every year since the 80s. Like, it's at this point, like, it just needs to get done. Like, please stop messing with Texas for real.
Louis:Stop messing with Texas for real.
Chris Jones:And if you are, if you're not a real austenite if you support highway expansion, that is our good friend Hoffman. Yes.
Louis:Yeah. A couple things that were brought up in this that I definitely wanna point out. We didn't we haven't talked about businesses closing during this. So you know, conservative state government in Texas is famously against eminent domain Yeah. Except for in this circumstance where they can build a highway wider
Chris Jones:Yeah, they're completely against it when it comes to the high speed rail network we're trying to build very again so when it comes to widening a highway in the middle of the capital city, like no questions adequate Yeah, and the the text. I thought if I plan does displace over 100 businesses homes there's a school in there If you ride along i 35. Today, you see these buildings are now starting to be abandoned. The other thing
Louis:the one guy mentions, like it goes against, like all his values, basically, I think that that is true to offense point of like a lot of people in Austin do care about climate change. And making this highway wider, there's like no way you can square in your head that that's good for climate change, like there, you can't twist yourself in enough knots to do that. I don't think so. And
Chris Jones:also just other environmental impacts. So right now I know the project is under a lawsuit, because the environmental study for demoing the the upper decks didn't really dive into the health effects for that demolition, you're releasing a lot of pollutants in the air, all of the dust for sensitive for people who have air sensitivities, it's gonna be really difficult for those neighborhoods to cope with this. This demo of the upper decks, obviously, we don't want the upper decks, we need to demo them. But that's a big question right now on this project is was the due diligence for the environmental study actually done correctly.
Louis:And it's there's a lot of conflict of interest there, because we won't get into all of it. But like TxDOT basically gets to do their own environmental review. Yeah. Which is hilarious. That's that sounds fake, but it's real. absolutely real. So yeah, one last batch of unless you have anything else you
Chris Jones:wanted to say is, it's also very clear that the Katy Freeway has a lasting impact on Texans, especially those in Austin, because as you heard in that video, it's mentioned multiple times, like the Katy Freeway is sort of the I don't like say boogeyman in the room, because like, they also like kind of sound like it's not real, but it's very real.
Louis:But yeah, I mean, the Katy Freeway is basically like, it's basically the mean that you've seen before, whenever they're showing like a just add one more lane, bro, or whatever it is kind of seeing there. And yet definitely, to your point is like, a sticking point for so many people at this.
Unknown:I mean, I definitely support like, capping it, like either a cap and stitch program, like type of thing, or I mean, if we could get rid of it. I don't know how doable that is, especially given the current political situation right. But I think a cap and stitch right now seems like the most realistic kindness similar to what Dallas did with like the park, but I think it's at a park, it would be better if they made something like housing or more community spaces. Yeah, definitely. I like the idea is that 35 putting out there, I think that, in general, there's this like, opportunity to reroute traffic, there's all this traffic that goes north south and bypasses the city that should just go around the city and and then there are other ways to connect our city makes it make it a denser city make it a more interconnected place that has better transit. I think the bond we passed a couple of years ago is like run into a bunch of legal issues and funding issues. And we should double down on our investments to improve transit so that, you know, it's easier to bike around or take public transit, and take take cars off the roads so that people can focus on other ways of getting around the city. Just make awesome more bikable stuff. So then people don't have to expect to like you will have to drive like five or 10 minutes for a bike ride. That's like 10 minutes. And then so if you make it not bikable, then people are gonna drive and cause more cars.
Louis:Totally more enjoyable. Like, yeah,
Unknown:I think rethink 35 has some good ideas, but like, in my opinion, like, I just want to like dissenter, like the highway from all these conversations we're having about like transport and what should look like in Austin, because like, at the end of the day, like some of my buses it they they come like every hour, and it's like sometimes they get canceled and they don't come at all like that needs to get fixed before we start talking about like, I don't know what to do with like these roads, like I just want to do you know, decentralized cars from this, like whole discussion we're having about how to make Austin more like accessible transport. I would really love to see more public transport in Austin. I think that that would address a lot of the issues that are trying to be addressed.
Louis:Obviously helped people they're mentioning public transportation needing to be fixed. A few of them actually. And one thing that I found interesting that was an argument that TxDOT was trying to make at one point in favor of their plan was that the the buses could run on the Manage lanes. That in a in a you know, on paper maybe sounds good until when you look at the plans right now at least the only buses that do use 35 at all, are these kind of UT System buses. They're kind of like the Metro Express but they're like ut sponsored ones. When when I used to live off of Riverside. There's three neighborhoods over off of Riverside that have them and they kind of run up 35 There's no place to enter in with the Manage lanes to like get onto that system until after UT campus. So if they were to create some sort of like commuter buses from far south Far North, maybe. But like, at one point, I think they like had cap Metro even being like, yeah, like our buses will be able to use this. And it's like, not really going to do anything to improve bus services unfortunate. So
Chris Jones:that's not really really the viable solution.
Louis:It's not I mean, like they're there. I mean, if we want to talk about viable solutions. We talked about doing this. I think it's a fun thing. Both of us are avid city skylines players. And kind of like, if you could city skylines this, what would you do? Yeah,
Chris Jones:if I get city skylines, I think it would actually do a little bit of what the folks in the video are saying, really focus heavy, more heavy attention on public transit. In this system, I think with the cabin stitch program, I think that's a necessity for this. Again, nobody wants to see the highway smell the highway here the highway. Yeah, if we can bury it, that's great. I would absolutely do the campus stitch program, I would add a lot of community oriented development along that stretch, I would have part of the rail line running through it. I have dedicated bus lanes bike lanes, really make this more of a community amenity in that space. They'll definitely be be my plan, at least. But I play city skylines on unlimited money and with a lot of mods. For me, that's easy to say, but I'm not running with the budget. Right, fair. What would you do in gondolas across? Yes, yeah.
Louis:I mean, I would also have a pretty transit approach I would like I mean, you'd like to see like the full build out of Project Connect, obviously, what because like, you really just need more if 80% of the traffic is staying in Austin, like, let's give people more efficient ways to get around Austin, because clearly everybody in their own, you know, 6000 square foot or 6000 pound boxes driving around isn't the most efficient way to do so for
Chris Jones:too long, there will be 6000 square foot boxes driving around, basically,
Louis:I mean, some of them around here, geez, that's clearly not the most efficient way. So like some sort of transit solution would would be best. But I think I would actually, kind of, I would like to do a rethink 35 type solution, I think I would, and we'll put a map up for folks who are not from Austin, but I think I would, I would have 35, essentially, like Peter out just before the river, coming coming from the south going north and turn into like, you still have to bridge over. But the highway would essentially end there and turn into more of like the boulevard type approach that we think 35 has, you could build a whole bunch more, you know, housing, apartments, stores, restaurants, whatever, all the way up and down it, if mo if 80% of the traffic is going inside of Austin, those people were only going 35 or 40 miles an hour on i 35. Anyway, so travel times, might get slightly slower. But if people are seeing that that is an option, or they can take a better increased bus service, if you have bus lanes and this sort of stuff on it, that could get them there faster, maybe that more efficient solution to moving people around will become faster to do so. And I think you know, for as far as like traffic that needed to stay on the highway, if they're far south, they can go out 130. And if they go up a little bit further north, they can get off at 71 and take 183. And then this is around. This is where
Chris Jones:we differ in our desire for i 35. Because having driven it a lot, I see a need for at least one extra lane and downtown right. I don't know that the Manage lanes are a necessity. Although now we're building these separated manage lanes in South Austin, which these will tie into but for me, when I am coming in, especially from the north, the highway goes from four lanes to above to below to three lanes. So there's a huge gridlock right there because we are squeezing all of this traffic down to three lanes when it was for. Also this is a primary artery for goods and services from Mexico to Canada that's
Louis:really close to highway and take Highway 130 Oh, no, I
Chris Jones:agree. But it's such a vital highway link. So it's we still have the highway have to have a highway coming through the region. But because so many trips are going into downtown, I still think we need a highway connection. So my opinion is just one lane out, bury it and improve the area and the land the space above it. That's what I would like to see. I would like
Louis:that better than what's there now for sure. But I just think that there's not a there's like the through traffic, it's not going to really add any time to go out highway 130. Or even to jog out in around 183 like so time is really not that big of a deal. And again, the local traffic like the local traffic will either still use the same road or they will eventually you know, like as we're building out better public transit as we're betting out, building up better bike lanes, like there are so many more pleasant ways of getting around that and especially as the city gets bigger and more dense and there's less Parking and all this sort of stuff, like taking the car is going to become a less eloquent solution for people and like, especially if the city does a good job in providing alternatives that are better. So I think when we kind of talked about doing this episode before, like, we need to be thinking about something that's going to work for the next 70 years. And I don't want what's going to work for the next 70 years to be more of the same, which I'd be afraid that like leaving a highway would do it just like enables the city, the state everybody to like, drag their feet on so many of these other projects, because like ag kinda sort of works as is, let's just like kind of keep doing the same thing and move on.
Chris Jones:One of the things I kind of liked about the lowering the grade and putting the caps over is that any further expansion out is going to be almost cost prohibitive, it's going to be way too hard to continue out. So if we can essentially lower the highway and cap it. That's the solution. And that's the solution we're going to stick with for probably the next 100 years or more. Maybe 100 years, people aren't driving as much. We have trains all throughout Austin or gondolas flying around. We'll
Louis:see. We'll see. Yeah, it's an interesting project, though. And it's like happening. It's like happening now. We'll be curious to see if these lawsuits do go anywhere. If the project as of right now, like, you know, not to be a downer, the project looks like it's gonna happen. You know, I could be I hope I'm proved wrong. But
Chris Jones:it's definitely happening. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And as we'll talk about in the next episode, it's definitely happening because of the infrastructure bill that just got passed. Texas is using 80% 90% of the money that it received for highway expansions. And this is right at the top of the list of highway projects are in backlog. So it's happening. And this is a topic that we're going to continue to talk about totally over multiple episodes. As you said, we have an E bike episode coming up
Louis:the next episode. This is well we are in the next episode is focused on some of these federal infrastructure spending bills, which which ties in perfectly because you just mentioned it right there. But yeah, speaking of this topic, I did want to point out everything 35 does have an event coming up to be just a couple days after this episode is released. So if you're watching this, like right when it comes out, Saturday, January 27, at 2pm, they're going to be gathering signatures for their petition. And they're going to be over a long kind of the area near the hike and bike trail, near where 35 crosses it, which will be closed for quite a while during construction as a lot of the city will be it's going to be a little bit of a cluster. We didn't really talk about that. But everyone knows what a highway construction project looks like, really ugly, and we'll be there will be at the event, we will be at the event because we're going to be first having a conversation with Kelsey who is an organizer with rethink 35 We might talk a little bit about that, but we're really gonna be talking about my favorite topic of all time, which is E bikes. Kelsey has purchased an E bike in the last couple of months when you know Austin has a great rebate program we'll probably talk about that too. But I'm excited to chat with her about her her new E bike and
Chris Jones:if you see us out at the event and want to say hi definitely come up Yeah, say hello to us. We'd love to hear any feedback you have about the show totally and speaking of feedback about the show I think we actually did get a little bit of commentary from folks who have listened so far
Louis:we did so the first one that I want to bring up it was from at sparks add to one seven on YouTube. Thank you sparks I have literally our first YouTube comment that was not me trying to like juice the algorithm. Thanks for doing this podcast Austin has a lot of great spots and pads for biking slash transit but has so many opportunities to level up to thank you spark side very much appreciated. We also had some some engagement on tick tock recently
Chris Jones:people were very excited to see my writing of the super tall Schwab Schwab ah yeah so know how to say it but the the hanging on yeah
Louis:so there's a couple others I'm just gonna read some names Dale and H Luca are question mark question mark question mark. Right. Alex Norris. You know lots of folks. Alex Norris had one that I wanted to point out apparently on that Looper tall not on the super tall on the monorail. They once put a circus elephant in it to show how strong it was. And then the elephant jumped out into the river. You said you knew about this. I read about it. You neglected to mention that when we talked about that. I read about
Chris Jones:it. Apparently the the elephant was okay. Yeah, some slight injuries for other people as well. They decided not to try that stunt again.
Louis:I can understand why. And then the only other one we this wasn't a message so I won't read the read the whole message but I'll shut out the person's name. We got a message from Danny on Tiktok who said that he listened to the first episode and loved it and he lives about an hour from Salt Lake City, which in a couple episodes, you'll see that was kind of our first like go somewhere else. We're gonna have a couple episodes in Salt Lake City that are going be really interesting. And even if you're somebody from Austin listening, I think you'll be interested in the Salt Lake City episodes. And vice versa. If we ended up getting some folks from Salt Lake City, I mean, we're going to try to keep these conversational and interesting for folks who don't even live in the places that we're talking about. So, yeah, but please, please, it's fun for us to get the comments. We literally are like sending them back and forth and like, oh, shit, people are watching us. Great. So, yeah, please leave comments. Let us know what you think. Send us messages. We're interested in your feedback and opinions and thoughts. If you've got ideas, we definitely want to hear from you. So
Chris Jones:please continue to like, subscribe and share the podcast. You tell your friends, family, bus drivers, everybody you can think of. You can listen to us on pretty much any podcasting platform. Or you can watch on YouTube except for
Louis:SoundCloud, which is a complaint of Jerry's I don't know if he's the only person I know who uses SoundCloud so maybe it's not good. I'll take the note and say, Yeah, awesome. Thank you all so much for watching, and we will see you next Tuesday for the next transit tangents Tuesday. I'm saving that dough for transitory reset, watch me go