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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Ep. 40: Austin - Project Connect
What does it take to transform decades of car-centric planning? Join us as we delve into the pivotal rail votes that have shaped Austin's transit landscape. From the setback of the 2000 rail initiative to the resounding success of the 2020 Project Connect plan, which garnered nearly 60% of voter approval. Project Connect presents a comprehensive vision featuring light rail lines, bus rapid transit routes, a commuter rail, and an "Uber-like" pickup service. This ambitious plan is poised to redefine Austin as a true transit city.
Doors are closing. Public transit that's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control. Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind. Public transit, it's the rhythm of my life.
Speaker 2:On this episode we jump into Project Connect Austin's $7.1 billion transit expansion plan. We discuss how it's going, where it's going and who it's going to benefit the most. All of this and more on Transit Tangents. Hey everybody, and welcome back to Transit Tangents. My name is Chris and I'm Lewis, and today we are talking about something a little closer to home for both of us, and that is the Project Connect plan right here in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1:Totally, and this is one that we've been kind of holding off on talking about. At least personally, I've almost been like nervous to tackle it. This is going to be just a kind of an intro to Project Connect. We had the privilege of attending a meeting put on by Transit Forward, a local advocacy group here in Austin, where we heard from members of the people aiming to make Project Connect actually happen.
Speaker 2:So yeah, this is the ATP, which is the Austin Transit Partnership. Who's sort of in charge of delivering Project Connect? We had members from CapMetro and we had city officials there as well.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, specifically, the CEO of CapMetro, dottie Watkins, and the mayor, kirk Watson, all spoke, so it was really good to be able to get an update on where things stand with Project Connect. And so, yeah, this will be the first overview and then we're going to have some interviews hopefully coming up over the next couple of weeks and months, kind of doing deeper dives into specific aspects of the plan. But before we dive into the grand new vision for what could be making Austin into a real transit city in the future, which I think a lot of Austin residents actually do want, especially when you look at votes that happened to make this plan move forward let's take a look back first, though, at what Austin used to have, because it's a little sad when you actually take a peek at what Austin had in 1925.
Speaker 2:Cue the sepia tone filter. To go back in time. Yeah, austin had been a fairly small city through the early 1900s and despite being a fairly small city we still had a pretty extensive streetcar system. Most Austinites know that we had a streetcar from downtown to Hyde Park. Hyde Park was sort of the first suburb outside of Austin. It was a historic streetcar suburb. That's how people commuted back and forth. The North Loop neighborhood, a very famous neighborhood in Austin, also named North Loop because it was sort of the Northern Loop of the streetcar system. Everyone's familiar with those stories but we look at the map from 1925 and we see that the streetcar system was actually a lot more extensive than what we thought absolutely, yeah, I mean, there are lines that I hadn't seen and this map's a little hard to read.
Speaker 1:There's some lines that go further out into east austin. There are lines that kind of go northeast from downtown, and then you have two different lines that go south across the Congress Bridge which would have been the only bridge over the river in the kind of downtown area at the time down to Mary Street and one line that actually jutted off to the side into Travis Heights.
Speaker 2:Which really surprised me, especially because spoiler alert we're going to talk about this later in the Project Connect episodes we may not get a Travis Heights station, which I'm actually in support of not having a Travis Height station, but that's for another day. It's just so funny that that was a streetcar line back in the day and now totally.
Speaker 1:And what's also fun is to see that some of these old streetcar lines are once again going to have light rail on them under the current plans of Project Connect, whether that be the corridor through Guadalupe, whether it be on South Congress and other sections of the city as well, which is fun to look at. But what we could have had if we just kept them there? Yeah, absolutely so. Now we've kind of taken a look at some of the history. Obviously, unfortunately, a lot of those streetcar lines began to disappear with the rise of the automobile. A lot of them were ripped out and buses replaced the system.
Speaker 1:In the city of Austin right now, cap Metro runs the bus system they have since the 80s and there's a pretty extensive bus network. That's actually fairly good for a city of its size. I don't use the bus to commute every day or anything, but I use the bus, depending on the time of year, weekly or at least a couple of times a month, usually just to go back and forth to downtown, though Not using the outskirts of the system, but if you're on any of the kind of major transit corridors in the city, you get pretty reliable, frequent bus service.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you've listened to all of our episodes which I know everyone has if you've listened to all of our episodes, you know that I also sort of learned how to use CapMetro through this show. I'd used CapMetro very briefly when I first moved to town 12 years ago, but it was through this transit podcast that I actually got to go back and revisit some of these bus lines and really learn how to use the system. A lot of that has to do. Again, as I've mentioned many times, where I live in the city it's not easy to use the bus. It's 30 minutes up and down hills to get to the first bus station. But since starting this I've actually had a chance to get on the buses in Austin and getting around town is pretty simple and also doesn't really take that long to get from point A to point B.
Speaker 1:Right, and again it all kind of varies. So to give you a little bit of a breakdown of the system, there are over 70 bus routes in total throughout the city. They vary greatly On the lower end they're closer to every hour frequency, but the kind of what the city describes or what the what CapMetro describes as the high frequency network, which would be buses that show up every 15 minutes or better. That's a pretty extensive network. In addition to, like the high frequency, the kind of most successful bus products, if you will, for the city are definitely the kind of rapid routes which that's like the 801 for those who are familiar with austin.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, the 801, the 803, um, uh, and, and cab metro characterizes them as a brt. Uh, I have qualms with that a little bit, because for most of it, for for, frankly, all of it, it's not like dedicated right of way. There are some sections with bus lanes, but, and if you want to know more about BRTs?
Speaker 2:go back to back, go back to that BRT episode.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, we'll put a link there for you. But uh, yeah it. It essentially is like skip stop service or uh, kind of like limited stop spacings. The 801 is the highest ridership route, the 803 is near the top and then you have surprisingly or not surprisingly, if you pay attention to this sort of thing the next higher ridership routes are the ones that come the most frequently and serve the densest parts of town.
Speaker 2:In addition to the bus lines, the Metro Rapid lines, we also have our commuter rail system. Now, austin has talked about commuter rail for a very long time, Beginning in the 1970s. During the energy crisis, citizens came together and started demanding a plan for light rail. Now, nothing really happened until the 90s, when the Texas legislature actually stepped in and ordered Cap Metro to come up with a plan and put it out as a referendum. I think maybe the texas legislature was a little more rail friendly in the 90s maybe, but they did put it on the ballot in 2000, which included like a 52 mile system, and it was narrowly defeated by about 2 000 votes which is so sad to think about.
Speaker 1:It's actually interesting if you're not from austin. The current mayor of austin was actually mayor when that happened, uh, and he'll often say now that, like, one of his biggest regrets was like, like, and it's I mean, it was a vote, so it's not necessarily something he could have done, but was like not having had that passed back then it was like within 2 000 votes or something within 2 000 votes and just imagining what this city would be like had that passed is yeah, it's and that would have been a mix of commuter and light rail also.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not worth dwelling on anyway we we uh did put rail back on the uh ballot in 2004. At that point it did pass. And it passed because uh, the cat meter came back with a more palatable option that uh included more rail on the right away, it was more commuter rail. Right, it didn't really focus on the bigger extensive network. And when you say rail on the right-of-way, it was more commuter rail. It didn't really focus on the bigger, extensive network.
Speaker 1:And when you say rail on the right-of-way, it was essentially like there was an existing right-of-way that the city had previously purchased, that the current red line runs on, and they essentially just said we're just going to run this exactly on this freight rail right-of-way, which makes sense if you're trying to build a system with as little financial resources as possible, but unfortunately takes a little bit of a roundabout way to get into downtown and absolutely avoids the most dense parts of the city, which leads to the kind of ridership situation that the red line is currently in. We're going to jump right back into this episode in just a second, but first, if you have not liked this video, go ahead and do so. Also, leave a comment. We love reading all of them and respond to as many as we can, and be sure that you are subscribed so that you catch every episode as they come out, please share this with your friends, and if you don't have time to watch YouTube videos in the future, you can catch us on any of the podcast platforms that are out there.
Speaker 1:Just that are out there. Just be sure to leave us a rating and give us a comment. Moving along, there were two more kind of key rail votes that happened. The first one, 2014. In 2014, there was an additional rail plan put up. This rail plan actually had the alignment kind of not necessarily running through the main core it was more downtown than the red line is but a lot of transit advocates did not like the alignment of the 2014 plan. Uh. There were a couple other issues with it. We're not going to go into deep detail on them, but rail did not get passed in 2014.
Speaker 1:Finally, in 2020, uh, the $7.1 billion project connect plan that we know today was put on the ballot and it passed, uh, with almost 60% of the vote. Uh, so this was kind of an overwhelming yes. Cap Metro and their partners had finally kind of put together the plan that hit the correct transit corridors and people were satisfied and excited about the vision that it showed. This included light rail lines that went through the city. It included additional brt or or metro rapid routes throughout the city. Uh, and it also included, uh, in addition to the red line, the green line commuter rail. Uh connecting further out into east austin and beyond into mainer and elgin, um. So this was a a very big, ambitious proposal and it was amazing to see the city pass it. Now, it's one of those things that, like, man, if they had done something, if they had passed the 2001, yeah, what a situation we would be. That would be different.
Speaker 2:But uh, that's not how it happened, unfortunately and if we had passed it a couple years before, covid, yes, uh, who knows how different it could have been. Along with the 2020 project connect plan that was passed, uh, we saw the introduction of two light rail lines, with an additional third line drawn. We call it the gold line. Right now it is a brt, but it could be a potential line in the future so let's start off by talking about the?
Speaker 1:uh, the blue line and the orange line. So the blue line is a line that will run from the airport, when fully built out, uh, along the East Riverside corridor and then head north into downtown on what will be a new bridge constructed for both the Blue Line and the Orange Line, to cross Lady Bird Lake, swing kind of by the convention center, downtown before heading a little bit west and then making a turn north, passing close to Republic Square and heading north up the kind of guadalupe corridor until it meets, uh, north lamar. Eventually, uh, current plans have it going to the north lamar transit center at full build out. So not initially right away, but at full build out all the way.
Speaker 2:To that extent, um, this is going to service the university area so a lot of students can use this line to get into downtown, to get to the airport. It would be really important for commuters who are trying to go to the airport, travelers coming back into Austin, this would just be a heavily used line in town.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and not to mention so. I used to live on the East Riverside Corridor area. I lived near for those of you from Austin Riverside and Pleasant Valley corridor area. I lived near for those of you from Austin Riverside and Pluggin Valley the 20 bus route that currently serves the area, one of the highest ridden bus routes in town. The 300 passes through that area, one of the highest ridden buses in town, and the seven passes through that area. All of those three bus routes, I want to say they're in the top eight bus routes in the city, seeing tons of riders on them, each to be in the kind of the top tier bus services. So it's a part of town that has a lot of density but also a lot of lower income folks who don't necessarily all have the luxury of owning a car to get to and from work. So this rail line would really serve those folks very well. The second line, though, is the Orange Line.
Speaker 2:The Orange Line will run a similar path in North Austin, starting around the university area down through downtown. Where it will diverge is once the lines cross the river. You'll have one line of the blue line heading toward the airport off of riverside. The orange line is going to follow uh south congress, going south from the river all the way to about old dwarf. Ideally one day we see this go as far south as South Park Meadows for those of you who are interested in Austin geography, but for the time being it's going to stop right at Old Torf Right and I think in the existing plans it's going to get eventually in a later phase as far as Stassney.
Speaker 1:But yeah, some of the original Project Connect plans had it getting as far down as South Park Meadows. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And this, I think, is also going to be a pretty heavily used line. The area through South Congress that it's moving through is a very touristy area there are. When you think of Austin, you're probably going to think of 6th Street and you're going to think of South Congress. Totally. Those are the two main sort of tourist draws. But what I love about South Congress is that it's not just a tourist district. I go to South Congress I'm sure you do it sometimes but there are things that draw locals to South Congress as well, and so this is a great line for them. Where the line is going to terminate, initially on Old Torf, there is a brand new HEB center being built. There's a lot of development happening in this area, totally.
Speaker 2:I do think it's going to be a good amenity for the community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean that's going to be a great kind of. It will end up being a transit-oriented development where, kind of a kitty corner to where the new HEB is being built. There's plans for new apartments, office space, retail, all sorts of stuff being built there, as well as a lot of exciting plans being built right on, like kind of the South Congress, right after you cross the river with the kind this future rail line, intentionally like very intentionally building it here, because austin knows austin city council, the mayor, currently are doing a really good job of trying to build more housing in downtown and it is actively having the positive effect of currently lowering the cost of rents in austin. In a lot of cases I'm currently paying less money in rent this year than I was last year to live in the same apartment. It's not not much, but it's something and that's yeah, that's wild.
Speaker 2:This may change, but at this moment Austin rents are going down, while all other metro areas rents are going up, right?
Speaker 1:And it's in big part due to the current situation where building more housing is being incentivized at the moment, which is great. So those are the two light rail lines and, again, these are going to be built out in phases. This is not going to all happen overnight.
Speaker 2:If only we could city skylines it. Yes, yeah, I would.
Speaker 1:But Project Connect is a whole lot more than just the light rail lines. It also includes additions to the rapid buses essentially, and some of them are literally going to be opening next year. Additions to the rapid buses essentially, and some of them are literally going to be opening next year, which is pretty exciting. So we're going to see, in addition to the 801 and the 803, which are our two existing BRT lines I'm going to say BRT, but I'm massive quotes from my opinion here we're going to see the addition of the 800.
Speaker 2:Can we say BRT stands for better rapid transit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah maybe better than the regular bus, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, uh, so we're going to see the 800 and the 837. So, uh, it's going to essentially be one line that connects um Mueller, which is a uh new ish development for the city of Austin. It is an area that was the old airport for the city, uh, and has been redeveloped to include a bunch of different housing types, from apartments to some single family homes, to townhomes, to duplexes, four plexes, whatever. Insert your plex here, uh, it's. It's kind of like a much bigger version of the grove which we did a full episode on. We'll put a link there um but there's another.
Speaker 2:Heb development there, there's the office spaces, there's a cinema, there's, there's everything. There's a hospital, there's all kinds of stuff there. And I actually just drove through mueller the other day and saw the stations for the brt that they're building, yep, and the stations are nice and you could see.
Speaker 1:You know they're sort of level boarding for the bus and they've done a lot of really nice work through that corridor and an important note there is like there there is some bus service to get you into downtown from there, but it's not that great, if I'm being honest, and, uh, mueller is not the most affordable part of town. I'm sure there's some affordable housing there, but I think it's an area where you would have a lot of people who might choose to use transit and you kind of need to entice them to do so, and I think this route that goes from Mueller into downtown will do that for quite a few people. So I'm interested to see the success of that. The second line that's being introduced is the 800. So the 837 goes essentially from Mueller. It goes a little further out, the Mueller to to, to encompass adding some park and ride infrastructure further out. But, uh, the second one is the 800, which is being built like the pleasant Valley line, um, it.
Speaker 1:Essentially this is the the the first line, uh, the first BRT line that does not go into downtown. So BRT line that does not go into downtown. So it's going north-south, but the entire line stays east of Austin and it mirrors portions of the 300 bus, which is one of the heaviest ridden bus lines in the city and tons of people riding it. That's one that cuts through the Riverside Corridor, like I talked about, but essentially just going north-south here. Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting to see having a higher frequency line that doesn't go right into the urban core, because right now there's not tons of those there are some high frequency lines.
Speaker 1:High frequency meaning every 15 minutes or better.
Speaker 2:But this will be kind of the first rapid route of that type yeah, and it's a good way, I think even if it's not going to a centralized place, it helps get you to other bus lines too that will connect through. So totally, uh, definitely, it's still going to help people get connected.
Speaker 1:And in the future. I mean it's like I'm thinking, you know, uh, for for folks in Mueller area as well and points anywhere on the new Torf and all these places potential for easy access to the airport if you're getting on essentially the BRT and then connecting to the Blue Line to get yourself to the airport. In the future I could see some potential benefits for that or for working. Like you're saying. It makes connections so much easier and right now, connections on buses is totally a crapshoot in my opinion. I avoid it whenever I can for the most part. So yeah, and then kind of the last piece here and I think this one was actually included in Project Connect is the addition of pickup zones. So these pickup zones are in areas that you could kind of describe as either being like a transit desert and near the end of a line somewhere, and they kind of serve a couple purposes.
Speaker 1:Number one you can use it like a ride share app. Essentially, you can also call it in as well. Well, too, which is nice for folks who maybe don't have a smartphone, or for your older relatives who don't know how to use their smartphone. Um, but you can essentially use it like uber or lyft, but you can only use it to travel within the zone and you just pay the regular transit fare, which is a buck 25 one way or 250 for a day pass, which is pretty awesome, so you can use it to travel within that zone. So if you're running trips to the grocery store, that sort of thing, or what you can do is you can use it to get yourself to the actual transit stop. So if you were to live at the end of the 801 or the 803 or another bus route in the area, you can use the pickup zone, use the app and use it as a way to transfer onto a bus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cat Metro CEO Dottie pickup zone. Use the app and use it as a way to transfer on to a bus. Yeah, cat metro ceo dotty watkins described it as public uber. Yeah, which is probably the best way to think of it. And I have to make a little bit of a retraction to something I said I think it was on episode three where I was complaining about there not being a bus stop at the north uh medical center in austin, uh, the saint david's there, and turns out it's a pickup zone. It's a pickup zone.
Speaker 2:So if you're trying to get to the hospital saint uh, saint david's north uh, and you don't see the bus line. You can use cat metro pickup, so cat metro.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry for dragging you through the mud about it a year ago uh, so that should kind of give a a decent overview I know so, we live here, so we probably rambled a little bit in some of the areas but, uh, a decent overview of of some of the potential that project connect has here in austin. Um, again, I think it's important to point out that, like, yes, this will be done in phases. This whole thing's not going to be done overnight. The cost of this has gone up quite a bit, uh, unfortunately you know voting on this in 2020. I don't have to tell anyone that the cost of anything and everything went up after the pandemic. That includes things associated with building rail, unfortunately, so the costs have gone up quite a bit, but that that is part of the reason why the phased approach is uh taking place.
Speaker 1:Um, you can look into the specifics of the funding mechanisms and everything. It's kind of wonky, if I'm going to be honest, so we'll provide some links if you're interested in doing it. It's going to be boring for a lot of the audience. I would say maybe we'll get someone on who's good at talking about it also, because I don't feel like I understand all the complexities of it. But, um, yeah, the cost went up, so that's that's kind of of led to a couple issues. There's a couple, in my opinion, bad faith lawsuits on some of this by a rotating cast of characters who sue the city over everything.
Speaker 2:A very small cast of characters.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, the same people. Yes, so we'll see. The city feels fairly confident. It seems like in those lawsuits they haven't stopped any progress from happening.
Speaker 2:uh, the austin forensic partnership, cap metro, the city have all been business as usual as these kind of get drawn out, which is really what it seems like these lawsuits are aiming to do and I think I think the lawsuits on cap metro is a topic that we can absolutely dedicate an entire episode to, not just about cap CapMetro, but by how the process of building out these systems opens the door to a lot of lawsuits that slow things down.
Speaker 2:I think that's an entire episode we can do about why projects take so long. But for this one, I think how we can sort of end this is to say, stay tuned, because the Project Connect expansion of Austin is going to be a series of episodes that we're going to do. As Lewis said earlier, we are going to find people to go and interview. We're going to go out into the field and show you places that Cap Metro is actually going to be and where the stops are going to be, so that you can envision it. So if you're from Austin, if you love Austin and you're not from here, if you're thinking about moving here or if you just care about transit in general, stay tuned for these episodes totally, and I do want to give a lot of credit and I think this is relevant to wherever you live.
Speaker 1:I mean, whether we talk about salt lake city or charlotte, like we just talked about, or san antonio even you really need strong local leaders to really go out on a limb to like push and fight for these projects, and we're fortunate in austin to have a city council and a mayor that are like very for pushing project connect forward. Um, and and there are also I mean we talked to uh, adam powell, who's running currently for city council. Gotta get my little plug for adam in here. His race is going well so far. He just earned a big endorsement from the local transit and housing advocacy group aura. Advocacy group aura.
Speaker 1:Um, so there are a lot of great people out there pushing for this sort of thing and you need to find those candidates in your area, especially as we're getting into election season here, in those local elections. If you want to see great projects like project connect happen in your city or if you live here, you want to do it, get out and find those candidates, because I think that's the only reason why stuff like this ever gets happened, because it's hard to pitch to people like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna have to spend a lot of money to make this happen, but in the long term it's gonna pay for itself, it'll be totally worth it. Um, it's not easy to make those decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly call it Pete Buttigieg telling to give more money to Austin to make it happen yes uh.
Speaker 1:With that being said, if you haven't subscribed, please go ahead and do so. Like the video, find us on your favorite podcast platforms. All that good stuff, uh, without further ado, though. Thank you so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit tangents tuesday yeah, I'm saving that dough. Public transit's where it's at. Watch me go.