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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. 49: Cap & Stitch the Highways
How can a highway that once divided neighborhoods become a bridge for community connection? Join us on Transit Tangents as we unlock the transformative power of cap and stitch projects in urban planning. From Seattle's pioneering Freeway Park to Washington DC's innovative public-private partnerships, we unpack the mechanics and potential of covering sunken highways with decks that support everything from parks to bike lanes and even small buildings.
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Speaker 2:This week on Transit Tangents, we cover all things caps and stitches. We'll talk about three cities that have covered up portions of their highways in an attempt to reconnect neighborhoods, and get into the details about proposals to do so in the city of Austin. All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents.
Speaker 3:Hey everybody and welcome back to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name's Chris and I'm Lewis, and today we are filming in downtown Dallas at Clyde Warren Park, which is Dallas's famous cap and stitch park?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and if you don't know what that means, we are sitting on top of a highway. There is a very wide. I could try to count the lanes looking in the other direction here, but there's a very wide highway right underneath us, Very wide and congested highway. Yes, there's traffic in both directions as we record this. But, yeah, in this episode we're going to talk about capping and stitching highways, what that is. We'll talk about the place where we are right now, here in Dallas and this project, but we're also going to talk about projects in Seattle, in Washington DC and as well as Austin, which is one that is not built yet, not under construction yet, is hotly contested. There's a lot of I don't even know how I feel about it yet, which is kind of why we're doing the episode. I'm curious what people think Lots of options on the table, and we'll know soon what's going to happen, as there's going to be a vote on this in December.
Speaker 3:We will get into a lot more details about the Austin Cap and Stitch program, but first Lewis explain what is a cap and stitch program.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And because I said we're sitting on top of a highway right now, you might think, okay, it's just a tunnel and it is very similar to a tunnel, a lot of the same characteristics.
Speaker 2:But the main difference for a cap or a stitch would be you essentially build a sunken highway, so think you know, a steep wall on either side, with the highway sitting below the regular city streets grade, and then you're essentially just building a big deck on top of that sunken highway. A cap would be when you kind of cover maybe an entire city block or more, whereas the stitch is essentially taking an area where you would have a bridge for vehicle traffic going over and making it wider than normal and having room for, you know, maybe better bike infrastructure, putting some benches, some trees, things like that. In some cases you could, you know, even have a small building on some of these sorts of things. In some of our examples we'll get into some bigger buildings that they build on these sorts of things, but it's more of like you're bridging over the highway with different types of amenities.
Speaker 2:You're creating a human bridge instead of a car bridge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go, um, and yeah, we wanted to do this while we were here in dallas.
Speaker 2:Already last week's episode, we talked to somebody in dallas about a different topic and we were like this is a great example of cap and stitch here, so we might as well get into it. So, um, the first cap and stitch project that we're going to talk about was actually the first that happened in the United States at all, and that cap and stitch project is actually in Seattle. So the cap in Seattle was actually built back in 1976, so a long time ago. The highway wouldn't have even been that old at that time period and the cost is pretty insane, especially when we get into what the cost of some of these other caps, including including this one, and then the cost of what the Austin caps are going to be. But it was somewhere in the realm of $4 to $5 million to actually do the cap itself, and then later on, additional money was brought forward to actually build the parks and the amenities on top of it, which is pretty wild, and Chris did the conversion to today's dollars for the initial capping.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I it.
Speaker 2:For inflation it ends up being around 35 million dollars total, which is still significantly cheaper than what we're seeing in a lot of the parks that we're going to talk about in a second here. But, um, also interesting, so they call it freeway park, which is kind of lame in my opinion, but it looks pretty darn cool it is what it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it is they're not lying yeah I've driven through it actually, and the the interstate through that part of seattle is actually pretty narrow and you sort of make a turn and you're all of all of a sudden underneath a building, because it's not just the uh cap uh project there, the freeway park, but then there's also the convention center right behind it.
Speaker 2:So very, it's a very cool way to drive through seattle right, and they've integrated in, and I mean, seattle has other projects like this, but they are tunnel projects basically, so that's why they don't necessarily count in the cap and stitch. But I thought this one was interesting because it is so old, um, and at the time I mean, they had a lot of the same reasons that we talk about with putting in caps and stitch today, trying to mend communities that were divided. You know, during the highway construction, we talked about that in a very early episode when we were talking about 35 expansion in Austin. Um, oftentimes, you know, these highways were constructed through low-income black neighborhoods in a lot of cases and had irreparable damage to them. And then you know, here we are. In this case it was maybe only 20 years later or something, maybe less, where they come in and try to mend the wounds, but in a lot of cases gentrification and all this stuff takes over and you're not really helping those same people who you displaced in a lot of cases.
Speaker 3:So not great from that perspective, but overall, a much better use of the public space today, though, than it was back then, and something that I think a lot of cities have tried to imitate and we'll talk about a couple more of those cities Totally.
Speaker 2:And the last thing I want to put here, just to give you a breakdown on who paid for this At the time, 90% of this was actually paid for by the federal government, that being of the actual cap. So that's the five and a half million dollar structure, 90% paid for by the feds, and then the $4 million park and amenities on top was paid for with state funds. They had what they called forward thrust funding Interesting.
Speaker 3:Forward thrust funding. Interesting name choice, but thrust is into the forward, into the future.
Speaker 2:But a lot of that support coming from the federal and the state government there. So, yeah, something that I think we'd like to see a lot more of, especially state government there.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, something that I think we'd like to see a lot more of, especially here in Texas yes, bold.
Speaker 2:If you keep listening, you'll sense where we're going with that.
Speaker 3:The next city on our list is Washington DC. This is one of the nation's newest cap-and-stitch projects, having only started construction in 2015. And this is on a highway that, when it came through, it came through DC. Around the time the highways were being built, this area had been a predominantly black neighborhood and, like many cities, when the highway came through, that neighborhood was sort of destroyed and damaged up until this day Some like really amazing imagery that I found on Google Earth.
Speaker 2:there's actually pretty clear images of Washington DC in 1949 and you can see the neighborhoods where the main highway goes through. And then this is actually a spur that kind of cuts just off of it. And yeah, I mean it's just, it's the same story over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again in so many cities across the US where this happened. And then this spur kind of comes off and is when you look at it it feels very unnecessary, just kind of like spills out into downtown. But this is an interesting cap because this one is actually uh like they just kind of sold it off instead of private company can do this, so they essentially like gave the rights over the highway to a private company.
Speaker 2:They developed this into uh, five different buildings that are built on top of the cap, so it's mostly buildings with a little bit of park space in between and ways to connect over the highway much better than it was previously. And some of these buildings they're fairly tall, I'd say in the realm of 10 stories, maybe even a little bit higher. The cost on this much higher because we're talking about building huge buildings on it, but in the grand scheme of things, not that crazy considering the potential benefits. So this was a $1.3 billion project Again, private developers. The city is estimating that they would get 40 million new tax revenue per year. These new developments.
Speaker 3:And it's a good case for that private public partnership and allowing developers to come in and build this, because you're improving the neighborhood and you're getting that tax revenue out of it. It's kind of a win-win for the city of BC?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I mean even in the long run. I mean beyond property taxes, you've got all sorts of business in there, you've got residential, all this stuff. So in addition to that, in 25 years they're saying somewhere in the realm of a billion dollars in total tax revenue coming out of this project and the city not necessarily having to bear the brunt of all the construction costs over this highway. So an interesting model to look at for sure.
Speaker 3:I'd be curious to see what that area looks like today, with everything being built, or, if it has, if all the buildings have been completed, compared to what the area looked like back around 1949 and we have images from around 1949, from before, if you're watching this happen.
Speaker 2:We'll do this.
Speaker 3:They're on screen, we have images from 1949 where you can see this whole area and segregation by design, which is an account that we've referenced several times on. This show actually has the aerial imagery showing pre-highway and post-highway and sort of the how it decimated this neighborhood. I'd actually be really curious to see what that next stage looks like. So pre-highway, post-highway and now post-CAP program Totally.
Speaker 2:And that brings us to where we're sitting right now, which is Clyde Warren Park, and I've like heard about this plenty of times from people especially. Again, we'll get into the Austin stuff in a second. But, like, this is an example that is often cited, and after being here I mean for the most part I see why it's a well-utilized space and it's clearly very popular it's really well done and it has a lot of programming on it.
Speaker 3:So just from where we're sitting you have these beautiful trails with these arch arches, with lights on them for at for nighttime. There are two splash pads just within viewing distance. Right now of us, you can stand on the edge and look at the highway if you want, but for the most part the highway is very non-intrusive.
Speaker 2:You don't really know that you're sitting on top of the highway right and I mean you get like a little bit of road noise and whatnot. But I think some of that is also just from like there are quite a few few cross streets and whatnot.
Speaker 3:We're in a busy downtown. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense, you also have food trucks that line the sides of Claude Warren Park as well. You have a whole activity field behind us where you could play soccer or picnic or do whatever, and then you have small one-story buildings that actually house restaurants and bars all down one side of the park.
Speaker 2:So all in all, it's a very well-utilized space Totally, and I mean, yeah, there's people using everything. We also walked through here at about I don't know, 10 o'clock last night or so and it was busy, it was busy.
Speaker 2:There was a silent disco. Yeah, and so the combination of the programming, all of the different uses in this one space being downtown, I mean I'm generally impressed with it. Now, like you know, is it better than like a park that isn't on top of a highway? Maybe not, but I mean it's a much better use of the space than what was here, and it's really fun to look at some of the Google Street View images. So I went back last night and looked and you can see what this looked like before this was here, from the highway level, from the cross street level, all of this sort of stuff, and then seeing what it looks like today is night and day and makes this area so much better connected and actually like a much better land use here in general.
Speaker 3:This highway similar to other highways in the country is. It's a spur that goes between two major highways. This spur, when it was built, did demolish a predominantly black neighborhood right here in downtown Dallas, so there is sort of an unfortunate past on how and where this highway was constructed. This is a story that you hear time and time and time again.
Speaker 2:Even just in this episode.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah. So of course there's a not so pretty history of this area, but this is a nice way to try to repair some of that damage. You're now connecting a very different neighborhood than what it was then, but you are connecting sort of the downtown arts district with uptown dallas and it makes it a very comfortable transition totally and, if you're interested, we've talked about this book before but if you're interested in that story, I really recommend the book city limitsits.
Speaker 2:It's very specific to Texas actually. They talk about I believe they talk about this specific highway here in Dallas, a lot of highways in Houston, i-35 in Austin and kind of the history of all of these different highways and people who've been forced to move out of their homes as a result of these highways getting wider. And, to be clear, I mean in a lot of cases I just don't think we should be putting highways through the center of downtowns. I think that, like you know, while the caps are nice, I think that there are significantly better land uses that you could do than the highway that people are sitting in traffic in behind us here. But you know we do. The reality right now is this and I think to pick the best reality is to do what is being done right here for the most part. Some people may disagree with me on that. I don't know.
Speaker 3:And Clyde Warren Park, kind of similar to the DC model of building this CAP project. It was about 110 million dollars and a lot of it was privately donated. Some of it was funded from the state and then some of it was funded from the city of Dallas itself, and what's interesting about that is it's another private donated. Some of it was funded from the state and then some of it was funded from the city of Dallas itself, and what's interesting about that is it's another private public partnership. In a way, this is not technically a Dallas park and it's not a Texas park. This is a private park, private public park, so it does have an open hours and closed hours. There's programming that happens at the park that's not really affiliated with the city and there are other rules that may apply at this park.
Speaker 2:There's also like park security.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's park security, but it also allows them to bring maybe some more creativity to the space and provide some more amenities. The park is managed by a non-profit, and that non-profit keeps it in great shape.
Speaker 2:Right, and that non-profit, I believe, is the one who kind of fronted the rest of the money. So just to break down the cost a little bit, $20 million came from the city of Dallas, $20 million from the highway fund, from the state of Texas. It's like TxDOT ponying up some money here and then the remainder coming from this nonprofit. So, yeah, I mean it's a really nice looking, well manicured space that, again, clearly, even based on what you can see behind us, probably is well used.
Speaker 3:A lot, even based on what you can see behind us, probably is well used, a lot of people using it. It's a huge success story for Dallas, and Dallas is is taking this model and they're moving it to the southern part of Dallas as well, in a more historically black area of Dallas, and that is the southern gateway, which is actually right in front of the Dallas zoo, and that's going to be about a 2.8 acre park. The cost for that one is uh, it's a little higher $666 million once the whole project is done.
Speaker 2:If you're interested more on that project, we'll put a link to their website for the Southern Gateway project as well, and you know we're seeing that one's already under construction, so we'll see what the results are. We're going to jump right back into this episode in just a second, but first, if you have not liked this video or subscribed, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit. Also, leave a comment. We love reading them.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and if you don't have time to watch YouTube videos every time we release, you can always catch us on your favorite podcasting platform, from Spotify to Apple to anywhere podcasts are available.
Speaker 2:And if you want to support the show, we now have a Patreon launch. You get lots of additional benefits for being a member on Patreon. All the All right. That brings us to the Cap'n Stitch project happening where Chris and I live, in Austin. For those of you who don't know, TxDOT is currently planning an expansion project of I-35 right through the center of downtown Austin. We're getting more lanes in both directions. It's taking up a wider footprint in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2:We're displacing around 110 businesses, yeah plenty of eminent domain being used and the like. You'd think conservative government wouldn't want to use eminent domain, but they have no problem doing it for highway expansions. But I digress, that's not the point of this. If you're interested in more about that, we did a very early episode. You can go and check that out. We spent a long time talking about the expansion plans there. But along with the expansion though, to try to make the deal sound a little bit better for the city of Austin, the state is allowing the city to put forward a little bit of extra money to have caps and stitches throughout Austin. Right now there are several different kind of sections to this project, so you've got a few like core downtown caps and stitches, the biggest one kind of going from Cesar Chavez to 4th Street. Then you kind of have a continuation almost there where there's another that kind of starts from around 4th again and goes up to 7th. You also have a big cap at the University of Texas.
Speaker 3:Which at this point we think the University of Texas is going to fund and the city won't really be on the hook for that one. But we'll see and that would be a big.
Speaker 2:That would be really nice for that area. Yeah, and then you have a couple northern ones, so you have one kind of near the Hancock Center in Austin among several other, you know, smaller stitches and whatnot throughout the area. So we're not talking one thing like this.
Speaker 3:we're actually talking a much more extensive uh network of these in total a network of about 12 acres of city owned caps around the highway now.
Speaker 2:At one point this project looked like it was going to have a lower cost than what it's looking at today. Techsat has really been rushing this project of the i35 expansion in general. I will mention there's still lawsuits in progress with Rethink35 going on for this, but despite the lawsuits they're really just getting started.
Speaker 3:So if you pay attention to this thing and you feel like it's being rushed, it is being rushed. The city is sort of under this threat of missing this opportunity, because TxDOT is pushing this very quickly and I think a lot of that has to do with the infrastructure bill that got passed and the money is now available and it's time to do this project.
Speaker 2:Right, all right. So to break this down a little bit, updated cost estimates, like I mentioned lightly, have gone up significantly.
Speaker 3:I think we were around 800 million initially. That was the first estimate, right.
Speaker 2:And that would be for putting in the roadway elements so that we can essentially build the caps on top afterwards putting the actual caps on and then doing the amenities on top. It's kind of separated into those three categories. If you were to do all of those now, for all of the proposed caps and stitches, we're talking almost $1.4 billion. Now the tricky thing that comes with that is number one. Txdot is saying they're willing to build the stuff for the city but they're not going to pay for any of it at this stage. None, not a dollar coming from the state for it. The other tricky part you know some good news was that the city managed to get about $130 million from a federal grant for the Reconnecting Communities grant. I think it's funny that a Reconnecting Community grant can also be used on something where you're widening a highway, but that's whatever. But anyway, that covers most of the cost of the Cesar Chavez to 4th street cap um, so that one actually has.
Speaker 2:You know, the vast majority of the funding is secured for that part um, but that leaves hundreds of millions of dollars with the city not knowing exactly where that money would come from and the concern that's kind of coming a lot, a lot of you know, among a lot of folks, is if we do go forward with doing this everywhere, where is the money coming from and what is frankly, being cut as a result and what can we not do because of it?
Speaker 2:So, to break it down a little bit, there's a few options that the city is floating. City staff are floating, ranging from doing all of the caps but making them all smaller in many cases, making it so that you're going to have to cross more lanes of traffic, shortening them, all sorts of things like that, but you're able to put caps and stitches in all of the places that they want to do it. The positives of that is you get caps everywhere. Um, the negatives is, in my opinion, the nicest caps, including the ones right in downtown or the ones that have the potential to be the nicest and have the most use. Similar to this uh, would would shrink to be able to put caps in parts of the city that right now are basically like connecting strip malls together.
Speaker 3:So that's like the looking at it on the negative side, yeah, you're putting a lot of money into an area that hasn't been improved yet and it may spur the development or the improvement of that area, but you're still investing in an area that has, it's probably going to be improved and has more potential in the future, which kind of goes back to what I think you should do, and that is just build the road structure that's needed to support this infrastructure and then build these caps later as they, as funds, become available right and that is kind of an option here.
Speaker 2:So the city in december coming up very soon, a city council meeting, um is going to have to decide whether or not to fund the roadway elements uh, which is like sets the stage for being able to put the decks and potential amenities on. So if you wanted to just fund the roadway elements for all of them, we're still talking $284 million For phase two, which would be to fund the decks with no amenities. The city needs to decide whether or not to fund by December 2025. The amount to build all of them would be an additional $613 million. A portion of that money would be due in 2026 to fund the Cesar Chavez to 4th Street cap, with the remainder being due by 2032. In this scenario, decks would be complete around 2032. One other scenario is, if the city chooses not to fund some decks in 2025, they'll have the opportunity to fund them again in 2032, with those decks being completed around 2034.
Speaker 2:It's tricky. I'm actually like pretty conflicted on this because I take your point and the point that several folks are making that like sure. You know, uh, right now, some of the northern caps. It almost doesn't make sense because there's no development there at the time. However, there's a lot of upside for that area. By installing the cap, you can redevelop a lot of these old strip malls. There's room to redevelop them to build really nice mixed use. When you build that really nice mixed use, those properties are going to be higher in value than what they are as an old strip mall. Therefore, the tax revenue that the city brings in through them through property taxes, goes up. There will likely be more sales tax and all sorts of other things being spent in those new areas. So you generate more revenue that way, but you're fronting a lot of money up front before you see any of those returns coming later.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's a huge risk. It's a huge risk and it's a huge investment the city has to take in. Yeah, it's a huge risk. It's a huge risk and it's a huge investment the city has to take in. And I would like to see the city proposing some creative ways in funding these improvements, whether that is through more private donorship, you know. Hey, moody family, where are you?
Speaker 2:Your name's on everything else. Your name is on every amphitheater in town.
Speaker 3:We can build an amphitheater over the highway and just call it the Moody Caps. Hey, elon Musk, you're taking over Austin as well. Where are you at? Yeah, but I think there are creative opportunities in ways that we can help fund this in the future. And, as you touched on the taxing part of it, yeah, there's going to be future development along these lines and you can create special taxing districts where some of this money goes back into paying the city back for this improved infrastructure.
Speaker 2:You know, one thing that I think is interesting is Austin is covered in Capitol View corridors, and a lot of them protect your view of the Capitol Dome from I-35, which you have plenty of time to look at, because of how congested it is, which just for if you're not from Austin because this is kind of a unique thing I feel like a Capitol View corridor is literally like having a line of sight to the Capitol Dome, the Capitol building in downtown Austin, and many of them are protecting the view of the Capitol Dome from the upper deck of I-35 so that when you're driving on the highway you get a view for a couple seconds of the Capitol. It's pretty absurd and it prevents like development of tall buildings. Essentially.
Speaker 3:Usually, buildings can only be about five stories tall before they impede on the Capitol View corridor, so it's just this absurd restriction in downtown Austin that could be removed, and you have so much potential for tax revenue to be brought in from these properties that now they can build super tall buildings, and that's an area that maybe the city should look at as well. So I do think there are creative solutions that could be explored to help fund this. Now the problem is we don't have any time to explore these solutions. The city has to make a decision go or no. Go In less than a month. In less than a month. For why we're doing this? Yeah, and that's a really unfortunate reality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you say no to all of the decks from the start, right here in December, there's really no opportunities for decks for 50 years. So the crazy thing here is it's a rush to determine what to fund, but if you don't fund it, it's going to just be how it is for at least another 50 years, which, at that point, most of the people who are alive right now paying attention to this are not like. You don't get any of the benefits of that. You have no benefit of it when we talk about infrastructure projects like this.
Speaker 3:It's so interesting because this will redefine what the city of Austin looks like for 100 years probably. Because even if, after 50 years, you decide, okay, we're going to do this, what does that landscape look like at that point? And how much more time is it going to take to build after that 50-year mark? Like at that point, and how much more time is it going to take to build after that 50 year mark? Right? So we are really looking at a project that is, uh, really going to transform the life or the feel of the city of austin for the next two generations, and that is a huge decision to make and, again, no time to make it right yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:The main area being torn for me is just, you know, uh, our, our city budget. I mean there's all sorts of things in the city budget that have increased recently. We just passed a big police contract. There's also, I mean, there's going to be construction of all sorts going on in the city. We're airport expansion convention center being built. Project Connect Light rail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all of these huge projects happening at once, and I get worried about other related things being funded. Are we going to continue to be able to build out new bike lanes like we've been doing? Are we going to continue to build out more urban trails like we've been doing? I don't know that the answer will continue to be yes, and at a certain point, things are going to have to start to be cut and I get worried about what those sorts of things might be.
Speaker 2:If you go forward with all this but, at the same time, saying no to a lot of these caps now removes future opportunity. I really don't. I'm curious. There's a lot of folks I'll link some of them. There's some really smart people very involved in Austin City politics on Twitter that I want to make sure that you folks can go read their takes on all this sort of stuff, but I'm genuinely curious what people think. So if you're in Austin, definitely let us know what your thoughts are on this. I'm conflicted, but after you kind of go and, you know, do your research on this, chat with people about it. Again, I don't know that there is a consensus on this right now, which is interesting. There will be a council meeting where this will be voted on. It's going to be on Thursday, december 12th.
Speaker 3:We're both going to try to be there. Come join us.
Speaker 2:And yeah, if you haven't spoken at city council too, I mean it's good to go in and see how the whole process works and everything. You do need to sign up by the day before at noon. We'll put the link on where you can go do that in here if you're interested. But yeah, I mean it's going to be really interesting to see what happens. And again, it's just a decision that's going to have such a lasting impact.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and we will continue to cover this because, whatever happens, we're still going to be talking about I-35. And yeah, so if you're interested in this project in Central Texas, please stay tuned. There will be a lot more content coming Totally.
Speaker 2:We're gonna wrap this up here, though. If you have not liked the video, please do so. Subscribe, leave a comment. All that good stuff. Also, we've been putting out lots of bonus content on Patreon. You can support us there. It helps us out to be able to go on trips, like we've done here, to come to Dallas, chat with folks who are advocates for public transit here, among many of the other episodes we've done so. If you want to help us out directly, that's the best way, but without further ado. Thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit.
Speaker 2:Tangents Tuesday.