.jpg)
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
Austin - Project Connect's 16,000 Page Impact Study, Part 1
The episode explores Austin's Project Connect, a light rail initiative designed to improve transportation and connectivity throughout the city.
With the 16,000-page draft environmental impact study released, we provide a detailed overview of station highlights and their potential impact.
• Station breakdown starting from Yellow Jacket Station
• Key features of connectivity and sustainability
• Community concerns regarding station locations
• Discussion on the downtown development implications
• The role of UT stations in serving a large student population
• Encouragement for ongoing dialogue among stakeholders
Doors are closing Austin's light rail initiative. With the draft environmental study recently released, we dig through its 16,000 pages to provide you with everything you need to know about Project Connect. All of this on Transit.
Speaker 1:Tangents. Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and today we are going to take a much deeper dive into Project Connect in Austin, the plan for Light Rail here in the city. We just got a 16,000 page document dump along with the draft environmental impact statement. We've been going through all sorts of it, as many folks in Austin have.
Speaker 2:We are combing through the 16,000 pages so you don't have to yes yeah, yeah, yeah, although, to be totally fair, there's more to it.
Speaker 1:I'm sure have, we are. We are combing through the 16 000 pages, so you don't have to. Yes, yeah, yeah, although, to be totally fair, there's. There is more to it, I'm sure. Um, but we're trying to pick the stuff that, uh, we found most interesting throughout. So, uh, what we're going to do is essentially kind of dive through station by station. We now have literal, block by block maps, um, so we're going to show some of those uh, we did some work with some maps to give some aerials of everything and kind of just explain what the exact layout and station locations look like, as well as get into some of the environmental impacts, get into some of the effects on roadways, displacements, all those sort of things.
Speaker 1:Displacements and even, you know, not fully related to the draft EIS, but some good news even from the state legislature. So some cautious good news, we'll see. But let's start off, though, by kind of going station by station through this, starting off with Yellow Jacket Station.
Speaker 2:Which is going to be on the blue line. Yes, one of two lines, blue and orange. Blue line will go out towards the airport and, as you said, starting with the Yellow Jacket Station, this is the one that is the furthest southeast on Riverside Drive, closest to the airport Not to the airport, mind you Right, as everybody's grumbling in town, but pretty close to the airport Totally.
Speaker 1:And there are plans for an airport extension at some point, but it won't be done necessarily in the first phase. Yellowjacket station is going to be home to one of the few park and rides. A lot of the park and rides I'm skeptical of. This one actually makes some sense. It is right along the highway, the station area not super dense. There is some room for development. There are a few hotels close by which could be helpful.
Speaker 2:But overall, you know, this station is here in a lot of reasons, as because the maintenance facility is right there basically the operations and maintenance facility, which we'll refer to as OMF here and there, is located in this area in sort of a light industrial park. It's a lot.
Speaker 2:It's a row of warehouse buildings right next to sort of the city and state homeless camps, the marshalling yard the marshalling yard and a few other things, and so a lot of space in this area, a lot of underutilized space in a lot of cases, especially when we're looking at the warehouse section of this part of town Totally, but as we kind of move in, heading west, closer to downtown, the next stop on the line is the Grove station.
Speaker 1:Now, this is now the preferred station. Initially, there was some debate within the Austin Transit Partnership, the folks who are actually responsible for kind of the delivery of the light rail, where there may have been two different stops in this area, one at montopolis and one at farrow drive. Instead, they're kind of picking one spot in the middle, which is the grove, in big part because the city just purchased a large parcel of land and a an office building that the city now has plans to develop into a whole bunch of affordable housing, which would be very walkable to this station. Kind of funny. Right now, though, the station is currently just looks like a bunch of grass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, grass and trees and like kind of in between big neighborhoods. I was sort of against this at first because I am in favor of more stations. But looking at the map, looking at future development, I think this does make sense. It is more aligned with the direction these neighborhoods are going, totally.
Speaker 1:It also is a little bit better for the ACC campus that's in the area. It's not perfect still like they'll probably need to run some sort of shuttle, but under the other setup where you'd have a Faro stop and a Montopolis stop, it was really not convenient at all for ACC. So there may be some potential benefits with that as well.
Speaker 2:The next stop on Riverside Drive, past the Grove, is the Pleasant Valley stop. This is where Pleasant Valley and Riverside meet, where the station is going to be, interestingly enough, huge, median, wide, wide open space, and this is because Riverside was actually meant to be a highway originally. So, seeing this right of way that already existed being transitioned to light rail, you know we like to see that.
Speaker 2:It feels good, it feels nice, yeah, yeah yeah, this is also the intersection of a trail that's going to be created. I think it's called the. Is it the Country Club Trail? Yeah, the.
Speaker 1:Country Club Creek Trail.
Speaker 2:Creek Trail.
Speaker 1:It's currently like a small trail that's in Roy G Park right now. It's going to be extended through a big portion of Southeast Austin including a lot of areas that have a lot of apartment buildings, ending in Mabel Davis Park, which adds to some potential ridership for even like folks on bikes to be able to get from those areas to the station. So with that, I'd love to see some like bike lockers or something at this station.
Speaker 2:I'd characterize this area as like the strip mall capital of Austin. It is all huge parking lots. You have a massive HEV in this area which, for those not from Austin, is our big grocery store chain here. You've had a lot of apartment buildings here. A lot of them are being torn down, the older ones for larger development, which will bring in more people and potentially drive that ridership. But all in all you just have a lot of fast food, restaurants and surface parking lots.
Speaker 1:But where you see surface parking, yeah, I see potential, but I will say, though, too. So I lived on Crossing Place for a year not too long ago. Bus ridership in the area very high, affordable apartments in the area, quite a few, especially for Austin. So some of that is being torn down and I hope that there is a and I'm sure, given City Council, I have the faith in doing this like good transitions for folks who inevitably may be kicked out of their homes. Frankly, to build some of this new development. I'm specifically talking about the River Park development, which looks beautiful, but there definitely needs to be a real plan in place for that. I want to say that at the outset, there are also a ton of other apartments that are staying put, that will stay there In addition.
Speaker 2:Oh, go ahead. I was going to say just to say, you mentioned the bus ridership. This is a primary corridor for the 300 and the 20. The 20 is notable because that's the bus that takes you to the airport, from the airport to Republic Square and downtown Austin. But these are two of. They're not the busiest, but they're two of the busiest lines in the city.
Speaker 1:I want to say they're both near the top five ridership and in addition to that we're also going to see the new 800 rapid route bus running right through this area as well, which will add even more to this. So this is definitely going to be a busy stop. It's already a busy transit hub in the city, but let's move a little bit further west, closer to downtown. This will be the last stop, really right on Riverside, and it's going to be Lakeshore, serving some of the area that has already been developed in the Riverside corridor. So the strip malls start to get a little bit smaller as we work into this area and you start to see some more mixed-use development, some more newer apartment buildings. This area is also kind of home to the Oracle campus, so you have a decent amount of folks working in the area too. It'd be a little bit of a walk to the Oracle campus Oracle's maybe a little closer to Pleasant Valley.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah From here. Though there was plans for another station along Riverside, it seems as though the preferred version right now shows not having a stop at Travis Heights.
Speaker 2:Yep, for those who again not having a stop at Travis Heights. Yep, for those who again not familiar with Austin, travis Heights is a historically significant neighborhood. A lot of really nice large homes. It feels very suburban even though it's literally right next to downtown. Yeah, but like large, single family lots, a neighborhood that's probably not going to generate a ton of ridership. Yeah, something notable, though, before we get to this area is when the rail line is crossing I-35. So this is the main interstate through town. I-35 is going through its major redevelopment. This entire intersection is going to have to incorporate this new line going through, and what we're seeing on the renderings is a complete redesign of this intersection to be a single point intersection which, as far as I'm aware, I think is the first of its kind in Austin. I think so too. I can't think of one other one.
Speaker 1:I've never driven through one before. It will be interesting to see how the signal timing of this works. The whole light rail in general is supposed to have signal prioritization. I remember at one of the ATP meetings I went to a year or two ago they said that the trains won't stop between stations, meaning they won't sit at a red light.
Speaker 1:I'll'll believe it when I see it but uh and we'll talk more about the timing of things later but this, if anything, is going to be a spot where there's I. I highly doubt they're going to be able to make that happen, but it's going to be really interesting and maybe they'll elevate it all the way through here. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Right now it's not looking right now. No, right now it looks like it's going to be at grade crossing the bridge. However, just on the other side of this, when we hit Travis Heights, this is where the rail line will start to be elevated. Yes, as we go into stations on this sort of south waterfront district of town.
Speaker 1:Totally, which literally brings us to the waterfront. Stop. This area presently is an abandoned Austin American Statesman building, which is the local newspaper yes, actually not abandoned?
Speaker 2:Oh wow, it is a car storage facility. Local newspaper yes, actually, it's not abandoned, I found out. Oh wow, it is a car storage facility right now.
Speaker 1:Great land use right Right on the most prime Really high-end cars.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:If you're not from Austin, this is probably one of the most prime pieces of real estate in the city, I would imagine. It sits right on Town Lake. You've got views of downtown. This is where people go to watch the famous bats under the bridge, under the South Congress Bridge in Austin, the Yeti flagship store there, right across the street exactly. And what's really exciting is the plans for what is kind of being called the South Central Waterfront District. It's essentially plans to demolish the existing car storage facility inside of the Austin American Statesman Building to build like essentially extend downtown across the river.
Speaker 2:Yep, you'll have a blocked section of streets, you'll have parks and apartments and offices and everything you would expect to be as part of a sort of downtown extension. Right, and all of this is going to happen unless our least favorite transit villain in town, bill Alshire, wins his lawsuit against it.
Speaker 1:That's a whole other topic. He'll probably try to find something. I think, given the recent elections with our city council, there's probably going to be a ton of political. There is going to be a ton of political will, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think so too.
Speaker 1:We'll jump right back into the episode in just a second, but first, if you haven't liked this video or left a comment, please do so. It helps us out quite a bit and we also have some exciting news.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you want to support the show. We have swag, we have merchandise Go check out our store where you can get hats, t-shirts, hoodies, a bunch of other things coming new designs for that all going to be coming up in the next few weeks lastly, if you want to support the show directly and get access to early episodes, you can do so on patreon.
Speaker 2:But without further ado, let's jump right back into the episode um, but this is where the light rail line, like I said, elevated through this district brand new development and this is where the line is going to sort of split. Um, you have one line, which we'll talk about later, that's going to go down congress avenue, but the line we're going to continue to talk about is where we go into downtown. So this is actually going to cross Lady Bird Lake, town Lake I usually refer to it as Town Lake, I don't know why I said Lady Bird, but it's going to cross the lake via a brand new bridge and this is going to be, I think, a multi-use bridge. It should have some pedestrian bike access that connects the hike and bike trail on either side. I do believe it's taking out the Alta coffee shop and boat dock.
Speaker 1:The boathouse is going out. That's kind of like one of the bigger like only like city things that are going to be torn down.
Speaker 2:There are some we'll kind of get into some eminent domain that will need to be used for the line later on.
Speaker 1:But this is one of my, this is one of my top two gripes about, about project connect is that I love that little boathouse and then the other we'll get to later. Okay, well, hopefully they'll make a nice boathouse nearby um, uh, but the the light rail bridge will spit you out onto trinity street in downtown. Um, and the next two stops we're going to kind of talk about together because they're pretty close together. Frankly, the first um is being called cesar chavez. It's's basically just north of Cesar Chavez, on Trinity, kind of along the convention center, and the next is at the corner of Congress and 3rd Street.
Speaker 1:So there is some potential for the station at Cesar Chavez to change a little bit. There's some negotiations to include it into a development that's being built. So it would actually kind of go underneath a building that will be constructed, but for right now it just it would actually kind of go underneath a building that will be constructed, but for right now it just looks like it kind of takes a sharp turn onto 3rd Street, obviously with the convention center next door. You're going to get a lot of traffic there. It's also just downtown.
Speaker 2:I would also be interested to see how this area looks in the future because, we've mentioned before, the convention center is being completely demolished and going to be almost doubled in size. It going underground, above ground right. Huge redevelopment of this section of downtown yep.
Speaker 1:Um, it's also going to be the closest stop to rainy street too. So, folks, uh, if you're wanting to look to go out on rainy street or rainy street for those of you not from the area is an area that has just exploded in growth.
Speaker 1:Um, massive residential towers, mixed-use towers, soon to be home to the tallest building in Texas, and an IHOP and an IHOP weirdly yes, right there, and then obviously we mentioned it a little bit here, but the Congress station as well, again serving downtown, which we don't need to get into too much depth of what it is there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and these two stations are very close together, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you're using this section of the rail line, I feel like you're probably coming through town. Your destination is the end of this line, or it is Rainy Street or something, Right?
Speaker 1:They're pretty close together.
Speaker 2:But I do think having the one on Congress is going to be beneficial as well. I mean, this is the central hub of Austin, so if you're coming into town from the north to southeast west, wherever and you end up in Austin like Congress is the heart Right? It's like where we want to go downtown. That's like where you start Exactly. It's easy access to Sixth Street. It's easy access to everything on Second Street, on Fourth Street. All of these are like major thoroughfares with tons of shops, businesses, theaters, all kinds of stuff um.
Speaker 1:Once the line follows third street, it eventually will then head north again on guadalupe um, and this section is where it gets a little interesting, so can I pause for a second?
Speaker 2:that's where you know that you live in austin. When you call it guadalupe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I first moved here, I was like guadalupe and everyone's like no, no, no, no, it's guadalupe. And I was like what? Yeah spelled guadalupe but pronounced guadalupe for some reason. Uh, anyway, the uh. This is where things start to get interesting, because we also need to think about what the roads are going to look like, for car traffic is as much as I don't want to think about it, but uh, so guadalupe and lavaca are kind of the major north south roads going through downtown for cars and for buses right now, and they both operate in one ways, with Lavaca going north and Guadalupe going south all the way until you hit MLK Boulevard.
Speaker 1:This new plan calls for the light rail to run both north and south on Guadalupe, with dedicated bus lanes on either side of the light rail that are basically seemingly looking like transit priority lanes. The reason I am deducting this from looking at the maps here in the renderings is it is showing buses only like kind of motions on the road for going straight. It is showing some car motions on the street, but it's only right turns for the most part. What that leads me to believe is they're leaving access to parking garages and things like that for people who live in the area. Um, what that leads me to believe is they're leaving access to uh parking garages and things like that for people who live in the area so that they can use the street, but not for general through fair down the road. Um, that means Lavaca, and they show this in the renderings. As well as being converted into a two way street, uh, that'll have two primary lanes in either direction, with some turning lanes, uh, mixed in as well.
Speaker 2:So really turning in guadalupe into a transit corridor yeah, it's going to take some getting used to for a lot of people in austin. I think this is actually when this is starting to be built out. I think a lot of people are going to be unsure about this yeah, I mean frankly, uh, people are afraid of change in general and like honest, it's not that often that I'm driving through this part of town.
Speaker 2:It's usually not that bad, so I don't, I don't know I think, as a somebody who's I do have to drive through this part of town a fair amount again. Don't live near a transit stop um it, it.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a challenge for people, I think I also think, though, that they're not just going to, like willy-nilly, throw up some different lanes and not have a plan for it. So we'll ultimately see. I mean there's. I mean people will definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're going to find reasons to complain, for sure, yeah and also, uh, this whole area has a lot of potential for some future changes. There's a couple of lots here that are our prime areas to be redeveloped. So, um, what we might see in the future, hopefully, is a one more more transit stop somewhere near Republic Square, but something to kind of round out downtown, because we only have the two stops in downtown in the core. But there is a little bit of a gap here. So it's not on this initial plan, but hopefully maybe in the future there's another stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll see. I think the addition of the next stop we're going to talk about, the Woolridge Square station, answers some of that. But I do agree that, like the Republic square, not having a stop is interesting but, given all of the road redesigns downtown, uh, we just don't know, like I think. I think that they may, might know more than I mean, I know, that they know more than we know, frankly. So I'm hoping that the leaving the Republic square stop out has something to do with how the buses are going to be rearranged or something. There's still a lot in flux here, but we'll see. But we'll continue to move along the line here. So, if I can see the skyline, is it?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Continuing to move along the line here. The next two stops are at Woolridge Square and 15th Street.
Speaker 2:I would call this like the Capitol stop, basically this is going to be the closest one to the Texas State Capitol. The Governor's Mansion is right here. Woolridge Park is nice. I also like to call this the prison stop, because it's literally on the same block as the county jail.
Speaker 1:That's the 15th Street, one right. Or is that the Woolridge Square? That's the Woolridge Square. This is Woolridge Square. It's the closest. That's the world. Okay, world square yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's the closest one to the county courthouse in the county jail, which is interesting. But this section of downtown does have a lot of potential for development as well, and I think a stop here is going to help spur some of that development right. So I do think this is a. This is kind of a sleepy part of downtown. I think we're going to see a lot more apartment buildings and shops and everything start popping up once the light rail is finished here right now.
Speaker 1:A lot of people refer to it as the lawyer district uh, especially the area just west of this, and it's it makes sense. I mean it's this is walking distance to the state capitol building um, a lot of law firms there's also referred to as the law ghetto the law ghetto. Oh that's.
Speaker 2:That's better than the lawyer district there's a whole section behind this park that is all um old historic homes, and every single one of those homes is a law office or some type of commercial office. It's not a real neighborhood, right.
Speaker 1:The other thing I'll say about this area 15th Street Station, surrounded by parking garages, so hopefully the land use changes a bit over time.
Speaker 2:And that's going to serve a lot of the state office buildings as well. There's the brand new Capitol Mall project in Austin, where you have a ton of new state office buildings in this area and a central mall-like corridor. The light rail doesn't go to that mall, but it's very close.
Speaker 1:Right. One thing I hope with this area, especially at 15th Street, is they do something to try to make the walking environment a little bit better, because presently it is terrible All stroads. As we move north, though, we get into some more exciting developments that some people also might have issues with in the future.
Speaker 2:This is going to be controversial. It's absolutely going to be controversial. You know what? I don't care. I love it, I like this one a lot, but people will be upset about it.
Speaker 1:So we're now moving into kind of the UT area, so two stations kind of serving the UT area, the first being UT Station, the second one kind of serves the north end of the area and kind of some of West Campus as well, being 29th Street. This whole stretch, though most of it is known as the Drag locally. It's an area where you've got the University of Texas on one side of the street, you have like a strip of businesses and restaurants and shops and whatnot on the other side of the street and the West Campus neighborhood kind of just set behind those businesses, which is the most dense neighborhood in town.
Speaker 1:Yes, probably in Texas, and yeah, I mean it's tons of student housing, apartments, all sorts of things over there. So what's really exciting in my view of this is that, uh, we're essentially pedestrianizing this whole section. So, um, and and with that it's not, I guess, fully pedestrianized you're gonna have the light rail running up and down the middle, um, you're then, in the renderings here, gonna have bus lanes in either direction, which to me, is crucial because this is some of the highest ridership of bus bus riders in the city as well. It would have been a miss, in my opinion, to move the bus routes off of the street and further away from campus, so I'm glad to see that they're including that here as well.
Speaker 1:As the, the biking is a little unclear. It seems like there's plans to either do a bike path or have it be bike and bus shared in this section, so we'll see ultimately what happens. The traffic through this area is going to need to be rerouted through West Campus, which has a pretty broken grid at the moment. So I'm curious how they work some of that out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's gonna be really interesting. West Campus, a lot of narrow streets, so it's going to be a huge redesign of this area. I think a lot of traffic is going to be pushed toward Lamar, which is another major thoroughfare just on the other side of West Campus, so we'll see how the traffic patterns change here. This pedestrianized version of the drag seems to extend up to 29th Street. Yep, again, this is a street full of restaurants and bars. There was a huge controversy over one particular restaurant called Dirty Martin's potentially being demolished. Dirty Martin's is not going to be demolished.
Speaker 1:Right, although they still have a sign. I took some photos and stuff for B-roll earlier and they do have a Save Dirties sign still up on the side. They are also the ones who are working with Bill Altschreier on the lawsuit. They're listed as I'm not a law person, plaintiffs or co-plaintiffs I don't know what it is but they're involved in the lawsuit and they're going to have a station right next to the restaurant, literally like right next to Dirty. Martins is where the 29th Street station is.
Speaker 2:So 29th slash, dirty Martins station.
Speaker 1:Yes, For those of you not from the area too, just to give you a concept of how much ridership this area could potentially have. You've got 52,000 students at UT Austin and 21,000 faculty and staff, which is wild, like when school is not in session.
Speaker 2:It is noticeable in Austin honestly, as much as Austin is a tech and government city, ut Austin is the draw for the city. It is the economic engine, it is the innovative engine of the city. It is really part of the heart of Texas and the heart of Austin and it is such a massive employer, it's such a massive attractor of people, not to mention sporting events and conferences and everything else that happens here. So, yes, it is already a high ridership and I think this is going to be the most used part of the system.
Speaker 1:Totally. Only other thing I'll note here is the amount of pedestrians in this area already exceeds the number of people traveling in personal vehicles in the corridor. The traffic through the corridor of people stuck in personal vehicles is high, but it's terrible to drive through there anyway. So I'm excited to see what plans the city puts forward as an alternative to that for folks in cars. But right now people on the sidewalks are crammed in for the most part, and it's I don't know. The space allocation should be based on how people are using it, and the vast majority of people are riding a bus or walking or biking. So good to see the correction happening here.
Speaker 2:Like we said, there is a lot of information to cover here. It is a 16,000 page document and there is not enough time to go through a 16,000 page document in our standard sort of 25, 30 minute format. If we were to do a page, a second, it would be 4.4 hours long.
Speaker 1:So what we're doing is breaking this into a part one, part two. Part two is out now on Patreon. If you subscribe on Patreon, you can get access to this now and watch the second half of this. Otherwise, the rest will be posted in the normal place next week on Tuesday. So without further ado. Thank you all so much for watching. Let us know your thoughts so far here too. We'd love to hear them in the comments and whatnot. But thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit. Tangents Tuesday.