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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
Transit Wins: Four Projects Making Progress
Transit projects across the country are making measurable progress despite earlier funding and political challenges. We revisit four transit initiatives from previous episodes to highlight the positive developments that show momentum for public transportation investments.
• SunRail expansion in Orlando has secured the full $6 million needed for project development and environmental studies, with Universal contributing $2 million
• Dynamic testing has begun on Maryland's Purple Line, which is now 76% complete with a projected opening in winter 2027
• Dallas Area Transit Alliance (DATA) successfully fought against legislative attempts to cut DART's budget by 25%
• Austin City Council approved support columns for future I-35 caps downtown and stitches near Airport Boulevard, adopting a phased approach to urban reconnection
• These projects demonstrate the importance of public-private partnerships, grassroots advocacy, and strategic compromise in advancing transit
If you enjoy Transit Tangents, please like our videos, leave comments, and consider supporting us through Patreon or buying us a coffee through our website.
Your local bus might be stuck in traffic, but these transit news updates are cruising in the express lane. We're circling back to four past episodes with fresh updates, all packed into this week's ride on Transit Tangents.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and today we are going to be revisiting a few topics that we covered earlier this year that have all had some pretty mostly good news updates to them, which is always nice to see, especially now. I mean, we've been a little doom and gloom with some of the recent funding mechanisms and all sorts of stuff in regards to transit, but it's nice to have a little bit of good news.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good to have good news. So this will be a little bit of an update episode, maybe a little bit shorter today, but we wanted to make sure that you're up to date on the latest on these four topics.
Speaker 1:We're going to start off with one that was a pretty exciting topic to talk about at the time and it's gotten some positive news, which is the development of SunRail in Orlando. And in that episode we kind of posed the question is Brightline spurring public transit investment in Florida? And we were kind of like a cautious yes at the time. And the cautious yes has turned less cautious.
Speaker 2:It is spurring. Now it's just a yes, yes, yes, it is.
Speaker 1:So for those of you who didn't see that episode number one, I'd recommend you check it out. But number two for a quick reminder um sunrail, as it exists today, is a commuter service that goes north, south, running through orlando. Um it's almost 60 miles long, or? About 60 miles, really, long, long track um, which is pretty wild that it does that.
Speaker 2:Um gets you close to the airport but not quite not there um.
Speaker 1:It also, you know, interfaces pretty well with the existing bus services that are in the orlando region um.
Speaker 2:In 2024 it saw about 1.2 million riders um but for which it's good, because that's about 12 higher the year before, so there's definitely growth on the line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the proposed SunRail expansion will hopefully only add to this. So the expansion that was being proposed is for the Sunshine Corridor that would essentially connect the airport in Orlando, which is also the current terminus of Brightline. It would connect it to the existing Sunrail north-south line and it would connect further to the west, encompassing some areas closer to the convention center and destinations such as Universal and Disney Springs. So this would basically connect downtown Orlando, the airport, as well as some of these big, both tourism but also employment centers, all via rail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is huge for an area that is largely car focused.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:Orlando has a lot of highways all over the place, so this is a huge advancement for public transit in this area and hopefully gets more people off the road, especially if you're connecting these employment centers like get people off the road, especially if you're connecting these employment centers, like get people off the road and allow them to take trains from their place of residence to Disney, where they're probably working right, and when we talked about this in that episode, we had mentioned that the next step that was needed was to raise six million dollars for the project development and environmental study.
Speaker 1:We noted at the time that six million dollars is not that much in the grand scheme of things when you're talking about governments. At the time, two million had already been contributed from the Florida Department of Transportation, a half a million had been contributed from Seminole County and a half a million from the city of Orlando, and as of now, the entire six million dollars is now funded and as of now, the entire $6 million is now funded. So to make up that remainder, we had Universal actually chipping in $2 million, and then you also had the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, as well as Orange County, each chipping in a half a million each.
Speaker 2:You know, Disney could have paid for something.
Speaker 1:I was actually a little surprised. I mean, so we talked about it in the episode was some drama between like, where will the stops be? On that side, um and uh, universal had set aside some land I believe that they've kind of given to the project. Um, the stops won't be directly at universal or directly at disney springs, but it will be close enough for like a little shuttle yeah, and I think it.
Speaker 2:I think it's a smart move on their part Um, especially with universal. I mean, they've invested a lot of money in the area. Now they open a new park not advertising for the new park, but I want to go now, use this line to get to the new park.
Speaker 1:Yes, uh, one thing that I noted here I mean like you don't think of Florida as a transit state, so well, yeah. And I mean like the fact that like right off the bat was like, oh, florida dot, yeah, we'll throw in two million bucks for the study right away. It was positive. And then, uh, I pulled a quote from mass transit magazine here. Uh, f dot described the project quote as another transformational project for our region and it's just like imagine text not saying that about any non-highway project.
Speaker 1:They would never, they wouldn't even, they wouldn't even comment and they would immediately deny the two million dollar request. Yeah it's pretty wild.
Speaker 2:Texas. What are you doing? We can. We can be better than Florida right, you're letting, you're letting.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're gonna. We're gonna try to create some conservative Competition for transit. Greg Abbott, you're letting. You're letting Ron DeSantis beat you out. Come on, greg, get on it. Sorry, ron DeSantis beat you out. Come on, greg, get on it, sorry. This study is going to take two years and is a necessary step to gain federal dollars for this. Obviously, federal dollars will be a whole other hurdle, but my guess is, this being Florida, ron DeSantis and Trump.
Speaker 1:Although they've had a rocky relationship, I think they mostly have made amends at this point yeah yeah, but there will need to be federal dollars for this, as the price tag is somewhere in the realm I've got it on here uh is about four billion dollars to make this happen. Um, bright line will also be very much involved in this, as the this corridor will also be where the bright line trains will run before making their way eventually, to tampa which I think they're going to be sharing the lines right, or at least sharing the right-of-way Exactly yep, so wanted to give you that piece of positive news there, though, that that project is still moving forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right now I think it's still in the study phase, though, as you said, we've raised the money for it. That study phase will take about two years before they then submit for those federal dollars. So definitely plenty of time to keep this. Keep this as a recurring topic. To come back to yep. The next on our list is the Purple Line in Maryland. So we actually got a chance to do an episode about the Purple Line. We went to one of the stations that was sort of being built at the time. It was very cold. Who's freezing?
Speaker 2:so cold this is part of our larger DC episode, so Take a chance to go back and look at that purple line up. So look at the DC episode if you're interested in that region. But as a recap, the purple line is Eventually going to be a ring route that goes around the the DMV area.
Speaker 1:For now, that's being optimistic. But yeah, yeah, like.
Speaker 2:But yeah, the ultimate plan, the ultimate plan, the grand plan, is it will go all the way around the dmp area um. What we are seeing right now is the maryland portion that is nearing completion around 70 complete yeah and it's the one that is connecting uh for bethesda to new carolton.
Speaker 1:Basically, is that stretch where it's connecting? And first off, I did want to apologize as well. I said Silver Springs throughout the entire episode and y'all were not happy, not happy at all. One spring, silver Spring, one spring, my bad, I mean. I don't think it detracted from the rest of the episode. I even wrote Silver Springs on some of the maps too, and they were like oh my God. So apologies, my bad, but yeah. So over 76% complete. The big news though, as of recently on the Purple Line, is that dynamic testing began in April on some of the alignments. So they've actually got the light rail vehicles on the alignment testing driving them, which is pretty exciting, and that is an important step forward in any project like this. They've made a lot of progress on kind of all different types of segments. You've got some big flyover bridges that have been complete. Tunneling section near Bethesda is in really good shape right now and is progressing forward, and this was kind of a unique project because it does have tunnels, bridges on street. It's a little bit of everything.
Speaker 2:That's a little bit of everything. This one also has got a lot of criticism because it's one of the most expensive projects by rail mile in the country, and so there's been a lot of a lot of people giving it flack. But to see it finally getting to a point where we're in the testing phase, where we're nearing the completion phase, as you said, that is really, really excited to see. Yep, and even though it's been plagued by some delays and, again, cost overruns, uh, the current target date to open is winter of 2027.
Speaker 1:Yes, so we are quickly approaching that yep, uh, but happy, happy to see the positive progress forward here. If you're interested in more on this project, we went very in-depth in that episode, which we'll have linked here for you. 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 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.
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Speaker 1:Our next update here we have kind of revisited this topic a handful of times. This is an update on the funding for transit in Dallas. We talked to our friends at DATA the Dallas that there had been a bill introduced into the Texas legislature with the goal of essentially cutting DART's budget by more than 25 percent. It was a budget cut and then also a reallocation of some of the funding.
Speaker 2:I also I want to make a call out to data in the hard work that they've done in trying to fight the legislature's attempt to maybe kill this transit agency essentially which we can talk about but they have really focused on getting the word out, doing petitions, getting people involved. They brought over two dozen people down to Austin for a few days to do canvassing at legislators' doors in their offices, got a ton of meetings. They really put in the work.
Speaker 1:And this is an organization that is like barely they might not even be a year old, yet they're barely a year old if they're a year old. So kudos to their team who have kind of gotten this going. I know Connor and Tyler Kui several people whose names I'm forgetting right now but yeah, they've really been crushing it to make this happen. Yeah, and the hard work has paid off so far. There's still a little bit of things that could go wrong here, but the big opposition that they came to the statehouse to come and speak with legislatures about was this specific House bill. That House bill is no longer. There is still a version in the Senate, but it has kind of just been sitting there. The Texas legislation session is almost done. If, when we're going to edit this, this has already been done, we'll insert a little disclaimer right here saying that that Senate bill has also been killed. But some cautious optimism right now that the DART bill has not moved forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so love to see that, love to see the community involvement in fighting this. Another update here is that the city of Plano, which was sort of the driving force in fighting DART and enlisting other cities to oppose the DART board and go to the legislature to force the legislature to then uh reduce the amount of contribution and taxes and all that go back to our dart episode. There's a lot happening there, but plano, who is the main instigators? Uh has had a recent election in may of this year and they have elected new members of their city council for new places and two of the new council members are pro-DART.
Speaker 1:Or at least more transit friendly.
Speaker 2:Definitely friendlier to.
Speaker 1:DART.
Speaker 2:They still want to challenge DART on where is our money going? How can it be better used? But two of the candidates are not in favor of removing the funding entirely. We have two other candidates that are a little less friendly to DART, but it does look like there's some pro-transit advocates now within the Plano City Council, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in the future.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, and I mean in general, it was not looking good for a little bit. I feel like the bill was kind of having some momentum and whatnot. It made a lot of news, but glad to see what's seeming like a positive resolution to this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely the last one on our list is right here at home. It's a topic that we've talked about several times, and that is the Austin CAP program.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the CAP and STCH program we talked about in depth when we did an episode while we were in Dallas actually, program we talked about in depth, uh, when we did an episode while we were in dallas.
Speaker 1:Actually we talked about clad warren park where we were in dallas, but we also talked about the proposals for cap and stitch here in austin. Um, the short version of the story is, with the i-35 expansion um text dot trying to throw a bone to the city of austin if you will, uh said, hey, well, if you want, we can build the infrastructure so that you can have caps. Now it's not really throwing that much of a bone when you're going to make the city pay for the infrastructure to put the caps on and everything having to do with the caps. But I digress there, I guess. Um, there had been several proposals brought forward that we kind of went more in depth on and they were really expensive, was the issue. If you were to go through with all of the cap and stitch options that had been laid out, it was over a billion dollars started at 800 million, and then it quickly rose to over 1.2 billion yeah, um, which is a lot of money, especially when it's just basically the city doing it.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean, we did end up at one point well, not at one point. They technically still have a Reconnecting Communities grant that would cover something like $140 million of cost, but now all of these sorts of grants like that are up in the air, given that it's coming from the federal government. So the city had to basically try to decide what to do. Next. There had been some delays from TxDOT. This initially was supposed to be decided on back in fall and then in December and then in March. It was December and then in March the can kept getting kicked down the road. Essentially TxDOT was having delays which worked out to the favor of the Austin City Council, I would say, because they had some more time to figure out what to do and in the end we've ended up with kind of a compromise commitment here from the city council.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to read from KUT's transportation reporter here, just to have the specifics. So the Austin City Council approves support columns for parks over I-35 at Cesar Chavez to 7th Street, 11th to 12th Street, as well as two 300-foot-long stitches close to the red line crossing near Airport Boulevard. There had been a couple other proposals all put forward. The council was pretty split on this, actually basically right down the middle, and then a few amendments had been tossed in, so there were kind of two competing ones and this, ultimately, from Zoe Cadre, was the proposal that went through. Important to note here that it only right now commits to supporting funding for the, the support system, I guess.
Speaker 2:Uh, so no caps actually, which is the way that I thought we should have done it from the beginning. I mean the caps. We can spend the next 100 years building the caps whenever the city has money. That's fine. I think most people in austin would understand that and be fine with that. But the fact that we were sort of uh, forced to decide you build the supports now or you don't build them at all, right, it's frustrating.
Speaker 1:But I say, just build the supports and then do the rest of it later well, although I will say you wanted the full caps up north, I would love, love the full, I would love them. There is no support. There is no support for that right now.
Speaker 2:Okay, I would love the full program where you had caps stretching across the entire stretch of interstate, all that stuff. I would love to see it. But at the same time I will take what we can get.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:And if it's just building the support system?
Speaker 1:for it. Let's build the support system. Yep, yeah, and so, like you know, the most important ones in my view, like the Cesar Chavez to 7th Street, one makes a lot of sense. That's going to have a huge impact for the downtown area. The 11th to 12th Street one is kind of weird to me, honestly. I mean, I guess it doesn't hurt, but much money to do that, I don't quite get it. Uh, the university of texas at austin, um, they kind of have unlimited dollars. So we actually haven't heard an update from them.
Speaker 1:I haven't heard anything either my guess is they're gonna cap their whole huge stretch, which is going to be probably lovely um, and then the two stitches up north um were kind of a compromise. So there was a plan for a full cap up there which again to me felt pretty strange, I mean, especially for right now.
Speaker 2:I'd be like connecting some like strip malls and a weird area some areas that could definitely be redeveloped and I think, I think in the future, this is going to end up being a transit stop, a train stop, uh, train station. There we go, yeah, on the red line, and there will be more development in this area. So I do think that that is going to be a great amenity for the future.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not going to exist. There won't be a when they build it. They're building the, the train station or the cab, they're building the stitches. The stitches are going to provide more space, the stitches will be good, yeah, so yeah, you're going to have two wide bridges, I guess, I think the, the train. There will be room for train and bike lane basically there, but the cap in that area is no longer.
Speaker 2:Even if it's not a cap, it's still an opportunity to improve the transit station and connections in this area.
Speaker 1:Personally, I like the cap up there, the stitch up there, better than the cap. I don't see the long game in the cap up there as much, only because you're still going to have a pretty wide road for the frontage roads and then it's like airport boulevard and it's just like that's another giant road. It just doesn't feel like as pleasant of a potential experience that you might have downtown. But, um, we'll see. So I mean, in general, uh, I think that they've landed in a good spot on it.
Speaker 2:Um, I was curious where it was gonna go yeah, I was really nervous that we were not going to get anything. So yeah. I'm happy to see at least some progress on it.
Speaker 1:Yep, no, I think, and I mean it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out too, in the sense that, like there's still a lot of reliance on tech stock here to make this happen, the cost could go up dramatically still. Tech stocks track record I'll link this person's Twitter account, but there's some estimates on just looking at what TxDOT says the budget's going to be and then what it actually is on highway projects, and the chart is not looking good. So there's a very strong likelihood that Austin City Council is just going to be on the hook for more money later, which is not great.
Speaker 2:We're never getting an interview with TxDOT. At this point I don't even want one. We've never have we said anything good about TxDOT.
Speaker 1:There's not that much good to say. I don't think it's not true.
Speaker 2:If there are other episodes that you've watched that you want to see updates on, please let us know in the comments or shoot us an email. We'd love to do a deep dive into any of the episodes that we've done in the past and provide you with the latest, and we'll probably do more episodes like these in the future too, that are a little shorter, easier to consume.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just kind of revisit the topics we've already discussed yeah, and I think it's important to be like hey, here's a little status update, so um, yeah, um. With all that being said, though, if you have not liked this video already, please do so. It helps us out quite a bit. You can also leave a comment and let us know if you agree, disagree with the things we had to say about these sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Um, if you uh want to support the show, you can do so via our patreon, where these episodes will typically come out a little sooner. Uh, you can also support us by visiting our merch store using buy me a coffee. We just had somebody recently buy us five coffees.
Speaker 1:Thank you, so much for that I was. I got the caffeine jitters. Yeah, with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching. Enjoy the rest of your transit tangents. Tuesday silver springs.