AUSTIN | Transportation Updates

[paulsjv]

Originally Posted by M1EK

2. Round Rock's plans aren't going anywhere until the money fairy comes back from the dead. Even then, likely not.

Very true.. however, at least their rail looks like it is going places people actually want to go.

[austin242]

I wish the city had more money now

[paulsjv]

M1EK would have loved the short lived conversation on KVET this morning about the red line and how much it sucks, how they know that no matter what CAPMETRO says or does it will never be used because it goes no where people want it to go, how no one is currently riding it (except maybe 10 people), and it costs too much to ride.... lol

[M1EK]

Probably not, actually. Knowing KVET it was probably the Skaggs/Daugherty version of anti-all-rail-transit crap.

[hookem]

Originally Posted by paulsjv

M1EK would have loved the short lived conversation on KVET this morning about the red line and how much it sucks, how they know that no matter what CAPMETRO says or does it will never be used because it goes no where people want it to go, how no one is currently riding it (except maybe 10 people), and it costs too much to ride.... lol

That's a typical conversation on 590 KLBJ too... but as M1EK implies, most of the commentary from hosts and callers is anti rail (really, anti alternative transit -- people who call radio shows seem to hate bikes, buses, and trains!). There is no way to convince them that ANY rail would be good.

[M1EK]

Originally Posted by hookem

That's a typical conversation on 590 KLBJ too... but as M1EK implies, most of the commentary from hosts and callers is anti rail (really, anti alternative transit -- people who call radio shows seem to hate bikes, buses, and trains!). There is no way to convince them that ANY rail would be good.

I've been on their morning show (KLBJ's) twice; both times providing some nuance; but they don't seem interested in that most of the time. First time was many years ago when they were aghast at the 15% bike-ped rule (I explained to them that it was 15% of a tiny fraction of all transportation spending, not 15% of everything; and they settled down); 2nd time was a couple years ago about the city's urban rail plan when I drew the distinction between the Red Line POS and the possibility that the city's plan might actually work.

I've written Jeff Ward's show a bunch of times to no avail - he is absolutely uninterested in nuance, unless you're willing to call in and wait in line indefinitely, which is kind of hard to do in the afternoon.

[MichaelB]

Originally Posted by hookem

That's a typical conversation on 590 KLBJ too... but as M1EK implies, most of the commentary from hosts and callers is anti rail (really, anti alternative transit -- people who call radio shows seem to hate bikes, buses, and trains!). There is no way to convince them that ANY rail would be good.

Actually, people who call into radio shows just tend to hate!

[KevinFromTexas]

^Seconded.

I would not expect people who call to, listen to, or run the country music stations or KLBJ-AM, to be supportive of anything that helps with public transportation. They are of the segment of the population that "has their's" and everyone is SOL.

[M1EK]

901 boardings per average weekday in April, which included 2 days of the (higher) first paid week. That's 450-500 people per day using the service; likely trending down given what I saw at the stations.

viva el crackplog!

And I'm sorry I had to leave SecretAgentMan out of the "where is your mea culpa" list; I couldn't quickly find anything where he predicted OK ridership for this piece of crap. Maybe one of you can do so. Notice he's been absent ever since ridership began to trickle out?

[SecretAgentMan]

Originally Posted by M1EK

901 boardings per average weekday in April, which included 2 days of the (higher) first paid week. That's 450-500 people per day using the service; likely trending down given what I saw at the stations.

viva el crackplog!

And I'm sorry I had to leave SecretAgentMan out of the "where is your mea culpa" list; I couldn't quickly find anything where he predicted OK ridership for this piece of crap. Maybe one of you can do so. Notice he's been absent ever since ridership began to trickle out?

That's right. I wouldn't attempt to predict ridership without access to modeling data. That being said, I am a little disappointed with the numbers so far.

However, I think we have seen both anecdotal and empirical evidence that there is unmet demand for travel outside of typical commute times, with greater frequency and more reverse commute options. There are only two ways to remedy this.

Cap Metro could restrict its freight traffic to allow some evening and weekend service. This seems unlikely as they finally turned a profit on their freight operations this past year. This still wouldn't allow very frequent service or much reverse commuting because of the lack of multiple tracked sections.

The other option is to invest in double, or ideally, triple tracking much of the line and more vehicles to allow more frequent, two-way travel and extended service hours without compromising the ability to operate freight.

[M1EK]

People say all kinds of things when they don't have any skin in the game. There's ten people claiming that increased bus service would get them to leave their car at home for every one who actually does, when you increase said bus service.

The fact is that double-tracking this line and running trains all day makes it trivially more useful (it still doesn't run anywhere but to the dead corner of downtown and to a bunch of shuttle-buses) at the expense of all of our local (and probably federal) dollars its feasible to use for rail - meaning that double-tracking the Red Line kills urban rail dead.

In other words, we could kill rail for 30,000 commuters/day so a couple hundred people can get to/from 6th street on Friday and Saturday nights. Yay.

Tri-Rail already did this, and failed. One could learn from their mistake - it would be a lot less expensive than making it ourselves, and spending another decade or two not building rail that people will actually use in large numbers.

[hookem]

Yeah, I would not see any sensibility in trying to double track this line, and I don't think any voters will. I mean, it's still a line from "not quite downtown" to "nowhere" that takes an incredibly long route and goes very slow.

It's great that some people from Leander want to take the train on Saturday to get to a festival downtown... heck, I'd do it if I lived there. But really, is it worth the $7m a year (which I think is an incredibly inaccurate low-ball estimate) to the taxpayers of Austin to give them this sort of entertainment shuttle? That's all it will be...

I think we need to consider the other option: shut it down and use the money we save for a real transit option, whenever the opportunity comes again (and I realize that might be 10 years). Or maybe an airport line, which would at least be useful for many more Austinites.

[hismasterplan]

I should know this being from Austin, but is there a shuttle bus from the airport, into downtown Austin? I don't recall seeing any, but then again I wasn't looking. Always got the old ride from a friend.

The whole red line is pretty unfortunate as its a great concept being shed under bad light and poor design. If it sticks around, and ends up running more, it could be more popular in the future with all the new development along the way. Hopefully, any public ignorance or cynicism born out of this train won't reflect on future rail ballots. But it looks like it will if CapMetro doesn't get its act together and do something smart.

[hookem]

Originally Posted by hismasterplan

I should know this being from Austin, but is there a shuttle bus from the airport, into downtown Austin? I don't recall seeing any, but then again I wasn't looking. Always got the old ride from a friend.

Yes, the Airport Flyer http://www.capmetro.org/riding/airport.asp

Basically you can take it from the airport and it will drop you off at 6th and Congress. I've taken the bus from Westlake to the airport a few times, I can take the 30 route to downtown and then pick up the flyer. Sometimes even Cap Metro isn't so bad (although the frequency/hours still are lacking).

[paulsjv]

I'm always a fan of throwing a ton of money at a problem to try and "fix" it. What a joke.

[M1EK]

Originally Posted by hismasterplan

I should know this being from Austin, but is there a shuttle bus from the airport, into downtown Austin? I don't recall seeing any, but then again I wasn't looking. Always got the old ride from a friend.

The whole red line is pretty unfortunate as its a great concept being shed under bad light and poor design. If it sticks around, and ends up running more, it could be more popular in the future with all the new development along the way. Hopefully, any public ignorance or cynicism born out of this train won't reflect on future rail ballots. But it looks like it will if CapMetro doesn't get its act together and do something smart.

No, it's not a great concept; and the new development along the way isn't going to make any difference, because there's no new office development around the drop-off stations, and none in the foreseeable future. Neighborhoods have been fooled into allowing slightly higher residential density around some stations (this is a good thing!), but nearly none of these people will take the train to work on any given day - because on the other end, they face a shuttlebus, or, at best, a much longer walk than most people consider acceptable for rail transit.

[hismasterplan]

Commuter rail is a good concept if done right, that's all I meant.

[henrylightcap]

Any opinions on this new CEO? Does anyone know any details about the job she did in Corpus and Orlando?

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...ef-754512.html

[Dale]

Originally Posted by henrylightcap

Any opinions on this new CEO? Does anyone know any details about the job she did in Corpus and Orlando?

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...ef-754512.html

Orlandoan here. She was generally thought to have been an innovator, given what she had to work with, Orlando having no dedicated funding for bus transit.

[M1EK]

May ridership figures are out and they're even worse.

Average weekday ridership for May was 779 boardings a day. That's down 13.5 percent from the 901 daily boardings in April. Given the 19 daily train runs, the May average was 41 boardings on each run from Leander to downtown Austin or from downtown back to Leander (some runs originate or end at stations closer to downtown than Leander). Each train has 108 seats.

Remember, we're talking about boardings here, not individual passengers. And this is a commuter train on a 32-mile line, so almost everyone who gets on it once during a day has to get back on it later to return to where he or she started. That's two boardings for one person. So 779 boardings probably represents somewhere around 400 people a day using a train line that cost something well above $120 million to build and will cost more than $8 million a year to operate.

my coverage en el crackplog. Yes, Capital Metro apparently actually thinks they're going to get people that work/shop at the Domain to ride the train 'there' if they transfer one of the completely unused shuttlebuses to the Kramer station. Repeating for like the fifth time now a mistake already made by Tri-Rail; people with other options don't pick commutes with a transfer to a shuttlebus, period.