January 21, 2025 • 19 mins
This episode continues our overview of Project Connect's 16,000-page environmental impact study. We focus on station placements, expected ridership, and potential displacement of local businesses. We raise key concerns about community impact while highlighting the significance of improved public transportation for Austin's future.
• Overview of Project Connect Draft EIS and light rail system
• Discussion of north and south rail line routes and stations
• Environmental impacts and displacement considerations
• Impact on local businesses
• Expected ridership numbers and travel time improvements
• Political implications and potential threats to funding
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey everybody and welcome back to this episode of
Transit Tangents.
My name is Chris and I'm Lewis,and this is actually a little
different.
It is a part two of our ProjectConnect Draft EIS review.
In part one if you haven'twatched that we went through
each of the stations station bystation, talked about sort of
(00:38):
the alignment of the system andwhat you're going to expect once
the system is built out.
Now we're going to get into therest of the document in part
two.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Let's pick right up where we left off.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
From 29th Street.
If you are familiar with Austin, the road Guadalupe does make a
little bit of a sharp turn asit starts heading north and kind
of realigns with the Austingrid.
Ut kind of offsets the wholegrid.
It's very annoying for those ofus who are a little OCD about
cities.
But where it is turning intothis north section of Guadalupe
(01:11):
this is my second gripe it istaking out my favorite pho place
, sip pho.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, I was a little sad to see that too.
I was just literally had.
I went there on Sunday orSaturday or Sunday, it's a
delicious place, so get your phobefore it's gone.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
But, uh, this continues up the road to 38th
street.
Uh, 38th street is the northernterminus of the line for now,
before it gets extended up to,eventually, the north lamar
transit center, but this will bethe northern terminus of the
phase one line.
This is also going to be, uh,the northern park and ride.
This park and ride is going tobe at the corner of 38th and
(01:47):
guadalupe and right now, what'ssitting there is like a jiffy
lube and a couple of like a carwash, a couple of small
businesses, maybe an urgent carethere as well.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, there's a starbucks.
Yes, some of it, some of itwill stay, some of it will
starbucks on the other side.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's fine, yeah, okay , yeah, it's just it's sort of
this other development uh, righton the the corner of hyde park
that is going to be a parkinggarage in the parking ride
parking ride area the area.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Right now too, there are some apartments close by.
Uh, there's also a medicalcenter right there, so I'd
imagine that we'll see somedecent ridership.
I have a gripe with building aparking ride here only because
in the future it's going toextend up a couple more stops.
There's already a parking ridewith a garage at the Triangle,
which is where the 45th stopwill be, which will be the first
(02:32):
one being built on the nextextension.
You've got parking at Crestviewalready.
You've got parking at the NorthLamar Transit Center.
It feels wasteful, but whatever.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I mean, maybe in the future they'll be able to put
something else where the parkinggarage is.
It just seems like there's justa design in a way that the
parking garage can be integratedinto a TOD at some point,
something I don't know.
Yeah, we'll see.
That brings us to the end ofthe blue line going north, the
orange line.
Blue slash orange at the top.
I guess, like I said, up to theNorth Lamar Transit Center.
If we are going back theopposite direction, we'll run
(03:08):
right back through downtown,across the river, starting at
the waterfront station.
Again, this is where the AustinAmerican-Statesman car storage
facility currently is.
This is where the line is goingto branch off, and it's going
to be only the Orange Line.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The Orange Line is going to go south through town
to old horse yes, um, you'llhave a stop at south congress,
which is kind of uh, in the.
The stop is kind of at thenewer part of the south congress
shops and whatnot.
Chris and I were just kind ofsaying we're surprised it's not
a little bit further south, likecloser to where alan's boots is
, and stuff feels like it wouldmake a little bit more sense
there.
But but this is a spot whereeveryone who comes to visit
(03:46):
Austin is going to go to SouthCongress.
It's a major tourist spot.
A lot of good restaurants andstuff too, so locals will go
there.
There's some music venues, allthat sort of stuff.
To me, the more exciting stopis at Old Torf, which will
currently be the southernterminus.
There are plans to extend thissignificantly further down the
line, but we're going to talkabout Old Torf today being the
end of it.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
We have our HEB-oriented development there.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yes, yeah, so the original HEB store was the
original one, which, if you'renot from Texas, is a grocery
store was demolished and theybuilt a brand new one on the
corner, and there is significantredevelopment about to take
place on one of the oppositecorners, which is currently an
abandoned strip mall.
So we'll see a lot of mixed-usedevelopment residential offices
(04:31):
, I believe, a hotel, even kindof all in the area.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
This will also be a park-and-ride part of the system
which again kind of anunnecessary park-and-ride.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, because, again, this will extend further.
I mean, if you're in a car andyou're already at old Horf,
there's no freaking way you'regetting out to ride to downtown.
I just maybe I'm wrong, but, um, yeah, uh, I also think having
the grocery store right at thestop is going to make this a
popular spot.
Um, I can imagine folks wholive downtown who want a real
(05:01):
grocery store and are living carfree.
Uh, which would be an amazingfuture in Austin to have it be
easy to live car free.
I mean, people do it.
It is difficult, for sure, andI can imagine having a quick
light rail line from downtown tothe old Torf station being a
really popular spot with thegrocery store right at the
(05:22):
station.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So that is a summary of all of the stations and where
the light rail is going to goall through town.
So, with all that being said,how often are you going to see a
train at these stations?
And right now it looks like themain trunk.
The trains are estimated to beevery five minutes, which is
really impressive and means weare definitely getting signal
(05:43):
priority, because there's no waythat's happening without it.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Totally yeah.
And so five minutes at peak andeven off peak every seven and a
half minutes.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Which I would take that as well.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Totally so.
That means on the two kind ofwhere it splits off down
Riverside and South Congresswe're looking at every 10
minutes and every 15 minutesoff-peak, which is a major
improvement from any bus in thecity for the most part.
Right now the most frequentbuses in Austin are every 10
minutes and I will tell you thatthey're not every 10 minutes
normally.
So, yeah, love to see thefrequencies here.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
This is also a big improvement on the just current
travel times on the existingsystem.
So right now, if you're goingto go from 38th Street to Old
Torf, which would be the extentof the full Orange Line, if you
were to do this on a bus, theestimated travel time is about
33 minutes, and that's kind ofgenerous, especially depending
on what time of day it is,because traffic through there
(06:35):
gets pretty heavy.
If you were going to take 38thStreet to Yellow Jacket, which
is the end of the blue line,that's going to be about 45
minutes, again, highly dependenton traffic.
Yeah, that one requires atransfer yeah, and it would
require a transfer and that'sonly going to get slower over
time as more people move toAustin and there's more
development Timing with thelight rail 38th to Old Torp
(06:58):
Street 20 minutes.
Yeah, it's amazing, it's reallyreally good.
And then light rail 38th toYellow Jacket 26 minutes.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
That one's like massive improvement.
That means, like again, withthe extension to the airport,
like downtown to the airportwill be quick and, like right
now, the 20 from the airportwill be quick and, like right
now, the 20 from the airport todowntown and vice versa, which I
actually do it quite a bit ispainfully slow down Riverside
because it stops all the timeLike there's just so many people
getting on and off.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I'd say the times are comparable to our dream gondola
system.
They are probably that's right.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
If you go back to our gondola episode a little while
ago, a a little while ago.
A couple other interestingthings to point out here, and
also this is a bit of ashout-out to the Austin Urbanist
Discord.
I don't know that I'm allowedto share a link to it, but if
you're interested, maybe I don'twant to upset anyone who runs
it, but if you're interested,send a message or something and
we can get you an invite Becauseit's a big group.
(07:49):
But shout-out to Parker andseveral other people in there,
it's always really informative.
There's a ton of like reallygood transit wonks in there.
Parker was looking into thekind of lengths of the stations
and caught something that Ihadn't seen before.
So presently the stations arenot all being built to their
full length, so a full lengthstation would be about 350 feet.
(08:11):
Currently a handful of them areonly going to be about 250 feet
long.
To start.
Um, a lot of that is to justlike disrupt less traffic in
some of these areas wherethey're interfering with
stoplights and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Um and it looks like there's a lot of sections where
the if you have three trains aregoing to be leaning into
traffic a little ways.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Right, they would on.
Yes, they would.
So you would.
That would be with the 350-footstop.
So with some assumptions ofwhat vehicles are being used,
you'd only be able to do two-carlong trains with the shorter
stations.
With that the potentialcapacity is to move 5,640 people
(08:49):
per hour along the trunk linein each direction.
That would go up, obviously, ifthe stations were extended,
allowing for the third car to beadded on.
But again, yeah, shout out toParker in the Discord.
I met Parker a couple timesdoing some volunteer work for
Adam over the summer.
So yeah, but overall theexpected ridership of the system
(09:13):
by 2040 is about 29,000 peopleper day.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, so a sizable amount.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Totally.
And just to give somecomparison, the 801, which is
the highest ridership line inthe city right now, sees about
7,300 riders per day.
And then the 20 is another highridership route, but it's the
area that goes along riverside.
Uh sees about 5 000 per day,with the full system of cap
metro being about 80 000 per daypresently.
(09:39):
So, um, this will capture a big, a big number of people and has
the potential, with all thedevelopments that we've kind of
talked about, to increasesignificantly in time.
The city's.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
The development is so the city's densifying over time
.
We have the home initiative sosmaller, more development in the
neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
All that's going to contribute to higher ridership
as well as well as the extendedsections of the line that
hopefully will come soon.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, extended sections to the airport, to the
North Lamar Transit Center andto the South Lamar Transit
Center, not.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
South Lamar, south Congress.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And to the South Congress Transit Center.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And eventually even to Stassney, I believe, is the
furthest build-out, but that oneI'm not going to hold my breath
for that coming anytime soon.
We'll jump right back into theepisode in just a second, but
first, if you haven't liked thisvideo or left a comment, please
do so.
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Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, if you want to support the show.
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Speaker 1 (10:39):
Lastly, if you want to support the show directly and
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Speaker 2 (10:47):
So we also looked at the environmental impact portion
of the environmental impactstudy and this really focuses on
changes to the naturalenvironment, but also focuses on
the human and urban environmentas well, and that includes
displacement.
Most of this transit line isgoing to run through existing
right of way, pretty much all ongrade at street, so the natural
(11:10):
environmental impact prettyminimal and they call that out
in the document, that a lot ofwhat we're seeing as far as
changes to drainage and all thiskind of stuff, all of that
infrastructure already existsand that impact's already
happened with the roadways.
Where you're going to seedisruption, it's all going to be
temporary, with temporaryconstruction sites, right.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And when we look at some of the uh that would need
to be displaced as part of this,um, we're going to see 27 full
acquisitions, so that is uh,eminent domain being used to
take 27 properties.
Rest in peace sip for, yes,rest in peace info and some of
the some of the spots in thatarea I'm less upset about.
There's like a gas stationthat's taken, that's like not
good land used to have thereanyway, all that sort of stuff,
(11:53):
and then 277 partialacquisitions.
So that's we need a little bitmore room to widen the light
rail in the road or that sort ofthing.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, taking a little sliver of yards or like where
sidewalk exists now, just kindof extending those out a little
bit.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yep, setting those out a little bit, yep, and among
these kind of acquisitions andpartial acquisitions, it's going
to displace about 59 businessesand eight residential condo
units.
That one's a potentially on thecondo units, but as far as the
businesses go, obviously likeI'm not a huge fan of eminent
domain where it can be avoided,but in the case of this this is
(12:28):
like clearly for a public good.
Hated on I-35 because I justlike they could have done stuff
in the footprint better.
Uh, there's a lot of otheroptions there.
As far as building a light railsystem in the city, it's
obviously going to be a net good.
In time it's going to get a lotof use and all this sort of
stuff.
Um, we're just, you know,hopefully these businesses and
(12:49):
I'm sure they will be well takencare of and helped to relocate
when possible well, and it'salso called out in the
environmental impact study thatwe are spurring new growth and a
lot of these areas too.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
So when you make these, these statistics on the
displacement, it's really hardto then say how many new
businesses are going to come inin these places, or how many new
opportunities the businessesthat were there, how many new
spaces are gonna to come in inthese places, or how many new
opportunities the businessesthat were there, how many new
spaces they're going to haveonce the construction's done.
And what is great about thiswhole process of building out
the system is that there areprograms that help businesses
(13:22):
kind of bridge that gap betweenthe construction phase and
getting to a more permanentspace or finding a new space.
In the the environmental impactstudy they even call out that
LoopNet shows we have like 80plus commercial parcels
available for purchase or rent,and so there are options for
these businesses.
They don't necessarily have toclose down.
There are programs out there toassist.
(13:44):
One thing I'm really happy tosee here there's not a lot of
residential displacement wementioned there's eight
residential condos that you'regonna you know, maybe limit
their access to parking.
There's a couple ofsingle-family homes that are
gonna have to go aroundriverside, but for the most part
the displacement is throughcommercial and industrial sites
(14:05):
and very, very few residentialdisplacements.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Right, um, the other kind of major area would be
where the operations andmaintenance facility is going to
go.
Again, it isn't an area thatwill be well suited to find
additional space, given theprograms that you're talking
about.
It isn't an area that isalready zoned as light
industrial and, frankly, itseems like an appropriate use
(14:28):
for the space.
The city in the document alsosays they're going to make sure
that they're using tracks thatkeep things as quiet as possible
.
There are some homes not superfar away, but those homes are
already backed up to a lightindustrial area as it is, so
it's not going to be asignificant land use change for
the neighborhood.
Unrelated specifically to theEIS, but related very much to
(14:50):
Project Connect.
We talked about this in theprevious episode.
A little bit too kind of acouple main threats, unrelated
specifically to the EIS butrelated very much to Project
Connect we talked about this inthe previous episode.
A little bit too Kind of acouple main threats to the
project in general, being inTexas, were lawsuits, some of
which have had some successfulresults, and or steps in the
right direction.
The other is the statelegislature.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yes, and the state legislature has a history of
creating preemption laws in thestate, especially targeting
Austin, where anything that wetry to do as a city, the state
then comes in and says you can'tdo that Right.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
So much for small government, huh.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, and Project Connect is no different.
It's also not a surprise toanybody that the Texas
legislature very conservativeand primarily elects leaders
from parts of the state that area little more rural, small town
, that aren't huge supporters oftransit.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Right, and what we just saw happen in the state
legislature was prettyinteresting.
So there were kind of twocharacters who were up to be
elected for Speaker of the Houseyes, the House and the Senate
are both overwhelming Republicanmajorities in Texas and you had
two people.
You had David Cook, who wasmore popular among kind of
(15:57):
MAGA-style Republicans, and thenyou had Dustin Burroughs, who
is more of like an establishmentRepublican character Still very
right-wing.
Yes, but more like traditional,I guess, conservative.
There's a lot that theDemocrats who have worked to
elect him disagree on.
But what happened was Democratsworked with boroughs supporters
(16:20):
, essentially in the house, toelect boroughs.
Who actually was electedspeaker of the house with more
Democrat votes than Republicanvotes.
Um, the governor and otherfigures are very not happy that
this happened, but essentiallyto get this guy elected to
Speaker of the House, a lot ofDemocrats in the state,
including members of the Austindelegation, voted him in
(16:51):
no-transcript.
But please don't mess with ourlocal government.
And when we look at there'ssome articles that talk about
this.
But local, go ahead.
Sorry, you're going to.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
No, I was just saying he's still not.
People in Austin still aren't ahuge fan, right?
I mean he helped pass thelimitation on how much cities
can tax, so it really makes itharder to add new programs in
the city because it limits that.
But what I was going to say isone of the most vocal opponents
of project connect, which isellen trox claire, who's a
representative who doesn't livein austin, mind you, um, but is
(17:23):
a huge uh voice against projectconnect and against uh the city
of austin, anything they do.
She was very vocal againstburroughs and in support of Cook
.
Now she has sort of severedthat tie to the Speaker of the
House.
So any bills that sheintroduces that could
potentially take away fundingfor Project Connect or cancel
(17:44):
the project, maybe, maybe,potentially they won't get the
oxygen that they definitelydon't deserve.
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
There was a great article I subscribed to.
It's the Austin politicsnewsletter, I think Jack Craven,
or Craver is the the.
He's like an independent localjournalist worth checking out,
honestly like, uh, if you careabout local journalism, finding
folks like him is important, Ithink.
But uh, the headline of hisarticle about this was something
along the lines of, like, theright, right wing, uh, uh,
(18:14):
speaker of the house was chosenthe right, right wing.
I thought it was like.
I was like, oh, that's a prettygood way, that's good, yeah, um
, yeah.
So you know cautious optimismthere that you know one of the
potential fires to this projecthas been maybe put out or at
least gotten under control for alittle while.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Maybe there's at least a little bit of political
will to negotiate.
Uh, leaving it alone yeah,we'll'll see and this also goes
towards the Dallas things aswell.
You know we look at the Planotrying to leave Dart.
Maybe this also helps themAbsolutely Well.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
With all that being said, let us know what you think
about this.
Obviously, this is a projectnear and dear to our hearts
because we live here in Austin,but, yeah, it's exciting to see.
Nonetheless, if you want tofurther support us continuing to
do the show, we go all over theplace on the ground at some of
these places.
We're going to be in Dallasactually at the end of this
month.
If you want to help support usdirectly, patreon is the best
(19:03):
place to do so.
You can also listen whereveryou get your podcasts Watch here
on YouTube.
If you haven't liked this videoalready, please consider doing
so.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Leave a comment.
If you haven't liked this videoalready, please consider doing
so.
Leave a comment.
If you want to make a one-timedonation, we also have access to
Buy Me a Coffee, so please feelfree to go buy me a coffee.
And, as we have mentioned in acouple episodes and on our new
mid-roll, we have a store.
So if you want your TransitTangent swag, which includes
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things to come, check out thelink to our store as well.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And, with all that being said, thank you all so
much for watching and enjoy therest of your Transit Tangents
Tuesday.
Hey everybody and welcome back to this episode of
Transit Tangents.
My name is Chris and I'm Lewis,and this is actually a little
different.
It is a part two of our ProjectConnect Draft EIS review.
In part one if you haven'twatched that we went through
each of the stations station bystation, talked about sort of
(00:38):
the alignment of the system andwhat you're going to expect once
the system is built out.
Now we're going to get into therest of the document in part
two.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Let's pick right up where we left off.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
From 29th Street.
If you are familiar with Austin, the road Guadalupe does make a
little bit of a sharp turn asit starts heading north and kind
of realigns with the Austingrid.
Ut kind of offsets the wholegrid.
It's very annoying for those ofus who are a little OCD about
cities.
But where it is turning intothis north section of Guadalupe
(01:11):
this is my second gripe it istaking out my favorite pho place
, sip pho.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, I was a little sad to see that too.
I was just literally had.
I went there on Sunday orSaturday or Sunday, it's a
delicious place, so get your phobefore it's gone.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
But, uh, this continues up the road to 38th
street.
Uh, 38th street is the northernterminus of the line for now,
before it gets extended up to,eventually, the north lamar
transit center, but this will bethe northern terminus of the
phase one line.
This is also going to be, uh,the northern park and ride.
This park and ride is going tobe at the corner of 38th and
(01:47):
guadalupe and right now, what'ssitting there is like a jiffy
lube and a couple of like a carwash, a couple of small
businesses, maybe an urgent carethere as well.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, there's a starbucks.
Yes, some of it, some of itwill stay, some of it will
starbucks on the other side.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's fine, yeah, okay , yeah, it's just it's sort of
this other development uh, righton the the corner of hyde park
that is going to be a parkinggarage in the parking ride
parking ride area the area.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Right now too, there are some apartments close by.
Uh, there's also a medicalcenter right there, so I'd
imagine that we'll see somedecent ridership.
I have a gripe with building aparking ride here only because
in the future it's going toextend up a couple more stops.
There's already a parking ridewith a garage at the Triangle,
which is where the 45th stopwill be, which will be the first
(02:32):
one being built on the nextextension.
You've got parking at Crestviewalready.
You've got parking at the NorthLamar Transit Center.
It feels wasteful, but whatever.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I mean, maybe in the future they'll be able to put
something else where the parkinggarage is.
It just seems like there's justa design in a way that the
parking garage can be integratedinto a TOD at some point,
something I don't know.
Yeah, we'll see.
That brings us to the end ofthe blue line going north, the
orange line.
Blue slash orange at the top.
I guess, like I said, up to theNorth Lamar Transit Center.
If we are going back theopposite direction, we'll run
(03:08):
right back through downtown,across the river, starting at
the waterfront station.
Again, this is where the AustinAmerican-Statesman car storage
facility currently is.
This is where the line is goingto branch off, and it's going
to be only the Orange Line.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The Orange Line is going to go south through town
to old horse yes, um, you'llhave a stop at south congress,
which is kind of uh, in the.
The stop is kind of at thenewer part of the south congress
shops and whatnot.
Chris and I were just kind ofsaying we're surprised it's not
a little bit further south, likecloser to where alan's boots is
, and stuff feels like it wouldmake a little bit more sense
there.
But but this is a spot whereeveryone who comes to visit
(03:46):
Austin is going to go to SouthCongress.
It's a major tourist spot.
A lot of good restaurants andstuff too, so locals will go
there.
There's some music venues, allthat sort of stuff.
To me, the more exciting stopis at Old Torf, which will
currently be the southernterminus.
There are plans to extend thissignificantly further down the
line, but we're going to talkabout Old Torf today being the
end of it.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
We have our HEB-oriented development there.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yes, yeah, so the original HEB store was the
original one, which, if you'renot from Texas, is a grocery
store was demolished and theybuilt a brand new one on the
corner, and there is significantredevelopment about to take
place on one of the oppositecorners, which is currently an
abandoned strip mall.
So we'll see a lot of mixed-usedevelopment residential offices
(04:31):
, I believe, a hotel, even kindof all in the area.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
This will also be a park-and-ride part of the system
which again kind of anunnecessary park-and-ride.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, because, again, this will extend further.
I mean, if you're in a car andyou're already at old Horf,
there's no freaking way you'regetting out to ride to downtown.
I just maybe I'm wrong, but, um, yeah, uh, I also think having
the grocery store right at thestop is going to make this a
popular spot.
Um, I can imagine folks wholive downtown who want a real
(05:01):
grocery store and are living carfree.
Uh, which would be an amazingfuture in Austin to have it be
easy to live car free.
I mean, people do it.
It is difficult, for sure, andI can imagine having a quick
light rail line from downtown tothe old Torf station being a
really popular spot with thegrocery store right at the
(05:22):
station.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So that is a summary of all of the stations and where
the light rail is going to goall through town.
So, with all that being said,how often are you going to see a
train at these stations?
And right now it looks like themain trunk.
The trains are estimated to beevery five minutes, which is
really impressive and means weare definitely getting signal
(05:43):
priority, because there's no waythat's happening without it.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Totally yeah.
And so five minutes at peak andeven off peak every seven and a
half minutes.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Which I would take that as well.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Totally so.
That means on the two kind ofwhere it splits off down
Riverside and South Congresswe're looking at every 10
minutes and every 15 minutesoff-peak, which is a major
improvement from any bus in thecity for the most part.
Right now the most frequentbuses in Austin are every 10
minutes and I will tell you thatthey're not every 10 minutes
normally.
So, yeah, love to see thefrequencies here.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
This is also a big improvement on the just current
travel times on the existingsystem.
So right now, if you're goingto go from 38th Street to Old
Torf, which would be the extentof the full Orange Line, if you
were to do this on a bus, theestimated travel time is about
33 minutes, and that's kind ofgenerous, especially depending
on what time of day it is,because traffic through there
(06:35):
gets pretty heavy.
If you were going to take 38thStreet to Yellow Jacket, which
is the end of the blue line,that's going to be about 45
minutes, again, highly dependenton traffic.
Yeah, that one requires atransfer yeah, and it would
require a transfer and that'sonly going to get slower over
time as more people move toAustin and there's more
development Timing with thelight rail 38th to Old Torp
(06:58):
Street 20 minutes.
Yeah, it's amazing, it's reallyreally good.
And then light rail 38th toYellow Jacket 26 minutes.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
That one's like massive improvement.
That means, like again, withthe extension to the airport,
like downtown to the airportwill be quick and, like right
now, the 20 from the airportwill be quick and, like right
now, the 20 from the airport todowntown and vice versa, which I
actually do it quite a bit ispainfully slow down Riverside
because it stops all the timeLike there's just so many people
getting on and off.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I'd say the times are comparable to our dream gondola
system.
They are probably that's right.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
If you go back to our gondola episode a little while
ago, a a little while ago.
A couple other interestingthings to point out here, and
also this is a bit of ashout-out to the Austin Urbanist
Discord.
I don't know that I'm allowedto share a link to it, but if
you're interested, maybe I don'twant to upset anyone who runs
it, but if you're interested,send a message or something and
we can get you an invite Becauseit's a big group.
(07:49):
But shout-out to Parker andseveral other people in there,
it's always really informative.
There's a ton of like reallygood transit wonks in there.
Parker was looking into thekind of lengths of the stations
and caught something that Ihadn't seen before.
So presently the stations arenot all being built to their
full length, so a full lengthstation would be about 350 feet.
(08:11):
Currently a handful of them areonly going to be about 250 feet
long.
To start.
Um, a lot of that is to justlike disrupt less traffic in
some of these areas wherethey're interfering with
stoplights and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Um and it looks like there's a lot of sections where
the if you have three trains aregoing to be leaning into
traffic a little ways.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Right, they would on.
Yes, they would.
So you would.
That would be with the 350-footstop.
So with some assumptions ofwhat vehicles are being used,
you'd only be able to do two-carlong trains with the shorter
stations.
With that the potentialcapacity is to move 5,640 people
(08:49):
per hour along the trunk linein each direction.
That would go up, obviously, ifthe stations were extended,
allowing for the third car to beadded on.
But again, yeah, shout out toParker in the Discord.
I met Parker a couple timesdoing some volunteer work for
Adam over the summer.
So yeah, but overall theexpected ridership of the system
(09:13):
by 2040 is about 29,000 peopleper day.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, so a sizable amount.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Totally.
And just to give somecomparison, the 801, which is
the highest ridership line inthe city right now, sees about
7,300 riders per day.
And then the 20 is another highridership route, but it's the
area that goes along riverside.
Uh sees about 5 000 per day,with the full system of cap
metro being about 80 000 per daypresently.
(09:39):
So, um, this will capture a big, a big number of people and has
the potential, with all thedevelopments that we've kind of
talked about, to increasesignificantly in time.
The city's.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
The development is so the city's densifying over time
.
We have the home initiative sosmaller, more development in the
neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
All that's going to contribute to higher ridership
as well as well as the extendedsections of the line that
hopefully will come soon.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, extended sections to the airport, to the
North Lamar Transit Center andto the South Lamar Transit
Center, not.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
South Lamar, south Congress.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And to the South Congress Transit Center.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
And eventually even to Stassney, I believe, is the
furthest build-out, but that oneI'm not going to hold my breath
for that coming anytime soon.
We'll jump right back into theepisode in just a second, but
first, if you haven't liked thisvideo or left a comment, please
do so.
It helps us out quite a bit andwe also have some exciting news
.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, if you want to support the show.
We have swag, we havemerchandise, our store where you
can get hats, t-shirts, hoodies, a bunch of other things coming
, new designs for that all goingto be coming up in the next few
weeks.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Lastly, if you want to support the show directly and
get access to early episodes,no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
So we also looked at the environmental impact portion
of the environmental impactstudy and this really focuses on
changes to the naturalenvironment, but also focuses on
the human and urban environmentas well, and that includes
displacement.
Most of this transit line isgoing to run through existing
right of way, pretty much all ongrade at street, so the natural
(11:10):
environmental impact prettyminimal and they call that out
in the document, that a lot ofwhat we're seeing as far as
changes to drainage and all thiskind of stuff, all of that
infrastructure already existsand that impact's already
happened with the roadways.
Where you're going to seedisruption, it's all going to be
temporary, with temporaryconstruction sites, right.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And when we look at some of the uh that would need
to be displaced as part of this,um, we're going to see 27 full
acquisitions, so that is uh,eminent domain being used to
take 27 properties.
Rest in peace sip for, yes,rest in peace info and some of
the some of the spots in thatarea I'm less upset about.
There's like a gas stationthat's taken, that's like not
good land used to have thereanyway, all that sort of stuff,
(11:53):
and then 277 partialacquisitions.
So that's we need a little bitmore room to widen the light
rail in the road or that sort ofthing.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, taking a little sliver of yards or like where
sidewalk exists now, just kindof extending those out a little
bit.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yep, setting those out a little bit, yep, and among
these kind of acquisitions andpartial acquisitions, it's going
to displace about 59 businessesand eight residential condo
units.
That one's a potentially on thecondo units, but as far as the
businesses go, obviously likeI'm not a huge fan of eminent
domain where it can be avoided,but in the case of this this is
(12:28):
like clearly for a public good.
Hated on I-35 because I justlike they could have done stuff
in the footprint better.
Uh, there's a lot of otheroptions there.
As far as building a light railsystem in the city, it's
obviously going to be a net good.
In time it's going to get a lotof use and all this sort of
stuff.
Um, we're just, you know,hopefully these businesses and
(12:49):
I'm sure they will be well takencare of and helped to relocate
when possible well, and it'salso called out in the
environmental impact study thatwe are spurring new growth and a
lot of these areas too.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
So when you make these, these statistics on the
displacement, it's really hardto then say how many new
businesses are going to come inin these places, or how many new
opportunities the businessesthat were there, how many new
spaces are gonna to come in inthese places, or how many new
opportunities the businessesthat were there, how many new
spaces they're going to haveonce the construction's done.
And what is great about thiswhole process of building out
the system is that there areprograms that help businesses
(13:22):
kind of bridge that gap betweenthe construction phase and
getting to a more permanentspace or finding a new space.
In the the environmental impactstudy they even call out that
LoopNet shows we have like 80plus commercial parcels
available for purchase or rent,and so there are options for
these businesses.
They don't necessarily have toclose down.
There are programs out there toassist.
(13:44):
One thing I'm really happy tosee here there's not a lot of
residential displacement wementioned there's eight
residential condos that you'regonna you know, maybe limit
their access to parking.
There's a couple ofsingle-family homes that are
gonna have to go aroundriverside, but for the most part
the displacement is throughcommercial and industrial sites
(14:05):
and very, very few residentialdisplacements.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Right, um, the other kind of major area would be
where the operations andmaintenance facility is going to
go.
Again, it isn't an area thatwill be well suited to find
additional space, given theprograms that you're talking
about.
It isn't an area that isalready zoned as light
industrial and, frankly, itseems like an appropriate use
(14:28):
for the space.
The city in the document alsosays they're going to make sure
that they're using tracks thatkeep things as quiet as possible
.
There are some homes not superfar away, but those homes are
already backed up to a lightindustrial area as it is, so
it's not going to be asignificant land use change for
the neighborhood.
Unrelated specifically to theEIS, but related very much to
(14:50):
Project Connect.
We talked about this in theprevious episode.
A little bit too kind of acouple main threats, unrelated
specifically to the EIS butrelated very much to Project
Connect we talked about this inthe previous episode.
A little bit too Kind of acouple main threats to the
project in general, being inTexas, were lawsuits, some of
which have had some successfulresults, and or steps in the
right direction.
The other is the statelegislature.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yes, and the state legislature has a history of
creating preemption laws in thestate, especially targeting
Austin, where anything that wetry to do as a city, the state
then comes in and says you can'tdo that Right.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
So much for small government, huh.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, and Project Connect is no different.
It's also not a surprise toanybody that the Texas
legislature very conservativeand primarily elects leaders
from parts of the state that area little more rural, small town
, that aren't huge supporters oftransit.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Right, and what we just saw happen in the state
legislature was prettyinteresting.
So there were kind of twocharacters who were up to be
elected for Speaker of the Houseyes, the House and the Senate
are both overwhelming Republicanmajorities in Texas and you had
two people.
You had David Cook, who wasmore popular among kind of
(15:57):
MAGA-style Republicans, and thenyou had Dustin Burroughs, who
is more of like an establishmentRepublican character Still very
right-wing.
Yes, but more like traditional,I guess, conservative.
There's a lot that theDemocrats who have worked to
elect him disagree on.
But what happened was Democratsworked with boroughs supporters
(16:20):
, essentially in the house, toelect boroughs.
Who actually was electedspeaker of the house with more
Democrat votes than Republicanvotes.
Um, the governor and otherfigures are very not happy that
this happened, but essentiallyto get this guy elected to
Speaker of the House, a lot ofDemocrats in the state,
including members of the Austindelegation, voted him in
(16:51):
no-transcript.
But please don't mess with ourlocal government.
And when we look at there'ssome articles that talk about
this.
But local, go ahead.
Sorry, you're going to.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
No, I was just saying he's still not.
People in Austin still aren't ahuge fan, right?
I mean he helped pass thelimitation on how much cities
can tax, so it really makes itharder to add new programs in
the city because it limits that.
But what I was going to say isone of the most vocal opponents
of project connect, which isellen trox claire, who's a
representative who doesn't livein austin, mind you, um, but is
(17:23):
a huge uh voice against projectconnect and against uh the city
of austin, anything they do.
She was very vocal againstburroughs and in support of Cook
.
Now she has sort of severedthat tie to the Speaker of the
House.
So any bills that sheintroduces that could
potentially take away fundingfor Project Connect or cancel
(17:44):
the project, maybe, maybe,potentially they won't get the
oxygen that they definitelydon't deserve.
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
There was a great article I subscribed to.
It's the Austin politicsnewsletter, I think Jack Craven,
or Craver is the the.
He's like an independent localjournalist worth checking out,
honestly like, uh, if you careabout local journalism, finding
folks like him is important, Ithink.
But uh, the headline of hisarticle about this was something
along the lines of, like, theright, right wing, uh, uh,
(18:14):
speaker of the house was chosenthe right, right wing.
I thought it was like.
I was like, oh, that's a prettygood way, that's good, yeah, um
, yeah.
So you know cautious optimismthere that you know one of the
potential fires to this projecthas been maybe put out or at
least gotten under control for alittle while.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Maybe there's at least a little bit of political
will to negotiate.
Uh, leaving it alone yeah,we'll'll see and this also goes
towards the Dallas things aswell.
You know we look at the Planotrying to leave Dart.
Maybe this also helps themAbsolutely Well.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
With all that being said, let us know what you think
about this.
Obviously, this is a projectnear and dear to our hearts
because we live here in Austin,but, yeah, it's exciting to see.
Nonetheless, if you want tofurther support us continuing to
do the show, we go all over theplace on the ground at some of
these places.
We're going to be in Dallasactually at the end of this
month.
If you want to help support usdirectly, patreon is the best
(19:03):
place to do so.
You can also listen whereveryou get your podcasts Watch here
on YouTube.
If you haven't liked this videoalready, please consider doing
so.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Leave a comment.
If you haven't liked this videoalready, please consider doing
so.
Leave a comment.
If you want to make a one-timedonation, we also have access to
Buy Me a Coffee, so please feelfree to go buy me a coffee.
And, as we have mentioned in acouple episodes and on our new
mid-roll, we have a store.
So if you want your TransitTangent swag, which includes
shirts, hoodies, socks, stickers, all of those things and more
things to come, check out thelink to our store as well.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And, with all that being said, thank you all so
much for watching and enjoy therest of your Transit Tangents
Tuesday.
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