September 2, 2025 • 25 mins
Austin's transit agency CapMetro is preparing to adjust its bus network to integrate with the upcoming light rail system, creating connections between buses and trains while maintaining efficient service across the city.
• Project Connect light rail construction will begin in 2027 after surviving legislative challenges
• Three contractors qualified for final engineering and construction with selection coming in early 2026
• Three options proposed for busiest routes (801/803): continue alongside light rail, partially feed light rail, or become complete feeder routes
• New airport connections including extension of Route 350 to create north-south airport access bypassing downtown
• Route 300 (second busiest route) getting major redesign in Southeast Austin
• Route 30 is becoming Route 8 with increased frequency from 30 to 15 minutes
• Light rail will initially run from 38th Street to Downtown with branches to Riverside and South Congress
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Doors are closing.
Public transit that's my way toroll On the metro.
I'm taking control.
Bus stops, train tracks it's mydaily grind.
Public transit, it's the rhythmof my life.
This week on Transit Tangents,we cover how the City of Austin
is planning to adjust itscurrent bus network in
(00:23):
preparation for its future lightrail system, for planning for
feeder routes, adjustingexisting bus routes and even new
connections to the airport.
We'll dive into it this week onTransit Tangents.
Hey everybody, and welcome tothis episode of Transit Tangents
.
My name is Lewis.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And I'm Chris.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And today we are going to be talking about a
topic we've covered before, butthere's quite a few updates to
it.
We're going to be kicking itback to the great city of Austin
and talking about a topic we'vecovered before, but there's
quite a few updates to it.
We're going to be kicking itback to the great city of Austin
and talking about how the cityis getting ready for the
beginning of construction on thelight rail portion of Project
Connect which is pretty exciting.
And before we kind of jump intothat sort of stuff, we did want
(01:01):
to give a couple updates onProject Connect and where things
stand as far as that goes.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
As we mentioned on the show in the past, the Texas
legislature meets every otheryear and we were a little
worried, moving into thislegislative session, that there
would be some bills that cameout that were pretty negative
for public transit across thestate.
We got through mostly unscathed, including our Project Connect
here in Austin.
There was a bill that wouldessentially have gutted the
(01:29):
financial piece of the project.
That did not advance in thelegislature, thankfully.
So we're now moving out of thesummer session into a hopefully
brighter future so that we canstart breaking ground on Project
Connect in 2027.
So coming up soon, but not soonenough.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Definitely definitely positive news there, and
something tells me that theTexas State Legislature is going
to have their hands tied, beinga little bit busy doing some
more devious things than tryingto kill light rail projects at
the moment.
We'll save that for anotherperson's podcast.
They can go talk about that.
We'll keep it a little lighterhere today.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
What's more important , lewis?
Is it getting Austin a nicelight rail system or saving
democracy?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
One other update here on the light rail.
So there was a request forqualification process that went
out earlier in the year.
Three contractors wereessentially chosen that they
were qualified to be able to dothe final engineering design and
construction of this project.
Right now those three differentcompanies qualified to be able
to do the final engineeringdesign and construction of this
project.
Right now those three differentcompanies, firms, are kind of
(02:29):
putting their bids together andtheir actual proposals together.
Those proposals need to besubmitted by October of this
year and by early next year itsounds like January or February
the Austin Transit Partnership,the organization responsible for
actually building this lightrail and kind of pulling all the
logistics together, will chooseone of those partners.
So that'll be early 2026.
(02:50):
That way one of those partnerscan actually begin construction
in early 2027.
So it always does feel likeit's getting further and further
out, but this feels like someconcrete progress.
You know we had the draftenvironmental impact statements
that you and I went through indepth in that two-part episode.
If you are unfamiliar withProject Connect and you want to
(03:11):
learn more, I highly recommendwatching those two episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
We literally went through station by station by
station, looking exactly whereall the different alignments
went, but so that kind of givesyou, I will say, in
professionally being on thisside or being on that side of
the projects where you're tryingto put together proposals, this
is a really positive step.
So I'm really excited to seethat we're finally at a position
(03:34):
where companies are able to bidon this project.
That's definitely definitelygood news.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So, now that the city will actually be moving forward
with the construction of thelight rail, that leaves CapMetro
, the transit operator, with aton of decisions to make as far
as actually how to integrate thelight rail into the existing
transit system.
You can imagine, right now thetransit system is obviously
mostly comprised of buses, minusthe commuter rail line that
runs in the city, and many ofthose bus routes are likely
going to need to be reconfiguredto be able to make the light
(04:06):
rail work, in some cases,running bus service that
complements it, that feeds it,that runs alongside it.
So there's a lot of decisions tobe made to make sure that folks
can still get around the cityin a effective way without kind
of.
You're basically like running abalancing act of trying to feed
people into the light railwhile also still trying to have
(04:27):
people have as many one seatrides to their destination as
possible.
So every five years, capmetroputs together a transit plan.
They did one five years ago,they'll do one five years from
now, and they're essentiallydeciding what are they going to
do with the network over thenext five years, at the five
year mark and then 10 years out.
There's a lot of interestingdecisions being made as we're
(04:49):
approaching.
This decision with the lightrail, and the biggest one has to
do with the busiest routes thatthe city has right now.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, so if you want to go back to our Austin in a
day using only public transit,we actually feature these two
lines quite a bit.
But our two busiest routes inthe city are the 801 and 803
rapid routes and these two aresort of the biggest questions
right now in the city.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Totally and it's tricky and this affects a ton of
people.
Just to put some numbers to it,in the last 12 months the 801
has had 2.5 million riders, theone which is like the local
version of the 801.
The 801 is more of the likeExpress rapid route.
They call it BRT.
It's more like BRT light, ifyou will.
The one which runs alongside italso had 1.2 million riders in
(05:38):
the last 12 months.
So if you add those togetheryou're at like three and a half,
almost 4 million riders onthose two routes.
Add into that again.
Chris mentioned the 803.
That one's the number sixbusiest route in the city.
That one is 1.3 million ridersin the last 12 months and then
the number three bus which kindof runs along the 803, the more
local version is at just under amillion.
(05:59):
So all in all I mean this ismillions of people per year.
Millions of riders kind of willhave to live with the effects
of these changes.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The current plan for Project Connect is that the
light rail will start in CentralAustin around 38th Street,
continue down south intodowntown.
One branch will split off onthe other side of the river and
head toward the airport downRiverside and the other branch
will continue down SouthCongress Avenue to Old Torf.
(06:28):
That central spine from 38thStreet to Old Torf is really
that corridor that's in question, because that is where the 801
and 803 traverse the city.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
To get into the details a little bit.
Capmetro is proposing threedifferent options.
Option 1 includes continuing torun both rapid routes 801 and
803, as well as their localroutes 1 and 3 through downtown
along with the light rail.
The key difference here is thatthose routes would now run a
few blocks further east, alongSan Jacinto and Trinity, instead
of on Guadalupe and Lavaca.
In this scenario, they'd beable to take advantage of the
(07:02):
new bus-only lanes in thatcorridor.
However, they may need to workon some solutions with UT Austin
, as the northern sectionthrough campus does not have
bus-only lanes and can getpretty busy.
This option is the mostexpensive, as it would run the
most amount of service throughthe area.
Option 2 includes running the801 and 803 on their existing
(07:22):
routes as they are today, buthaving local routes 1 and 3 feed
the light rail on the northernend at 38th Street Station and
on the south at Republic Square,overlapping just a little bit
of the light rail on SouthCongress.
This maintains service on the801 and 803, but also makes it
compete more directly forridership with the light rail
running on the exact samecorridor through downtown.
The local routes, though, wouldact more as feeders, adding to
ridership of the light rail.
(07:43):
Option 3 maintains the localroutes through downtown but uses
the 801 and 803 as feederroutes for the light rail.
In the north they would connectat 38th Street Station and in
the south at Oldsworth for the801, and at Republic Square for
the 803.
This would be the leastexpensive to operate of these
three options, but would likelyrequire the most amount of
transfers for riders.
Those transfers, though, shouldbe fairly quick, with the light
(08:04):
rail in the north havingservice every five minutes and
on the branch lines every 10minutes.
As Chris was saying, you do havea lot of a balancing act here,
right?
So at one hand you do want tofeed ridership onto the light
rail to make sure that the lightrail is successful, but if you
were to make it so that theseroutes fed into the light rail,
(08:24):
it would be fine.
If, for example, you were goingfrom somewhere on, you know,
far South Congress to downtown.
You know you're now you aremaking a transfer, but it's not
out of the ordinary.
The light rail will be runningfairly frequently on the
branches.
It'll be about every seven and ahalf minutes on the main trunk
line.
Every five minutes you wouldride the 801 from far South
(08:46):
Austin to the end of the lightrail at Old Torf.
Get on, your wait wouldn't bevery long.
To me, the issue starts to comein where, if you're trying to
go further north, if you'retrying to go from far South
Austin to Crestview, for example, the light rail currently ends
at 38th.
So your journey would turn intoriding the 801 from further in
(09:07):
South Austin to Old Torf,getting on the light rail at Old
Torf, riding the light rail to38th Street, getting off of the
light rail and then getting onanother bus from 38th Street up
to Crestview.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So definitely not ideal.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
One transfer is not great.
Two transfers is bad.
To be clear, in this scenariothat I laid out, depending on
the option chosen, a one seat ortwo seat ride may still be
available using either the localroute or the rapid route, but
not all of them.
If it were the local route, itwould only run every 30 minutes
though, which can be hard toplan around.
There's definitely quite a fewarguments for both.
I mean, I've seen the argumentmade for having it ending at the
(09:46):
feeders.
To try to.
I feel like we both been prettynegative on on having them end
and be like feeders.
The one major positive to usingit as the feeder system instead
of having them run through isthat the bus routes would get
shorter, they would deal withgoing through less intersections
and the schedules would likelybe more reliable.
So arguably, you could have amore reliable schedule.
(10:08):
You would have less waiting atthe stops initially, so you
might make up some of that timeof the transfer, whereas the
existing 801 and 803 areextremely long routes that do
get delayed.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, and if you continue with the other option,
where the bus line essentiallymimics the same path as the
train, now you're eroding intoyour light rail light ridership.
Not only does that affect youfinancially, but even
politically and optically.
That is going to have an impacton the line as well, with
people saying, well, why are you, why did we build this, if
(10:37):
you're just going to continue torun the bus?
So there's definitely somepitfalls there as well.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, I think.
Ultimately, though, whatplanners and and folks who are
riding the bus here should bethinking about, though, is like
how can we make it so that folkscan get to their destinations
as fast as possible and asefficient as possible?
I do think that what you justlaid out at the end there, like
the political reality, is thatit like it could look bad, but
(11:04):
are we planning for politicaloptics, or are we planning for,
you know, for effectiveridership, and I think, like the
rider, we both I would say weagree on the?
the answer is yes to both yeah,because, oh yeah, both.
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, that is the politicalreality, unfortunately transit
agencies are still politicalentities.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Uh, yeah, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yep, yep, um.
So that's kind of the thebiggest question here.
This is lewis during the edit,after having the conversation
and looking at the maps, evenharder putting the edit together
.
I really think, after thinkingthrough this more, option two,
with a slight variation, is mypreferred option, meaning I
would continue to keep the 801and 803 running full routes, but
(11:47):
I wouldn't do it on the LavacaGuadalupe corridor.
I would instead shift it overonto the Trinity and San Jacinto
corridor and have the localroutes just feed into the light
rail.
So essentially you still havethrough running routes that go
from far North Austinin to farsouth austin, but it's competing
(12:07):
less directly with the lightrail as the 801 and 803 would no
longer be on that levacaguadalupe corridor.
There's obviously a lot ofdifferent things to think about
here.
So let us know in the commentsdown below which option you
think would be best for thissituation.
Otherwise, we wanted to kind ofjump into a couple of the
routes that I think areinteresting to take a peek at
(12:28):
here.
So the first kind of thing areaI want to look at is at
ridership to the airport.
So first off, the only bus thatconnects to the airport in
Austin right now is route 20.
It runs every 15 minutes toevery 30 in the off peak hours
in South Austin through downtownmimics, exactly the light rail
route, essentially alongriverside.
One exception the light rail inphase one unfortunately does
(12:51):
not go to the airport.
So, uh, the 20 will continue togo to the airport.
It will then meet up with theend of the light rail, uh, at
the yellow jacket station, goall the way down riverside, up,
uh, into downtown austin, andnow will actually end just north
of the UT campus, whereaspreviously from there headed to
(13:11):
the northeast towards Muellerand beyond.
The Cap Metro is kind ofexplaining this, saying that
they're going to end it there,in part because the new Rapid
Route 837 kind of covers somesimilar terrain in that area.
So to me it kind of makes sense, though, to have this line that
runs along the light rail butacts more as like a local stop.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I think anybody who was riding the 20 in that sort
of arc back from the universityarea toward the Mueller
neighborhood would probably optfor the 837, just for the speed
and convenience.
So this change makes completesense to me.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Totally.
And for folks, just to you know, who might be wondering, like
why would you run the 20 rightalong the light rail?
You just put the light railthere.
Well, the stop spacing on thelight rail is a lot further
apart than the stop spacing on abus.
So, especially for folks whoaren't interested in walking
very far or might not be able towalk very far think older folks
or folks who might be travelingin a wheelchair having the kind
(14:09):
of local service along the lineis still really important and I
like to see that they kept thefrequency at 15 minutes.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The other really exciting development at the
airport is that we are getting anew bus that will take you from
the airport back into town andthat is going to be in the form
of the extension of the 350.
The 350 currently runs from theNorth Lamar Transit Center down
through Crestview along airportand then ends at the East
Austin bus station.
(14:35):
This is where a lot of likeGreyhound and other regional
buses come into the city, butit's also a big hub for East
Austin for local buses.
From there it's going to beextended across the river into
the airport.
So now you're going to have abrand new connection that will
bypass downtown and serve thissort of North Central Austin
area and all their riders whoneed to get back and forth.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Totally.
I'm pretty excited about thisbus.
I've ridden it a handful oftimes from near where I used to
live down towards the Springdalearea and that Springdale area
is seeing a ton of development.
There's a lot of otherdevelopment along Airport
Boulevard and Chris and I weretalking just before this that,
like in the future, this couldbe a really good corridor for
some good BRT infrastructuredown the line, especially as
(15:18):
more development along thiscorridor starts to happen.
Chris really wants Airport.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Boulevard.
I really want light rail.
Airport Boulevard is the mostprime corridor for either BRT
like true BRT or light rail.
You have, through certainsections, an enormous center
median and then in areas wherethe center median shrinks you
have really wide right of waysthat are not being utilized on
(15:42):
either side of the roadway.
So it is a massive corridorthat could really see some some
really incredible developmentand, as you said, lewis, there's
so much new residential andcommercial development that's
starting to happen in thiscorridor that I'm really hopeful
that gets put onto a roadmapsoon.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Totally this encompasses a few routes, so I'm
kind of putting it into thebucket of Southeast Austin.
Changes in Southeast Austin asfar as transit goes, although
some of these routes will extendfurther out.
The biggest piece of this isRoute 300 is getting a major
change.
The 300 is the second busiestroute in the entire city with
2.2 million riders annually andwhen you look at it on a map
(16:19):
initially it looks kind ofconfusing because it basically
the 300 today does like a big Cshape, going from Crestview in
the north, over into East Austin, down into Southeast Austin and
then cutting across on Old Torf, eventually hitting South Lamar
and ending at the WestgateTransit Center.
It is a really long route.
It often sees a lot of delaysbut is always very, very busy
(16:41):
anytime.
I've been on it and I see itaround all the time because it
goes so many places.
So with the the change, thesouthern portion of the 300 is
now going to, once you get tolike the Riverside Pleasant
Valley area is going to, onceyou get to like the riverside
pleasant valley area is going tomerge in and go straight down
south into southeast austin,kind of mirroring the end of the
new rapid 800 route.
(17:03):
It is also the end of what usedto be and this we'll get to
this in a second.
It's like the current routeseven in south austin, so it is
a big change, mostly because ofhow many people ride it.
But I actually parts of melikes this and parts of me
doesn't.
I'll explain the doesn't in alittle bit.
I'll kind of get to the other,explain the other changes and
(17:24):
then we can kind of go fromthere.
So what is being done with theold 300 route section that goes
across old Torf is it's beingturned into the new, much
shorter route 331.
So this new route will go fromthe Westgate Transit Center and
we'll kind of go up South Lamar,go across old Torf and we'll
(17:45):
eventually end at the new lightrail station at Pleasant Valley.
Important to note that thisroute intersects both the 803,
the 801, the end of the lightrail on old wharf and the end of
the light rail on pleasantvalley, as well as two hebs.
So, um, a shorter route, but itit hits a lot of places
(18:05):
essentially it's the potentialof uh.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
It's a really good feeder route to get you into the
more rapid routes that aregoing to take you into downtown
and the places that you need togo, or, like you said, to get to
heb and other like reallyimportant business centers right
, yeah, and it'll definitelyfeed people into into those
light rails.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Now the thing that this kind of does for southeast
austin though that I don'tnecessarily love is that
southeast austin could get aone-seat ride to downtown on the
7 today.
But now the 7 starts in republicsquare and still does the same
section north, but it doesn't gointo Southeast Austin.
So now if you're in SoutheastAustin in those same kind of
neighborhoods that it served,you can only now get on the new
(18:44):
300 route or the new 800 routeas well as some other more minor
routes, but none of them godirectly into downtown Austin.
They all kind of either takeyou up into east austin or
connect you to a feeder route or, sorry, feed you into the light
rail.
So it's kind of forcing atransfer in an area that didn't
(19:06):
require a transfer before.
However, it is now a transferto rail.
So definitely some you knowweighing out options for folks
in that area and for transitplanners who are kind of trying
to make those decisions.
Definitely, I thought it was aninteresting one to look at, and
it's like it's got to bedifficult to make some of these
decisions when you're talkingabout changing the busiest bus
(19:27):
routes in the city, you knowyeah.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
And especially trying to figure out what is the city
going to look like in 10 years.
I mean, austin changesfrequently.
Having been here 13 years, itfeels like a completely
different city in some aspects.
But even that area of southeastAustin is going to go through a
major transformation.
So you know, these things arereally subject to change.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
There are a million different routes that you could
call out in this transit plan.
There's one more I wanted totalk about specifically because
we did kind of an entire episodetalking about one development
along this route.
We did an episode I forget whatwe called it, but it was
something like how can you makebetter suburbs?
Uh, this was right after we didan interview with street craft,
um, which was this is likeprobably like episode five or
something, which is pretty funnyespecially considering we're on
(20:08):
, like I don't even know, 85 or90 or something.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Now I don't even know this episode's approaching 90,
which is crazy, pretty wild.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
But so this time we wanted to talk about Route 30,
which is actually no longergoing to be Route 30.
It's going to turn into Route 8, and it passes the development
that we talked about, which iscalled the Grove, which is kind
of a mixed-use development thathas everything from a few
single-family homes totownhouses, to apartment
buildings, commercial offices, abeautiful park.
(20:39):
And while we were talking aboutthat episode, we were saying
that you know, it was a reallybikeable part of town.
They were building and it's nowopen a great bridge that
connects to a really key biketrail system in Austin along
Shoal Creek Boulevard, reallykey bike trail system in Austin
along Shoal Creek Boulevard.
And we were saying that there'sa lot of potential for transit
because you did have a one seatride on the then 30 to downtown
(21:00):
but that the 30 really only ranevery half an hour, which kind
of sucks, if we're being honest.
Like every half an hour bus isjust not great.
You really do have to planaround it.
But with this plan, the newroute eight redesigns that old
route and increases thefrequency to every 15 minutes.
So the new Route 8 will stillkind of follow the same route of
(21:22):
the old 30 in North Austin,starting up on Anderson
Boulevard, going through the FarWest neighborhood and then kind
of zigzagging its way back intodowntown, before then kind of
jutting out towards kind of intofurther West Austin but staying
north of the river, whereas theold 30 used to just do this
wild zigzag through SouthwestAustin and it was an extremely
(21:43):
long and windy route.
And I don't have the statisticsin front of me on what the
on-time performance of the 30used to be, but just based on
how long and windy the route is,my guess is it wasn't good.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Um, so if you wanted to take a tour of West Austin,
you got to see everything, causeit just that is true Everything
in West Austin, uh, uh, andunfortunately, this route is
actually the one that's closestto my house, and it still
doesn't get any closer.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
So, cabmetro, if you're listening, we should talk
yeah, hit up, chris needs a,maybe you get a pickup zone.
Yeah, there you go.
But yeah, I mean again, therewere a million different ways
that, a million different thingswe can look into with this.
I will say, if you'reinterested in learning more
about that area that we weretalking about on the 30, I think
that was a fun episode we didearlier on on the Grove, so
(22:32):
we'll make sure it's linked.
But I don't know.
It's interesting to think aboutthe planning for cities, whether
it be in Austin or anywhere,when you are doing these big
infrastructure projects.
Like, don't get me wrong, I'mreally excited about the light
rail coming into Austin, butwhen we're talking about phase
one, phase one is not the fullvision of the light rail.
(22:53):
So you know I, in my view, youcan't really start to think too
much about you know, like I liketo me, I think it's imperative
to keep the 801 and the 803running their full distances,
just so you're not forcing somany awkward transfers.
I totally understand thearguments for running them as
feeders, but I think that youknow I, in my example of where I
used to live, both myself andmy partner jerry, we used to
(23:14):
ride down.
My partner worked at ut so wewere going down there quite a
bit.
To get from my old place justnorth of the triangle to ut, we
would require us getting on abus to to just to go down to
38th and then transfer to get onthe light rail at 38th to go
another stop, basically to ut.
Like that feels prettyridiculous, honestly.
(23:36):
Like that doesn't?
That feels clunky, extremelyclunky.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, sounds like the opportunity to break out the
e-bike well, and that's I meanto be fair.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
we were mostly just doing the e-bike before that
trip, but not everyone is goingto bike, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I think that it's an interesting thing to be taking a
going to change when you makesuch a large change or make this
big addition to your transitnetwork and the light rail is
that it is a good disruption towhat currently exists, and it's
(24:17):
a fun puzzle to try to figureout.
And then I'm even more excitedto see, once we get past phase
one, what does it look like inthe future If we get to a phase
two.
When we get to a phase two,when to a phase two, uh, when,
when?
That's what I said.
I crossed my fingers and saidwhen, when we get to a phase two
, uh, what that's going to looklike.
But seeing these, um, seeingthese changes is really exciting
.
There may be a few growingpains along the way, but, um, I
(24:40):
think it's a good thing foraustin absolutely, uh, cap metro
is looking for feedback on this.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
we'll make sure links to the actual maps and all the
information are included below,because there was a ton more
than we could include in justthis video.
With all that being said,though, if you have not liked
this video already, pleaseconsider doing so.
It helps us out quite a bit.
You can also leave a comment.
Let us know what you think ofTransit Plan 2035 in Austin, and
if you want to support the showdirectly the best ways to do so
, so via our Patreon buy me acoffee or checking out our merch
(25:08):
store down below, but withoutfurther ado.
Thank you all so much forwatching and enjoy the rest of
your Transit Tangents Tuesday.
Doors are closing.
Public transit that's my way toroll On the metro.
I'm taking control.
Bus stops, train tracks it's mydaily grind.
Public transit, it's the rhythmof my life.
This week on Transit Tangents,we cover how the City of Austin
is planning to adjust itscurrent bus network in
(00:23):
preparation for its future lightrail system, for planning for
feeder routes, adjustingexisting bus routes and even new
connections to the airport.
We'll dive into it this week onTransit Tangents.
Hey everybody, and welcome tothis episode of Transit Tangents
.
My name is Lewis.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And I'm Chris.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And today we are going to be talking about a
topic we've covered before, butthere's quite a few updates to
it.
We're going to be kicking itback to the great city of Austin
and talking about a topic we'vecovered before, but there's
quite a few updates to it.
We're going to be kicking itback to the great city of Austin
and talking about how the cityis getting ready for the
beginning of construction on thelight rail portion of Project
Connect which is pretty exciting.
And before we kind of jump intothat sort of stuff, we did want
(01:01):
to give a couple updates onProject Connect and where things
stand as far as that goes.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
As we mentioned on the show in the past, the Texas
legislature meets every otheryear and we were a little
worried, moving into thislegislative session, that there
would be some bills that cameout that were pretty negative
for public transit across thestate.
We got through mostly unscathed, including our Project Connect
here in Austin.
There was a bill that wouldessentially have gutted the
(01:29):
financial piece of the project.
That did not advance in thelegislature, thankfully.
So we're now moving out of thesummer session into a hopefully
brighter future so that we canstart breaking ground on Project
Connect in 2027.
So coming up soon, but not soonenough.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Definitely definitely positive news there, and
something tells me that theTexas State Legislature is going
to have their hands tied, beinga little bit busy doing some
more devious things than tryingto kill light rail projects at
the moment.
We'll save that for anotherperson's podcast.
They can go talk about that.
We'll keep it a little lighterhere today.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
What's more important , lewis?
Is it getting Austin a nicelight rail system or saving
democracy?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
One other update here on the light rail.
So there was a request forqualification process that went
out earlier in the year.
Three contractors wereessentially chosen that they
were qualified to be able to dothe final engineering design and
construction of this project.
Right now those three differentcompanies qualified to be able
to do the final engineeringdesign and construction of this
project.
Right now those three differentcompanies, firms, are kind of
(02:29):
putting their bids together andtheir actual proposals together.
Those proposals need to besubmitted by October of this
year and by early next year itsounds like January or February
the Austin Transit Partnership,the organization responsible for
actually building this lightrail and kind of pulling all the
logistics together, will chooseone of those partners.
So that'll be early 2026.
(02:50):
That way one of those partnerscan actually begin construction
in early 2027.
So it always does feel likeit's getting further and further
out, but this feels like someconcrete progress.
You know we had the draftenvironmental impact statements
that you and I went through indepth in that two-part episode.
If you are unfamiliar withProject Connect and you want to
(03:11):
learn more, I highly recommendwatching those two episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
We literally went through station by station by
station, looking exactly whereall the different alignments
went, but so that kind of givesyou, I will say, in
professionally being on thisside or being on that side of
the projects where you're tryingto put together proposals, this
is a really positive step.
So I'm really excited to seethat we're finally at a position
(03:34):
where companies are able to bidon this project.
That's definitely definitelygood news.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So, now that the city will actually be moving forward
with the construction of thelight rail, that leaves CapMetro
, the transit operator, with aton of decisions to make as far
as actually how to integrate thelight rail into the existing
transit system.
You can imagine, right now thetransit system is obviously
mostly comprised of buses, minusthe commuter rail line that
runs in the city, and many ofthose bus routes are likely
going to need to be reconfiguredto be able to make the light
(04:06):
rail work, in some cases,running bus service that
complements it, that feeds it,that runs alongside it.
So there's a lot of decisions tobe made to make sure that folks
can still get around the cityin a effective way without kind
of.
You're basically like running abalancing act of trying to feed
people into the light railwhile also still trying to have
(04:27):
people have as many one seatrides to their destination as
possible.
So every five years, capmetroputs together a transit plan.
They did one five years ago,they'll do one five years from
now, and they're essentiallydeciding what are they going to
do with the network over thenext five years, at the five
year mark and then 10 years out.
There's a lot of interestingdecisions being made as we're
(04:49):
approaching.
This decision with the lightrail, and the biggest one has to
do with the busiest routes thatthe city has right now.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, so if you want to go back to our Austin in a
day using only public transit,we actually feature these two
lines quite a bit.
But our two busiest routes inthe city are the 801 and 803
rapid routes and these two aresort of the biggest questions
right now in the city.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Totally and it's tricky and this affects a ton of
people.
Just to put some numbers to it,in the last 12 months the 801
has had 2.5 million riders, theone which is like the local
version of the 801.
The 801 is more of the likeExpress rapid route.
They call it BRT.
It's more like BRT light, ifyou will.
The one which runs alongside italso had 1.2 million riders in
(05:38):
the last 12 months.
So if you add those togetheryou're at like three and a half,
almost 4 million riders onthose two routes.
Add into that again.
Chris mentioned the 803.
That one's the number sixbusiest route in the city.
That one is 1.3 million ridersin the last 12 months and then
the number three bus which kindof runs along the 803, the more
local version is at just under amillion.
(05:59):
So all in all I mean this ismillions of people per year.
Millions of riders kind of willhave to live with the effects
of these changes.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The current plan for Project Connect is that the
light rail will start in CentralAustin around 38th Street,
continue down south intodowntown.
One branch will split off onthe other side of the river and
head toward the airport downRiverside and the other branch
will continue down SouthCongress Avenue to Old Torf.
(06:28):
That central spine from 38thStreet to Old Torf is really
that corridor that's in question, because that is where the 801
and 803 traverse the city.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
To get into the details a little bit.
Capmetro is proposing threedifferent options.
Option 1 includes continuing torun both rapid routes 801 and
803, as well as their localroutes 1 and 3 through downtown
along with the light rail.
The key difference here is thatthose routes would now run a
few blocks further east, alongSan Jacinto and Trinity, instead
of on Guadalupe and Lavaca.
In this scenario, they'd beable to take advantage of the
(07:02):
new bus-only lanes in thatcorridor.
However, they may need to workon some solutions with UT Austin
, as the northern sectionthrough campus does not have
bus-only lanes and can getpretty busy.
This option is the mostexpensive, as it would run the
most amount of service throughthe area.
Option 2 includes running the801 and 803 on their existing
(07:22):
routes as they are today, buthaving local routes 1 and 3 feed
the light rail on the northernend at 38th Street Station and
on the south at Republic Square,overlapping just a little bit
of the light rail on SouthCongress.
This maintains service on the801 and 803, but also makes it
compete more directly forridership with the light rail
running on the exact samecorridor through downtown.
The local routes, though, wouldact more as feeders, adding to
ridership of the light rail.
(07:43):
Option 3 maintains the localroutes through downtown but uses
the 801 and 803 as feederroutes for the light rail.
In the north they would connectat 38th Street Station and in
the south at Oldsworth for the801, and at Republic Square for
the 803.
This would be the leastexpensive to operate of these
three options, but would likelyrequire the most amount of
transfers for riders.
Those transfers, though, shouldbe fairly quick, with the light
(08:04):
rail in the north havingservice every five minutes and
on the branch lines every 10minutes.
As Chris was saying, you do havea lot of a balancing act here,
right?
So at one hand you do want tofeed ridership onto the light
rail to make sure that the lightrail is successful, but if you
were to make it so that theseroutes fed into the light rail,
(08:24):
it would be fine.
If, for example, you were goingfrom somewhere on, you know,
far South Congress to downtown.
You know you're now you aremaking a transfer, but it's not
out of the ordinary.
The light rail will be runningfairly frequently on the
branches.
It'll be about every seven and ahalf minutes on the main trunk
line.
Every five minutes you wouldride the 801 from far South
(08:46):
Austin to the end of the lightrail at Old Torf.
Get on, your wait wouldn't bevery long.
To me, the issue starts to comein where, if you're trying to
go further north, if you'retrying to go from far South
Austin to Crestview, for example, the light rail currently ends
at 38th.
So your journey would turn intoriding the 801 from further in
(09:07):
South Austin to Old Torf,getting on the light rail at Old
Torf, riding the light rail to38th Street, getting off of the
light rail and then getting onanother bus from 38th Street up
to Crestview.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So definitely not ideal.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
One transfer is not great.
Two transfers is bad.
To be clear, in this scenariothat I laid out, depending on
the option chosen, a one seat ortwo seat ride may still be
available using either the localroute or the rapid route, but
not all of them.
If it were the local route, itwould only run every 30 minutes
though, which can be hard toplan around.
There's definitely quite a fewarguments for both.
I mean, I've seen the argumentmade for having it ending at the
(09:46):
feeders.
To try to.
I feel like we both been prettynegative on on having them end
and be like feeders.
The one major positive to usingit as the feeder system instead
of having them run through isthat the bus routes would get
shorter, they would deal withgoing through less intersections
and the schedules would likelybe more reliable.
So arguably, you could have amore reliable schedule.
(10:08):
You would have less waiting atthe stops initially, so you
might make up some of that timeof the transfer, whereas the
existing 801 and 803 areextremely long routes that do
get delayed.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, and if you continue with the other option,
where the bus line essentiallymimics the same path as the
train, now you're eroding intoyour light rail light ridership.
Not only does that affect youfinancially, but even
politically and optically.
That is going to have an impacton the line as well, with
people saying, well, why are you, why did we build this, if
(10:37):
you're just going to continue torun the bus?
So there's definitely somepitfalls there as well.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, I think.
Ultimately, though, whatplanners and and folks who are
riding the bus here should bethinking about, though, is like
how can we make it so that folkscan get to their destinations
as fast as possible and asefficient as possible?
I do think that what you justlaid out at the end there, like
the political reality, is thatit like it could look bad, but
(11:04):
are we planning for politicaloptics, or are we planning for,
you know, for effectiveridership, and I think, like the
rider, we both I would say weagree on the?
the answer is yes to both yeah,because, oh yeah, both.
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, that is the politicalreality, unfortunately transit
agencies are still politicalentities.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Uh, yeah, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yep, yep, um.
So that's kind of the thebiggest question here.
This is lewis during the edit,after having the conversation
and looking at the maps, evenharder putting the edit together
.
I really think, after thinkingthrough this more, option two,
with a slight variation, is mypreferred option, meaning I
would continue to keep the 801and 803 running full routes, but
(11:47):
I wouldn't do it on the LavacaGuadalupe corridor.
I would instead shift it overonto the Trinity and San Jacinto
corridor and have the localroutes just feed into the light
rail.
So essentially you still havethrough running routes that go
from far North Austinin to farsouth austin, but it's competing
(12:07):
less directly with the lightrail as the 801 and 803 would no
longer be on that levacaguadalupe corridor.
There's obviously a lot ofdifferent things to think about
here.
So let us know in the commentsdown below which option you
think would be best for thissituation.
Otherwise, we wanted to kind ofjump into a couple of the
routes that I think areinteresting to take a peek at
(12:28):
here.
So the first kind of thing areaI want to look at is at
ridership to the airport.
So first off, the only bus thatconnects to the airport in
Austin right now is route 20.
It runs every 15 minutes toevery 30 in the off peak hours
in South Austin through downtownmimics, exactly the light rail
route, essentially alongriverside.
One exception the light rail inphase one unfortunately does
(12:51):
not go to the airport.
So, uh, the 20 will continue togo to the airport.
It will then meet up with theend of the light rail, uh, at
the yellow jacket station, goall the way down riverside, up,
uh, into downtown austin, andnow will actually end just north
of the UT campus, whereaspreviously from there headed to
(13:11):
the northeast towards Muellerand beyond.
The Cap Metro is kind ofexplaining this, saying that
they're going to end it there,in part because the new Rapid
Route 837 kind of covers somesimilar terrain in that area.
So to me it kind of makes sense, though, to have this line that
runs along the light rail butacts more as like a local stop.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I think anybody who was riding the 20 in that sort
of arc back from the universityarea toward the Mueller
neighborhood would probably optfor the 837, just for the speed
and convenience.
So this change makes completesense to me.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Totally.
And for folks, just to you know, who might be wondering, like
why would you run the 20 rightalong the light rail?
You just put the light railthere.
Well, the stop spacing on thelight rail is a lot further
apart than the stop spacing on abus.
So, especially for folks whoaren't interested in walking
very far or might not be able towalk very far think older folks
or folks who might be travelingin a wheelchair having the kind
(14:09):
of local service along the lineis still really important and I
like to see that they kept thefrequency at 15 minutes.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The other really exciting development at the
airport is that we are getting anew bus that will take you from
the airport back into town andthat is going to be in the form
of the extension of the 350.
The 350 currently runs from theNorth Lamar Transit Center down
through Crestview along airportand then ends at the East
Austin bus station.
(14:35):
This is where a lot of likeGreyhound and other regional
buses come into the city, butit's also a big hub for East
Austin for local buses.
From there it's going to beextended across the river into
the airport.
So now you're going to have abrand new connection that will
bypass downtown and serve thissort of North Central Austin
area and all their riders whoneed to get back and forth.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Totally.
I'm pretty excited about thisbus.
I've ridden it a handful oftimes from near where I used to
live down towards the Springdalearea and that Springdale area
is seeing a ton of development.
There's a lot of otherdevelopment along Airport
Boulevard and Chris and I weretalking just before this that,
like in the future, this couldbe a really good corridor for
some good BRT infrastructuredown the line, especially as
(15:18):
more development along thiscorridor starts to happen.
Chris really wants Airport.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Boulevard.
I really want light rail.
Airport Boulevard is the mostprime corridor for either BRT
like true BRT or light rail.
You have, through certainsections, an enormous center
median and then in areas wherethe center median shrinks you
have really wide right of waysthat are not being utilized on
(15:42):
either side of the roadway.
So it is a massive corridorthat could really see some some
really incredible developmentand, as you said, lewis, there's
so much new residential andcommercial development that's
starting to happen in thiscorridor that I'm really hopeful
that gets put onto a roadmapsoon.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Totally this encompasses a few routes, so I'm
kind of putting it into thebucket of Southeast Austin.
Changes in Southeast Austin asfar as transit goes, although
some of these routes will extendfurther out.
The biggest piece of this isRoute 300 is getting a major
change.
The 300 is the second busiestroute in the entire city with
2.2 million riders annually andwhen you look at it on a map
(16:19):
initially it looks kind ofconfusing because it basically
the 300 today does like a big Cshape, going from Crestview in
the north, over into East Austin, down into Southeast Austin and
then cutting across on Old Torf, eventually hitting South Lamar
and ending at the WestgateTransit Center.
It is a really long route.
It often sees a lot of delaysbut is always very, very busy
(16:41):
anytime.
I've been on it and I see itaround all the time because it
goes so many places.
So with the the change, thesouthern portion of the 300 is
now going to, once you get tolike the Riverside Pleasant
Valley area is going to, onceyou get to like the riverside
pleasant valley area is going tomerge in and go straight down
south into southeast austin,kind of mirroring the end of the
new rapid 800 route.
(17:03):
It is also the end of what usedto be and this we'll get to
this in a second.
It's like the current routeseven in south austin, so it is
a big change, mostly because ofhow many people ride it.
But I actually parts of melikes this and parts of me
doesn't.
I'll explain the doesn't in alittle bit.
I'll kind of get to the other,explain the other changes and
(17:24):
then we can kind of go fromthere.
So what is being done with theold 300 route section that goes
across old Torf is it's beingturned into the new, much
shorter route 331.
So this new route will go fromthe Westgate Transit Center and
we'll kind of go up South Lamar,go across old Torf and we'll
(17:45):
eventually end at the new lightrail station at Pleasant Valley.
Important to note that thisroute intersects both the 803,
the 801, the end of the lightrail on old wharf and the end of
the light rail on pleasantvalley, as well as two hebs.
So, um, a shorter route, but itit hits a lot of places
(18:05):
essentially it's the potentialof uh.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
It's a really good feeder route to get you into the
more rapid routes that aregoing to take you into downtown
and the places that you need togo, or, like you said, to get to
heb and other like reallyimportant business centers right
, yeah, and it'll definitelyfeed people into into those
light rails.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Now the thing that this kind of does for southeast
austin though that I don'tnecessarily love is that
southeast austin could get aone-seat ride to downtown on the
7 today.
But now the 7 starts in republicsquare and still does the same
section north, but it doesn't gointo Southeast Austin.
So now if you're in SoutheastAustin in those same kind of
neighborhoods that it served,you can only now get on the new
(18:44):
300 route or the new 800 routeas well as some other more minor
routes, but none of them godirectly into downtown Austin.
They all kind of either takeyou up into east austin or
connect you to a feeder route or, sorry, feed you into the light
rail.
So it's kind of forcing atransfer in an area that didn't
(19:06):
require a transfer before.
However, it is now a transferto rail.
So definitely some you knowweighing out options for folks
in that area and for transitplanners who are kind of trying
to make those decisions.
Definitely, I thought it was aninteresting one to look at, and
it's like it's got to bedifficult to make some of these
decisions when you're talkingabout changing the busiest bus
(19:27):
routes in the city, you knowyeah.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
And especially trying to figure out what is the city
going to look like in 10 years.
I mean, austin changesfrequently.
Having been here 13 years, itfeels like a completely
different city in some aspects.
But even that area of southeastAustin is going to go through a
major transformation.
So you know, these things arereally subject to change.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
There are a million different routes that you could
call out in this transit plan.
There's one more I wanted totalk about specifically because
we did kind of an entire episodetalking about one development
along this route.
We did an episode I forget whatwe called it, but it was
something like how can you makebetter suburbs?
Uh, this was right after we didan interview with street craft,
um, which was this is likeprobably like episode five or
something, which is pretty funnyespecially considering we're on
(20:08):
, like I don't even know, 85 or90 or something.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Now I don't even know this episode's approaching 90,
which is crazy, pretty wild.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
But so this time we wanted to talk about Route 30,
which is actually no longergoing to be Route 30.
It's going to turn into Route 8, and it passes the development
that we talked about, which iscalled the Grove, which is kind
of a mixed-use development thathas everything from a few
single-family homes totownhouses, to apartment
buildings, commercial offices, abeautiful park.
(20:39):
And while we were talking aboutthat episode, we were saying
that you know, it was a reallybikeable part of town.
They were building and it's nowopen a great bridge that
connects to a really key biketrail system in Austin along
Shoal Creek Boulevard, reallykey bike trail system in Austin
along Shoal Creek Boulevard.
And we were saying that there'sa lot of potential for transit
because you did have a one seatride on the then 30 to downtown
(21:00):
but that the 30 really only ranevery half an hour, which kind
of sucks, if we're being honest.
Like every half an hour bus isjust not great.
You really do have to planaround it.
But with this plan, the newroute eight redesigns that old
route and increases thefrequency to every 15 minutes.
So the new Route 8 will stillkind of follow the same route of
(21:22):
the old 30 in North Austin,starting up on Anderson
Boulevard, going through the FarWest neighborhood and then kind
of zigzagging its way back intodowntown, before then kind of
jutting out towards kind of intofurther West Austin but staying
north of the river, whereas theold 30 used to just do this
wild zigzag through SouthwestAustin and it was an extremely
(21:43):
long and windy route.
And I don't have the statisticsin front of me on what the
on-time performance of the 30used to be, but just based on
how long and windy the route is,my guess is it wasn't good.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Um, so if you wanted to take a tour of West Austin,
you got to see everything, causeit just that is true Everything
in West Austin, uh, uh, andunfortunately, this route is
actually the one that's closestto my house, and it still
doesn't get any closer.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
So, cabmetro, if you're listening, we should talk
yeah, hit up, chris needs a,maybe you get a pickup zone.
Yeah, there you go.
But yeah, I mean again, therewere a million different ways
that, a million different thingswe can look into with this.
I will say, if you'reinterested in learning more
about that area that we weretalking about on the 30, I think
that was a fun episode we didearlier on on the Grove, so
(22:32):
we'll make sure it's linked.
But I don't know.
It's interesting to think aboutthe planning for cities, whether
it be in Austin or anywhere,when you are doing these big
infrastructure projects.
Like, don't get me wrong, I'mreally excited about the light
rail coming into Austin, butwhen we're talking about phase
one, phase one is not the fullvision of the light rail.
(22:53):
So you know I, in my view, youcan't really start to think too
much about you know, like I liketo me, I think it's imperative
to keep the 801 and the 803running their full distances,
just so you're not forcing somany awkward transfers.
I totally understand thearguments for running them as
feeders, but I think that youknow I, in my example of where I
used to live, both myself andmy partner jerry, we used to
(23:14):
ride down.
My partner worked at ut so wewere going down there quite a
bit.
To get from my old place justnorth of the triangle to ut, we
would require us getting on abus to to just to go down to
38th and then transfer to get onthe light rail at 38th to go
another stop, basically to ut.
Like that feels prettyridiculous, honestly.
(23:36):
Like that doesn't?
That feels clunky, extremelyclunky.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, sounds like the opportunity to break out the
e-bike well, and that's I meanto be fair.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
we were mostly just doing the e-bike before that
trip, but not everyone is goingto bike, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I think that it's an interesting thing to be taking a
going to change when you makesuch a large change or make this
big addition to your transitnetwork and the light rail is
that it is a good disruption towhat currently exists, and it's
(24:17):
a fun puzzle to try to figureout.
And then I'm even more excitedto see, once we get past phase
one, what does it look like inthe future If we get to a phase
two.
When we get to a phase two,when to a phase two, uh, when,
when?
That's what I said.
I crossed my fingers and saidwhen, when we get to a phase two
, uh, what that's going to looklike.
But seeing these, um, seeingthese changes is really exciting
.
There may be a few growingpains along the way, but, um, I
(24:40):
think it's a good thing foraustin absolutely, uh, cap metro
is looking for feedback on this.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
we'll make sure links to the actual maps and all the
information are included below,because there was a ton more
than we could include in justthis video.
With all that being said,though, if you have not liked
this video already, pleaseconsider doing so.
It helps us out quite a bit.
You can also leave a comment.
Let us know what you think ofTransit Plan 2035 in Austin, and
if you want to support the showdirectly the best ways to do so
, so via our Patreon buy me acoffee or checking out our merch
(25:08):
store down below, but withoutfurther ado.
Thank you all so much forwatching and enjoy the rest of
your Transit Tangents Tuesday.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com