Progress on Austin Urban Rail?

Looks like Austin might be just a little bit closer to voting on the City's urban rail project, which unlike MetroRail, will actually garner ridership, as it connects three of the main employment centers in Austin: UT, the Capitol, and Downtown, with some of the northern inner-city neighborhoods. And that's just in the first phase.

"A Long Route to Go" - Austin Chronicle



If it ever gets completed, the urban rail project could encourage more and better development in the actual livable center of Austin, making its claims to being "green" more legitimate, and fostering more of a sense of place in central Austin. And the fact that they're looking at alternatives to the horrible routing along San Jacinto near UT and the Capitol seems to be a good sign.

Austin Urban Rail System Map

Just a drawing-out of the proposed Austin Urban Rail System, a streetcar/LRT hybrid that the City is thinking about since CapMetro went through with the MetroRail boondoggle.


View austin urban rail in a larger map

Portland Opens the Green Line

Map by The Transport Politic
Portland, that transit Valhalla, opens its newest light rail line today, the Green Line, which connects northern Clackamas County to downtown Portland, and adds a new North-South Transit Mall (with a re-routed , to compliment and alleviate traffic off of the original East-West Transit Mall. It's been in the works for near 35 years now, as the Portland Tribune writes in this article:

"The Interstate 205 MAX line – the latest addition to the Portland region’s ever-expanding light-rail system – sometimes appeared to be the project that would never happen."

TRIBUNE PHOTO: L.E. BASKOW

It's almost like Austin's current MetroRail boondoggle, but instead of years of planning and rejection ending up in a unusable mish-mash of light and commuter rail, Portland went on with other projects, including the Red Line to the PDX Airport, and the Yellow Line up Interstate Ave., not to mention their superb streetcar endeavor.

But it is similar in that a suburban minority held back the project for everyone that could benefit from it; in this case, it was state and regional voters, including those in Vancouver, WA that rejected TriMet's requests for money, not suburban voters totally rejecting any idea of rail as in Austin.

"State and regional voters rejected funding for a line from Vancouver to the Clackamas Town Center through Portland and Milwaukie in the 1990s, forcing TriMet to find other sources of money"

So they succeeded by instead only building the section to Clackamas County, not the northern section into Washington (though that is eventually planned to be built). This, along with the recent Seattle Link LRT opening just go to show how behind in the game Austin is as far as transit. Everyone knows, CapMetro works nothing like TriMet, which of course has its flaws, but at least is competent, and with the assistance of the Metro government, has produced some truly inspirational transit projects. CapMetro has done nothing of the sort, which is why the City of Austin's separate urban rail project needs to be pushed through and worked out succesfully, so that Austin can have real rail transit like Portland.

"Urban Rail" in Austin?

Community Impact: Proposed urban rail could relieve road congestion



© Community Impact 2009

Latest news that I've seen about the Austin/CAMPO Urban Rail project recently was a page-long article in the Leander/Cedar Park edition of the Community Impact newspaper. Gives some nice definitions of what the heck they're meaning by "urban rail", and where they plan to route the train, ans well as some dates.

According to Austin's Transportation Director, Rob Spillar, they're branding it as "urban rail" because

"We're trying to make a distinction, that this is something different, a technology that can have the characteristics of both light rail and streetcars..."

Interesting idea, but I think I've seen most systems with grade-separation and street-running still called "light rail, but maybe this is an issue of semantics that still needs to be resolved?

Community Impact also laid down a supposed route for the "urban rail" system, which sounds much more promising than the route of the commuter rail Red Line:

"...15.3-mile track would originate in Mueller, go down Manor, through UT and past the Capitol to connect with CapMetro's Red Line... then crossing the river, before running down Riverside, and out to ABIA."

Here's a possibility of actually building a rail system that would serve a much higher ridership/percentage of Austinites, hitting the two major governmental complexes in town (accessibility of course depending exactly where the line is routed), through a busy part of downtown, and the urbanized Riverside corridor. Thus why the ridership calculations are for:

"...32,000 riders a year."

Apparently the CAMPO Transit Working Group even voted to approve further action upon the Urban Rail plan by 11-1, with former Travis County County Commissioner Gerald Daugherty being the only "ney" vote. Ray Spillar sees putting the bond proposition of $290 millon (to match 50/50 with FTA funds) on the May or November 2010 ballot. Too bad I'll be gone to college then.

There might yet be hope for Austin and REAL rail transit...

EDIT 3/7/09: Link and Map