Category Archives: Red Line Myths

It’s time to talk about Rapid Bus again.

Posted on February 21, 2013 | 5 Comments

So the PR machine is out in force trying to make Rapid Bus sound great so people are distracted from the fact that the densest, most active, most vibrant corridor in the city – not only now but 40 years from now – isn’t going to get rail until the 2040s, if then. In the meantime, we’re planning on building another hugely subsidized line to suburbs that don’t pay any Capital Metro taxes; and an urban rail line to a “new urban” development that is new, but isn’t urban; and even when fully built out will have far less people and far less travel demand to the core than Guadalupe/Lamar do today.

Was that sentence long enough? I pay by the period.

Anyways, so Rapid Bus? Snakes like JMVC are pitching the hell out of it and talking about it in the same breath as light rail and commuter rail as “high capacity transit” – which is a way to make people in Central Austin think they’re getting equal or nearly-equal quality.

This is bullshit.

So apparently I need to do this again – and this time, for the maximum possible fairness, I’m going to start with the BEST POSSIBLE CASE for Rapid Bus – the Burnet/Lamar corridor, where no express service currently exists.

Joker-here-we-go

→ 5 Comments

Posted in 2008 Light Rail, Austin, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, Funding of Transportation, High Grade Bile, I Told You So, metablog, Rapid Bus Ain't Rapid, Red Line Myths, Subsidies to Suburban Sprawl, Texas Republicans Hate Cities

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Capital Metro and Rail Demand, Part The Deux

Posted on January 26, 2013 | 1 Comment

As always, click to embiggen.

According to our buddy John-Michael Vincent Cortez, this area justifies rail service:

Lakeline "station"

Do the Cedar trees make it urban?

but this location does not:

NB Guadalupe near 27th

Clearly there’s no demand here.

But surely I must have taken a bad picture of the first location. Let’s spin around and take a couple more shots:

Lakeline "station" looking west-ish?

Vibrant!

Lakeline "station" looking east-ish?

Urban!

One last one, to the north-ish, showing development happening any day now which will turn this into an urban paradise:

Lakeline "station", looking north-ish

Man, that screams “future TOD”, don’t it?

Oops, looks like suburban homebuilder signs. Well, still, if he says that this area justifies rail service:

Lakeline "station", looking north-ish

Man, that screams “future TOD”, don’t it?

 

Lakeline "station" looking east-ish?

Urban!

 

Lakeline "station" looking west-ish?

Vibrant!

 

Lakeline "station"

Do the Cedar trees make it urban?

and this does not:

Guadalupe near 27th, looking south

Desolate low-density wasteland with no urban activity, obviously

who are we to argue?

Previously.

(All Lakeline pictures taken during a serendipitous Saturday morning trip from my kid’s chess tournament up in Cedar Round Rock Park to the Super Awesome Target to buy a camp chair, in which I coincidentally (yes, coincidentally) drove right by the ‘station’. Austin pictures horked from Google streetview, which were obviously snapped during a slow period. Posted with some pain to bookface because RRISD blocks that, and IMAP/SMTP, but NOT tworter for some reason, so Round Cedar Park Rock punks should please plan on getting tworter accounts posthaste).

→ 1 Comment

Posted in 2008 Light Rail, Austin, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, Red Line Myths, Subsidies to Suburban Sprawl, Transit in Austin, Transportation, Urban Design

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spin alert: Back to our buddy

Posted on January 16, 2013 | Leave a comment

From his twitter last night:

JMVC on twitter, 1/15/2013

JMVC on twitter, 1/15/2013

Huh. Interesting this survey has not been published. Meanwhile, I refer again back to my three posts on the specific issue of who’s riding from where:

 

First, in Who Is Riding The Red Line, Part One?, I showed that the overwhelming majority of Red Line passengers are boarding at the three park and rides on the northern end of the line; NOT from the stations most people would think of as “in Austin”.

In Who Is Riding The Red Line, Part Two?, I showed that it was expected that most riders at the Lakeline and Howard stations would not be from the City of Austin due to simple geography (i.e. of the people for whom it would make sense to drive a reasonable distance in the correct direction to the station, the overwhelming majority would be outside the Capital Metro service area and the city of Austin).

In Who Is Riding The Red Line, Part Three?, a rider from up north verified that most passengers getting on board at the Lakeline Station (within Austin city limits, but just barely) are actually from Cedar Park, and pay zero Capital Metro taxes when in their home jurisdictions (no, the one or two lunches a week they might do in Austin don’t amount to a hill of beans).

So, back to today: If JMVC is asserting that most riders are from Austin, he has a duty to share his survey methodology and results with the public. If legitimate, I’ll cheerfully append them to each and every post above. Let’s see what he’s got.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, I Told You So, PS: I am not a crackpot, Red Line Myths, Transit in Austin, Transportation

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Quick response to spin session

Posted on January 11, 2013 | 1 Comment

I’m really swamped but did not want to let this one go.

Watch this video and go to item 4B (zoom forward to when JMVC talks Red Line and Rapid [sic] Bus).

JMVC tells the Rapid Bus tale to the UTC

JMVC tells the Rapid Bus tale to the UTC

Note the following points are made:

1. Red Line ridership is up (true!)

2. MetroRapid is coming. This is important because it’s the thing that connects the best parts of Austin; where the most travel demand exists (their words, but true!)

Then go ahead to the city’s MetroRapid presentation (4C) and see Jace Deloney and Richard Mackinnon ask JMVC some questions about Rapid [sic] Bus precluding light rail on this corridor.

Note that, despite claiming for years that yours truly was lying when I said Rapid Bus meant no light rail here, JMVC now says:

1. There will be no light rail here

2. I can’t comment specifically on why, but

3. You’re crazy to want light rail here because Rapid [sic] Bus is all this corridor demands and Capital Metro would never want to provide more than the corridor demanded in transit service (others may have other reasons for doing so, again, their words).

 

Now, UTC? Here’s where you dropped the ball after doing a decent job up to this point:

Nobody followed up and asked JMVC why they provided rail on the Red Line corridor – why that corridor somehow ‘demands rail’ and a corridor with 5-10x as much existing transit ridership and far more density along it now and in the foreseeable future doesn’t.

Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue

Yeah, he’ll say “well, the voters told us to”, which is where you can say “The voters didn’t make that proposal; you did, with Mike Krusee but without any input from the City of Austin, who were caught completely flatfooted”. That might be too much past history for you. Let me know, and I can be your bad guy there who can’t let go of the past if you need me to. I’m a friggin’ hero that way.

Anyways, back to the point.

Hint: JMVC is spinning his ass off here to avoid getting caught in his own lie, told for many years; that Rapid [sic] Bus is an OK interim step; that it won’t get in the way of rail later. If he can now convince people that rail’s not needed there, he doesn’t have to admit that his previous claim was a lie. Spinning like this is his job. I wish he wasn’t a disingenuous dick about it everywhere and pretended like he was just a truth-teller, but fundamentally his job is to make Capital Metro look as good as possible. However: It’s the responsibility of those serving the public interest, like the UTC, to catch people like this out when they lie.

Guess what I would have done, back in my day on the UTC? Well, letting a paid spin artist get away with a lie that hurts the long-term public interest is not on the list. It’s uncomfortable to confront people. You will seem like, and people will call you, an asshole. Tough; it’s important to remember who you serve – you serve the citizens of Austin, not Capital Metro, and in this case Capital Metro has screwed the citizens of Austin and is about to get away with it.

JMVC got away with it

JMVC got away with it

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Austin, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, I Told You So, Rapid Bus Ain't Rapid, Red Line Myths, Transit in Austin, Transportation

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Stop lying about TOD, Capital Metro

Posted on March 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

I know you guys know better than this. And I know you’re just repeating what the developer says, but you know better, and so repeating something you know to be false makes you, well, liars.

Here is a picture from Google Earth showing the straight-line path from the 2900 Manor Road “TOD” to the MLK station. Google Earth shows this as 0.47 miles, which is not even in the same universe as “close enough to call this a transit-oriented development”. VTPI, who essentially invented the term, allows for walks of up to a half mile IF AND ONLY IF some necessary preconditions are met, which the Red Line does not even come close to meeting. Otherwise? Quarter-mile – and that’s for a large TOD area. If you want to call a small development a TOD, it needs to be very close to the transit.

It’s bad enough to count the M Station as a TOD – but at least it’s close enough to be a reasonable distance to walk, although still much further than the prospective passenger would walk to their car in the free surface parking lot. It’s bad enough to count Midtown Commons as a TOD, given that it’s less dense than the Triangle, which has no rail transit at all.

But this? This is enough. Stop it. Stop it now.

Your pal,

M1EK

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, Red Line Myths, Transit in Austin

Tagged , , ,

Write the City Council on Red Line weekend subsidy

Posted on February 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

Here’s what I just sent.

Honorable mayor and council members:

Please reject efforts by some to use additional tax revenue from the city of Austin to subsidize service on Capital Metro’s Red Line. As a strong supporter of rail transit in general but also an Austin taxpayer, I don’t want to spend our scarce local transportation dollars on a service which primarily benefits non-Austin residents, and definitely not at such a high cost.

The most recent operating subsidy information available from Capital Metro shows weekday service requiring an operating subsidy per ride of approximately 34 dollars. This is abominably high compared to good rail lines in other cities – and ten times the current bus subsidy across the system. But this subsidy, at least, is paid for by all Capital Metro members (including Leander residents, for instance). Not so the case with this new proposal.

Even if we exceed weekday numbers by perhaps double, my own quick estimates show we would likely be spending around 20 city tax dollars per rider to bring them downtown and take them back – and a reasonable expectation is that they might spend 40 or 50 dollars while here – meaning the city is asking taxpayers to spend 20 bucks to return 40 or 50 cents to the tax coffers (and this is assuming they wouldn’t have driven and paid to park were the Red Line not an option).

This money needs to be saved for the city’s own urban rail plans.

Regards,
Mike Dahmus
UTC 2000-2005
mike@dahmus.org

Since sending this I realized I should also have included a point I made on the phone to KUT an hour or so ago: that during the week, you can make an argument for (some) subsidy by referring to scarce space on highways and roadways and in parking lots and garages. This is not the case on the weekend – plenty of space to get into downtown, and plenty of places to park, some of which even make the city additional revenue.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Austin, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, Economics, Funding of Transportation, PS: I am not a crackpot, Red Line Myths, Transit in Austin, Transportation

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How much are we subsidizing passengers on the Red Line now?

Posted on February 7, 2012 | 4 Comments

Erica McKewen from Capital Metro let me know that one of the most recent monthly reports does, finally, have the subsidy information available for the general public.

Example from page 7 of December’s report, blown up for your perusal below. The most recent subsidy information shows that even with higher ridership after the 2011 changes (closing competing express bus routes, dropping unproductive shuttles, adding a peak trip); the Red Line still requires a subsidy of nearly 35 dollars per passenger per trip. In most other cities with successful light rail lines (that pull boardings well into the 5 digits per day), operating costs are similar or even lower than the bus system as a whole – which, if you can get higher passenger fares, means that operating subsidies on good light rail lines are lower than comparable buses, not ten times as high.

In tabular form, the most important numbers only:

Mode Operating subsidy per ride Notes
Regular bus $3.22 On top of a regular fare of about $1 per trip, $2 for express. High productivity routes like the #1 have barely any subsidy at all.
UT shuttle $1.23 By contract, a certain percentage of operating costs is paid for directly by UT; the rest by Cap Metro – this is fare-free for students and de-facto fare-free for everybody else
Red Line $33.98 Fares were lowered for most people to be as low or even lower than express buses; many to most riders do not even pay Capital Metro taxes

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Austin, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, I Told You So, Red Line Myths, Transit in Austin

Tagged ,

Approximately 3100 words for today about TOD

Posted on April 1, 2011 | 1 Comment

I wish this were an April Fools’ joke, but many folks, including city council members and Cap Metro board members, apparently believe the site drawn below with loving care in MSPaint is going to be a TOD when it’s complete. The project page is here.
Click on each picture for a double-size version.

Continue reading →

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Austin, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, I Told You So, Red Line Myths, Transit in Austin, Transportation, Urban Design, Walking in Austin (Pedestrian Issues)

Red Line Phase One Wrap-Up

Posted on February 2, 2011 | 2 Comments

This is the last monthly data we get before Big Changes make for a big discontinuity in the graphs. December is, as Capital Metro wants to make sure you know, a low ridership month. As usual, click for larger versions. Analysis follows the pictures.

Continue reading →

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, I Told You So, Red Line Myths, Transit in Austin, Transportation

You Idiots, You Blew It Up

Posted on December 3, 2010 | 9 Comments

I posted this link on twitter with the caption: “Austin Urban Rail Goes To Hell”. Note entry number for giggles.
I really don’t have time for this, with the 60 hour workweeks, young family including baby that still doesn’t sleep nights, and impending back surgery, but I have to say something, so I’ll be brief.
I offered a year or more ago to become involved with Leffingwell’s team on the urban rail project. I was ignored. (Note: I offered quite nicely.)
Recently, the plans have crystallized – and it’s bad. Shared running almost everywhere – except for one (admittedly long, but not really relevant) stretch from I-35 to the airport, the trains will be stuck behind cars – or at best, buses (including local buses). No, a ‘possible future transit lane’ on Guadalupe/Lavaca doesn’t mitigate; unless it’s reserved for ONLY Rapid Bus and the train – and I don’t see that happening; it’s going to be stuffed with locals too, and that’s if it even happens.

Unlike Brewster McCracken, who talked up reserved guideway everywhere except the leg out Manor to Mueller, Leffingwell’s team has relented and the plan now calls for the trains to be stuck in traffic almost everywhere important. McCracken talked about “time certainty” being a big deal on a trip to/from the airport (or to/from work, of course). You don’t get that without your own lane – period. No amount of Rapid [sic] Bus technology is going to get you there.
This rail plan, in its current state, is not worth fighting for. In fact, it’s probably worth fighting against, as was the 2004 plan that so many of the “why don’t you just stay civil” folks failed to affect in any way, shape, or form.

Be ready for a lot of the same people who claimed from 2004-2010 that car drivers would switch in droves to a train that required them to ride shuttlebuses to claim that the fact that these trains are stuck in traffic won’t keep people from switching to them.
Remember who was right before, and who’s been wrong the entire time. Or just be lazy and maintain access to the gladhanders to stay “civil” – and hold hands as we all ride the train off the cliff together – your choice.
And Not a done deal, you say? The engineering docs look pretty much done-deal level to me; as do the interactions with the media (note: the ONLY media outlet to cover the issue of guideway AT ALL was “Impact Central Texas”; their story here – good job guys; and shame on everybody else).

The urban rail system route is expected to follow Guadalupe and Lavaca streets, San Jacinto Boulevard and Congress Avenue. It will travel with traffic and may potentially receive signal priority at traffic lights, similar to Capital Metro’s buses.
An urban rail system in Austin is expected to cost $200 million in its first phase of development. The track will be 33.8 miles in length and extend from Mueller to downtown to the Austin Bergstrom International Airport. Photo by Bobby Longoria/Community Impact Newspaper. Click for a larger image.
“Big difference between this and a bus is that it can fit 170 people, mostly standing, where a bus caps out at 60 or 80,” Spillar said.

Hey guess what another big difference between this and a bus is, Rob? The bus that’s stuck behind somebody double-parked can change lanes. A train sharing a lane with cars is the worst transit possibly imaginable in a city where most people drive – it has the worst aspects of buses and the worst aspects of trains with almost none of the good parts of either.
More background on Why Streetcars Suck courtesy of Jarrett Walker here: streetcars: an inconvenient truth
So I guess I need to update my “IT’S NOT LIGHT RAIL” chart:
If your train runs on freight tracks, can’t run in the street, and requires shuttle buses – IT’S NOT LIGHT RAIL. Know what else? If your train doesn’t have its own lane – and relies on the same crap Rapid [sic] Bus uses to get a leg up, IT’S ALSO NOT LIGHT RAIL.
Summary: If you want to live in a city with good urban rail, your best bet now is probably to move away. Seriously.

spreadsheet behind this image coming sometime down the road, maybe.

→ 9 Comments

Posted in 2008 Light Rail, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, High Grade Bile, I Told You So, Red Line Myths, Transit in Austin, Transportation