Monthly Archives: November 2005

This use case analyzes a typical central Austin resident.
Let’s consider a lawyer who lives in one of those expensive houses in Hyde Park and wants to get to his law office downtown. Mister Law-Talkin’-Guy probably has free parking available in his office building, but many downtown workers don’t (they would have to pay to park). Today, Mister LTG doesn’t take the bus, because it’s a lot slower than his car, and he can park for free in his building.
Numbers indicate “seats”. IE, if the number gets up to 3, you had to ride in 3 vehicles to get there. T indicates transfers. W indicates wait. P indicates pedestrian trip.

To me, the only transit option which seems remotely palatable to Mr. LTG is the light-rail trip, because it could save time over his drive through rush-hour traffic. None of the other options are likely to be remotely competitive in time or reliability – in fact, the light rail trip might be a BIT slower than his car too. But if you’re a downtown worker who has to pay to park, or parks a few blocks away from your office, the light-rail option would be a clear winner. The light rail trip might even win Mr. LTG over since he’d have a smooth comfortable ride where he could read the Wall Street Journal, which of course he can’t do when he’s driving, and probably not on the bus, unless he’s unusually carsickness-resistant.
Note how unreliable the trips are which involve navigating traffic. On a good day, the car would beat even the light rail trip; but on a bad day, light rail would be faster. Light rail’s speed doesn’t change, in other words, because it has its own lane. The bus and the shuttle-bus both suffer from this worse than even the private car does, since you can always change your route when you’re driving.
This particular passenger type maps well to UT students who live at the Triangle, or to UT staffers who live anywhere central, etc. Essentially, the entire central Austin residential market could have been very well-served by light rail, but will not be served at ALL by commuter rail.
Most people in Central Austin are transit-positive. That is, even if they own a car, they’re willing to seriously consider using public transportation. A good number of these folks take city buses today; but the idea that Rapid Bus is going to get a non-trivial number of the remainder to leave their cars at home is ridiculous.
What about streetcars? The Future Connections Study, as I previously noted, has settled on a route which winds from downtown up to UT, then east to Mueller, so it won’t be of much use for actual residents of Central Austin. Even if it DID go “straight up the gut” as intelligent folks asked for, it wouldn’t be able to beat the city bus (or Rapid Bus) – unlike light rail vehicles, streetcars share lanes with cars.

Start of a new series – for those who are still optimistic about this commuter rail line. A “use case” in my business (software) describes how a customer might perform a certain task using your product – in this case, we’ll describe how a few prospective transit customers would get to work using 4 transportation products.
Today’s example is a Leander resident who works at the University of Texas or the State Capitol. Both locations don’t provide much in the way of free convenient parking, so workers at both locations currently provide a good deal of business for the 183-corridor express buses. Leander residents are much more suburban and conservative than Central Austin residents, so the performance and reliability gap between transit and the car would need to be smaller, in my opinion, to attract new riders to choose transit than it would be for the analogous central Austinite. I expect most of those who are motivated by expensive or inconvenient parking are already taking those express buses, in other words. (and the express buses are actually pretty nice; most of the time I can read in them without getting carsick).
Numbers indicate “seats”. IE, if the number gets up to 3, you had to ride in 3 vehicles to get there. T indicates transfers. W indicates wait. P indicates pedestrian trip.
“Current” is indicated next to the bus trip because there are some indications that Capital Metro might eliminate some of the 183-corridor express buses in order to induce more commuter rail ridership.
Note that the “shuttle bus” portion of this trip will, even if made on a streetcar, still have the same traffic characteristics (i.e. a streetcar running in mixed traffic will still be as slow and unreliable as a shuttle bus).
See notes after the table for more.

In general, I assumed you would get to the express bus stop and wait 5-10 minutes for the express bus, and I was charitably assuming it would be on time. The remainder of that trip is from the 7:25 route in from Leander, and assuming a 5 minute or less walk from the stop. The drive is me estimating what I suppose it would take that time of day (I’d like to hear from a Leander resident that makes this trip in their car for a more accurate estimate). The commuter rail time has such a wide swing because of the shuttle bus component – buses fare worse than cars in heavy traffic due to their acceleration characteristics and the fact that they can’t change their route to get around heavy traffic. In general, I assume that the more time you spend on a bus, the less reliable your trip (could be faster or slower than the average). (The express buses don’t try to slow down to avoid hitting stops early on the way in in the mornings, unlike city buses, so you actually could get dropped off earlier than schedule indicates).
Note that one of the key attractions to the 2000 light rail route is its reliability. A route which doesn’t require that you take shuttle buses can dependably get you to work at the same time every day. The train isn’t stuck in traffic, and you don’t have to make any transfers.