Chronicle remains credulous

Posted on September 7, 2006 | 7 Comments

In today’s story about the new effort to align CAMPO dollars to Envision Central Texas goals, not once, in the entire story, was this fact mentioned:
The three biggest “nodes”, now and in the future, by orders of magnitude, are UT, the Capitol, and downtown; none of which are served by commuter rail, and not well by streetcar. If you live at Mueller and work at the Capitol, you can take the streetcar to work, but it’ll be as slow as the bus is today, and that’s the only use case that makes sense. All existing residential density in the city continues to be provided with nothing but slow, stuck-in-traffic, buses (mislabelled as “Rapid” though they may be).
Summary: Until the elephant in the tent is addressed (those three nodes), all of this is just useless ego-stroking wastes of time.

This entry was posted in Austin, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, I Told You So, Rapid Bus Ain't Rapid, Republicans Hate Poor People, Republicans Hate Public Transportation, Republicans Hate The Environment, Subsidies to Suburban Sprawl, Texas Republicans Hate Cities, Transit in Austin, Transportation, Urban Design, Use Cases. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to Chronicle remains credulous

  1. Patrick | September 7, 2006 at 1:15 pm |

    Well, maybe egos are being stroked. I can’t help but think something else is, too. Ugh.

  2. Chris | September 7, 2006 at 4:43 pm |

    Yeah, commuter rail will be a train wreck. And streetcars that can get struck in the same traffic as buses are no better than buses.
    What was the light rail route in the 2000 proposal? Can you refer me to an old post or site?

  3. GlennM | September 8, 2006 at 11:04 am |

    m1ek,
    Thanks for the education over the last year or so. You’ve made me a believer that the current transportation plans suck. But what’s the action plan? Continuous streams of bile don’t interest me. A plan of attack does.
    GlennM

  5. M1EK | September 12, 2006 at 4:23 pm |

    Chris,
    http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000266.html
    I drew in the ’00 route in blue. Continue up Lamar to the intersection with the existing rail line, and then it joins the commuter rail route heading northwest from there. They weren’t planning on using the existing rail track, though; the plan was to double-track the whole thing from day one.

  6. M1EK | September 12, 2006 at 4:24 pm |

    Jeff,
    I’ve posted before about the FEC corridor, both here and in the lightrail_now group which I finally left in disgust a month or so ago, over their refusal to hold Lyndon accountable for his misrepresentations while moderating the hell out of me for simply pointing them out.

  7. Jeff | September 12, 2006 at 5:15 pm |

    I know you have posted on it, thats why i sent the article. :)