Excerpted from a post I just made to the excellent Cyburbia Forums:
Actually, Austin’s development pattern was nearly ideal for a successful light rail line – the one which would have gone straight down Guadalupe past UT and the Capitol, I mean. Huge suburban catchment area served well by big park-and-rides followed by transition through inner-city residential neighborhoods with thousands of residents within walking distance followed by three mega-employment-centers (UT, capitol, downtown) all with parking issues which encourage transit as long as transit is reasonably competitive.
The reason commuter rail won’t work is that it doesn’t run through those inner-city neighborhoods (you know, the ones where people actually LIKE mass transit) _AND_ it requires a shuttle-bus transfer for UT and Capitol and most downtown employees. You can’t come up with a better way to shoot yourself in the foot than to first lose your best customers (inner-city people) and then tell your remaining customer base of skeptical suburbanites that the last mile or two of their trip is going to be on a shuttle-bus stuck in traffic with everybody else’s car.
great point. I want public transit in Austin, but what we’re going to get is the most bone headed implementation possible. The only reason it passed was because it was all we had. Augh.