Showing posts sorted by relevance for query parking. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query parking. Sort by date Show all posts

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

A Changing Mobility Structure and The Death of Parking

Thanksgiving 

It was probably pretty common to argue about politics over Thanksgiving weekend with your families.  I got into a discussion about parking. And yes I told them this might be on the blog.  My parents live close to a town in California called Walnut Creek.  It's a compact walk-able center for shopping in the San Francisco Bay Area and very walk-able when you get out of the car. 

But you have to get there first.  The BART station was built too far away from downtown for it to be ultimately useful as a shaper of parking policy and the Macy's parking lot is soon going to be charging for the privilege of storing a vehicle while you shop.  I have no doubt that free parking will continue to exist, however this argument might not have even been taking place in 20-30 years.

The Death of a Parking Space

Currently there is a call to hold horses on parking development due to the coming revolution of autonomous vehicles.  Quotes from articles on news sites go like this...
“The flow of any retail follows the function of parking,” explained Weilminster at the Nov. 9 event at the Grand Hyatt in Buckhead. Self-driving cars are also expected to reduce the need for parking decks, which cost between $25,000 and $40,000 per parking space to build.
This from an article in the Atlanta Business Journal about how technology is going to change real estate development. But that is a future prediction. But what about now? In Houston, it's already real...slightly.
City officials are somewhat reluctant to attribute the loss to any one cause, but data show parking meters along Washington and nearby began pulling in less money per month right around the time paid-ride companies such as Uber and Lyft entered Houston in February 2014....
Meanwhile, sales tax collections in the district appear unaffected by the parking rules, based on city data.
According to the Houston Chronicle, parking lots that would usually support revelers are used less based on the data. Of course we don't know if its directly because of ride hailing services, but it would be a good hypothesis.

I also had former Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz on the podcast recently and he lamented the focus on parking and told members of the audience who were revitalizing storefronts to just wait to build new parking.  Below is the shorter snippet on his relevant comments.

"I would not be investing in parking at all, for at least five years.  Let's just see how it plays out"


Others are noticing what Dave and planners are starting to say out loud.
"They’re saying, 'Don’t build parking lots, don’t build garages, you aren’t going to need them,'" said Councilman Skip Moore, citing city planners at national conferences across the country....
...significant pressures are aligning which should give pause to investors in automobile parking garages. Garages are typically financed on a 30-year payback, either by cities or private investors. But they could find themselves holding the un-payable back-end of a 30-year note, when folks stop driving within the next 15 years...
Even technology VCs are getting in on the action. Marc Andreesson said this to The Verge
There are mayors that would, for example, like to just declare their city core to [ban] human-driven cars. They want a grid of autonomous cars, golf carts, buses, trams, whatever, and it’s just a service, all electric, all autonomous.  Think about what they could do if they had that. They could take out all of the street parking. They could take out all of the parking lots. They could turn the entire downtown area into a park with these very lightweight electric vehicles.
He also talks about flying cars for high end users which makes me think that autonomous vehicles will be on the surface with the plebes and flying cars will be for the "landed gentry" as it were.  I'm starting to see the Jetsons come to life in my head right now.  Or maybe the Star Wars planet of Coruscant where the lower to the ground you live, the lower your social status. 




A Future of Autonomous Vehicles

I would very much like to ban driving from dense urban cores.  With adequate subway, bus, and delivery systems, there would be no need for small vehicles that only carry one or two people to be so hulking and wasteful.  And perhaps it will end up like Ghent, in Belgium.
“It was a rather radical plan to ban all cars from an area of about 35 hectares,” recalls Beke. “With every decision you take, there can be some opposition – but I never expected a bullet, of course.”
There were protests outside Ghent’s city hall: businesses were afraid they’d lose their customers, elderly residents were concerned about being cut off from their children. But Beke stood his ground, and although a few businesses that relied on car access had to move, today the city centre is thriving.
Or maybe we'll have a new paradigm with moving sidewalks or those tubes from the Futurama cartoon. Though that seems like a lot to maintain and we know how often elevators break down at subway stops.  But imagine if arterials were just moving walkways?


Imagine how many people could move without a metal frame surrounding them?  What could be done with all that parking we free up?  There is more than enough space in cities today to make room for everyone.  It doesn't even have to look like the densest places of our wildest dreams or nightmares. It could be cozy.  And supported by a good transportation system.

Three Ways of Autonomy

Another article that I read recently discussed the three ways of future autonomous cities.  In a report put together by McKinsey and Bloomberg, a typology of places was put forth to describe how cities will adopt autonomy.
Cities like Delhi, Mexico City, and Mumbai ("clean and shared" category) will focus on the EV part of the equation in an attempt to reduce pollution...

...Meanwhile, a second type of city characterized by sprawl (think L.A. or San Antonio) will still privilege personal, private car ownership, even if "autonomy and electrification allow passengers to use time in traffic for business or pleasure."...  

...But a third type—densely populated, high-income places like Chicago, Hong Kong, London, and Singapore—will move away from private car ownership toward shared AV mobility, the report says. People may travel more overall, because picking up an Uber AV will be relatively cheap and easy...
I think typologies are a great way to break down ideas but this is a bit too simplistic given what we discussed earlier about pedestrian central cities and the reduced parking possibilities.  I think we'll see a mixture of these things based on urban form and pedestrian policy.  And it's possible there will be pockets of pedestrian oasis free from big vehicles all together that aren't a part of central cities.  That is if we get policy right. 

I know that car companies don't see this human centered future. Yonah Freemark documented this idea of heaven and hell. They see the money that can be made selling a car, or a car service, or anything that will make for exchanging currency.  But who knows what the future brings.  I'm just watching for the trends.  We might want to start thinking of what we want the future to look like though before it looks at us.    

Back to Thanksgiving

So back to Thanksgiving and Walnut Creek.  This discussion about a need for parking wouldn't happen in 20 years. We won't have to worry about cars crashing over sidewalks and won't have to pay for parking.  And the goods we buy can be delivered to our door  Just another sunny day in California.  

That is....if we get the policy right.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Parking Bombs

More! That's the scream of merchants and others who believe that a downtown without an endless sea of parking is not worth going to. But once the whole downtown turns into a parking lot it's not really worth much anymore is it? Yet we still see the discussion of parking dominate without an eye for the destruction that it can cause a downtown if left unfettered.

Before Portland's miraculous return as an urban Mecca, it too was once infested by parking. So was the city of Houston, where parking lots took over most of the downtown at one point.



Via Mike Lydon and Transit Miami (Via the book City Shaped)

Perhaps you can say how different this is from Rotterdam after German bombing...


It's unfortunate that we didn't see what we were doing to our wonderful cities in the name of cars first. Europe had war, yet we dismantled our cities in a similar way in the name of progress. So much parking though, what has that done to the city's value? What has it taken away in terms of tax revenue from land and greater employment agglomerations? A study by Anne Moudon and Dohn Wook Sohn showed that offices that were clustered had greater values than those that weren't in the Seattle region. In addition to the spending on highways that expanded our regions to their current far reaches, how much real estate value did we destoy?

Greater value for downtowns was lost and in the process we saw places like Hartford, as found by Dr. Norm Garrick at UConn lose population, employment, and their character. Not just the loss from parking, but from the gutting of the city by the Interstate System. Here are some slides from Dr. Garrick showing the destruction. When he toggled through the first time, the room I was in audibly gasped for air.

Hartford Pre Interstate


Hartford Post Interstate


So what's the damage? The amount of tax creating employment did not grow and parking spots skyrocketed.


So in aggregate what did this look like? The red shows it all:


Lost revenue, lost agglomeration, lost value. Will these examples teach us a lesson about too much parking? Perhaps

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Not a Train, Never Will Be

BRT is not "rail-like". It is not a replacement for rail but rather an upgrade on a specific corridor from what exists. Buses in their own lanes are better, but they are not "rail-like".

In addition, the opposition needs to stop whining about the bus bringing higher densities to the corridor and reducing parking spaces. Parking is not free and the pavement has a better use than storing your car. You live in the East Bay on the best corridors to reduce VMT and oil dependence, and I imagine you talk about being green all the time. Yet you oppose density and better transit that will help that goal.

Cunradi agreed parking space losses are a serious issue. To offset the impact, the transit district will consider developing parking lots or garages, or installing parking meters on commercial side streets so the spaces turn over faster, he said.

Greg Harper, an AC Transit board member from Emeryville, said the fear of denser development is an underlying fear that has fueled opposition to bus rapid transit.

The transit district should not be responsible for replacing parking. The city should not be responsible for paying for parking for specific merchants or anyone for that matter. Parking is not free. Losing a number of parking spaces is a small price to pay for better transit.

Also a bit of warning to those who think that BRT is "rail-like". BRT will never be replaced by light rail. There is no example of BRT ever being taken out and replaced by rail. Once its there, that's it. Buses. That is not to say that it doesn't have its place in the network, but if a corridor needs rail, and buses are used, an upgrade is a long time coming, if ever.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Parking Rates & Housing Needs

In Phoenix, Light Rail has pushed more businesses to core areas and pushed parking rates up.

While they remain among the lowest in the nation, monthly parking rates in Phoenix grew faster this year than in any other major metro area in the country. A new annual report on parking rates from Colliers International says the median unreserved monthly parking rate in Phoenix is $65. That’s up 24 percent from last year’s survey, while the national average declined 1 percent. Two years ago, the average in Phoenix was just $35 a month.

The strange thing is the light rail is causing more people to drive downtown. Perhaps downtown parking fees should be harvested as value capture, since there seems to be some sort of causation according to the article.
“With the light rail’s capability of moving more people in and out of downtown, we are beginning to see entertainment venues and businesses shift from the Camelback Corridor and other metro areas to downtown Phoenix to take advantage of light rail traffic,” Miscio said. “This shift is also driving more auto traffic into downtown, increasing parking garage usage and rates during both the daytime and evening.”
Though businesses moved, development has been slow in Phoenix, for obvious reasons. But while the line connects destinations, according to local developers it's lacking in housing density, which is another likely reason that more people are driving and parking rates are higher. It's times like these that looking at value capture possibilities to pay for more transit and related infrastructure is probably a good idea. Especially since there is likely to be a residential building uptick if there is a lack of options along the line.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Next Earthquake

What could be more devastating than a huge earthquake or atomic bomb hitting San Francisco?

A proposal to have 1:1 parking ratio in the city outside of downtown among other provisions. Just about the dumbest idea I've ever seen or heard of. Idiocy knows no bounds. Here are some other crazy provisions from a the comments...

The ordinance does NOT leave the recent C-3 (downtown) parking controls as is. In fact, it guts them. And it doesn't gut just the recent changes. It guts the fundamental controls that have existed in downtown for decades, and were the core of the City's renowned 1985 Downtown Plan, on which the Financial District we know today was built. The biggest change is not just the residential controls. The biggest, and most drastic change is the complete elimination of the limitation on commuter parking for commercial (office) buildings. The initiative would more allow (via changes to Section 151.1) more than 650% of the commuter parking currently allowed downtown! Where 100 spaces are now allowed, this initative would allow 667 spaces! This is a fact, and the math is simple:

The current controls place an absolute parking maximum equivalent to 7% of the gross floor area of an office building. 500,000 sf office = 35,000 sf parking = 100 parking spaces. Under the initative, a builder could build up to one space for every 750 square feet of office space. 500,000 sf office = 667 spaces. The words drastic and dramatic don't even begin to capture the magnitude of this change for downtown. The entire downtown has been built on a limited parking model, and only because of that reason (and only) the commute to downtown SF has the highest share of commuters taking transit outside of lower manhattan.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The Cost of Street Parking Spaces

Cities are adding bicycle lanes to streets with heavy bike traffic as a means of improving safety, but the process is constantly being hindered by strong opposition from the businesses along the streets where the lanes are proposed. Most small businesses with street parking spots are reluctant to give them up for parking lanes out of fear that decreased parking space will affect their business.

This was recently highlighted in San Francisco, when bike lanes were proposed for Polk Street. Though Polk was considered one of the most dangerous streets in the city for cyclists and pedestrians, the plan to add a bike lane faced heavy backlash from local merchants, and as a result, took over 2 years to implement. The backlash from local merchants provoked enough contention in bike advocates that some started a Yelp campaign against an optometrist who lobbied the Mayor to remove his block from the Polk Street bike lane plan.

However, the fears of bike lanes damaging local business are unfounded. In fact, many studies show that rather than decreasing business, increased bike traffic actually seems to promote more spending. While people in cars tend to spend more money per shopping trip, people on bikes tend to take more trips and will ultimately spend more. This has been seen in cities throughout the US and internationally, so any opposition to bike lanes based on negative economic impacts have yet to be justified.

Bike lanes aren’t the only use for parking spots that can be good for business. Parklets are popping up in front of stores and restaurants in many cities, and they too, can increase sales for nearby businesses. Parklets take up only one or two parking spots, but their occupancy rate and turnover are far higher than a parking spot. As a result, places that install parklets often find that the extra activity promotes extra business.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Feeling the Pain of Parking

I posted a few weeks ago about what I felt like was a natural disaster when it came to parking in San Francisco. People are feeling the pain, and are trying to make those who have adjusted pay for their pain. A post on Metro Rider in LA, discusses how LA just hasn't felt the pain because they don't pay the true cost of parking. It's just paid for through back channel ways. If the free market was really able to work, those spaces would cost an awful lot. But they would be provided by the market. Perhaps they would cost as much as the one's in New York City, which according to a New York Times article are going for about $225,000. Wow

For developers in New York, parking is the highest and best use for below-grade space and fetches about the same price per square foot as actual living space, which costs much more to develop. According to Miller Samuel, the average parking space costs $165,019, or $1,100 per square foot, close to the average apartment price of $1,107 per square foot. Those are averages, of course. A $200,000 parking space is about $1,333 per square foot.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

The Myth of Houston's No Zoning Part 1

There is a pervasive myth in the world of anti-planning and anti-transit fanatics that should be debunked. Specifically Randall O'Toole believes that Houston is the bastion of the free market. That would be nice and rosy if it were true, but it of course is not.

Parking Requirements

What is a good libertarian argument without a discussion about their preferred mode of transportation. If there was no such thing as zoning in Houston, then there would also not be any requirements on property. But instead we find that a one bedroom apartment has a 1.33 space parking requirement which of course lead to larger parking lots or garages costing developers lots of money. If it were a true free market issue, parking space construction would be left up to the market, yet its not. A report done by the EPA found that parking requirements were a big reason why TOD in Midtown has failed to take off. Another reason seems to stem from the fact that land owners think their land is worth much more than it really is and have been unwilling to part with it feeling like a high rise is their eventual destiny.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Future Housing Near Transit Hit Hard

While we've seen housing that exists near transit hold its value and become a hot commodity during the downturn, we also see the flipside, new housing near transit is not getting built because of the lack of demand for housing, people just don't have money. This is true in Seattle and in the East Bay where big plans exist for transit villages around Link and BART. In Seattle:
For-profit developers proposed more than 1,500 condos and apartments within a 10-minute walk of a station. Now, with the trains to carry their first paying passengers in three months, most of those deals are on hold. Project after project has been delayed or derailed, victimized by tight credit and related economic woes.
In the Bay Area on the Freemont line the plans are getting hit the same way:
All along the East Bay’s Interstate 880 corridor, from Oakland to Fremont, cities are putting plans for hundreds of units of market-rate housing on ice. The projects can’t go forward until the credit crisis thaws, allowing developers to obtain loans that they typically used to build.
I wonder how much more could be built though if they didn't have to worry so much about parking, the bane of every TOD's existence.
In Fremont, for example, where the city wants to build 300 condominiums near its BART station, plans originally called for the housing to sit atop a subterranean parking garage. To avoid the added cost of building an underground parking lot, the developers turned to a new scheme that calls for the multi-story housing to wrap around an elevated parking structure.
The Dallas donut (an apartment building wrapped around an internal parking structure) is usually what the market will bear after (edit: was until) transit, if only it were easier.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Guest post: Why can't I find parking?

(Note from Pantograph: This is another guest post from my friend Ed. If you missed his first two posts, check back down the page for more of his work)



Spend any time driving in San Francisco, and you’ll notice that there isn’t a lot of parking. Then, just before you give up and put the car in a garage, it dawns on you that while there aren’t that many spaces, there also aren’t that many parked cars. Instead, driveway after driveway chops up the curb, leaving the street space unusable. Curb cuts are everywhere, of course, but San Francisco buildings seem particularly fond of them.

The obvious impact is that these curb cuts take away parking that could serve many different users of the neighborhood – residents, visitors, and shoppers, and put it into private hands. But there are a lot of other reasons to dislike curb cuts. They increase conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles, they set up hazardous situations as cars back out onto busy streets, they encourage sidewalk parking, and they can often leave a street without room for the trees and other amenities that improve the way pedestrians experience the street. Moreover, the garages they lead to take up space that could be used for a variety of things that add to street life, like storefronts or stoops.

The desire for off-street parking in some areas is certainly valid. However, because there isn’t a price attached to installing a curb cut, we see the type of “overfishing” that plagues any unpriced resource, with some buildings sporting rows of 4, 5, and even more garage doors fronting city streets. Fortunately, this is starting to change - the city is soon going to start charging at least $100 per year for installing a cut, and there have also been efforts to slow new installations in North Beach. Hopefully these measures will lead to efficient use of the city’s curbsides.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Parking Lot Congestion Pricing?

I was reading up on the Seattle congestion pricing debate over at Seattle Transit Blog and Orphan Road and was thinking about ways to address the equity issue of congestion pricing. I'm wondering what kind of tax isn't regressive. Is it the land tax? Perhaps.

But what about a rush hour parking tax?

Parking garages have meters that do timestamping, so why not charge a fee for parking between 8:00 and 9:30 and leaving between 4:30 and 6:00. When you use that funding for expanding transit, you can then expand to road based congestion pricing after expanding transit. That way if you don't have any other options, you can still get in and park if its early or late making people vary their timing surely making it more equitable. I'm sure there are drawbacks because this just popped into my head and I didn't think it through completely but I'd like to hear people's take on it. It could be too limited to workers downtown for instance. Or people could just write it off on their taxes unless that benefit was taken away.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Oh Noes! Street Parking Havoc!

So says an article in the Virginian Pilot. I had to chuckle when I saw the head line, "Light-rail work creates street-parking havoc in Norfolk". Havoc they say, pandemonium ensues and all is lost!
Machismo Burrito Bar owner Bill Caton worries it will drive him out of business. Like many businesses in densely developed Freemason, his relies on street parking for his customers.
But then we find out just how many spaces will be lost. A whopping 40. Someone at the city of Norfolk should have taken pedestrian counts before, during, and after the light rail construction. Then I checked the Pilot's website and what were the ads around the article? All for autos. Sure its not a direct correlation, but we know who pays for a lot of advertising budget for the news. Parking story? Big News!!!

Monday, September 17, 2007

Tailgating & Transit Don't Mix

Why is this not a surprise? Tailgating apparently is ranked by the amount of parking available which of course is limited in transit oriented cities. Even in the most transit oriented city, a recent uproar has been caused in the Bronx over the cost of parking for the new Yankee Stadium. Makes sense, but when it causes a city to lose a bid for my favorite sports event every 4 years it gets personal. I know this is old news, but when I saw the post at Transit Miami, it kind of poured some salt in an old wound.

San Francisco will abandon its bid to bring the 2016 Olympics here in the wake of the 49ers' announcement that the team no longer plans to build a new stadium in the city, the group leading the Olympic effort announced today.

Scott Givens, managing director of San Francisco's bid, said last week's surprise announcement regarding the stadium -- until then a central part of the group's San Francisco Olympic bid -- irreparably damaged the city's reputation with the U.S. Olympic Committee.

The reason for the drop? The cost of a light rail extension from the T line and the lack of tailgating!

The team's largest objection to the San Francisco site, they said, was the high cost of bringing transit and parking infrastructure to the Point. York also cited the loss of traditional parking lots, saying tailgating would not be an option for fans if the stadium was located in San Francisco.
I sometimes wonder if San Francisco is really transit first, if one of its most beloved institutions, the 49ers are so beholden to the car. At least you'll be able to get to AT&T park on a PCC at some point in the future. But I won't be going to watch the 5k.

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Muni Gets an F

I love transit, but this weekend when trying to get from the Mission to North Beach I had an awful time on what should be a rapid transit corridor. Aside from my subway under Geary, I'm going to say that Van Ness needs one too. This is the 101 corridor from LA to Oregon and it's always packed. Muni wants to turn it into a BRT corridor but once again that will just make people mad. Making a 6 Lane Urban thoroughfare into 4 lanes is a good idea most of the time. And people don't go fast on this street because there are too many stoplights.

But in this instance, taking away a lane for buses is A. A bad idea and B. A bad idea. Why? Because making a major road like this go to 4 lanes is like a snowstorm blocking planes at the airport in Denver. No one will get anywhere. If there was a subway, it would have taken me 35 minutes instead of an hour to get where i was going. 25 minutes is a HUGE time savings and worth it to the folks who want to get to the north side of town out of bus traffic. So instead of planning this long term, it should be done now, with the Geary Subway.

But we have no money says MUNI. There is tons of money out there. As referenced in the article above, Don Shoup (king of parking), states that parking in downtown San Francisco is too cheap. I have never driven downtown at any time other than 11pm or Sunday afternoon but the reason is I don't want to have to worry about parking. It's so much easier and faster to just take the train in the subway. But apparently if I did find a space downtown on the street it would be cheap cheap cheap.

While San Francisco has taken steps to make transit friendly and parking harder to come by it comes as no surprise that they still cater to the automobile. It is so entrenched in our society that even the most dense metropolis' can't get away from it. So if we can't get away from it, lets make it as expensive as possible. Another funding source that is being discussed is closing off downtown from anything but Taxi's, buses and rail. This is a great idea and it would raise money for transit, specifically the subways that are in planning but need funding.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Possible Capital Funding Sources #1

As a part of this blog, I'd like to toss out possible transit funding sources. These ideas are meant to spur ideas and thoughts about how to pay for the transit infrastructure that cities desperately need. Included in this discussion will be ways that the Feds can better fund and operate the New Starts program to support these other funding sources.

So today i'd like to throw out the first idea. A developer parking in lieu fee. Along major urban corridors in the United States, developers are facing a harsh reality. Parking spaces are required at suburban ratios along corridors that should be served by urban transit. There should be an exchange where parking spaces can be traded for transit money. So what would happen is a parking space costs a developer a certain amount of money, say 20,000 dollars in a very urban area. Usually a certain amount of spaces are required. So what if half of the spaces were required could be traded away for a half price solution. So if 50 spaces are required, then 25 of them could be traded for 50% of the cost meaning the developer builds 25 spaces but then pays $10,000 for each space he doesn't build into a capital fund for transit expansion. This single project would raise $250,000 for transit projects in the city and allow the developer to use the savings to build more housing or make the housing available more affordable. This solution has never been used to my knowledge in this fashion but its about time cities start looking at better ways to fund capital projects that will propel the transit space race forward.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Austin's Rail History & Route Choice Problem Part 2: Politics

Now that we're through the history in the last post and know the ropes.  Let's chat about the current politics that are pushing the corridor in the direction it is headed instead of where we think the logical choice of corridor is located, down Guadalupe and Lamar streets.

Politics - Politics always plays a part of planning for a major infrastructure investment and this decision is no different.  There are several groups that have a specific interest in the routing of the transit line, and while not nefarious in their push to get the line through their land (it's an honest belief that it will help these parts of the city) , it seems to continue to push the project in the direction it is going.

And while its fair that each of these political pushes has merit enough for future extensions, it doesn't mean that these alignments should be the first ones in the ground. Consider the map of the current Urban Rail plan below in Orange.

Map Courtesy of the Austin Chronicle


The main line goes from the Mueller redevelopment project through the University of Texas on San Jacinto Street right next to Memorial Stadium and down south to Riverside where the line would run out to the Airport.  For some reason airports are always wanted for rail extensions even though they aren't major trip generators in the region compared with other areas.  Again, while my preferred corridor is Guadalupe/Lamar, we'll go through that issue later. 

University of Texas' Stake

The University of Texas has a strong presence in the Austin area.  Of course one of the largest institutions of higher education in the country would, but UT is specifically strong.  And it sees itself sometimes as its own little island.  Below is a map of the university campus.  Most students take classes in the sections labeled 1,2,4,5 in the top left quadrant of the campus area.


The yellow line above represents the Guadalupe/Lamar corridor which now is traversed by the #1 Route bus.  The orange line is the Urban Rail plan as it currently stands.

However the University sees itself as the whole campus, and their center is along San Jacinto street, which is the road that splits sections 5 and 6.  Since planning for rail began, the campus master planners at the University have always wanted rail on this street, even though it would be a round about route for students coming from the North or South trying to get to classes to sections 1 and 2.  Also the Forty Acres bus loop that takes students between housing on the west side of Campus (some of the densest neighborhoods in the city) is the second highest patronized bus line in the city after the #1 bus meaning that on any given day, about 8,000 students hop a bus to loop around campus because its convenient, and they don't want to walk up the huge hill from the stadium to Gregory Gym.  But the goal of the University of the line down San Jacinto was to be able to expand East as property allowed denser development for students and space on the west side disappeared.  This is in my mind why they continue to push for a San Jacinto alignment, it's the center of their future master plans.

Another wrinkle though occurred to me when visiting with Campus Planner John Rishling in 2004. He mentioned that at some point UT would also want to connect to the Pickle Campus as students could be housed there and expansion could take place to create a research village on 425 acres when space got to be a premium on the 40 Acres.  This is in UT's longer term plans and is unlikely to cause them to push for a corridor down Guadalupe anytime soon.  Additionally, unless the current Red Line is retrofitted a two seat ride would be required to get to Pickle, which is currently within walking distance to the Red Line itself, but not a stop.  Any future plans to make Pickle into a campus that needed to be directly connected to the 40 acres would have to consider transportation, but they are not there quite yet.

Images Courtesy of Dhiru Thadani


Map Courtesy of UT

 


Mueller Airport Redevelopment's Stake

Mueller Politics - Mueller is the first new urban neighborhood in the central city for a very long time. The planning for this site took years after the airport left the site for Bergstrom Air Force Base in Southeast Austin in 1999.  The Master Development Agreement was signed in 2004 and development started in 2007.

Throughout that time representatives at Mueller had pushed for rail to run into the development.  The development density was limited by a traffic impact analysis, and in order to increase densities a transit line needed to be constructed through the site to reduce the total trips.  According to the Capital Metro Future Connections Study for the 2006 streetcar alternatives analysis, that meant densities could increase by 12% if that rail line were constructed (PDF PG 15). 
The agreement with the City of Austin sets a traffic impact expectation on the basis of  proposed land use levels and the presence of existing transit services in the Mueller area. The introduction of measures that moderate vehicular travel to and from the site allows the developer to increase development density to the extent that traffic quantities are not increased above the expected level.

The analysis indicates that the Circulator, along with the MLK Rapid Bus, would attract increased transit use to the extent of reducing the RMMA traffic impact by 7,820 vehicle trips. On that basis, there could be additional development to the extent that 7,820 vehicle trips would result. If the development mix of additional development was the same as in the approved plan, the trip reduction would support a 12 percent increase in development without exceeding the vehicular travel target of 73,969 trips (assuming the current mix of land use is uniformly densified).

As the redevelopment project moves towards development, that allowance is cut short not by the trips, but the land available to build more density than originally planned.  So time is of the essence for Mueller but ultimately this type of incentive is backwards.  What they should have programmed is density allowances where increased value or bonus funding was funneled into a funding source that would have built the transit line to the development rather than having to wait for the line to get there before developing.   As it stands now that opportunity is disappearing, and the push for Mueller is a priority for increased value to the city and developers. 

State Politics & Space

Of course if you read the history you would see that there is a lot of animosity towards Capital Metro at the state level.  For a period of time they were trying to take away the quarter cent.  But for those who think the corridor would be a good thing, they want to redevelop the East side of the State Capital since the West is already developed. 

Of course the State provides parking in these garages and has a lot of excess capacity, which means that there is very little incentive to take transit other than existing traffic issues.  According to a 2010 parking study by the Texas Facilities Commission, any employee who works for the state at least four hours a day is eligible for a parking pass.  In 2009, approximately 25% of the spaces were vacant. According to the report...
This parking supply of 9,529 spaces serves approximately 10,101 full time employees (FTEs) in the Capitol Complex during a non-legislative year.
That's not a lot of transit usage but the report recommends that all that free parking is costing the State a LOT in lost revenues. Additionally this suggests that there is a missing demand for transit that could be met by a new line.  However the question will be how much of the population that works at the state is located along the Mueller Corridor as opposed to the Guadalupe/Lamar corridor and points north.

Image Courtesy of Austin American Statesman


With the state also hard up for money (as every other state in the country), the Texas Facilities Commission led by notorious Capital Metro detractor Terry Keel had been working on a public private partnership plan to bring 7 million square feet of space to the Capital.  This would include replacing a number of parking garages with new space which would be bolstered by the Urban Rail proposal. The parking report above also mentions the possible reuse of underutilized resources for redevelopment.



Additional whispers suggest that a UT Medical School campus could also be on the docket in this space, producing a long awaited Medical School that I've always wondered why it didn't exist in Austin.  State Senator Kirk Watson, who was on the Transit Working Group for a time is also pushing for the Medical Campus.   That's a lot of pressure to keep the line on San Jacinto and/or Trinity streets versus the already built out areas around Guadalupe and Lamar. 

The 2000 Burn

Finally there is the political ramifications of getting burned in the 2000 election which saw the voters in the City of Austin approve the Guadalupe/Lamar corridor, but the service area voted against (read the suburbs).  People in Austin continue to be scarred by that election and scared of the state's power to take away funding and make the city dance.  Not only was it the election that brought George W. Bush to the White House, it was also the one that almost wiped out half of Capital Metro's funding, and gave the anti-rail crowd more power in the city to say that the public wasn't interested.  Again, Of course the people of Austin were interested, just not those outside the city limits. Now that this isn't Capital Metro's line, something tells me the voters of the city will still have the City's back for a ridership proven line. 


The Push for Riverside

I really don't take issue with Riverside because its about an equal corridor with South Congress.  It will actually help alleviate concerns from Rob Lippencot (Guero's owner) and Max Nofziger who opposed development of Light Rail in 2000 on South Congress.  Additionally there is space for dedicated lanes in the median as well.  The Airport doesn't need to happen right away but that could be discussed at a future time.

Next Post - The Corridor That Should be the Focus