Austin: No Place to Go but Up
medium.com
medium.com
The answer to Austin's traffic problems is the same as for all cities. Reduce space for cars (roads and parking) and put that space to better use, whether it be for more efficient transportation options (ie. bicycles and public transit) or for housing and amenities.
The author cites Vancouver's grade separated Skytrain as a model to follow but didn't bother looking at the real success of Vancouver's transportation system, which is that as of 2014 only 50% of trips are taken by car. This milestone was achieved not just due to Skytrain, but due to huge gains in walking and cycling trips. Vancouver built a great transit system yes, but has also densified the city, built a great deal of separated bike lanes, never built a freeway, and most important of all has not expanded road capacity at all for decades. Traffic entering the city decreased by 5% since 1996 and entering downtown decreased 20%, while the population living and working in the area has dramatically increased.
The amount of cars entering Vancouver's downtown has been unchanged since the 1960s.
That's why cities like San Francisco consider tearing down their elevated freeways and replacing them with surface streets -- it creates a more desirable atmosphere when you're below. (Think the Embarcadero.)
Chicago's L is efficient, certainly, but the entire downtown core is hidden under a dark, loud, shaking train track. It's not the most pleasant thing to spend your time around.
That said, from the sound of the traffic problems in the article, I think Austin is going to need a lot more than just bike lanes. It's expensive, but they might need to bite the bullet and build a proper subway.
This works pretty well because you're usually close to a station so people wanting to use these facilities don't often require parking.
EDIT: A particularly clean example of this is 2k540 in Okachimachi. A bunch of kinda artsy stores, lots of lighting... kinda feels like a small mall except it's outside.
Some pics : https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=2k540&tbm=isch
Maybe Austin should do something similar. It can narrow the streets and build some underground highways. Leave the above-ground for pedestrians and bicycles, traffic that can actually stop if it spots something interesting. Cars mostly go from here to there, never stopping in-between.
Buses are much cheaper than trains and can be re-routed if it turns out the population centers shift.
The noise is the major issue with the L. And they certainly could do something about that, but honestly, the city has more important issues they should be spending money on (the schools are getting completely screwed over, and a couple of high crime areas need real solutions).
Why do I keep hearing this, but only from Austinites? I put Austin in about the same category as Minneapolis; I'm vaguely aware it exists but not of anything going on there.
What are the major globally relevant corporations headquartered in Austin? Major NGOs? Famous cultural events? (Compare the level of coverage of SXSW to London Fashion Week). Dominant, influential film studios or publishing houses?
Why do I keep hearing Austin talked about in the same breath as SF or New York as a major global city? It's not even a "national city" to me.
It's got some hipster cultural cache and is a regional cultural and economic center... if your primary language is English.
Don't get me wrong, Austin is probably the best city in Texas, but it's still in Texas.
Honestly, I think only New York and Los Angeles really qualify as "global" cities in the US. Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and DC would be a step below that, and then it gets harder to define - Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, and a number of other cities could be considered a third tier, depending on the criteria you use (major companies based there, cultural attractions, etc.) But again, that gets much more subjective.
We have to stop calling what's happening in Austin "gentrification." We are segregationists. Our laws prevent mixed-income neighborhoods from existing.
gentrification: 1. the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste. 2. the process of making a person or activity more refined or polite.
I think the option with the elevated bike would work well, considering there are a lot of cyclists and "free bikes" (like in London you can get them for free for 30min with the membership card).
And I don't understand the fascination with Austin; downtown area is nice, rest is all boring suburbs (IMO) just like any other place in Texas.
Edit: Does anyone care to comment on the downvotes?
I always have lots of fun in Austin. The food is great, there is live music everywhere, and the people are all super friendly.
> live music everywhere
Only in downtown Austin.
The truth is some of the most legendary venues are far from downtown.
Two quick examples: Poodies Hilltop Roadhouse and Giddy Ups.
For example, check http://www.city-data.com/#mapOSM?mapOSM[zl]=5&mapOSM[c1]=35.... SF:Austin is just ~14%:11% (people in tech, science and engineering)
In my experience, most of the people that really love Austin are the types that have never lived in a large diverse city before. Of course Austin is great compared to some small town. There's no point of reference.
/lived in Austin for 12 years
Probably the dismissive tone.
The Bay area is unique throughout the world, so saying a city isn't a tech hub just because it isn't the Bay is silly. Forbes and others have written quite a articles about how Austin (And Dallas, and Chicago, and others) are all well on their way to being tech Meccas, and have backed it with actual data, e.g. http://www.forbes.com/sites/navathwal/2015/02/12/5-markets-p...
So, your comment can come across as antagonistic and with a fair amount of hubris.
They've decided that they don't want people to see their articles without advertising.
We should respect that and quit linking to them.
How do you define a tech hub? Is it R&D or is it operations (maintenance/sustaining, DevOps, tech support, biz dev)?
If it's R&D, clearly Austin is no tech hub. Only a handful of semiconductor companies and maybe a few software companies do _substantial_ R&D in Austin (a minor project doesn't count).
Austin has had many years of tech manufacturing and roots for large enterprise companies, so in a sense it has been heavily a tech hub for decades, but not when it comes to software and startups for which Silicon Valley is known for.
Your pretentious and heavy-handed description description of the suburbs and outer environs ignores the beautiful nature trails, pristine open-land, outdoors-oriented, and mostly nice attitudes of comforted Texans.
different strokes.
This was achieved by:
* Building dense, walkable residential neighbourhoods downtown.
* Creating a great rapid transit network
* Building a network of bike lanes, including separated lanes.
* Policy against expanding the car road network that has lasted for decades.
I think bikes are great, more bike options for sure, 10000. However in my opinion they're not a great solution to the transportation problem for most people.
I bet the writer would change his opinion if he learned more about urban design. The final image is pretty much a poster child for what NOT to do (similar to Le Corbusier's vision for Paris).
The solution is to build more densely to make car trips less practical and to have better public transit that can't get stuck in traffic.
Ever notice how people prefer to walk on streets that have storefronts?
But what you can't do is create an "all-around" city where every transit option has equally low congestion. People will show a preference for whichever mode they got used to, and fill the others only as they hit their tolerance limits - not because one is faster, or cheaper, unless it's substantially so(and then congestion will arise to even the odds). This typically manifests today in a city crowding the highways but leaving the buses empty. New construction will mostly be used by newcomers unless there is some disincentive to drive, like downtown congestion charges, reduction of parking, smaller roads, etc.
The bus lane capacity thought experiment equates velocity to throughput. This is obviously wrong; while a bus interferes with some traffic, it also pulls more people into less space. Multiply that along the whole route, at high frequency, and you end up with geometric efficiency. A bus may go at a third of the speed, but it carries easily 10x as much as a four-seater, and bigger buses could hold even more. At the peak hours, congestion and slow speeds are assumed and vehicle capacity starts to matter for delivering the most commuters home in a timely fashion.
Then consider the network benefits of running more routes and connections at higher frequencies. Public transit has to hit a certain critical mass of densities and destinations before it really takes off; most of the US today, being heavily suburbanized in the mid-century fashion, does not enjoy this. But the New York City region got there, and several other metros are showing signs of moving in this direction. Access to transit is implicitly improving now that we're in the era of electric rideable vehicles and people making their first/last-mile connection can go at 10-15 MPH on whatever weird gadget they want without breaking a sweat or having to find lockup space. Capacity becomes a complicated equation with all these factors.