It's crazy that the NYC transit system is controlled by the state government in Albany, a bunch of folks that pretty much don't use it at all.
Glares angrily again at West Austin
But hey, we have "bendy"/rapid-transit-style buses as of a couple of years ago that don't even use protected lanes, so at least we can fit more people on a gridlocked Guadalupe St during rush hour than normal buses. OH! And a toll lane on Mopac now that charges you based on how congested the "loop" is and is guaranteed to be just as congested as the non-toll lanes.
Austin Texas: A cautionary tale in applying chaos engineering to city planning.
Grinds teeth into powder
as for toll lanes, welcome to the the new means of permanent revenue extraction. Atlanta got them in spades including one near billion dollar installation that cannot be used if ice threatens because its nearly all bridges. people had to fight to remove tolls that were promised to be removed from GA400 years ago after it was paid off so now the state just switched to "express lanes" which is a PC way of saying toll lanes.
I'm hesitant to say this is exactly it (or even that it's one specific thing), since--if memory serves, and I'm opening this up for someone who perhaps has a better memory than I do, there was a bond package in 2005 that wouldn't have even affected the western edges of Travis County as the Cities of Bee Cave and West Lake are unincorporated.
Busses and trains aren't free (usually) so I don't see why highways should be free.
In some places the taxes on roads far outweights the cost for the gas tax/other forms meant to pay for the upkeep. Transit or general budgets keep the overflow. Probably a good idea in terms of transit funding as increased transit has a traffic clearing effect.
400 in particular was a dick move. They pitched a highway and said they'd fund it by making it a toll road, to be revoked once it paid for itself. It wasn't. Traffic backed up for miles so they could continue to collect a measly $.50 out of scope for years.
Stealing existing lanes of I-75 that taxpayers paid for "because congestion" and turning them into PeachPass lanes so that the well-off can pay for an easier commute while simultaneously making the rest of us who can't afford to do that have an even more congested road is folly IMO.
Whenever I bring up that I won't be in staying in SF, people inevitably say "oh, I heard Austin is a hot new tech hub! You're from Texas, aren't you?"
Yup. From. From. And likely never going back.
I'm a few weeks now into relocating to the midwest (which is why I still say "we" when I talk about Austin), and I've said the same thing.
Austin is a marvelous place to spend a weekend or a couple of days if you want to see a festival (I still think Nashville is the better "live music" city), but I will never live there again unless it transforms dramatically so much of their transit issues, housing issues and traffic issues, not to mention finding a city council with a backbone.
I don't think I can put it to words and have it sink in any better to someone who hasn't lived there how livid I was to see the news that council abandoned CodeNEXT. That was the move that got me packing up and forced my hand to get the hell out.
https://www.statesman.com/news/20180802/codenext-to-code-nix...
FTA: Since the first draft of the revised land-use rules was released in early 2017, CodeNext has laid bare the ideological differences between pro-density urbanists and neighborhood preservationists, who have sniped at one another for months in public meetings and through social media.
Yep. That's pretty much describes my near 20 years living in Austin to the letter. About the only thing those two groups can agree on is "build another toll road so far out of the city it takes a 20 minute drive to the eastern edge of the city limits just so you can go north to Pflugerville and not sit on I-35 for an hour and a half"
It's already happened IMO.
It's easy to blame those guys for not seeing the benefit you would get from the extra tax, but if you put yourself in their shoes, they probably have more pressing issues that you yourself don't even have on your radar.
Or given the fact the integrated metro NYC system (subway + regional rail) serves a very significant number of riders who do not actually live in NYC proper --
perhaps it's not so "crazy" after all.
(Now, sales and hotel taxes, on the other hand...)
40% of NY's tax revenue comes from NYC. Add in the surrounding areas (Westchester, Long Island, etc.) and non-residents who commute and you get up to 82%.
https://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2018/feb/01/r...
If you let the city own the MTA, they'll never make hard decisions because they'll be at the mercy of voters.
It's been years since I read it, but as I recall, the system was built by private entities, who were gradually driven out of business when the city set a cap on the price of a fare (first at a nickel, then at a dime). When they folded one by one, they got subsumed into the MTA, and I guess at some point it was decided that it was ok to raise the price.
Many would say Albany is controlled by nyc interests and why should citizens in cities like Buffalo in western ny fund nyc projects.