BIKE: News items on Austin rail transit plan

[Nawdry]

The following items recently posted to the PTP distribution list may be of 
interest to those who have been following the discussion about transit 
options in Austin.

LH


=PTP================================================

http://www.lightrailnow.org/news/n_aus_2004-01.htm

Light Rail Now! website
2004/10/30

Austin: Light "Commuter" Railway Proposal Offers Mobility Relief for
Congested Northwest Corridor

By Light Rail Now! Publication Team • October 2004


Austin, Texas is yet another city where a critical ballot initiative for rail
transit is coming before voters on November 2nd ­ in this case, the one
new-start project among the major rail ballot initiatives this electoral
season. Capital Metro, the regional transit authority, has placed on the
ballot a referendum for a regional "commuter" rail plan, part of a more
comprehensive plan (called "All Systems Go") which also includes
expanded bus service. Although Capital Metro, with a 1% dedicated sales
tax, has long had sufficient financial resources to finance rail transit, a
specially passed Texas law mandates that the agency must bring any rail
plan before voters (and any such election can be held only in a
presidential election year).

"Foot in the door" approach

An earlier initiative for a citywide light rail transit line was defeated by a
very narrow margin four years ago. So Capital Metro planners decided to
"slim down" the initial rail line proposal ­ taking a sort of "foot in the
door"
approach. At stake today is a plan for a 32-mile (51.5-km) "commuter rail"
line using Capital Metro's existing freight railway (the use of which is also
contracted to a shortline freight operator) from the suburb of Leander on
the northwest, along a somewhat hook-shaped route through East Austin,
then westward to terminate at the Austin Convention Center downtown.
There would be nine station stops, eight of them within the Austin city
limits and five of them in what is generally considered central Austin. (See
map, below.) The full end-to-end run, according to Capital Metro planners,
would take just under an hour.

--------------------------------------------------------
[MAP]
Longrange plan map shows regional rail lines and other transit routes.
Currently proposed Leander-to-downtown "commuter" route is shown in
red.
--------------------------------------------------------


Capital Metro projects that initial ridership on the line (tentatively targeted
for opening in 2007) would be about 1,700 boardings per weekday. The
longer-range forecast predicts about 16,700 weekday boardings in 2025.
[Austin American-Statesman, 17 October 2004]

Diesel railcars eyed

The trains, rather than being powered by electricity from overhead lines,
most likely would be self-propelled diesel-electric "hybrid" rolling stock -
often termed DMUs (diesel multiple units) or DEMUs (diesel-electric
multiple units). Relatively light (non-FRA-compliant) railcars, such as
those currently used on the southern New Jersey RiverLine and Ottawa's
O-Train, are of particular interest to Capital Metro planners.

When the line would open, possibly as early as 2007, trains would run
north and south during both rush hours at perhaps 30-minute intervals,
with one midday run in each direction. To provide connective service, the
transit agency plans to have high-frequency "circulator" buses serving the
downtown stop and connecting passengers with at least three other
areas.
[Austin American-Statesman, 31 August 2004]

Modelled after the similar rail operations, mentioned above, in southern
New Jersey and Ottawa, Canada, the Capital Metro plan seems to be
evolving in design as another non-electrified light railway. Capital Metro
has pegged the installation cost at approximately $60 million, although
reportedly that cost does not include $30 million for rolling stock that
would be bought on a lease-purchase basis and would be financed from
the line's annual operating budget.

Low-cost investment

The rail line would benefit from substantial ancillary or associated
investment. For example, Capital Metro has already spent, or committed
to spend, more than $40 million on track upgrades and park-and-ride lots
by the track in Leander and near Lakeline Mall - investments primarily
directed at improving freight railway operations and safety, and providing
P&R facilities for existing bus services, but which obviously have spinoff
benefits for the rail plan.

While this starts to sound like a lot of money, "in transit terms, even a
figure in the vicinity of $125 million is pocket change" comments
transportation reporter Ben Wear of the Austin American-Statesman (31
August 2004). "Capital Metro's ownership of the track, and its path from
the high-growth northwestern suburbs through several key areas of
potential development and then on to downtown, make it an almost
irresistible way to give passenger rail a tryout."

Continuing support for light rail, streetcars

At least within the central city, rail transit ­ including light rail
transit (LRT)
­ continues to command some community support. Thus Capital Metro's
official "commuter rail" plan is not the only ostensibly workable and
affordable urban rail transit concept attracting attention.

Not part of the current plan (or ballot initiative), but definitely gaining
momentum in the thinking of local community leaders, planners, and
decisionmakers, a streetcar system has been proposed to provide
connectivity within central Austin. A coalition of seven citizen activist
groups has recommended installing two downtown streetcar lines to
supplement and provide the essential core-area connections for Capital
Metro's regional "commuter" rail line station at the downtown convention
center.
[Rail Transit Online, August 2004]

Under this proposal, Electric trolleys ­ either modern vehicles, such as
those in Portland and Tacoma, or heritage types like those in New
Orleans, Memphis, or Tampa ­ would initially run along Third Street and
from Palmer Auditorium (on the south side of the Colorado River) to the
University of Texas (UT) campus. Backers contend that the streetcar
service would both function as a downtown circulator and stimulate
desired development and redevelopment.

While the business, civic, and environmental organizations promoting the
streetcar scheme originally wanted it added to the rail plan being brought
before voters in the November 2nd ballot measure, they're backing the
official rail plan in hopes that a "commuter" rail service, if approved by
voters, would underscore the need for the streetcar interface, and fortify
support within Capital Metro for the plan.

"People like streetcars" noted Mark Yznaga, a board member of Liveable
City, a local activist group, in an interview with the Austin American-
Statesman (27 July 2004). "People will ride streetcars. We think it would
really enhance the commuter rail project because it would give people a
way to get around downtown."

Bolstering the case for a streetcar system is a new report commissioned
by the Austin City Council. which concludes that such a rail system
connecting the Austin Convention Center to the former Seaholm Power
Plant (an historic building targeted for redevelopment) could increase
property values by more than $268 million, or 16%, on a roughly 80-block
area of the city's downtown ­ an area whose assessed value, calculated
at $840 million, constitutes about 1.4% of the county's tax rolls. "Increased
accessibility provided by proximity to a rail station will increase property
values" the study emphasizes.
[Austin American-Statesman, 2 September 2004]

Meanwhile, rail transit supporters are focusing their energies on trying to
pass the regional "commuter" rail plan. Although Capital Metro cannot
advocate a position on the ballot initiative, the agency has been carrying
out a vigorous public information campaign in various advertising media,
including TV, newspapers, and directly mailed brochures. So far,
opposition has appeared to be weak and sporadic.

Spoofing the name of the "All Systems Go" plan, a small opposition group
naming itself All Systems No has coalesced with familiar anti-rail activists
in its leadership like former city councilman Max Nofziger and "veteran
anti-rail activist" Jim Skaggs, according to UT's Daily Texan (2004/10/13).
The group pulls together highway advocates ("Road Warriors"), NIMBY
activists, and monorail zealots in a loosely unified anti-rail coalition.

Rail vs. tollway cost comparison

Resurrecting their slogan from the 2000 anti-rail campaign, "Costs Too
Much, Does Too Little", opponents have attempted to cast the rail plan as
a huge waste of money by focusing on the millions of dollars of cost and
the initially small ridership. But scrutiny of the unit costs tell a different
story. A comparative cost analysis of the rail line vs. the SH130 tollway
project ­ a north-south toll road now under construction just east of the
city ­ shows that, per passenger-mile, the rail service would apparently be
a bargain.

In 2008 ­ assumed as the first year of full rail operation ­ with only about
1,700 daily passengers, the rail line cost would be $1.15 per passenger-
mile (p-m) compared with the total cost (tollway plus vehicle operation,
parking, etc.) of $1.36/p-m for travel on the SH130 tollway. But by 2027,
with rail ridership reaching nearly 17,000 per day, even with a projected
increase in traffic on the tollway, the rail system is an even bigger bargain:
$0.38/p-m for rail vs. $0.86/p-m for tollway travel. Thus, rail would appear
to be 126% more cost-effective than a similar roadway facility (although
the two projects are in different corridors and therefore not actually
competitive).
[Calculations by LRN based on data provided by Capital Metro]

Rail's impact: 26% of commuter travel?

Following another very familiar path of attack, opponents have attempted
to demean projected rail ridership figures by comparing the corridor
ridership forecasts with a much larger (and irrelevant) pool of travel. For
example, in the Austin American-Statesman of 5 October 2004,
conservative commentator Ashley Sanchez presented a diatribe against
Capital Metro's rail transit plan. (Ironically, Sanchez is a resident of Cedar
Park, a suburb located on Capital Metro's railway but which opted out of
the service area several years ago ­ thus she cannot vote on the issue.)
An analysis of Sanchez's argument may be useful to other transit
advocates and agencies encountering similar criticisms.

"By Capital Metro estimates, about 1,500 to 2,500 people would ride rail
initially" Sanchez writes. "That's less than 1 percent of Travis County
commuters riding a rail line that would cost $60 million in initial capital
expenditures and $5 million per year to operate."

Repeatedly, rail opponents resort to this tactic of attempting to evaluate a
relatively tiny rail project in a single corridor against the traffic or
demographics of an entire region, metro area, or, in this case, county.
This is approximately equivalent, for example, to declaring that Austin's
water-supply system is inadequate and a waste of money because it's a
minuscule percentage of the water consumption of the state of Texas.
Likewise, any big highway project costing many tens of millions of dollars
could probably be shown to carry a volume of commuters amounting only
to a tiny fraction of the total in the county or region, and thus be branded a
similar waste of money ­ although, curiously, transit critics never attempt
to apply their methodology to the private motor vehicle system.

Instead, as with any major transportation project, rail transit lines should
be evaluated by their impact on the corridor they serve. To assess this for
the Capital Metro project, an analysis by Public Transport Progress
contrasted the projected rail transit ridership for 2027 (17,000 per day)
against an estimate of the total jobs projected in the corridor for that year.

The analysis assumed that approximately half the rail transit ridership, or
8,500, was equivalent to the number of actual individual passengers, and
that 70% of these would be work commuters, or about 6,000. For the
corridor, the analysis assumed a 2-mile-wide corridor for the outer 11
miles, a one-mile-wide corridor for the middle 11 miles, and a half-mile-
wide corridor for the final, inner 10 miles ­ amounting to a corridor of
about 38 sq. mi., or about 1.8% of the total area of the two counties. The
analysis then applied this percentage to total employment in 2027 for
Travis and Williamson Counties to obtain a rough estimate of the
population in the rail corridor ­ about 23,000 jobs (i.e., commuters).
[Public Transport Progress,16 October 2004]

The bottom line: The Capital Metro rail line by this analysis would carry
work commuters equivalent to about one-fourth (actually, 26%) of the total
future workforce in the corridor ­ certainly, a far more significant
proportion of travel impacted by the transit service than the minuscule
percentage produced by a virtually meaningless comparison with the
entire county or region.

Anti-rail "safety" hysteria

Another major anti-rail tactic is to exploit and manipulate the public's fears
over safety. In a campaign apparently aimed at provoking hysteria and
fear of all types of rail services, the All Systems No coalition have
apparently searched the world's Internet files and filled page after page of
their website with garish, spine-tingling photos of railway accidents from
everywhere ­ freight accidents, passenger accidents, heavy rail, light rail
... the more calamitous, the better ­ evidently in an effort to fabricate the
impression of a "threat" to safety by rail transit, by far and away one of the
safest of all transportation modes. The website publishes tables of
statistics on "Vehicle-Train Collisions in Texas" ­ yet fails to note that, in
virtually every case, it's motor vehicle drivers who are at fault, jettisoning
all concern for safety by remaining oblivious to possible train operations,
circumventing and even crashing through safety gates, ignoring warning
lights and alarms, and otherwise flouting safety laws.

Interestingly, the All Systems No crew (after all, an amalgam of pro-
highway Road Warriors with an assortment of monorail advocates and
other "Anything But Rail" activists) say not a word about the real
transportation safety problem ­ the staggering number of motor-vehicle
accidents, which the rail transit service would help alleviate, even if just to
a small extent. In 2003, 52 people died in motor vehicle wrecks in the
Austin area ... and Austin seems on course to exceed that. As of 20 July,
37 people had already died in Austin car wrecks in this year ­ a 42%
increase from the same date the previous year.
[Austin American-Statesman, 20 July 2004]

A focus on reality is usually an effective antidote to this particularly
deceptive effort at manipulating public fears through appeals to hysteria.
Our section Reality Check: The REAL Transportation Safety Problem
provides continually updated sampling of news items, chronicling highway
tragedy after tragedy - should set the record straight as to where the real
safety problem in transportation actually lies.

Rail plan makes sense to public

Fortunately, the criticisms of opponents, and challenging rail planners'
ridership forecasts, so far have not seemed to gain much tread with public
sentiments ­ in sharp contrast to the ill-fated 2000 light rail transit plan
which was narrowly defeated by voters after opponents waged a ferocious
campaign against it.

At least two major reasons may account for the ostensible popularity of
the current plan. First, it seems to make a lot of sense to many Austinites
and regional residents to make effective people-moving use of Capital
Metro's railway line, clearly a valuable asset.

Second, a leading champion of the "commuter rail" idea has been local
State Representative Mike Krusee, a powerful Republican leader mainly
representing the suburban and rural residents in Williamson County, just
to the north of central Austin. Krusee's influence has helped pull more
conservative and business-oriented support ­ much of which rallied
against the 2000 plan ­ toward support of the current proposal.

Austin rail plan and campaign links:

All Systems Go
http://allsystemsgo3.capmetro.org/

All Systems No
http://www.allsystemsno.org

NOTE: Much of this report has been adapted from material disseminated
by the Public Transport Progress news distribution list.



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http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/metr
o_state_1448b9df96efe0fe009f.html

Austin American-Statesman
Sunday, October 31, 2004

A closer look at commuter rail proposal

Frequently asked questions about the Capital Metro referendum

By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


Voters in the Capital Metro service area on Tuesday will for the second
time decide whether the transit agency can legally begin passenger rail
operations. Here is an overview of the proposal.


Q: Is this the same proposal voters turned down in 2000?

A: No, not even close. That referendum, which lost by less than 1 percent
of the vote, involved a 52-mile, $1.9 billion light rail system with several
routes. Capital Metro this time proposes to spend $60 million, about 3
percent of the former project's cost, on a single commuter line from
Leander to downtown Austin. It would be 32 miles long.

Q: Commuter line? It's still light rail, right?

A: No, mostly. Rail transit definitions can get a little tricky. But typically
light rail involves electric-powered trains tethered to overhead wires that,
at least for a significant portion of their routes, run on city streets. In
this
case, Capital Metro will use diesel-powered cars, and they will run on
existing railroad tracks, except for three or four blocks downtown, where
they might share Fourth Street with vehicle traffic.


Q: You said 'No, mostly.' Mostly?

A: The cars are similar in body design and scale to a light rail car, and on
at least two systems in North America such cars are used on what the
transit agencies involved call light rail. In addition, this line will be
something of a hybrid because the first four stops in the northwest end will
be widely spaced, like commuter rail, but the final five will be tightly
bunched, more like a light rail system.

Q: What would we get for $60 million?

A: Nine stations for $39 million, sidings and track improvements for $19
million and $2 million for a temporary maintenance facility.

Q: That's the only cost?

A: Capital Metro, which owns the track as part of a 162-mile line from
Llano to Giddings, has spent $35 million over the past few years on
upgrades to the line. But the agency says just $8 million of that work
occurred in the 32 miles where the commuter trains will run. The cost also
doesn't include straightening out a substantial wiggle in the line southwest
of Round Rock, a project the agency says it will do eventually. Nor does it
include a permanent maintenance facility or the rail cars. The agency
plans to lease the cars, which cost an estimated $30 million for six at a
cost of about $3 million a year. As ridership increases over the years,
Capital Metro will have to buy or lease more cars. And the agency
estimates that a computerized traffic control system, which it will need
eventually, would cost another $15 million.

Q: Tell me more about the cars I'd be riding in.

A: They would be 120 to 140 feet long and single-decked, unlike more
traditional double-decker commuter rail cars. Seating capacity would be
100 to 120, with a total standing and seated capacity of about 200. There
would be a driver's cab at each end, allowing the car to simply reverse
direction when it reaches the north or south terminus. The cars would
have a maximum speed of about 60 miles an hour in the longer, straighter
stretches in the suburbs and perhaps half that speed in the more urban
stretches. Capital Metro says there would be a place on the train for
bicycles, and that there are plans for wireless Internet capability.

Q: How many trains a day are we talking about?

A: In the beginning, Capital Metro estimates 14 runs a day, with four or
five trains inbound from Leander at 30-minute intervals in the morning and
one or two in the reverse direction, a similar pattern in reverse for the
evening rush hour, and one round trip at midday. In the long term, service
would be much more frequent and run for more, if not all, of the day.

Q: What would the fare be?

A: The Capital Metro board will set the fares much later. But for now,
officials are saying that the undiscounted fare would be comparable to
riding a Capital Metro express bus: $1 each way.

Q: Will my taxes go up?

A: No. They can't. Capital Metro is already charging the full 1 percent
sales tax allowed by law.

Q: Will Capital Metro go into debt to do this?

A: No. Capital Metro in the current budget year has about $25.5 million of
excess tax revenue, more in future years, that could be used for capital
costs and operating expenses, which are expected to rise to $11 million
annually by the third year. In addition, Capital Metro will apply to the
federal government for a mass transit grant equal to half the cost, or
about $30 million. If that grant doesn't come through, Capital Metro
probably would have enough money to build the line anyway.

Q: When will it open?

A: In late 2007 or early 2008.

Q: How many riders does Capital Metro expect to have?

A: Agency officials say their ridership estimates are still subject to change.
But for now, they estimate an average of slightly more than 1,700
boardings each weekday in the first year. By 2017, Capital Metro projects
6,900 boardings, and by 2025, slightly more than 16,700 a day.

Q: Capital Metro television and radio ads this summer talked about how
bad traffic is and how much worse it will get if we don't do something. Will
rail solve the problem?

A: No. But in the long run it could lessen the growth of rush hour highway
congestion in the U.S. 183 corridor that it basically parallels from McNeil
Drive to Leander. And Capital Metro, if the referendum passes, plans to
greatly expand bus services, adding express bus routes and creating 10
"rapid bus" routes that would have longer intervals between stops than
regular bus service. Depending on the use of those bus routes, that could
help with congestion on other Central Texas highways.

Q: If the referendum passes, are we giving Capital Metro a blank check to
build other rail lines, including light rail or streetcars?

A: No. The ballot asks voters only if they are for or against "the operation
of a fixed rail system by Capital Metropolitan Transit Authority." But the
underlying "notice of election," which binds Capital Metro, limits the
agency to building the Leander to downtown Austin line. Capital Metro
would have to hold a separate referendum to get authority for other rail
lines or expansion of this one beyond Leander or downtown beyond its
terminus, near the Austin Convention Center.

Q: What if I work near the Capitol or near Lamar Boulevard or at the
University of Texas? That's a long walk from the end of the line, and
people with destinations that far away might not want to use the train.

A: Capital Metro plans to have "circulator" buses that would be waiting at
that station, and perhaps near three others farther north, to ferry train
passengers to locations not within easy walking distance.

Q: Who gets to vote on this?

A: Registered voters who live within the Capital Metro service area, which
encompasses Austin, Leander, Lago Vista, Jonestown, Manor, San
Leanna, Volente, Anderson Mill and unincorporated portions of Travis
County Precinct No. 2. The line can legally pass through territory not in
the service area, such as Cedar Park. But the stations will all be within the
service area unless Capital Metro works out separate financial
arrangements with out-of-area governments.