BIKE: Commuter Rail In General

[Phil Hallmark]

Patrick,

I for one have not forgotten that you are AMP'd for monorail. But I 
don't recall STEP #3 below being discussed before now. The 3 steps seem 
like a great idea.... but how realistic is it to expect to get them done 
by 2006, or even 2010, if ASG fails and the road warriors swoop in to 
finish their sprawl jihad with Cap Metro money?

Seems to me the question we need to answer today is which way to vote in 
2 weeks on ASG. If ASG passes, it may make your 3 steps easier to 
accomplish. Or not. Who knows.

You know, it may just be a fact that the road warriors have won. Thanks 
in large part to Mr. Krusee as clearly outlined in Mike D's blog. I hope 
I'm wrong.

Regards,
Phil Hallmark



Patrick Goetz wrote:

> Phil Hallmark wrote:
>
>> I think one reason you are not getting much traction here is that 
>> there's not a clear vision for what happens if the ASG proposal fails 
>> at the polls next month. I did a quick perusal of your blog section 
>> on transit in austin, and I did not find any info on what happens 
>> next. So, let's hear it: What happens next if you get your way and 
>> ASG does not pass Nov 2? When will the next rail referendum take 
>> place, and what will the system look like?
>>
>> You make very sound arguments against ASG, but "just say no" isn't 
>> enough.
>
>
> Dang, do I post do this list just to keep the skin on my fingertips 
> worn down to a healthy hamburger red?  There is nothing stopping us 
> from proposing a system which actually makes sense (i.e. provides a 
> real transportation alternative to the private automobile) and proceed 
> to bring this to fruition in 2006.
>
> STEP #1:  Convince ourselves that what we really need is a Metro system.
>
> Actually, my experience suggests that a majority of Austinites don't 
> need any convincing, they already "get it".  The people who don't get 
> it are the politicians, Cap Metro, CAMPO, and local rail "experts".  
> For some reason, the mass transit systems which move the majority of 
> people in the majority of larger cities in the world are "too 
> expensive", "too exotic" or "not worthy of consideration" as far as 
> these individuals are concerned.  I'll leave it to the reader to delve 
> into the psycopathology of this extraordinary level of corn pone 
> parochialism, I'm just here to suggest a solution.  From 1998 to the 
> present, Capital Metro has never once proposed the implementation of a 
> Metro, which is why they continue to enjoy a lack of public support, 
> if not outright derision from people whose brains aren't on 
> autopilot.  LRT sounds like it might be a good idea until one goes to 
> Chicago or New York or Berlin or Tokyo or Vienna or {insert 100 other 
> cities here} and experiences the advantages of a real public transit 
> system, at which point it begins to look like an extremely ridiculous, 
> rather dangerous, slow, and inconvenient toy; something a science 
> fiction writer would come up with as the pedestrian's weapon of choice 
> against the automobile in the war between pedestrians and motorists.
>
> STEP #2:  Identify the Metro technology which will be most effective 
> for Austin.
>
> Alan Drake suggests that a subway is really the way to go, and points 
> to the Copenhagen Metro as a extremely high tech system being built 
> for less than $38M/mile.  I still think monorail is the most cost 
> effective solution.  Lyndon Henry and David Dobbs assure us that -- 
> despite being a dumb idea because what we really want is slow, 
> dangerous 185 ton LRT vehicles taking up space on the street in order 
> to show those cars a thing or two -- elevated rail is cheaper to build 
> than monorail; the engineers who build these systems beg to differ.  
> It doesn't matter what we think; this is an engineering question which 
> should be resolved as such.  If nothing else, we can pick a system 
> based on vendor proposals.  I don't really care -- hopefully the most 
> cost effective solution will come out on top.
>
> STEP #3:  Proceed with an EIS immediately in anticipation of a 2006 
> election.
>
> Earth to Capital Metro:  It's quite simple, really:  Propose a plan 
> that actually provides a transportation alternative to the private 
> automobile, one which doesn't totally mess up the status quo, one 
> which provides service to real destinations, one which actually makes 
> sense to the thinking person, and there won't be any problem getting 
> the voters to sign off on it, regardless of whether it costs $60M or 
> $6B dollars. Heck, we just read in last week's Chronicle that the 
> proposed roadway plan is going to cost $14B, and none of these roads 
> are going to do squat for Austin.  On the contrary, they're going to 
> make Austin a worse place to live with more urban sprawl, more 
> pollution, and considerably diminished economic viability.  Why not 
> divert 40% of this money to build 3 cross-town 
> monorail/subway/elevated rail lines which will serve to divert most of 
> the anticipated population growth back into urban core rail 
> corridors?  This is not nearly as much of a hard sell to the public as 
> the ROAD/CAMPO/Cap Metro/commuter rail bobblehead crowd would lead us 
> to believe.  It's not about the money, dammit, it's about proposing 
> something which makes sense to someone who has a brain -- that hasn't 
> happened yet.
>
> A friend recently told me that her 75-year old mother, who's never 
> even been on a bus in her entire life, was in Vegas while the monorail 
> was still running.  As soon as she got back, she called the daughter 
> and excitedly announced "A monorail is what Austin needs -- I'd vote 
> for this in a minute!"  Why it is that a little old lady with no 
> experience with public transportation "gets it" and Lyndon Henry and 
> Capital Metro don't is simply beyond me, but then there are still 
> millions of folks out there that think the Iraq war has been a great 
> success, which is almost as absurd and clearly demonstrates that 
> anything is possible.
>