The city’s newly published Guadalupe Corridor Plan unsurprisingly turned heads when the Austin Transportation Department published it on Tuesday. Any plan that recommends the elimination of on-street parking and conversion of general purpose lanes into transit-priority lanes can be reliably counted upon to draw swift reaction from car-friendly quarters, including no less a person than […]
Transportation
Posted inTransit
Breakdowns plague MetroRapid fleet
The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s highly heralded MetroRapid buses fell well short of the agency’s maintenance goals during Fiscal Year 2016-17. Each month, the fleet of 55 vehicles failed to reach the minimum goal of miles traveled between road calls. “A road call happens anytime there’s a mechanical failure that requires the vehicle to be […]
Posted inTransportation
County adopts sidewalk fee-in-lieu program
Developers in unincorporated Travis County will now pay the price for not building sidewalks. On Tuesday, the Commissioners Court approved changes that will establish a sidewalk fee-in-lieu program similar to the one operated by the city of Austin. Chapter 82 of the Travis County Code mandates that developers outside of any city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction must […]
Posted inRoads
Final Guadalupe plan hits the streets
At long last, the city’s shortest corridor has its plan. The Austin Transportation Department today released the much-anticipated Guadalupe Corridor Plan, a 66-page document that calls for a multimodal revolution along the Drag. As expected, the document recommends the conversion of two car lanes into bus-only lanes on Guadalupe Street between 29th Street and Martin […]
Posted inBicycles
Research hopes to fill in the gaps for bicycle and pedestrian data
Traffic is terrible. City and state officials are really good at counting cars to see how terrible traffic is and how it got that way, but that sort of data-collection infrastructure doesn’t exist for bike and pedestrian data. New research hopes to change that. The project has a simple goal, but you wouldn’t glean that […]
Posted inTransportation
Smart Mobility Roadmap draft begins its tour of boards and commissions
Two of the human minds behind Austin’s robot car roadmap rolled into City Council chambers on Wednesday evening to show the fruits of their work to the city’s Joint Sustainability Committee. Karla Taylor, Austin Transportation Department chief of staff, and Karl Popham, Austin Energy’s manager of electric vehicles and emerging technology, showcased the draft document […]
Posted inTransit
Capital Metro sticks with ultralow-ridership line in Manor
The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority is moving full speed ahead with its plans to prioritize frequency over geographic coverage, but the agency’s commitment to that principle isn’t total. The recent adoption of the contentious June 2018 service changes that eliminated several routes and altered others due to low ridership will keep intact the No. 470 […]
Posted inRoads
Environmental concerns delay city action on upcoming MoPac project
Several City Council members want more information about the planned expansion of MoPac Expressway before they sign off on a key funding agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation. Council voted 9-2 at its Nov. 9 meeting to postpone an amendment to its year-old partnership with TxDOT that would increase the city’s original $1.8 million […]
Posted inTransit
New to Austin’s public transit system? A Cap Metro employee will ride the bus with you
Priscilla Jove, 19, sat cross-legged on a bench at a bus stop on the corner of West Oltorf Street and South Lamar Boulevard Saturday afternoon. A biology student at Austin Community College, Jove was headed out to study. She said she rides the bus because she’s not just curious about the human body – but […]
Posted inTransit
Transit priority is a top priority for Project Connect
Project Connect is doomed unless the city hands over dedicated right of way. That was the message relayed by Javier Arguello, long range planning director for the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority, to the city’s Urban Transportation Commission on Tuesday night. Arguello told the body that the high-capacity transit investments Project Connect is ultimately trying to […]
Posted inTransit
Capital Metro board approves major renovation of its bus network
The first time was all it took for the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s contentious June 2018 service changes. The sweeping overhaul of the transit agency’s bus network earned the board of directors’ stamp of approval on Wednesday, avoiding the months of delay the board afforded to Connections 2025, the service plan from which the changes […]
Posted inTransit
Cap Metro plan up for a vote today
The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors is set to vote today on a major overhaul of its bus system. If approved, the changes would take effect in June, changing more than half of all routes in the area. While some buses would run more often, other routes would be eliminated. Some are calling […]