A routine park repair has triggered pent-up frustration over Austin’s infamously congested downtown traffic. At its meeting on July 26, members of the Parks and Recreation Board recommended a repair project that will force the closure of one lane of Cesar Chavez Street from West Avenue to San Antonio Street for the month of August. […]
Transportation
Posted inTransit
Corridor plans pushing forward with bus pullouts
A prominent selling point in Mayor Steve Adler’s pitch for a $720 million mobility bond has drawn a lukewarm reception by the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority. On multiple occasions, Adler has hyped bus pullouts as a key feature of his so-called Go Big Corridor Plan, a package that would spend hundreds of millions on regional […]
Posted inRoads
CTRMA gets tough with tardy MoPac contractor
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority is adding some bite to its bark over the delayed MoPac Improvement Project. On Wednesday, the CTRMA’s board of directors voted unanimously to give Executive Director Mike Heiligenstein the authority to start assessing financial penalties against CH2M, the engineering firm in charge of the project. CH2M began the job […]
Posted inTransit
Cap Metro ponders fare-ly big changes to MetroRapid service
The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced plans on Monday to add eight new stops to its two premium MetroRapid routes, but even bigger changes for the two-year-old service could be right around the corner. Todd Hemingson, Capital Metro’s vice president of strategic planning and development, told the Austin Monitor on Tuesday that the agency could […]
Posted inTransit
Message to Cap Metro: Don’t worry about TNCs
A prominent mass transportation expert told the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board of directors on Monday that ride-hailing services have little impact on public transit ridership. The data presented by Jarrett Walker, author of the book Human Transit, contradict one of Capital Metro’s official explanations for a sinking number of passengers. “Ride-sourcing has a small […]
Posted inTransportation
Corridors that cure cancer? Preventing it, maybe
Could streets be like doctors? A streetlight that diagnoses ulcerous colon. A sidewalk that administers chemotherapy. That question is what City Council Member Delia Garza levied at the oft-optimistic Mayor Steve Adler during the last Council meeting before members broke for the month of July. Garza was criticizing Adler’s push for a $720 million mobility […]
Posted inTransportation
Austin’s hotels resting well without Uber and Lyft
More than two months after Uber and Lyft shut down operations in Austin, one sector whose customers relied heavily on the companies has collectively shrugged and embraced the proliferation of new and existing alternatives. At a convention-style meet-and-greet at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Monday, representatives of those alternatives – including several of the upstart […]
Posted inTransportation
Urban Transportation Commissioners dissect mobility bond proposal
Members of the Urban Transportation Commission aired doubts about Mayor Steve Adler’s $720 million mobility bond proposal and also clashed on the vision for light rail in Austin on Wednesday Tuesday night. Three appointees to the advisory body let fly terms such as “disappointing,” “frustrated” and “problem” to describe their reactions to the massive package […]
Posted inTransportation
In search for transportation solutions, UTC turns to pods
A video game entrepreneur swept into City Hall on Tuesday night to pitch his proposal for a novel transit system to the Urban Transportation Commission. Richard Garriott laid out a detailed case for Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT, which would involve a citywide web of elevated guideways teeming with automated four-person pods carrying passengers from […]
Posted inTransit
MetroRail stations dealing out of the card game
Riders will not be able to use a physical credit card to buy train tickets at MetroRail stations come October. The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority has announced that starting on Oct. 9, ticket vending machines at the agency’s nine stations will only accept cash and the agency’s stored value transit passes. “Capital Metro is implementing […]
Posted inTransportation
TxDOT clarifies MoKan dos and MoKan don’ts
The Texas Department of Transportation has closed the door on running public transit without an accessory road project on a future travel corridor that runs between Interstate 35 and State Highway 130. On Thursday, a TxDOT spokesperson told the Austin Monitor that the “MoKan corridor could not be exclusively rail,” a decision that could upend […]
Posted inTransportation
CAMPO approves long list of short-term projects
The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) on Wednesday night approved a nearly $1 billion laundry list of transportation projects that are set to break ground over the next four years. The 2017-2020 Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) contains a total of 69 highway projects spread out across CAMPO’s six-county domain. Also folded into the TIP […]