The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority is moving into the second of six phases leading up to a possible 2020 referendum on Project Connect. With preliminary engineering contracts already awarded for the two high-capacity routes and the board set to award contracts for most of the other lines later this month, Project Connect program manager Dave […]
Austin City Council Mobility Committee
A City Council committee that reviews matters related to all modes of transportation.
Posted inTransportation
Street impact fees making their way back to Council
Austin Transportation is proposing a one-time street impact fee for new developments to help the city pay for its growth in an equitable and transparent way. After releasing a draft study earlier this week explaining how fees would be calculated and used, ATD staff joined the Mobility Committee on Thursday to provide further context. Liane […]
Posted inTransportation
ASMP roadway project strikes a nerve
The Austin Strategic Mobility Plan is already causing a stir in the community since being released Feb. 22. After a two-year process that allowed residents to comment on potential corridor projects, a handful of community members feel ignored by the final draft. As the Transportation Department invited them to do, several city residents brought their […]
Posted inTransportation
Scooters: Committee calls for clear rules
The number of dockless scooter operators wanting a share of the Austin market continues to rise. This week, Austin welcomed the latest entrant, Lyft, with permits for 1,500 authorized units, pushing the total number of authorized scooters (not the number of actual scooters) in the city to 10,521. The figure is drawing a number of […]
Posted inTransit
City, Cap Metro ready to consider transit before, not after, construction
For most of its existence, the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority has struggled to create a coherent service network in a city that has been largely developed without public transit in mind. This historical pattern now appears, after decades of political gridlock, to be reversing itself. During a Mobility Committee meeting Thursday evening, Austin Transportation Department […]
Posted inBonds & Propositions
Mobility Committee doesn’t not want Council to add Project Connect to November bond
After some brief dais drama on Tuesday, City Council’s Mobility Committee unanimously endorsed the idea of at least talking about putting $15 million in Project Connect seed money on the November ballot. The 4-0 vote nudged forward a request made by the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors last month aimed at funding preliminary […]
Posted inTransportation
Dockless scooters and bikes zip through Mobility Committee
City Council’s Mobility Committee learned on Tuesday afternoon that when it comes to dockless bikes and scooters, the last foot is the technology’s biggest problem. That was the message at least from Jason JonMichael, assistant director of smart mobility with the Austin Transportation Department. Along with Austin Transportation Director Rob Spillar, JonMichael briefed the committee […]
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 inTransportation
Austin’s next mobility challenge: downtown parking
Exactly what role City Council will play in an ambitious new framework conceived to tackle downtown parking problems remains to be worked out. On Wednesday afternoon, members of the Mobility Committee became the first among their colleagues to be briefed on the Downtown Austin Alliance’s Downtown Austin Parking Strategy, a 79-page document that assesses the […]
Posted inTransit
Renewed Project Connect closes in on milestone
The brain trust behind Project Connect will reveal which specific corridors have made the cut to advance to the next round of high-capacity transit planning on Friday. Last Wednesday, Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority Long Range Planning Director Javier Arguello told the City Council Mobility Committee that his team will present to members of the Capital […]
Posted inTransit
Mobility plan will prioritize transit
The collaborative effort to craft a transit priority policy is being rolled into the larger Austin Strategic Mobility Plan. Last Wednesday, Austin Transportation Department staff briefed the City Council Mobility Committee on their nearly year-old charge to put together a framework to guide decisions about transit-boosting treatments such as bus lanes and queue jump signals. […]
Posted inTransportation
Capital Metro merges working group with city planning effort
The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city of Austin have joined together to expand the scope of work for the group of residents and stakeholders deputized to weigh in on the latest iteration of Project Connect. The Project Connect Community Advisory Committee, which held its first, and so far only, meeting on Oct. 21, […]