Jumping the gun works, it seems. While city staff was devising a pilot program to govern dockless bikes and scooters, expecting to bring a proposal to Council members in June, two companies dropped their electric scooters throughout the city. Now the Austin Transportation Department has proposed fast-tracking approval of the pilot program. In a memo […]
Transportation Department
This city department is responsible for municipal transportation planning including roadways and bikeways.
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Ornithology edition
Bird brains… After the Uber and Lyft fiasco of 2016 and the city’s crackdown against rogue bike-sharing companies in 2017, we have no idea why rent-a-scooter firm Bird figured it’d be a swell idea to try to elbow its way into town last week without the blessings of the Austin Transportation Department. Nonetheless, the day […]
Posted inTransportation
Dockless scooter company takes flight in Austin
For the third time in four years, a brand-new technology-enabled transportation company has set up shop on Austin’s streets without seeking the city’s official blessing. On Thursday morning, the California-based company known as Bird released what one company official described as “a relatively small number” of its dockless electric scooters in parts of South and […]
Posted inBicycles
Dockless bike-share pilot development rolls forward
More than a year after an aborted attempt to move into Austin without permission, several dockless bike-sharing companies have switched gears and are now patiently working with the Transportation Department as it develops a pilot program that could put the smartphone-activated two-wheelers on city streets by this summer. On Wednesday night, Active Transportation Program Manager […]
Posted inTransportation
Council positioned to delay corridor program decision
City Council appears all but certain to postpone a scheduled vote on Thursday on the draft Corridor Construction Program, the highly ambitious blueprint for spending an unprecedented amount of bond money in a particularly condensed time frame. During Tuesday’s work session, several members expressed their desire to hold off on the decision, a sentiment that […]
Posted inRoads
Transportation Department defends ‘speed cushions’
Transportation Director Robert Spillar showed up at a meeting of the Public Safety Commission on Monday to defend “speed cushions,” the traffic-calming devices that have infuriated motorists across the city, most notably in a Northwest Austin neighborhood that successfully campaigned to have them removed. “We hate to put them out there, but the other side […]
Posted inTransportation
Contra-flow lane eyed as solution to up-up, down-down lurching of traffic at MLK
While plans to dedicate two lanes on the Drag to transit have been shelved for the moment, city planners hope to tweak another bus bottleneck on the Guadalupe Street corridor using 2016 mobility bond money. Tucked away in the proposed Corridor Construction Program – the laundry list of $450 million in projects aimed for nine […]
Posted inBonds & Propositions
City unveils proposed Corridor Construction Program
The long-awaited proposed Corridor Construction Program, the road map to Mayor Steve Adler’s Smart Corridor Plan that he’s now touting as potentially “genius,” is finally out of the stable. The city’s Corridor Program Office has been working to develop the program voters approved in the record $720 million mobility bond in November 2016 that set […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Is back
Lee’s new team?… Former Mayor Lee Leffingwell never had the noted social media chops of his successor (or his successor’s spokesperson, at least), and after he stepped down in 2015, his Twitter account mostly retired with him. In 2017, he posted a handful of tweets that mostly reminisced about his time at City Hall. However, […]
Posted inRoads
Austin’s new ‘speed cushions’ spark outcry
Susanne Paul worries that Jester Estates, the affluent Northwest Austin neighborhood where she’s lived for nearly 20 years, may be broken beyond repair. What was once an “extremely friendly” community is now fraught with political divisions that many of her neighbors believe may make it impossible to ever return to the “happy innocence of what […]
Posted inBicycles
City tentatively talks about dockless bike-sharing
The Austin Transportation Department is taking a studious approach to the dockless bike-sharing companies that have swooped into cities throughout the world in 2017. Active Transportation Program Manager Laura Dierenfield brought the Bicycle Advisory Council into the conversation on Wednesday night with a discussion that Dierenfield framed as part of an evaluation process aimed at […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Why not?
Wrestling with a tough decision… Austin’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America party scored a significant boost this weekend when Council Member Greg Casar agreed to sign up as an official member. The District 4 representative spoke at a DSA town hall on Friday evening alongside national health care activist and Party World Rasslin’ […]