became pretty clear to me that the Council is very reluctant to take
on a well-organized grassroots opposition from an area that votes
heavily enough to determine the outcome of elections (see latest
Chronicle).
Austin is gentrifying because the roads are getting clogged up, and
there isn't enough money to try to build our way out of congestion
very well anymore (hence the toll road syndrome). Is it any wonder
that big box retailers are learning how to play politics as the
metropolitan roads clog up and refocus retail trade back into the
core city?
As part of gentrification, a lot of professionals are now deciding to
live in Austin rather than enduring traffic jams commuting out into
the suburbs, as they might have ten years ago, and they are willing
to create strong, smart coalitions like the WalMart opposition;
RG4N. They believe in defending their property rights against the
really big money, big box developer strategist Richard Suttle, etc
If these folks in north central Austin can do it, than other less
organized areas of town will certainly be inspired to get their act
together, and I assume ANC will gladly help.
The reality is that more or less insoluble transportation problems
have become a major growth policy constraint in the Austin area, and
the politics follows.
A majority of Austin's streets and roads are now in poor, failing or
failed condition, and this is not expected to improve even with the
recent bond election (a large part of Austin's year 2000 Prop. bonds,
at least $67 million and in total much more, was diverted to buy toll
road right of way outside the city in Williamson County).
Now on to the traffic impact study. This was required of the
proposed WalMart at Northcross Mall.
The traffic situation was marginal; the road capacity on Anderson
Lane and Burnet Road and was very near breakdown even when using a
lot of favorable assumptions. Like plugging in standard AASHTO
numbers that do not correspond to the known big box reality.
One of the biggest flaws in the Northcross traffic impact study was
not even mentioned at the hearing. That is the fact that they are
only using CURRENT traffic numbers for background traffic, as opposed
to the numbers projected five or ten or twenty years from now. If the
road system is near breakdown even now, assuming the Walmart-friendly
assumptions being used by the city, how bad will the situation be
even five years from now, once the Walmart is located there? The
system breaks down during rush hours and diverts.
The traffic impact only looked at the very nearby roads surrounding
Northcross. But anyone who lives along Shoal Creek Blvd. knows that
it is increasingly used as an alternative to Burnet Road when getting
to Northcross from Allandate and points south.
The traffic impact will clearly tend to make Shoal Creek (supposedly
being planned to be bike friendly) try to become a major arterial as
Burnet Road becomes the more congested alternative approach to Walmart.
Who has the numbers to properly analyze these traffic problems? CAMPO
does, sort of, and you can see for yourself by going to the following
link:
Look at maps 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3.
If CAMPO's travel demand models proposes to predict how congested the
roads will be 25 years from now in 2030.If so, they should be able to
tell you how congested they will be five or ten years from now, right?
One big problem is that CAMPO's modeling has recently been outsourced
so that the modeling assumptions and methods underlying these results
are no longer subject to public scrutiny. We can now only see the end
results. This amounts to heavy congestion throughout the city, even
assuming we do build the toll roads and can afford to expand the
secondary network throughout Austin (map 2.3).
TxDOT wants to get the toll roads surrounding Austin under contract
ASAP, and approved for construction this next spring, 2007. CAMPO
does have an improved growth concept in the works:
But CAMPO has said they will only start implementing this better
growth concept in 2010 at the earliest, AFTER the toll road contracts
TxDOT wants are let! So CAMPO's hypothetical future better
transportation and land use planning will have to wait for years,
until after the sprawl roads are approved and under construction. Its
like dangling a paper carrot in front of progressive planners to
distract attention from all the toll road construction.
But meanwhile the reality is that Austin cannot afford to "Improve"
its own roads to handle all the regional spill-over traffic generated
by poor land use planning that assumes that all the suburban
developers will build out as proposed for decades to come (in Texas,
private roads have become public subsidies for private development;
its a lot cheaper to buy a politician than to build a road).
The reality is that all the toll roads (ones that Councilmen Wynn and
McCracken approved a few years ago against strong public opposition)
will generate a lot of spillover traffic in the central city.
That is a major reason why so many of the Austin area roads in
CAMPO's long range plan are STILL projected to be severely congested,
assuming that Austin has the money to widen or maintain them. But
this is unlikely according to the Austin's current funding trends in
which a majority of Austin's roads are in poor condition.
In conclusion, roadway congestion is a primary cause of
gentrification. Then this gentrification refocuses the growth battles
from the suburbs back into the core city.
In the absence of good land use planning and high level public
transportation, this situation tends to create heavy congestion on
the major arterials like Anderson Lane, Burnet Road, Lamar, etc.
This generates lots of spill-over traffic filtering into the
neighborhoods. This also adds to the localized traffic generated by
the big boxes that are trying to capture travelers along there same
congested arterials, who may wish to chain their trips by shopping on
the way home.
One important factor never considered is that increasing fuel prices
are never taken into account by Texas transportation planners (even
through this key factor has caused traffic in Texas to decrease on
urban arterials by about 2% in the last year according to the federal
data!).
After all, Prez GWBush has recently been warning us that we are
addicted to oil and need to reduce its use (even though he doesn't
believe in global warming unlike most climate scientists).
A looming peak in world oil production is the main factor that I
strongly believe will doom ALMOST ALL of the future transportation
planning being done by CAMPO and TxDOT, along with causing the toll
road bonds to default. There are tons of supportive documents
concerning peak oil, energy and transportation problems, on "Energy
Bulletin" and "The Oil Drum" websites.
Anyhow, even conservative Re[publicans are starting to realize that
transportation planning in Texas is very largely a political scam
promoted by special interests.
Historically, these interests have been suburban developers and road
contractors.
Follow this link to a Texas Monthly blog in which Paul Burka
critiques the thinking that toll roads or higher gas taxes are really
necessary:
A lot of Texas' political influence peddling involves roads
(starting with Gov. Perry, who gets lots of money from the
contractors, and who then appoints the Tx Transportation Commission.
They then in turn determine TxDOT policy at the local level) This is
documented in the Dec. 15 Texas Observer in an article titled "The
Highwaymen":
--- Happy Holidays, Roger
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