Update on North Corridor Study Area
July 9, 2012 6 Comments
What great turnout for our recent Project Connect: North Corridor Open Houses! Check out some of the press coverage of the meetings here. We will announce the launch of our online open house very soon, however we wanted to provide you with this quick update:
Your feedback matters and we are listening!
Many folks at our open houses mentioned they would like the North Corridor study to include a look at the SH130 corridor for it’s suitability for high-capacity transit. Based on this feedback, we have adjusted the study area. Below are maps of the original study area and the updated study area including SH130. At this point in the process, we are focused on getting your input on the specific transportation challenges in the North Corridor that we should be working to address. Later, we will develop many proposed transportation alternatives that may help with the identified transportation challenges. Then, we will work with our partners and the community to narrow down those alternatives to a Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA).
Thanks to all those who have participated this far, your input is absolutely critical to this project.
Original North Corridor Study Area
Revised North Corridor Study Area
As routes are determined, it is important to touch the areas of highest employment and most dense housing. People in single-family housing more usually have the means to travel to a station. People in apartments can benefit most from stations within walking distance. Intermodal shifts between trains and buses should be kept to a minimum and at the destination portions of a trip.
Because rights of way are always an issue, we should use the rights of way for the Interstate Highway system as a foundation for Intercity rail. That would reduce the amount of right of way required to a minimum, lowering that cost. No passenger rail should have a road or highway crossing at grade.
It is so wonderful that our metro area’s planning is focusing on these low-density areas where any rail transit will only operate with extraordinarily high operating subsidies (like the Red Line’s $35/ride) instead of focusing this energy on the dense core where any sane metropolitan area would have started building rail.
Thanks for your help in making sure that the suburbs continue to ride free on Austin’s taxes and the taxpayers of Austin continue to get no rail transit!
Instead of studying how we can better accomodate suburbanites, how about we focus our efforts on rail in the core that gets more riders for less subsidies?
KT – the two corridors currently being planned are the central and north corridors. The City of Austin is currently planning for high capacity transit in the central corridor (urban rail). Capital Metro is leading the alternatives analysis for the North Corridor, which will bring folks into the central corridor, where hopefully they will be able to connect to urban rail to reach their final destinations, if necessary. Project Connect is the effort to plan for all of these components of the region’s high capacity transit system (Urban Rail, Lone Star Rail, MetroRail, MetroRapid, Express Buses in Managed Lanes) working together as a system. Also, a significant portion of the North Corridor is within the City of Austin, and thus the alternatives analysis will certainly consider Austinites’ travel needs, in addition to suburban communities.
Just curious why there is not a South Corridor Study being done? Maybe there is and I just never hear about it?
Liam – Project Connect identified and evaluated several travel corridors, including the South corridor. All the corridors were evaluated against a number of factors to determine which corridors should be the priority for further study. The central corridor and north corridor were rated the highest in that evaluation. The City of Austin is leading the efforts to plan for high capacity transit in the central corridor (urban rail), and Capital Metro is leading the efforts in studying the north corridor (Project Connect: North Corridor). The hope is that eventually all the corridors (including south) can be further studied for high capacity transit, but our team thought it prudent to start with these two, given their current and future needs. Stay tuned for a future post that will elaborate on this further. thanks for participating.