He can smell it all the way at his home in Kyle

PabloSerna said:

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Like I said - this won't be settled in a matter of years. It will take many years to build out and many more years before the benefits begin to outweigh the upfront costs in my opinion.

However, I believe one day in my lifetime, it will be seen as a good decision by Austin voters. Hopefully this thread survives :-)

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It will never get built in the proposed form. There is no way, for instance, a tunnel under ladybird lake is built. That portion alone will be tied up for years.

The benefits will never outweigh the massive and continuing costs. A small percentage of to population will get a benefit while the whole population of Austin covers the costs.

If you do not believe that just look a the rail system in the bay area.

1. 30 to 40% of the cost of operating cost of the rail system is covered by taxes not fares
2. About 450,000 use the rail system every day. 6% of the bay are population.
3. The Population density is greater than 10,000 people per sq mile for the coverage area (Austin is 3000)

Fixed path transportation infrastructure for human transport is obsolete except in the most specific of circumstances. The sooner we can admit this and move on to vehicle subscription networks of self driving transportation that remove a large fraction of vehicles from the road and from production and from parking due to a lack of need, the better for our urban areas.

Eventually many people won't own a car, or will own fewer. They'll subscribe to a driving service with fully driverless cars, just pop open an app and put in a from and to location and the amount of people or space and the nearest available of a fleet of driverless cars in the area routes there and gives a ride to the destination on demand. Point to point, never has to be parked, drives until it needs refueling or charging and routes itself there to a maintenance lot where it is serviced and cleaned and put back online.

Thousands of these could replace many thousands more of personally owned cars that must be maintained, parked, insured, and registered by the owner. They go to wherever they are needed instead of requiring you to travel to a rail station. They use existing road infrastructure. They can be set to ride share at a discount or carry privately. Etc etc. in 20 years, a LOT of urban transport will work this way, or should. Stagger work hours slightly and we'd never need to build another road, because as fewer people drive themselves and use subscription services, fewer vehicles are on the road per rider at a given time. Networks of them could optimize to reduce traffic, move around slowdowns, meet demand spikes, etc.

Keeper of The Spirits said:

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He can smell it all the way at his home in Kyle

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Maybe that is what Kyle smells like

PabloSerna said:

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Will bookmark this for future reference.

I know I run in "certain" left leaning circles - I try to understand the other side, but I do not hear a comprehensive answer to rapid growth. The City Council, the Mayor, and City Staff have an obligation to figure it out. They hire study after study by the experts and this is what the experts are saying, namely Prop A.

Affordability is discussed by the way. I won't bore you with the details, but it begins with workforce housing along transit zones and mix-use arterials. Bad planning for years has led to the problems Austin is facing and is now on the path to fix.

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The liberals that have been in charge for decades have FINALLY figured out what's wrong and now have the solution. Give them more money to choose winners and losers and they will rework the rapidly growing modern city into the utopia of Portland.

MaroonSpirit said:

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Someone did an analysis of where most of the yes votes for prop A came from. Most were from UT and the surrounding area (west campus, etc). The UT Democrats did a promotion where they hyped up prop A and if you voted they had multiple offers around the area. $1 beer, free pizza, etc, etc.
These kids aren't even going to be here when they start construction on this thing and they sure aren't paying property taxes. They didn't care.

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Students and millennials have never seen a tax on other working class people that they don't like.