Why abandon Austin’s major corridor and congestion problem?
30 March 2013
[Map: L. Henry. Click to enlarge.]
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Several previous entries in this blog have already underscored the contradiction between the City of Austin’s emphasis on the severely congested condition of the Lamar-Guadalupe corridor and city planners’ astounding conclusion that building an Urban Rail line in an entirely different (and virtually non-existent) travel corridor would be some kind of remedy for this.
This glaring disparity is captured in a graphic contained in a handout prepared by Lyndon Henry for another presentation to the Transit Working Group on 27 January 2012, Urban Light Rail vs. Limitations of RapidBus.
In this map snippet, adapted from COA’s own route map, the high-traffic, congested Lamar-Guadalupe corridor is shown by a dashed red line and the annotation “Major Corridor and Congestion Are Here”, while the proposed routes to Mueller are shown (gold/ochre color, both solid and patterned — the patterned line eventually became the preferred route to Mueller).
The issue of RapidBus (aka “Bus Rapid Transit”) as the COA’s longer-term alternative to rail in the Lamar-Guadalupe corridor is addressed further in the original presentation handout, and will be discussed in a subsequent posting.
The original handout, in Word .DOC format, can be accessed via this link: Urban Light Rail vs. Limitations of RapidBus.
_______________Austin Rail Now 
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