Bus paveways on Guadalupe-Lamar — Project Connect’s “elephant in the room”
17 December 2013
MetroRapid bus, southbound on N. Lamar, nears Koenig Lane during testing on Dec. 10th. By dumping urban rail for this corridor, Project Connect would be free to proceed with plan to install specially paved bus lanes instead of rails. Photo: L. Henry.
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By Dave Dobbs
The Elephant in the Room within the Project Connect (COA) urban rail plan (first to Mueller via East Campus, etc. and then out the East Riverside Corridor) is the official proposal to build 40% to 50% dedicated bus lanes, roughly 15-18 miles, within the 37-mile MetroRapid system. This $500 million expenditure appears as a near-term (within 10 years) investment, 80% of which would come from the Federal Transit Administration. Lyndon Henry and I have documented this and explained how it might work in an October 18th article entitled No urban rail on Guadalupe-Lamar? Then get ready for bus lanes….
When I spoke with Project Connect’s Scott Gross about the nature of this a few weeks ago, he said that the dedicated bus lane plan was one that included both right-of-way acquisition and exclusive bus lanes. The math here says that these lanes would be far more extensive than paint-on-paving such as we are about to see on Guadalupe and Lavaca between MLK and Cesar Chavez, 1.4 miles at a cost of $370,000.
Here’s the math …
$500,000,000 ÷ 18 miles = $27.8 million ÷ 2 lanes = $13.9 million per lane-mile
This figure points to a heavy-duty reinforced concrete bus lane in each direction, 18 inches thick, similar to the bus pads at bus stops we see along major bus routes. This would require tearing up the street as severely as a light rail installation would, with all the other utility improvements therein that might be accomplished at the same time.
While my cost-per-lane mile is a simple mathematical one, the result is consistent with what Ben Wear reports for building SH-130, 90 miles from Georgetown to Sequin, for $2.9 billion, or about $8 million a lane-mile. Construction costs in the middle of a very congested street, e.g., South Congress or North Lamar, would be significantly higher than a highway over farmland. That and ROW acquisition costs could easily account for $5.9 million dollars of difference.
These bus lanes, planned in the next decade, would definitely be an obstacle to further FTA investment for 20 to 30 years wherever they are installed. The question we ought to be asking is: What kind of “high capacity transit” do we want on our heaviest-traveled streets?
_______________Austin Rail Now 
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