_______________Austin Rail Now

By Lyndon Henry, Editor

Austin’s light rail transit (LRT) project continues to progress despite difficulties. The Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) and Project Connect (PC) planning team have so far been able to overcome serious legislative and litigational threats from public transport opponents. Equally important, they’ve managed to navigate through serious budget problems arising from design complications, external economic inflation, and other factors.

It’s a relief at last to have the workable (and hopefully entirely affordable) 3-branch light rail transit (LRT) system plan that ATP has adopted, shown in this map, publicly released this past May, which indicates proposed station locations as well as planned future line extensions:

The revised downtown route is a surface alignment following several streets: Trinity St., 3rd St., and Guadalupe St. However, in discussions this past spring and summer with ATP staff and technical advisory committee members, I called attention to a major concern with respect to the small number of stations – just three – to serve both Downtown and the Capitol Complex – i.e., two-thirds of Austin’s critically important Central Area. All three proposed station locations – Cesar Chavez, Congress, and 15th St. – can be seen on this closeup from the map:

This deficit in stations results in a serious problem of inadequate station spacing in this key activity center complex. In particular, there is a 14-block gap (in line length) between the proposed Congress station (located on 3rd St. west of Congress Ave.) and the proposed 15th St. station (on Guadalupe). The route distance (per Google Maps) for this gap between these two stations measures 5,633 feet. That’s 1.1 mile, or 1,717 meters, between these stations.

The following more detailed map graphic, created from Google Maps, facilitates a more accurate assessment of the proposed LRT route and stations within the grid of streets, blocks, and major landmarks, and a better visual sense of the lack of stations along Guadalupe St., resulting in the sizable gap between the proposed Congress and 15th St. stations.

This is an exceptionally long spacing between stations for a major dense central area, and it appears to be inconsistent with Best Practices as exhibited by downtown route configurations in peer cities, particularly with central-city surface alignments, such those in as Portland, San Diego, Sacramento, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Salt Lake City, and others, where spacing typically ranges from 3 to 8 blocks. In fact, I can’t immediately think of any other light rail system in North America with a station spacing that wide in the heart of its downtown.

Transportation consultant Jarrett Walker has discussed the stop-spacing issue on his website, HumanTransit.org: Basics: The Spacing of Stops and Stations.  As Walker notes, “… transit planners generally observe that the walking distance that most people seem to tolerate — the one beyond which ridership falls off drastically —  is about 400m (around 1/4 mi) for a local-stop service, and about 1000m (around 3/5 mi) for a very fast, frequent, and reliable rapid transit service.”

Here, Walker is discussing stop-spacing for a city as a whole. However, it’s crucial to consider the particular factors in play regarding the spacing of stations and adequate access in a downtown or other densely concentrated high-activity area. Given the dense mesh of downtown street structure, a circular radius yardstick doesn’t seem adequately applicable – transit users can’t walk in straight-line radii between worksites and transit stations, they must follow the zig-zag street configuration, which significantly increases total access distance. Plus additional time spent waiting at traffic lights must be taken into account.

Real access time in minutes would probably be a better comparative measure of ease of access. And it’s not just a matter of convenience. This means that excessively wide station spacing in a downtown may impair access, discourage use of the transit service, and thus significantly reduce ridership. It also imposes extra difficulty for the elderly and mobility-challenged. Potentially the problem could also damage public goodwill.

While the Project Connect team has expressed concern about steep gradients on Guadalupe at 5th St. and several blocks north that affect station construction, I note that industry guidelines are not rigid but do allow design to follow existing street gradients where this can be done consistently with safety and Best Practices. (Reference: TCRP Report 155, 2nd Ed. 201; U.S. Access Board, Accessibility Standards.)

Taking into account these considerations, to remedy this (so far publicly presented) 1.1-mile gap in downtown LRT station spacing, on 28 April I proposed that at least two additional downtown stations on Guadalupe St. be added to ATP’s revised surface LRT plan. As illustrated in the small amended map segment presented below, these include a station at 4th/Guadalupe to serve the existing transit hub at Republic Square and the lower west side of downtown, as well as a station at 10th/Guadalupe, intended to improve accessibility to the north end and upper west side of downtown, including the Travis County Courthouse, many legal and professional offices, and the Austin History Center.

ATP personnel indicated that they were considering these proposals, and the broader possibility of adding more downtown stations to the revised LRT plan. So far, no changes have been publicized. ■