Another dishonest tactic is to ignore clearly intended context - such as that we're talking about decisions made the last decade or so, so prewar systems aren't really that relevant.

In THEORY, rail can be done as badly as BRT always is. In PRACTICE, it isn't. There's that difference again! And it's the dishonesty of pretending like shared running isn't a killer, ported over from bad BRT, which is responsible for these (thankfully few) stupid shared lane rail proposals which are still mostly low volume proposals anyways. For instance, Seattle wasn't dumb enough to share lanes on their LRT line, were they? When buses practically scream 'compatible with cars', it's dishonest to pretend they're NOT radically more likely to be forced to share lanes with cars.

If all US implementations end up this bad, and they do, then it is no longer honest to claim BRT is as good as rail. Even if your customers desperately want to be told it is.

The McMansion ordinance drove my old next-door neighbors to Westlake, and barring the windfall we got last year, would have driven us further out as well. It absolutely is a major factor in preventing families from staying in the core as it limits the main house on a lot of typical central lots to 1800 square feet or less (remember, no special treatment given to garage apartments - which my neighbors already had and I always wanted).

If the block adjoining Lamar really gained 192 condos and lost 541 apartments during this time, then this was a really bad time to pick - as it obviously was after a demolition and before the units were replaced.

Yes, this "permanence" rebuttal of Jarrett's is highly disingenuous. Streetcars were torn out, it's true, but it took a looong time - and none of them were effectively 'moved'. And all that happened basically one time in the last 100 years. In the meantime, most cities have seen buses shift far more times. Even trunk routes make at least minor shifts even if the general corridor stays mostly the same.

The multi-family throwaway line is an important one. If the neighborhoods surrounding UT weren't so dead-set against MF zoning anywhere near them, you could have interior buildings where you had 6 1BR apartments in the space of a single-family dwelling instead of a SF-zoned structure being inhabited by 12 people all sharing the same kitchen. Which one would you logically expect to create more problems for the surrounding neighbors? Based on my experience living next to a big duplex and across an alley from a small apartment complex, I take the apartments any day of the week. And it's not the size of the house. Small houses in my neighborhood often end up with 6 students in 3 bedrooms - not a major improvement as if they all share the same kitchen, one can logically expect them to be more prone to partying as well. Typical redirection - meanwhile, the landed gentry sit back and laugh at how they got the small homeowners to go against their own best interest yet again.

Oh god. Save me from the companies that think if you don't participate in programming as a hobby you're not worth hiring. Do we expect surgeons to practice on their friends and family when home from the hospital? Do we expect lawyers to go file lawsuits for fun? Do we expect chemical engineers to go mad-scientist in their backyards? You are self-selecting for those with extremely poor work-life balance. That may work for some. It is not a recipe for success across the board.

I hope everybody here is smart enough to notice that JMVC's paid spin didn't even mention the fact that the FRR on the Red Line did not improve even after ridership shot up after: 1. initiating all-day service (cost increase) 2. canceling the best competing express bus service and 3. modest service changes (peak hour trip time changes). This means the ceiling for this line is very low indeed. It is not something that can, with enough tweaking, be turned into almost-a-light-rail-line. It's fundamentally flawed and can never be the backbone Austin needs - and right now it's sucking up all the oxygen from solutions that, while nowhere near as good as the 2000 line that was killed by the Red Line, at least have some potential to grow into something worth saving.

Nicolas, it's so low because this is an awful route - chosen for us by a transit-hostile legislator, not somebody who actually wanted transit to succeed. Since then, it has to be defended by those whose employment is tied up in making it look better than it really is. In 1997, Cap Metro actually went to the Feds for opinions on a light rail route (brand-new double track, electric wiring, everything) on the route that is now known as the Red Line, and they were laughed out of there for low ridership potential - so, no, double-tracking this POS doesn't help. At all. Our 2000 proposal, which can now never be built thanks to the Red Line, would have carried 20 times as many riders for about 7 times the cost (and half the cost would have been paid for by the Feds).

Not true. FRR did not measurably improve because ridership only went up when costs did (all day service). There is no path that starts with the Red Line and ends with light-rail-like ridership numbers, or I would not have spent so much time and energy fighting it.

Jesse, at its most reductive level that's correct - but the turnout for these May city council elections is so low that it's hard on a moral level to call it "democracy at work".

Don't know for sure. Context suggests downtown.

A facebook friend just posted this morning that they just got a $277 jaywalking ticket. Good lord. If it's that much, I retract my first comment upstream; that's a ridiculous fine.

South Lamar is never going to get great. The corridor was overdeveloped for cars, and we lack the political will to condemn private property just to build sidewalks; and too many of the big roads don't CROSS Lamar, just end there. The worst road by far is South Congress - where there are a ton of pedestrians, still Lamar-like bad crossings, and they actually enforce jaywalking laws sometimes. Most of the jaywalking enforcement activity in the past, though, has been downtown - where the "distance to next crossing" is not much of an excuse. I'd be fine with this push if it was coupled with a push at the same time to enforce crosswalk laws on motorists.

No, it won't. Everybody watering their lawn uses more gpm than those other things do for a longer period of time.

Not buying it. Our water pressure is lowest when everybody's watering their lawns (i.e. early Saturday mornings these days).

Re: pipes, another point Jardinero is ignoring is that denser development uses less water per capita. The condo we lived in in Clarksville used virtually zero water for landscaping, for instance; when we moved into our (dense but not AS dense) single-family home in NUNA, we're using thousands more gallons per year to keep plants growing. A larger yard than that would cause even more water use per capita.

See today's Statesman. Honestly, most people out there think all roads are paid for by gas taxes, with some skimmed off the top for transit and cycling. Really. Or just see my crackplog from today.

It's conventional wisdom that roads pay for themselves via the gas tax after all. You really need more evidence?

It's more simple than this: Voters do not think roads are subsidized, period. They believe roads pay for themselves and then some. The media has aided and abetted this misconception for so long that I despair for the truth.

Also important to note - the entire area is taxed, but only areas outside city limits ever get any of these projects. For things like open space and SOME park developments, this makes sense, but absolutely not for roads.

The tree will make it very difficult to develop the property at a reasonable density. So it's quite likely the development won't happen at all now. As the developer pointed out, they can't go back and fill in the missing spot once the tree dies.

Anita, that kind of personal attack has no place in this discussion. My solution is that people should expect to get a generous discount on street parking in 'their' neighborhood, but not the 99% off market rates for effectively reserved spaces they get today. If that's not good enough, find another place to park.

My street has RPPP and I hate it. Means the street is empty of cars most of the day resulting in high vehicular speeds - I prefer the traffic calming and "eyes on the street" you get with lots of parked cars. Only way I'd support keeping it around at all is if it were reduced to a yearly pass for the parking meters that could be purchased at a discount (but still higher than the very low amount we pay today). It's about $10/year last I remembered - it should be more like $100 at a minimum.