Glenn Gaven : The Sad Saga of Austin's $10 Million Concrete Path

Austin City Councilman Chris Riley on his trusty steed.
Image from chrisforaustin.com.

Taken for a ride:
The sad saga of the
$10 million concrete path

It is no coincidence that this segment of concrete treasure will run along part of Austin Councilmember Chris Riley’s pet project, a New Urbanist rezoning wet dream known as the Airport Boulevard Renovation Project.

By Glenn Gaven / The Rag Blog / April 9, 2013

AUSTIN -- With a zillion bicyclists and a historically dismal voting turnout, Austin, Texas, is a city where the bicycle lobby has more power than the Koch brothers. Realizing this, the transit authority, Capital Metro, and train enthusiasts turned to the two-wheeled mafia for help in passing a 2004 referendum to build a train system to bring commuters from the suburbs into the city.

The package the transit authority created was branded "All Systems Go,” and promised a glorious system of bicycle trails alongside the 162 miles of train track the Authority had already purchased over the years using the generous 1% sales tax dedicated to transit. The trail was to be built by 2007.

The referendum, which also promised a Bus Rapid Transit component by 2007 that has yet to be seen, passed and it was full steam ahead.

By 2007 the transit authority boasted having already spent 7.2 million dollars on the “Rails with Trails” program. That money had been spent on a feasibility study and presumably other prep work like surveying and engineering studies as no actual trail was in evidence as recently as January 2013.

In 2009, Capital Metro was awarded an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant for $1.9 million in free stimulus money to build bike trails. As you may recall the major stipulations for ARRA grants were that projects be “shovel ready,” and create new jobs. The transit authority happily accepted the money and promised the bike path would be built by 2010.

In February 2013, Smith Construction began demolishing a nearly new sidewalk adjacent a short section of Airport Blvd. to replace it with a “concrete path,” using $787,386 of the ARAA money. With the obligatory overruns associated with all Capital Metro contracts, Smith will likely collect a cool million to build the .9 (yes 9-tenths!) mile pathway that will run alongside a long-established bike lane, where there was already a sidewalk.

The rest of the money was given to McGray & McGray Land Surveyors and Klotz Associates, Inc, for “surveys” and “engineering studies.”

It is no coincidence that this segment of concrete treasure will run along part of Austin Councilmember Chris Riley’s pet project, a New Urbanist rezoning wet dream known as the Airport Boulevard Renovation Project. Riley and fellow Councilmember Mike Martinez represent Austin on the transit authority’s board of directors by night.

So, for a total of at least $10 million (7.2 + 1.9 + 15% built-in overruns etc.) we get almost a mile of what is basically a sidewalk where there was already a sidewalk and already a bike lane. According to City of Austin sidewalk coordinator John Eastman a .9 mile sidewalk outside of downtown typically costs $570,000. Those of us who used it can attest to its functionality and newness. That sidewalk is gone. Gone also is most of our $10 million which went into the pockets of consultants and contractors who have grown fat over the years feeding at the public troughs kept full by Mike Martinez and Chris Riley.

Next year, Riley and Martinez, along with the contractors like Paul Bury who built Martinez’ mansion, and train enthusiasts like Lyndon Henry and Glenn Gadbois will be asking Austin voters to give them the money to build a billion-dollar streetcar system in downtown Austin. Bicycling voters will determine yea or nay. It should only take the 90 seconds or so ride on Airport Blvd. between the Lamar Blvd. and Highland Mall to decide if we got our $10 million worth the last time.

[Glenn Gaven is a long-time Austin union activist who worked with the UT Shuttle Workers Union (ATU Local #1549) and was co-founder of the Bus Riders Union-ATX. Read more articles by Glenn Gaven on The Rag Blog.]

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New Urbanism : Transportation Fantasia in Central Texas

Cloning the evil broom:
Kirk Watson and the New Urbanists

By Glenn Gaven / The Rag Blog / November 6, 2009

In the movie Fantasia, Mickey chops the evil broom into bits only to have them transform into a whole army of equally evil broom clones. Too often this happens in real life, election after election.

In Austin, we unelected New Urbanist Brewster McCracken only to have him replaced on the city council by two other New Urbanists, Chris Riley and Bill Spelman. New Urbanism for the uninitiated is neo-liberal ethnic cleansing.

Riley also replaced McCracken on the Capital Metro Transit Authority Board and will be joined by fellow New Urbanists John Langamore, Frank Fernandez, and likely a fourth yet unnamed clone appointed by the County commissioners.

The result of all this is a complete takeover by developers of transit in Austin. They have raised bus fares by over 100% in the last thirteen months, jettisoning millions of trips from the system, crippling community mobility and damaging air quality.

Pulling the puppet strings on the whole marionette malaise is transit czar Kirk Watson who heads CAMPO, the regional transportation planning authority. You may remember the diminutive Dem who almost singlehandedly ruined the Obama campaign with his appearance on MSNBC's Hardball. Watson's inburst caused the biggest polling point drop of the entire election.



As a state senator in 2009, he returned to Central Texas to flaunt his wizardry under the Pink Dome. Watson changed state law allowing for his agency to pick an additional Metro board member and removing all checks and balances from the fare setting process, greenlighting unlimited hikes for eternity. It is also well known that Watson wants to be Governor of Texas someday.

In a Union drive many years ago my mentor Helen Parsley told me, when I complained about a particularly bad manager, "Bad managers are our best organizers."

Indeed, I would likely not know any of my fellow organizers and activists had it not been for the Imperial Savant management of our world by George W. Bush.

With our understanding of the Fantasia phenomena and the Parsley principle, I propose that, instead of unelecting Watson, we draft him to be President of the United States and give him greater power.

This concept should be applied universally. Term limits should be abolished, and elections held as infrequently as possible. This accomplishes two things. It ends the revolving door that politicians and lobbyists exploit and corners the market on graft and corruption, therefore devaluing bribes and kickbacks.

The result for us will be greater organization, and if we successfully allow a long term Mobutuesque regime to blossom, maybe the advent of the revolution we all crave.

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Austin Transit Threatening to Hike Fares Again

February 7, 1940, marked a dramatic change for Austin commuters. At 1:40 p.m. 500 Austinites boarded the electric streetcars at 6th and Congress for one final ride. The ceremonial ride also launched the Austin Transit Company's brand new fleet of buses. Photo: Source.
Austin Bus Fare Hike Re-Rumblings
By Glenn Gaven / The Rag Blog / September 29, 2009

For many years Capital Metro ran a free service that was known as "the Dillos." Quirky buses crisscrossed Austin from Pleasant Valley to Austin High School and from UT down to Oltorf. Thousands of workers and tourists used these buses. One of the busiest Dillo routes shuttled jurors to and from the courthouse.

In 2007, the Downtown Austin Alliance, a collection of real estate interests intent on building a light rail system for themselves convinced the transit authority to christen a "Dillo Task Force," which altered the Dillo service to serve just the Downtown area east of IH35, south of the Capitol and north of the river mimicking the future rail alignment. To keep people of little means off the new system they instituted a fare for the first time. But they forgot to ride it, and the Dillos quickly died.

Emboldened and undeterred, the Downtown Alliance led by millionaire developer Tom Stacy has set it's sights on those same people of little means. 72% of Capital Metro riders are non-choice riders who have no car option. Over 90% have incomes below Austin's mean. In an Austin American-Statesman op-ed piece on September 24th, Stacy pleaded with the transit authority to raise bus fares sooner and at a much higher rate than the 100% increase that was arrived at last year after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The Statesman gleefully seconded the notion in an editorial the next day.

Earlier in the budget process Capital Metro staff drew up a balanced budget without the Alliance's quicker, steeper fare hike. The Board of Directors led by County Commissioner Margaret Gomez raised no objection and CMTA told the media and the public the fare hike would stay at the previously voted on rate and time.

On September 28th, the Board of Directors caved into pressure from the Alliance whose members own the property Capital Metro leases at a bargain rate at 323 Congress Ave. primarily to sell route schedule booklets and passes for senior and disabled riders. Their members also have sold many millions of dollars worth of real estate to Capital Metro over the years. Now Metro says the much harsher fare increase is back on the table.

The excuse Stacy and some others are using is that the stimulus money the transit authority is receiving should go 100% to hardware and specifically the Leander train. Not surprisingly, the most vocal person is Leander, TX mayor and realtor John Cowman who once called local transit workers "the help." Leander's 40,000 residents are the sole beneficiaries of the "Red Line," which has cost 112 million dollars and counting.

The rules for the transit portion of the stimulus money specifically allow for 10% to be used on operations. Regardless, there is no direct tie in to fares. The budget could be balanced any number of ways and the worst way would be to be on the backs of the residents of Austin with the lowest income. The Bus Riders Union of Austin has recommended cutting numerous areas of waste including leasing of the Metro store which is estimated to consume about one million dollars a year to do little more than sell passes and schedule booklets that we used to get at HEB or at Metro's opulent headquarters at 2910 East Fifth St. The stimulus chatter is nothing more than convenient teabagger rhetoric.

Raising fares lowers ridership. This flies in the face of Capital Metro's professed goal of doubling ridership by 2025. Lowering ridership harms the environment by forcing people off the bus and back into cars. As Austin approaches EPA non-attainment a fare hike is the opposite of what our air needs. The first stage of the hike has cost the transit system over one million trips in the first half of the year and the second stage set for next summer will further devastate ridership. Stacy's anti-people fare hike would be equally anti-environment, and compound an already bad situation.

When riders in San Francisco and Vancouver were pushed to the breaking point they staged fare strikes which not only denied those cities' versions of the Downtown Alliance their blood money, it also empowered transit riders to push for other changes to the system. They asserted their ownership and now these systems are seen as models for transit that Austin says it aspires to.

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Austin Buses : Fare Hike Means More Traffic, Pollution

Waiting for a bus on the Rio Grande campus of Austin Community College. Photo by Alberto Martinez / Austin American-Statesman.

Transit officials in Austin refuse to even acknowledge the relationship between fare hikes and ridership loss. Their estimates for the first increase were off by a factor of ten.

By Glenn Gaven / The Rag Blog / August 25, 2009

The average Austin household contributes $450 per year to Capital Metro. Most people don't ride the bus. So what is it that non-riders are paying for?

The few altruistic Socialists believe that low income residents deserve mobility, but the rest of us are paying for two things: less traffic congestion and the cleaner air that should result from less cars on the road. A great value in an ideal situation. Unfortunately, our transit authority fails to deliver. When they raised fares at the beginning of 2009, it resulted in over 1,000,000 fewer trips in the first six months.

By and large, non-choice riders use monthly passes and did not reduce their trips. Choice riders, those who have a car option, make up the vast majority of lost trips. So by raising fares, Metro added up to a million more car trips to our roads. Not exactly what we paid for. What we did pay for is management waste, and accelerated development. You can find mountains of evidence of this in the local daily.

Now Metro officials want to raise the fares again. The average increase would amount to over 100% in a one year period. Fear not, there is no threat to raise the $450 that non-riders pay, but imagine if there were. $900 a year to increase pollution and traffic congestion? This might finally get the attention of the seemingly oblivious CMTA Board of Directors. Even CAMPO chair, Kirk Watson might be moved by a 100% increase in his personal outlay.

Transit officials in Austin refuse to even acknowledge the relationship between fare hikes and ridership loss. Their estimates for the first increase were off by a factor of ten. Even if they proffer an estimate for the second hike, it will take a ton of sugar to swallow. The industry "fare-elasticity" model expects a 3-4% ridership drop for every 10% increase.

As environmentalists, we cannot stand for another devastating fare hike. Austin is approaching official EPA non-attainment status. Mass transit is a proven, effective means of reducing pollution. As the system is already in place, it is also far and away the most immediate and efficient means.

Not only should we stop the fare hike, we should demand that the transit system we bought be used effectively and begin exploring ways to maximize ridership like the fare-free proposal put forth last year by the Bus Riders Union-ATX. Then we would all pay the same price. And get our $450 worth.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Also see Austin Metro Policies Are Creating Fewer Riders and More Pollution by Glenn Gaven / The Rag Blog / May 7, 2009.

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Austin Metro Policies Are Creating Fewer Riders and More Pollution

Capital Metro and the Environment
By Glenn Gaven / The Rag Blog / May 7, 2009

As EPA clean air requirements become more stringent, Texas' Travis County is poised to enter a new phase of its non-attainment status. For the first time, TCEQ and the County will likely be forced to implement a serious action plan to reduce greenhouse gases, or risk massive reductions in federal transportation subsidy. Mass transit is well recognized as an immediate, efficient means to reduce pollution.

For whatever reason, our local transit authority is so far unwilling to genuinely participate in cleaning our air. They have opted against natural gas and expanding hybrid utilization as fuel options in favor of diesel. Capital Metro last year discontinued free rides on ozone action days even though they saw an average 15% ridership increase on those days. They raised fares last year and are set to raise them again this October. Raising fares reduces ridership. In fact, current ridership goals are set for 20,000 less trips per month and actual ridership figures are even lower, averaging 10% fewer riders from last year. This means more cars, far and away the number one source of ozone pollution, on our roads.

On Earth Day 2008, the Bus Riders Union-ATX submitted a proposal for fare-free transit to Capital Metro. The proposal was aimed at increasing mobility for all Austin residents, and just as important, at reducing pollution.

Fare-free transit is highly efficient as it eliminates the expensive and time consuming collection of fares on the bus. Such a system reduces pollution by getting people out of their cars. During a 15 month fare-free period in 1989-90 Capital Metro increased ridership by 80%. Not only were more people riding the bus, but discussion about adding more freeway capacity on IH35 subsided. Pollution is further reduced as idling times for buses lessens without fare collection and decreased traffic congestion lowers idling times of both buses and cars.

Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority should not just rescind the impending fare hike which would devastate ridership, they should immediately implement a fare-free system to coax riders out of their ozone emitting cars. The small drop in revenue would be more than recovered by eliminating the cost of collection, maintaining and increasing federal funding, and reducing the expensive and deadly health care costs resulting from breathing dirty air.

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