
Austin: No Place to Go but Up - Thevet
https://medium.com/@mtobis/no-place-to-go-but-up-e9968b8f7d90#.1r5y8wv0b
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Tiktaalik
The author makes the same mistake as so many others in assuming that people's
behaviour cannot change and that car traffic will always be present. The
reality is that when car infrastructure is correctly priced and alternatives
are available, the behaviour of people changes and car use declines. There's
no need for any of this elaborate separation of traffic.

The answer to Austin's traffic problems is the same as for all cities. Reduce
space for cars (roads and parking) and put that space to better use, whether
it be for more efficient transportation options (ie. bicycles and public
transit) or for housing and amenities.

The author cites Vancouver's grade separated Skytrain as a model to follow but
didn't bother looking at the real success of Vancouver's transportation
system, which is that as of 2014 only 50% of trips are taken by car. This
milestone was achieved not just due to Skytrain, but due to huge gains in
walking and cycling trips. Vancouver built a great transit system yes, but has
also densified the city, built a great deal of separated bike lanes, never
built a freeway, and most important of all has not expanded road capacity at
all for decades. Traffic entering the city decreased by 5% since 1996 and
entering downtown decreased 20%, while the population living and working in
the area has dramatically increased.

The amount of cars entering Vancouver's downtown has been unchanged since the
1960s.

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api_or_ipa
Having lived in Vancouver, we've still got a long way to go towards improving
our alternative modes of transit. The car still remains king in the suburbs,
and the political force of suburban drivers has been a significant blockade
towards further public transit infrastructure funding.

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aclimatt
One of the main issues with elevated roadways / trains / bike lanes / what
have you over city streets is the relatively dark and undesirable areas they
create below them. Seattle had this problem back at the turn of the century,
and it generally doesn't create a nice urban atmosphere to have massive
elevated roadways above the main city, even if it's trains or bikes that run
on them.

That's why cities like San Francisco consider tearing down their elevated
freeways and replacing them with surface streets -- it creates a more
desirable atmosphere when you're below. (Think the Embarcadero.)

Chicago's L is efficient, certainly, but the entire downtown core is hidden
under a dark, loud, shaking train track. It's not the most pleasant thing to
spend your time around.

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msellout
The Boston Big Dig was a great improvement -- buried the highway and
revitalized downtown and Seaport.

Maybe Austin should do something similar. It can narrow the streets and build
some underground highways. Leave the above-ground for pedestrians and
bicycles, traffic that can actually stop if it spots something interesting.
Cars mostly go from here to there, never stopping in-between.

Buses are much cheaper than trains and can be re-routed if it turns out the
population centers shift.

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prewett
I like the idea, but I think most of Austin has limestone bedrock six feet
below the surface, so that might be prohibitively expensive.

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umanwizard
> Has any city jumped from regional center to international metropolis so
> quickly, without ever passing through a period of being a national city?
> Austin has emerged as a world-class destination and a world-shaking center
> of innovation in a decade.

Why do I keep hearing this, but only from Austinites? I put Austin in about
the same category as Minneapolis; I'm vaguely aware it exists but not of
anything going on there.

What are the major globally relevant corporations headquartered in Austin?
Major NGOs? Famous cultural events? (Compare the level of coverage of SXSW to
London Fashion Week). Dominant, influential film studios or publishing houses?

Why do I keep hearing Austin talked about in the same breath as SF or New York
as a major global city? It's not even a "national city" to me.

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Kalium
Austin has... something of an ego. It thinks of itself as the center of Texas
- not completely unjustly, as it is the capital. Since Texas is _obviously_
the best, greatest, most important, and all-around awesomeist place in the
worst, it obviously follows that Austin is the best city in all of time and
space.

It's got some hipster cultural cache and is a regional cultural and economic
center... if your primary language is English.

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natrius
> _The abruptness of Austin’s success ... is causing a whole range of
> problems, unfolding in fast-forward — water supplies, electric supplies,
> gentrification._

We have to stop calling what's happening in Austin "gentrification." We are
segregationists. Our laws prevent mixed-income neighborhoods from existing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ0NzlQp0dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ0NzlQp0dc)

~~~
force_reboot
You can call it whatever you like, but for reference, the laws that are being
described as "segregationist" are laws regarding minimum lot size. These laws
are no more inherently racial than "gentrification". In both cases they only
affect black people disproportionally because (quoting from the video) "black
people have less money"

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H0n3sty
Actually, he said that "minorities make less money" in the video. That seems
like a racist statement, as he chose to ignore an important minority group,
asians.

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H0n3sty
Why downvote this one? I corrected the misquote and pointed out how the
speaker in the video chose to ignore asians to misconstrue his issue as being
about minorities in a racist way. If the video had featured a white person
whispering something disparaging (and false) about minorities would you feel
the same way?

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orliesaurus
I just moved to Austin. I am super blessed to live 8 min bike ride from the
heart of the city downtown. It's a nice city and I experience(d) the killer
traffic jam every time I want to go somewhere which is outside of my bike-able
range. I can't believe what it must be like to live north or south and have to
be stuck in your car daily. Maybe feels like Elon Musk when he came up with
the Hyperloop idea?

I think the option with the elevated bike would work well, considering there
are a lot of cyclists and "free bikes" (like in London you can get them for
free for 30min with the membership card).

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ashwinaj
As someone who's lived in Austin (left in Sep 2012 to the Bay area and still
have friends there) I chuckle when people say Austin is a tech hub. Sure there
are satellite tech offices and a growing startup scene, but it is nowhere
close and I mean like light years away from the innovation done in the Bay
area.

And I don't understand the fascination with Austin; downtown area is nice,
rest is all boring suburbs (IMO) just like any other place in Texas.

Edit: Does anyone care to comment on the downvotes?

~~~
cthalupa
>Edit: Does anyone care to comment on the downvotes?

Probably the dismissive tone.

The Bay area is unique throughout the world, so saying a city isn't a tech hub
just because it isn't the Bay is silly. Forbes and others have written quite a
articles about how Austin (And Dallas, and Chicago, and others) are all well
on their way to being tech Meccas, and have backed it with actual data, e.g.
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/navathwal/2015/02/12/5-markets-p...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/navathwal/2015/02/12/5-markets-
poised-to-be-the-next-silicon-valley-for-real-estate/#6ff9ca1c1000)

So, your comment can come across as antagonistic and with a fair amount of
hubris.

~~~
ashwinaj
Ok, fair enough.

How do you define a tech hub? Is it R&D or is it operations
(maintenance/sustaining, DevOps, tech support, biz dev)?

If it's R&D, clearly Austin is no tech hub. Only a handful of semiconductor
companies and maybe a few software companies do _substantial_ R&D in Austin (a
minor project doesn't count).

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caseyf7
Has traffic decreased anywhere? It seems like everyone in every city is
complaining about how much worse traffic is. This whole country needs massive
improvement in people movers. Dedicated bike lanes, hyperloops, driverless
cars - we need them - bring it on!

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Tiktaalik
Traffic has decreased in the City of Vancouver. Down 5% since 1996 and down
20% if you only count Downtown.

This was achieved by:

* Building dense, walkable residential neighbourhoods downtown.

* Creating a great rapid transit network

* Building a network of bike lanes, including separated lanes.

* Policy against expanding the car road network that has lasted for decades.

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danieltillett
You forgot the selling of half the properties to absentee owners who then
leave the property empty.

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unknownzero
I live in Austin and i walk/Uber everywhere and largely agree with the author,
we need better public transit absolutely. I'm wary of this line of thinking
however "Our population is largely young and vigorous. ", a significant
portion of people who could use better non single passenger car options are
certainly not so young and vigorous, and it's worth noting that even those
that are now won't be forever ;)

I think bikes are great, more bike options for sure, 10000. However in my
opinion they're not a great solution to the transportation problem for most
people.

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bluthru
Elevated anything kills the street experience for pedestrians, which is once
of the central points of having urbanism in the first place. Urbanism isn't
about getting to point A to point B as fast as possible, it's about a dense
network of interactions.

I bet the writer would change his opinion if he learned more about urban
design. The final image is pretty much a poster child for what NOT to do
(similar to Le Corbusier's vision for Paris).

The solution is to build more densely to make car trips less practical and to
have better public transit that can't get stuck in traffic.

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aninhumer
The writer is also talking about raising the pedestrian areas as well though.
Surely it doesn't matter how dark and uninviting the ground level is if no one
actually needs to walk there?

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bluthru
You're joking, right?

Ever notice how people prefer to walk on streets that have storefronts?

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aninhumer
So have elevated storefronts?

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chipsy
It's the biggest fallacy in armchair transit planning: Misunderstanding what
induced demand means. If the system is at capacity everywhere, but you build
to the point where a modality(any modality) is no longer congested, new demand
will shift towards that modality. Thus, you can have a city where all the
trains are packed, or one where it's the highways. Presumably, if you invested
enough in them, bikes and buses could go the same way.

But what you can't do is create an "all-around" city where every transit
option has equally low congestion. People will show a preference for whichever
mode they got used to, and fill the others only as they hit their tolerance
limits - not because one is faster, or cheaper, unless it's substantially
so(and then congestion will arise to even the odds). This typically manifests
today in a city crowding the highways but leaving the buses empty. New
construction will mostly be used by newcomers unless there is some
disincentive to drive, like downtown congestion charges, reduction of parking,
smaller roads, etc.

The bus lane capacity thought experiment equates velocity to throughput. This
is obviously wrong; while a bus interferes with some traffic, it also pulls
more people into less space. Multiply that along the whole route, at high
frequency, and you end up with geometric efficiency. A bus may go at a third
of the speed, but it carries easily 10x as much as a four-seater, and bigger
buses could hold even more. At the peak hours, congestion and slow speeds are
assumed and vehicle capacity starts to matter for delivering the most
commuters home in a timely fashion.

Then consider the network benefits of running more routes and connections at
higher frequencies. Public transit has to hit a certain critical mass of
densities and destinations before it really takes off; most of the US today,
being heavily suburbanized in the mid-century fashion, does not enjoy this.
But the New York City region got there, and several other metros are showing
signs of moving in this direction. Access to transit is implicitly improving
now that we're in the era of electric rideable vehicles and people making
their first/last-mile connection can go at 10-15 MPH on whatever weird gadget
they want without breaking a sweat or having to find lockup space. Capacity
becomes a complicated equation with all these factors.

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H0n3sty
This won't be a problem once enough remote tech workers replace the caged
commuters.

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Apocryphon
Is Austin the next SF?

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glibgil
No, Oakland is the next SF

