Jekyll2018-10-17T01:00:29+00:00/Austin Transit BlogA blog focused on housing and transportation in Austin.Fourplexes Everywhere Is the Best Hope for Zoning Reform in Austin2018-10-07T00:00:00+00:002018-10-07T00:00:00+00:00/housing/2018/10/07/fourplexes-everywhere<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/portland-fourplex.png" alt="fourplex-example" class="img-responsive" />
<em>A non scary version of density</em></p>
<p><em>(A caveat: I’m not going to address Austin’s Proposition A in this post because this is about land use, but I urge everyone to support it. I think some amount of public housing is good for a lot of reasons even if you embrace housing economics. I’ll elaborate on that a bit in another post).</em></p>
<p>CodeNEXT has been dead for several months, and members of Austin City Council have mentioned that they intend to tackle zoning again in the new year. There are a lot of reasons that CodeNEXT was defeated, but it’s worth examining who was against it’s passage and why because if those same groups oppose the next attempt at land use reform, then it’s likely to fail too. I think the answer is allowing fourplexes on every single lot in the city, but first let’s break down why CodeNEXT failed.</p>
<p>One predictable opponent of CodeNEXT was the <a href="http://ancweb.org/">Austin Neighborhoods Council</a> or ANC. The ANC is a reliable opponent of anything that isn’t single family homes on large lots, plentiful free parking for cars, and nostalgia for a “weirder” Austin when everyone looked like Willie Nelson. ANC members are <a href="https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/city-county/2015/05/28/rental-homes-becoming-unaffordable/">openly hostile towards people moving to Austin</a>, and their policy positions universally benefit existing Austin homeowners against anyone else (it’s worth reiterating here that Austin homeowners <a href="http://austintransitblog.com/housing/2018/09/19/renters-and-gentrification.html">are much wealthier and whiter than the city as a whole</a>).</p>
<p>The ANC will be against any progressive land use reform. It’s a given. As far as I can tell, there has not been a single step, no matter how small, towards allowing more housing to be built in Austin that the ANC has not opposed. It is not worth trying to compromise with them because they represent the beneficiaries of the current status quo, so they have no reason to support any progressive reform. Their representatives in Austin, particularly Alison Alter, Leslie Pool, and Nick Barbaro, will never support reform. It’s pointless to try and win this group over. Nick Barbaro is still in 2018 <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2018-10-12/public-notice-damn-the-torpedoes/">using his column to attempt to convince people that putting houses closer together makes them more expensive</a>. Save Our Springs, a group closely tied to the ANC that at least ostensibly used to be focused on environmental issues, has now morphed into a grotesque advocacy group for wealthy white homeowners west of I-35. Save Our Springs’ leader Bill Bunch, apparently without irony, now <a href="https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2018/10/prop-j-initiative-exposes-rift-among-austin-environmentalists/">openly calls for greenfield development</a>. These people are not going to be won over and they are not going to compromise. They should be marginalized and isolated politically as much as possible.</p>
<p>However, there are groups that had better arguments for opposing CodeNEXT that can be won over. Grassroots groups and residents that are focused on displacement and gentrification in East Austin nearly universally opposed CodeNEXT, and it’s difficult to disagree with their reasoning. Central East Austin has been transformed in the past ten years, and there was no indication that trend would slow after CodeNEXT. <a href="https://austin.towers.net/the-huston-apartment-project-headed-to-a-controversial-east-austin-site/">High rises are indeed bumping up against historically non-white single family neighborhoods on the east side</a>. Maybe that would be a bit more palatable if it were true all across the city, but it’s not. CodeNEXT preserved the wealthy single family neighborhoods west of I-35 almost completely. Hyde Park, Tarrytown, Travis Heights, Zilker, the list goes on. The richest, whitest neighborhoods in Central Austin were not going to be affected by CodeNEXT, and change was likely to continue at high speed on the other side of I-35.</p>
<p>In contrast to the outright denialism of Save Our Springs, groups like Go! Austin, Vamos! Austin (GAVA) <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/prop-j-austin-codenext-texas-climate-ballot-initiative-2232b2766d81/">acknowledge that allowing more housing in the central city is better for the environment</a>, but see the redevelopment of the East Side and wonder where people should go:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I’m an environmentalist and I don’t disagree with you that compact and connected cities are better for the environment and there’s a big argument to be made that more urban development can be cleaner and greener than sprawl,” Pulido said, expressing opposition to CodeNEXT. “Here’s what’s missing from this conversation. When you densify an urban environment and there is not affordability and you effectively displace families from the central core, where do they go?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>East Austinites had good reason to oppose CodeNEXT. So what kind of change can be made that won’t appear to benefit the rich, white, neighborhoods of Austin? The kind of change that is universal. No exceptions for Hyde Park’s racist old covenants, no exceptions for anyone. Make the baseline zoning in Austin city limits fourplexes. Every property in the city should be allowed to have four housing units. It’s a simple way to avoid introducing any further biases into the zoning code beyond what is already there, and arguably helps undo some of the damage of allowing wealthy homeowners west of I-35 to have their way for the past 25 years.</p>
<p>Fourplexes (as shown in the header image of this post) are also less scary than ten story buildings. A lot of people probably have a fourplex nearby already! They’re also less susceptible to the mostly mythical attack of “big developers” that are coming to ruin neighborhoods simply because of their size. It’s upzoning done gently but broadly. I’ll allow someone with more expertise to estimate the number of units it would add to the city’s capacity, but it would be…a lot. It’s very difficult to argue against.</p>
<p>There are some ways that opponents of change could dilute the effects of fourplexes like parking requirements and impervious cover requirements, so a fourplexes everywhere law will have to make changes to the status quo there. I think those arguments will fall flat because most people understand that a more compact city is better for environment, and free parking is not worth furthering the climate crisis that seems to get more dire by the day.</p>
<p>But the broad idea is that CodeNEXT was defeated by an alliance whose interests shouldn’t actually align, and that CodeNEXT was such a poor attempt at a zoning rewrite that it created it’s own demise. There is no reason that anti-gentrification activists should be aligning with the ANC, but that’s the world that Mayor Adler’s endless compromising has created. Austin’s housing activists are better off choosing a side and treating the ANC and Save Our Springs like the cynical adversaries that they are.</p>It's the only way to diffuse arguments against allowing more housing.What Should Project Connect Look Like?2018-10-07T00:00:00+00:002018-10-07T00:00:00+00:00/transit/2018/10/07/project-connect<p>We <a href="http://austintransitblog.com/transit/2018/10/01/cap-metro-art.html">posted an email to Capital Metro stakeholders</a> last week after the presentation of the new Project Connect vision from Randy Clarke asking for more information about why Autonomous Rapid Transit was included in the new vision. The only responses were from staffers at Capital Metro and Kirk Watson’s office, and the answers were all along the lines of “ART is the future, nothing is decided” with no evidence at all to back up claims about ART.</p>
<p>So what <em>should</em> Project Connect look like?</p>
<h3 id="corridors-and-modes">Corridors and Modes</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>We agree with basically everything <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XsriYYwn4dpSah7Co5SNME1amJLrS7G8/view">outlined by the Austin Coalition for Transit here</a>. It’s particularly worth emphasizing that the plan released in February before Randy Clarke joined Capital Metro was supported almost universally. There are <a href="https://www.capmetro.org/resources/">still documents showing the old plans on their site</a>, but I’ve also hosted the old plan <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/Screen+Shot+2018-10-10+at+10.06.17+PM.png">here for posterity</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There should be an initial light rail system running on North Guadalupe/Lamar, South Congress, and East Riverside. Everyone who has paid attention to this for the past twenty years knows these are the corridors in Austin that are suitable for light rail. Put it on the ballot in 2020, and it will pass. 2020 will be an election with extremely high turnout for progressive Austinites. A starter light rail system will pass, and activists should demand nothing less. Once it is running, propose additional bonds to fund extensions. They will pass too.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="end-the-ridiculous-art-sales-pitch">End the ridiculous ART sales pitch</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Austin’s elected or appointed officials should not be promoting any non existent technologies based on sales pitches at conferences and YouTube videos. This actually does seem to be the basis for Randy Clarke’s enthusiasm for ART, and Dave Couch was describing platooning autonomous buses from YouTube videos to advocates this week.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There should be no mention of unproven technologies like Autonomous Rapid Transit. There is not a single significant ART system on roads anywhere in the world today, and there are no self driving cars operating without drivers. The CEO of Capital Metro and other stakeholders putting money, time, and energy into a public roadshow for a non existent technology is misguided at best and extremely cynical at worst. The companies promising ART as the future have a profit motive to underestimate the arrival of this technology, and it’s astonishing to watch our public officials repeat that sales pitch to the people of Austin.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>That’s it. Transportation is not rocket science. Put rail down in dedicated pathways where people live and work <em>right now</em> and they will vote for it.</p>An alternative to the ART sales pitchEmail to Capital Metro Stakeholders2018-10-01T00:00:00+00:002018-10-01T00:00:00+00:00/transit/2018/10/01/cap-metro-art<p>Capital Metro CEO and Board Members held a big meeting today, and the big reveal was a <a href="https://www.capmetro.org/uploadedFiles/New2016/ProjectConnect/Project_Connect_Vision_2018/Project-Connect-Vision-Plan-092618-v7.pdf">new Project Connect map</a>. The map is fairly similar to other maps that have been released by either transit advocates or the agency itself. Most people that watch these things closely already know the corridors that can support the most transit riders (with important disagreements about the Green Line, which will never go away, and the proposed 2014 rail line, which is still on the map).</p>
<p>But the most important change was now including “Autonomous Rapid Transit” as the preferred mode for the busiest corridors. What is Autonomous Rapid Transit? I don’t know actually, and neither does anyone else. It’s some kind of bus that uses bluetooth to talk to other buses, which apparently our transit agency thinks sounds like it will solve our transit issues better than something like light rail, which carries millions of passengers per day around the world.</p>
<p>It’s a bad idea. I have no idea why they are doing this. The politics are going to backfire, the technology is vaporware, and the whole charade is a disservice to Austin transit riders. I sent the below email to randy.clarke@capmetro.org, communications@capmetro.org, media@kirkwatson.com
, and delia.garza@austintexas.gov (Delia Garza is an Austin City Councilwoman who sits on the Cap Metro Board). Feel free to copy paste and send them an email yourself!</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hi All,</p>
<p>I wanted to reach out to see if you have any comment on the inclusion of Autonomous Rapid Transit as a preferred mode for some
corridors in the Project Connect docs released today. Autonomous Rapid Transit is a technology that isn’t used anywhere in the
world currently, so do you think it’s an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars to study it’s use on Austin’s major corridors? Can
you elaborate on why a technology that has not been proven safe or functional in any city would be categorized as preferred by
Capital Metro compared to technologies that have been adopted worldwide? Are there specific, proven benefits that Autonomous
Rapid Transit can provide that more widely used technologies cannot?</p>
<p>Looking forward to hearing from you.</p>
</blockquote>Capital Metro effectively rules out light rail in favor of vaporware.Gentrification, Homeowners, and Renters2018-09-19T00:00:00+00:002018-09-19T00:00:00+00:00/housing/2018/09/19/renters-and-gentrification<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/gentrification-study-map.png" alt="map-of-at-risk-neighborhoods" class="img-responsive" />
<em>Neighborhoods where residents are at risk of displacement according to the UT Study</em></p>
<p>On Tuesday there was a <a href="https://www.mystatesman.com/news/local-govt--politics/austin-gentrification-study-touted-tool-fix-affordability-crisis/93GrTaSLpnsatpHyPgRn2H/">presentation to the Austin City Council on gentrification by a group of UT researchers</a>. The information is mostly not new except that the problem is of course getting worse because the City has done very little that would have a broad impact. Councilmember Ora Houston was somewhat livid at the fact that Austin has been having this conversation for nearly twenty years and, to paraphrase her, basically nothing has been done. The <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2018-09-21/as-long-as-theres-a-plan/">Affordable Housing Bond on the ballot in November</a> is a good step. It finally pledges to provide some relief to renters (who are 54% of the households in Austin, mind you).</p>
<p>But even Councilmember Houston has supported policies that overwhelmingly benefit homeowners that are much wealthier and whiter than the population of Austin as a whole. The most recent benefit for homeowners in Austin is the increase in the Homestead Exemption. The Homestead Exemption allows people that own their homes to exempt a percentage of the value of the home from their property tax bill. Why does this law exist? I have no idea. My guess is that homeowners have more money and it is a clever way to disguise wealth transfers that benefit the upper half of the income distribution. The insidious element here is when politicians that call themselves liberal and support Democratic candidates at a national level (Leslie Pool, Mayor Adler, and yes Ora Houston) vote to cut taxes on the the wealthy here in Austin. Let’s take a look at who owns homes in Austin:</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/austin-housing-type-ethnicty.png" alt="ethnicity-by-housing-type" class="img-responsive" />
<em>White homeownership far outpaces most other minority groups</em></p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/owners_and_renters_by_income.png" alt="owners-and-renters-by-income" class="img-responsive" />
<em>homeowners are vastly more wealthy than renters in Austin</em></p>
<p>These charts also dispel a common myth from defenders of the Homestead Exemption: that it is primarily targeted at keeping aging seniors or other long time homeowners in their homes who would otherwise be driven out by high property tax bills. While there are certainly some cases of this occurring in Austin, the data is fairly clear: homeowners have high incomes in Austin. The Homestead Exemption is an extremely regressive tax cut in order to address a phenomenon that appears to be very rare. Another remarkable aspect of this is that the current tax cut for homeowners comes at a time that the economy is roaring and Austin’s property tax rates are basically at the median for the past 20 years, and comfortably lower than the property tax rates in Dallas and Fort Worth:</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/property_tax_rates_over_time.png" alt="property-tax-rates-over-time" class="img-responsive" />
<em>Property Tax Rates Over Time in Austin</em></p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/property_tax_bill_as_percent_of_home_cities.png" alt="property-tax-bill-percent-of-median-home-by-texas-city" class="img-responsive" />
<em>Property Tax Rates for Texas Cities</em></p>
<p>A 2% increase in the Homestead Exemption is admittedly somewhat small in the context of the Austin city budget, but it’s not nothing. Especially considering how much of the city’s General Fund spending is basically non-discretionary. 70% of the budget in Austin goes towards Police, Fire, and EMT services, so the rest of the services the city provides are actually dividing a much smaller pie than it would seem at first glance:</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/usage_general_funds_2018_budget.png" alt="general-fund-allocations-2018" class="img-responsive" />
<em>Austin City Budget for 2018-2019</em></p>
<p>In this context, a loss of several million in tax revenue because of direct giveaway to a slice of Austin that is much more wealthy and white than the city as a whole becomes a more glaringly regressive policy. Even more so when you ask, why do we have a homestead tax exemption at all? Why are we subsidizing homeowners when renters are so clearly a group that is much more in need?</p>
<p>I’ve thought about why the Council up until this point has been so biased towards homeowners, and I think a lot of it is simply confirmation bias. Most of the Council are homeowners themselves, homeowners are more vocal at a local political level through advocacy organizations, and perhaps most importantly, homeowners have more money to donate to political campaigns and political organizations. The importance of last bit cannot be overstated: homeowners have the money to get their way in Austin, so they have gotten their way for a very long time.</p>
<p>To bring us full circle to the gentrification study, the City Council districts that are discussed most closely in the study <em>are even more renter heavy</em> than the City as a whole. Districts 3 and 4 along the City’s East Side have less than 25% homeowners! The Homestead Exemption is a tax cut that actively makes the problem of gentrification worse by transferring city money to more wealthy homeowners, but the same Council members that have the most to say about the study continue to support the Homestead Exemption. There is no excuse for it.</p>
<p>The thing that will help the most vulnerable Austinites is fairly simple: a massive increase in the supply of housing (both public and private), in all neighborhoods that have easy access to the Central City. It’s also the thing that homeowners associations (aka Neighborhood Associations) fight against the hardest. The homeowners with Beto signs and Hillary signs are not progressives until they start to care about the majority of Austinites that don’t own a home.</p>Austin Cuts Taxes to Save Homeowners, What Can Be Done for Renters?Nick Barbaro Columns Mislead Readers About Austin Politics2016-12-16T00:00:00+00:002016-12-16T00:00:00+00:00/housing/austin-chronicle/leslie-pool/2016/12/16/nick-barbaro-sucks<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/carry-youself-with-confidence.png" alt="google-images-screenshot" class="img-responsive" /></p>
<p>Nick Barbaro has <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2018-03-09/public-notice-hurry-up-please-its-time/">another confidently misinformed CodeNEXT post up</a>. Most of it seems to be complaining about how long CodeNEXT has taken, and he also addresses the <a href="http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=293181">People’s Plan</a>, a plan put forward to by activists that they hope will address gentrification in East Austin. The People’s Plan seems fine if kinda vague, but hey, let’s get the fun part where Nick Barbaro makes shit up about people he doesn’t like to mislead readers of his mediocre column.</p>
<p>Let’s start with him throwing out a falsehood against his least favorite council members:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ironically, the council members who have been the loudest voices insisting on fast-tracking CodeNEXT, in the name of an affordability crisis – even though every testimony on the subject has warned that zoning has little direct impact on affordability – will be the same ones slow-walking proposals such as these, that promise direct and relatively quick impacts for those on the lowest rungs of the affordability ladder. (To name names, that would be CMs Flannigan, Casar, Renteria, and Garza. Prove me wrong.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I kind of doubt that it will be these Council members dragging their feet more than any other. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong there, but he also throws in</p>
<blockquote>
<p>even though every testimony on the subject has warned that zoning has little direct impact on affordability</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I don’t know what testimony he’s referring to, but surely none of the testimony from AURA members over the years has supported that conclusion. There’s also basic economics and plenty of evidence that increasing housing supply can help stabilize prices, especially for older housing stock. Just this week we tweeted an article that <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2018/02/27/As-new-apartments-are-built-around-Pittsburgh-older-stock-is-feeling-the-pressure/stories/201802270047">described exactly that happening in Pittsburgh</a>:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://t.co/zDF0UkOjl3">pic.twitter.com/zDF0UkOjl3</a></p>— Austin Transit Blog (@atxtransitblog) <a href="https://twitter.com/atxtransitblog/status/968872335183941632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>from the <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2018/02/27/As-new-apartments-are-built-around-Pittsburgh-older-stock-is-feeling-the-pressure/stories/201802270047">article</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Quite simply, rent growth slowed in 2017 due to increased supply. Rent corrections are to be expected in 2018, but this will help support a healthy long-term outlook for the urban multifamily market.” Mr. Ackerman expects rents to level off, with increases ranging in the 1 to 2 percent range. In past years, rents in hot markets like Lawrenceville and Shadyside have been averaging increases of 7 to 10 percent, he said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps more interesting is a question Barbaro poses about some vacant land in Austin:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>City staff could indeed assemble a list of properties that could be made available for public housing; they did so for a soccer stadium, and many of the properties would be the same ones (McCalla Place, anyone?).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hey that is good question! Why is there vacant city owned land near a transit corrirdor in North Austin that we haven’t covered in dense, afforable housing? Could it be that it’s in Council Member Leslie Pool’s District 7? If only we had tried to build affordable housing in this area before, maybe that would be instructive?</p>
<p>Ah yes, <a href="http://kut.org/post/elysium-park-affordable-housing-development-faces-delays-city-hall">Elysium Park</a>. Elysium Park was an all affordable development proposed just inside Leslie Pool’s district near the Domain. Although the project was timidly approved by the City Council, the required zoning request was quietly opposed by Leslie Pool and vocally opposed by Pool’s close colleague Celia Israel. Israel’s lack of support for the project eventually led to State affordable housing being sent elsewhere (not Austin). If you have any doubts about whether these two work closely, <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2004-02-13/196912/">Pool was Israel’s campaign manager</a> and <a href="https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2016/07/contribution-reports-show-whos-giving/">Israel has donated to Pool’s campaign.</a></p>
<p>Barbaro’s <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-08-08/affordability-everywhere-but-here/">own paper reported on the backstory</a> of the project, and acknowledged that the exact Council Members he is now smearing in his misleading columns (Garza, Casar, Renteria) were the ones insisting on pushing the project forward:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the site is just barely in CM Leslie Pool’s District 7, and she made the motion to accept the developer’s request for an indefinite postponement while the company considers its next move. But Casar pressed his colleagues on whether they still supported affordable housing on the Northwest Austin site, as they had in February, when the project first came before them. “We talk a lot about affordable housing,” said Casar. “We talk a lot about being an economically segregated city, and this is a chance for us to do something about it. So I want to – before supporting a motion for any kind of postponement – understand that that’s the commitment of the council”…After the meeting, Casar issued a statement expressing disappointment in the council’s hesitation but thanking Adler, Garza, Gallo, and D3 CM Sabino Renteria for expressing continued support for the project.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nick Barbaro is, quite frankly, full of shit. So is Leslie Pool. They don’t care about affordable housing in Austin.</p>The Chronicle's prints falsehoods with an impressive amount of confidenceQuick Thoughts on Airport Rail Ridership2016-12-16T00:00:00+00:002016-12-16T00:00:00+00:00/transit/2016/12/16/airport-rail-ridership<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/project-connect-screenshot.png" alt="walkscore-austin-screenshot" class="img-responsive" /></p>
<p><em>Project Connect from Cap Metro</em></p>
<p>I’ve been discussing this on Twitter all morning, but I’m very skeptical that tourists want to ride public transport <a href="https://twitter.com/atxtransitblog/status/811560539700785153">from any airport unless they have to.</a></p>
<p>Even aside from that qualitative skepticism, I decided to see if I could find some numbers on ridership for existing public transport systems that have lines to the airport, and it turns out yes you kind of can.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_JFK#Ridership">JFK AirTrain ridership is right there on Wikipedia</a>, with nearly 18,000 passengers per day and 12% of the 53 million passengers (!!!) that pass through JFK yearly.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2016Factsheet_v12.pdf">The numbers for BART in San Francisco</a> are very similar - 11% of all air travelers to SFO used BART, which is connected to a very good public transportation network in the Bay Area (yes yes it needs improvement).</p>
<p>Perhaps a closer comparison would be Portland, Oregon, where they have had light rail the airport for fifteen years now. Portland has a more comparable airport with 16 million passengers per year, and the daily ridership at the airport station is…<a href="https://trimet.org/pdfs/history/railfactsheetairport.pdf">a whopping 3200 people per day.</a> That source is from 2012, but the numbers <a href="https://transitsleuth.com/tag/pdx/">in 2013 were similar.</a> That’s about 6% of the total passengers that pass through PDX Airport. Portland has a well established light rail system, and the line has been open for fifteen years.</p>
<p>So what can we expect in Austin? I would argue the numbers are likely to be much lower than Portland because Austin’s transit ridership numbers are much lower systemwide, but let’s be generous and assume that 10% of Austin-Bergstrom passengers take light rail. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin%E2%80%93Bergstrom_International_Airport">11,897,959 passengers come through the ATX airport every year</a>, giving us an annual ridership of 1,189,795 and a whopping 3,260 people per day.</p>
<p>If the line proposed in Austin is going to serve lots of people in between the Airport and Downtown, then great! Build it. But if the main justification for a rail line is “the airport”, then it’s going to be massive disappointment.</p>Rail ridership to the airport has been disappointing, and it will be for Austin's small airport too.Nick Barbaro Doesn’t Get to Define What’s Conservative and What’s Not2016-12-12T00:00:00+00:002016-12-12T00:00:00+00:00/austin-chronicle/housing/2016/12/12/nick-barbaro-sucks-lol<p>I was tired of Nick Barbaro’s trolling at the Chronicle so I sent him an email:</p>
<p>Dear Nick Barbaro,</p>
<p>In your <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-12-09/public-notice-angry-hornets/">most recent Public Notice</a>, it seems you are at least aware of the other side of a debate that you either consciously or accidentally find yourself weighing in on in Austin: how the city should grow. You seem well intentioned, so this email will be more explanatory of why what you prefer to call <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-11-18/election-notes-after-the-fall/">“density activists”</a> support the positions that we do.</p>
<p>So let’s start with how you addressed Friends of Austin Neighborhoods supporters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when it comes down to specific votes on specific issues, you find yourself allied with the most conservative members of the City Council, and 100% opposed to the voting records of the council members who have the longest and strongest histories of working for social justice issues in every field other than land use.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s telling that you don’t actually address the substance of FAN’s arguments here. You resort to defending the character of certain members of the Council, which is really not the point. If Council members are well intentioned but vote for regressive policies, does that make the policies any less destructive? Your argument is a textbook ad hominem argument as defined <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem">by Wikipedia:</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ad hominem is a logical <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy">fallacy</a> in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s also notable that you omit mentioning that FAN endorsed Delia Garza in your <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-12-02/public-notice-on-and-off-the-rails/">previous column</a>, but made sure to mention Don Zimmerman, who was not endorsed by FAN as clearly shown on their website. I’m sure that was an innocent mistake. The line that FAN is a “developer friendly internet group” whose positions “lean hard to the right” is a cheap smear, but it leads me into my next point.</p>
<p><strong>Voting against more housing is voting against the interests of young people, renters, and low income Austinites, and that is precisely what Leslie Pool, Kathie Tovo, Ann Kitchen and Ora Houston have done consistently.</strong> Let’s take the case of the Burnet/Rockwood project in Leslie Pool’s home district. The lot is currently an auto repair shop, and a developer wanted to build over 200 apartments, including 15% reserved as affordable housing. There is good public transit on Burnet, and the project was right next to 183. One would think this is an ideal place to add significant housing so more Austinites can have a place to live. Pool, Tovo, Kitchen, and Houston all voted against this project. Leslie Pool <a href="http://cityhall.blog.statesman.com/2015/02/13/5-tidbits-from-the-austin-city-councils-first-zoning-discussions/">cited traffic as a reason</a>, and Ora Houston <a href="http://www.mystatesman.com/news/local/austin-city-council-oks-contentious-apartment-project-burnet-road/foSWfWg7Eg99WG9yjnubHK/">cited the “rights of neighbors”.</a></p>
<p>So I ask you Mr Barbaro: what is progressive about preventing the construction of housing for Austinites? Is it because for some reason you assume that what is bad for developers is good for everyone? Have you considered what is good for those of us that don’t own homes, namely young people, renters, and low income Austinites? Is preventing the construction of housing because it might increase traffic a progressive position?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.austintransitblog.com/2016/10/25/job-growth-and-housing-economics-in-austin/">Adding more housing supply of all types benefits low income and young Austinites.</a> It doesn’t matter if you call certain people liberals, conservatives, or anything else. You can distort the meaning of those terms all you want. It doesn’t change the fact that the policies of your favored City Council members are regressive.</p>An email I sent to Nick Barbaro that led to him calling the blog "the scratchings of a chickenshit"Where To Go Post Election? Stop Saying Urbanism.2016-11-26T00:00:00+00:002016-11-26T00:00:00+00:00/housing/leslie-pool/2016/11/26/where-to-go-post-election<p>Ignoring the national political shitshow for a bit, the results of the local elections in Austin seem to be basically the status quo. Delia Garza and Greg Casar have been the two most reliable supporters of better transportation and land use policy in the Austin, and they both won re-election easily. Natalie Gauldin was defeated soundly, which means that Leslie Pool will continue to be strong voice against increasing housing (both affordable and market rate). Sheri Gallo will hopefully win her runoff, and we will be left where we were over the past two years.</p>
<p>So the question becomes how best to work with Leslie Pool and the other city council members that are either ambivalent, ignorant, or actively hostile to building more housing and better public transportation.</p>
<p>I think one move to is to drop the label of “urbanist”. Even for someone in their 20s like myself, the word still has connotations of “new urbanist” white suburb recreations like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida">Celebration, Florida</a>. “Urbanist” still feels like it advocates master planning an ideal life for middle class families with two kids where Mom stays home and cooks casserole after Dad comes home from his job in middle management downtown. There’s plenty of parking on both ends of the perfectly planned commute!</p>
<p>But master planning is not really what most of us are about. The places that most urbanists love (most big American cities) weren’t built with master plans, they were built before modern zoning really existed. The point is not that we should do away with all housing regulations or zoning, the point is that we don’t need master plans. We just need to let people live where they want and get around how they want. People have lots of different ideals and tastes about the places they want to live, and they should have lots of choices! If people want to live in the suburbs, great, more cheaper housing for me in the central city. If people want to drive everywhere, great, more room for me on the bus or train.</p>
<p>I feel the same way whenever I hear people called “density advocates”. I’m not advocating that anyone live a more dense place than they want to, but I am advocating for them to have the choice of doing so. No one wants to force anyone to live a Manhattanized hellhole if that’s not what they want. But Manhattan is one of the most expensive places on earth! Clearly people want to live there or a place like it, and there’s no reason that regulations should prevent that from happening.</p>
<p>One way of living is not inherently “better”, but there is a superiority in the term “urbanist” that I’m not sure it will ever shake. Yes, living in a multifamily dwelling and riding transit is better for the environment, but technological advances like clean energy and electric cars might shrink that difference significantly in the next 20 years. If people living in the suburbs isn’t bad for the environment and it’s not subsidized any more than living in the city, then go for it! Again, more space for me in the city.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that one policy is not objectively better than another, however. I think the policies that most urbanists advocate for are objectively better, and the arguments that we make should illustrate that rather than attempting to sell a lifestyle change to people that don’t want it. So back to how we work with Leslie Pool and other people that see “urbanism” and “density” as threatening? Use different terminology.</p>
<p>Say “fair housing” to describe allowing more housing types, because in reality that’s what it is. Adding housing in the central city is <a href="/economics/housing/2016/10/25/housing-costs-economic-growth.html">good for equality and good for the Austin economy</a>. Preventing housing construction is hostile towards renters and non homeowners, which I don’t think is fair policy.</p>
<p>Talk about “parking burdens” placed on businesses and landowners that are forced to provide parking that their customers and tenants don’t want. Explain over and over and over again that building parking costs a lot of money. If anyone needs a refresher, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/07/15/miamis-parking-deregulation-will-reduce-housing-costs/#2fd42ea8371c">Miami recently reduced parking burdens on residential developers</a>, and a developer described his issues with the previous zoning:</p>
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<p>Frey was unsure yet about what kind of rents the building would command, he estimated that building structured parking–in this case 12 spaces, under the previous regulations–would have cost $300,000, or $25,000 per space. This, he said, would have added roughly $330 per month to average rents, an uptick that he would have been unlikely to command in the working-class immigrant neighborhood.</p>
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<p>$330 per month to the average rent is astonishing. When anyone wonders why all new housing in Austin is so expensive, show them that quote. If Pool or any other Council member talks about affordability, show them that quote.</p>
<p>But I do think it’s time to move past the urbanism of the past. I’m not trying to master plan anyone’s life, and neither should you. The sane thing is to give developers, businesses, and residents options about how they want to use their properties, and let people live the way they want.</p>The term "urbanist" is probably tainted beyond repair.BRT in the Middle Of I-35 is a Terrible Idea2016-11-18T00:00:00+00:002016-11-18T00:00:00+00:00/brt/transit/2016/11/18/brt-on-i35-is-terrible<p>After reading <a href="http://m1ek.dahmus.org/">Mike Dahmus’</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/rickyhennessy/status/798924893677125632">Ricky Hennesey’s</a> takeaways from the Project Connect 2.0 meeting they attended, I was so disappointed I decided to write a letter to the Project Connect feedback team. Posting it below:</p>
<p>(sent to feedback@projectconnect.com, javier.arguello@capmetro.org and joe.clemens@capmetro.org)</p>
<p>I wanted to express my disappointment with what I have read about the Project Connect 2.0 presentation for Friends of Hyde Park on November 15th. Austin resident Mike Dahmus was at the meeting and <a href="http://m1ek.dahmus.org/">wrote extensively on his takeaways</a>. His perception was the top priorities of Capital Metro do not include investment in high capacity transit on the Guadalupe/Lamar corridor, which is nearly universal preference of transportation advocates in Austin. I would be very interested to know if Capital Metro acknowledges the strong support of transit advocates for High Capacity Transit on the Guadalupe/Lamar corridor. If your agency does acknowledge that support, you should address why we are being ignored.</p>
<p>The alternative priorities presented were also deeply disappointing. Among them were Bus Rapid Transit on I-35, which I’m somewhat appalled to hear. Interstates are not transit friendly, and Austin should not be investing money in high capacity transit on interstates. End of story. This is really common sense, but it’s also backed up by plenty of data. I would urge you to take a look at <a href="https://www.walkscore.com/TX/Austin">a map of Austin on walkscore.com</a> and observe the areas of Austin that are most walkable and therefore the most transit friendly. I’ll also embed an image here:</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/atb-assets/walkscore-screenshot.png" alt="walkscore-austin-screenshot" class="img-responsive" /><br />
<em>please don’t sue me walkscore</em></p>
<p>Notice that I-35 is a <em>barrier</em> to walkability. Walking from Cherrywood to UT is difficult and unpleasant because of I-35. You are proposing spending transportation dollars on a corridor that people <strong>actively dislike</strong>. You are transporting people along a corridor where there is nowhere to go. Is the expectation honestly that people exit one bus surrounded by 60+mph traffic, and stand nearby the 60mph traffic to wait for a second bus to get to their destination? That is an absolute fantasy and in the entire country <strong>no current highway running BRT systems that serve as successful examples</strong>. Mike Dahmus’ post includes a slide from a proposed BRT line in Minneapolis that does not yet exist. It is beyond me why Capital Metro would look at fictitious examples of transit in order to guide policy for a major city.</p>
<p>There are plenty of examples of successful transit projects. Houston’s light rail was built along the city’s busiest corridor, and <a href="https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/08/houston-bus-system-ridership/496313/">ridership has been well beyond expectations</a>. Houston’s light rail is built along the city’s busiest corridors, and those corridors were busy before there was rail, just like Guadalupe and Lamar are now. Houston also has a network of frequent buses connecting to that rail system, and their ridership is growing quickly while Capital Metro’s is falling precipitously.</p>
<p>Austin does not need to reinvent the wheel. Building good transit is simple: build it where people and businesses are. There are no people and businesses along I-35 that are friendly to transit riders, and there will never be. You are literally asking people to use transit in <strong>one of the most unpleasant and least accessible places in Austin: the middle of an interstate.</strong> It will be a disaster.</p>It doesn't matter how good of a deal the State is offering.Pool Opponents Smeared As Developer Front Groups While Pool Receives Money From National Construction PACs2016-11-01T00:00:00+00:002016-11-01T00:00:00+00:00/housing/leslie-pool/2016/11/01/leslie-pool-opponents-smeared<p>A <a href="http://www.nevernatalie.com/">hilariously terrible site</a> popped up this week to smear Natalie Gauldin, the City Council Candidate challenging Leslie Pool in Austin’s District 7. One of the quotes on the front page is “The only neighborhood organizations that have expressed support for Natalie are front groups for developers like FAN and AURA”. This is not true, as anyone who is familiar with those organizations knows. <a href="http://www.aura-atx.org/what_we_believe">Both groups mention affordability</a> in the first breath of describing what they are about, and their work so far has shown that.</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that “developers” are not universally good or bad people. Lots of people work in the real estate industry, many of them probably care very much about making Austin a better city and more affordable. There’s plenty of examples on Twitter and elsewhere.</p>
<p>That said, what about Leslie Pool’s association with the real estate industry? A quick look at the donors in her <a href="http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=265589">most recent campaign finance filing</a> shows that there are actually several real estate or construction interests that have given money to her campaign:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2016&strID=C00386029">HNTB Holdings PAC</a> of Kansas City, Missouri has spent nearly $600k this election cycle, with 60% of that spending going to Republican candidates. The donors appear to be mostly construction interests with a focus on transportation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.lan-inc.com/markets/roadways-bridges/">Lockwood, Andrews and Newnam PAC</a> is also a construction interest representing <a href="http://www.lan-inc.com/markets/roadways-bridges/">Lockwood, Andrews and Newnam</a>, a company that has built several highways around Texas and the country. All the data I can find shows them giving to <a href="http://www.followthemoney.org/entity-details?eid=11271000">Republican candidates previously.</a></p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, her campaign treasurer is a <a href="http://www.avisonyoung.com/en_CA/professionals/-/ayp/view/chad-m-williams/in/austin">Vice President at a massive commercial real estate company</a>.</p>
<p>There’s more individual donors from the real estate and construction industry, so feel free to browse for yourself. The point here isn’t that some real estate interests support Pool, but that a narrative has been allowed to develop that Gauldin and her supporters are owned by “developers”, whatever that means. The Austin Chronicle continued this garbage portrayal of Gauldin being in the pocket of developers by <a href="https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-10-21/chronicle-endorsements-austin-city-council/">endorsing Pool and accusing Gauldin of supporting “developer plans to a fault”.</a></p>
<p>Again, working in the real estate industry industry does not make you shady. However, I would argue that local city council candidates receiving money from well funded national PACs does deserve more scrutiny. There is only one PAC that has disclosed spending on behalf of Gauldin and it’s <a href="http://www.equityaustin.org/about">Equity Austin</a>, a local PAC that advocates for affordability in the city. Perhaps if the Chronicle did a bit more research into their endorsements they would know what the candidates actually stand for.</p>It's hard to even follow what the argument is here.