No Austin Metro
Aug. 16th, 2017 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebMy online Spanish book is expiring this week, so I'm rushing to watch all the cultural videos I can. I just watched "El metro del D.F." ("The metro of Mexico City"). Under the Bosque de Chapultepec (a huge park with lakes, a castle, museums, and a zoo) and the rest of the city is a metro system. Only the transportation systems of Tokyo and Moscow transport more people. The "first Metro trip departed in 1969." Many stations have art; the stations they showed in the video are super nice. The metro connects to the city's streetcars, buses, and microbuses. It's free for people over age 60.
I am so jealous. If they can build a subway system, why can't we? Limestone, perhaps, I was thinking, but no. The article Why Can't Austin Have This Elaborate Subway System? explains that experts agree that "the Austin Chalk is actually the best material in the world for doing tunneling in. [It's soft enough to easily drill through, but strong enough to be supportive.] But even so, the cost of building underground systems, the reason nobody does it except for limited circumstances in very dense cities, is because it’s prohibitively expensive." Nobody? All of Europe plus loads of other places add up to nobody?
That article also has an awesome fantasy metro map. Do check it out if you like to look at metro maps. Capital Metro’s vice president of strategic planning and development Todd Hemingson says it would probably cost $10 billion to create what's on that map. And "I doubt you’re going to see the big circle, because generally speaking, loop routes of that nature are not what a transit planner would come up with, unless they’re running in both directions, which could make it feasible." Um, duh, wouldn't all routes go both ways? This guy had never even thought about it until asked and his job is strategic mass transit planning.
In another article, Why Texas Doesn't Have Subways, Jude Galligan, a member of the (Austin) Downtown Commission, says everyone thinks it's prohibitively expensive. 'He concedes that subway is more expensive than other transportation options on the table, but the Waller Creek Tunnel has come in around $147 million. “I thought what was really interesting was, a tunnel that size or a little larger could hold two tracks going two directions, for not much more.”
Galligan likes the idea of a subway running beneath downtown, connecting I-35 to Sixth and Lamar. That’s a slightly shorter tunnel than Waller Creek, though the construction would be more complicated.
On the other hand, 'Curtis Morgan, a program manager at Texas A & M Transportation Institute, puts it this way: A normal light rail system costs about 75 million dollars per mile. “If you have put it up in the air to provide right of way for it, it would probably be twice the cost. And an underground treatment would be five times the cost of what it would be to do it on the ground.”' And now since 9/11, people are worried about the safety of metros.
Only one person in those articles implied Austin isn't dense enough (and we're trying to make it more dense). They all just say it costs too much. I think the real problems are a) we don't have anyone competent in charge and b) we have so much corruption that any large gatherings of money such as would be required for a project like this just disappear. ($800 million for light rail went to two $100,000 trains and some stations and extra railroad crossing bars.) We are getting to be a pretty dang big city; we should be able to afford to build a metro in the easiest medium ever.
I kind of regret researching this issue. I don't want to believe that Austin is more corrupt than Mexico City. (I'm hearing Mac the Mike tell me that I can't jump to this conclusion. Well, it may not be the only possible conclusion, but it certainly is one possible conclusion.)
I am so jealous. If they can build a subway system, why can't we? Limestone, perhaps, I was thinking, but no. The article Why Can't Austin Have This Elaborate Subway System? explains that experts agree that "the Austin Chalk is actually the best material in the world for doing tunneling in. [It's soft enough to easily drill through, but strong enough to be supportive.] But even so, the cost of building underground systems, the reason nobody does it except for limited circumstances in very dense cities, is because it’s prohibitively expensive." Nobody? All of Europe plus loads of other places add up to nobody?
That article also has an awesome fantasy metro map. Do check it out if you like to look at metro maps. Capital Metro’s vice president of strategic planning and development Todd Hemingson says it would probably cost $10 billion to create what's on that map. And "I doubt you’re going to see the big circle, because generally speaking, loop routes of that nature are not what a transit planner would come up with, unless they’re running in both directions, which could make it feasible." Um, duh, wouldn't all routes go both ways? This guy had never even thought about it until asked and his job is strategic mass transit planning.
In another article, Why Texas Doesn't Have Subways, Jude Galligan, a member of the (Austin) Downtown Commission, says everyone thinks it's prohibitively expensive. 'He concedes that subway is more expensive than other transportation options on the table, but the Waller Creek Tunnel has come in around $147 million. “I thought what was really interesting was, a tunnel that size or a little larger could hold two tracks going two directions, for not much more.”
Galligan likes the idea of a subway running beneath downtown, connecting I-35 to Sixth and Lamar. That’s a slightly shorter tunnel than Waller Creek, though the construction would be more complicated.
On the other hand, 'Curtis Morgan, a program manager at Texas A & M Transportation Institute, puts it this way: A normal light rail system costs about 75 million dollars per mile. “If you have put it up in the air to provide right of way for it, it would probably be twice the cost. And an underground treatment would be five times the cost of what it would be to do it on the ground.”' And now since 9/11, people are worried about the safety of metros.
Only one person in those articles implied Austin isn't dense enough (and we're trying to make it more dense). They all just say it costs too much. I think the real problems are a) we don't have anyone competent in charge and b) we have so much corruption that any large gatherings of money such as would be required for a project like this just disappear. ($800 million for light rail went to two $100,000 trains and some stations and extra railroad crossing bars.) We are getting to be a pretty dang big city; we should be able to afford to build a metro in the easiest medium ever.
I kind of regret researching this issue. I don't want to believe that Austin is more corrupt than Mexico City. (I'm hearing Mac the Mike tell me that I can't jump to this conclusion. Well, it may not be the only possible conclusion, but it certainly is one possible conclusion.)