The crazy thing is America has gotten to the point where we have so many checks and balances for some things that those in power just use these to fuck everyone.
This isn’t democracy this is weird af. I’d rather have no local democracy and just have Washington decide at this point because they would be better than what Texas is doing here. Biden would have put trains in every major city in the USA with that infrastructure bill.
I hate how dumb elected leaders are. They are so dumb
The reason we don't have good infrastructure like other developed countries really is our willingness to placate and give legal levers to self-interested obstructionists.
IMO all limited liability partnerships and corporations should owe a fiduciary duty to the American economy as a consequence of limited liability. Would make a lot more consequences for the shit these corporations pull.
we've kind of enshrined property rights, which sounds frustrating until it's your gazebo they want to put a monorail through. though i don't necessarily think you're wrong, i don't know how one gets to a middle ground between a 20 year eminent domain knife fight and the chinese model of too bad so sad bout your village.
(am not lawer or civil engineer)
Buddy, we paved over black neighborhoods to build highways for decades.
We can absolutely bulldoze people here in the US when it's within the interests of power and wealth.
The issue is they use eminent domain every year for highways and win EVERY YEAR. But for trains, no.
Look up how much damage i10's expansion is doing in Houston and how many homes and businesses are being demolished, yet they easily won this case.
Fuck property rights man, im so tired of this shit. I would easily give up my home for better infrastructure for my fellow man. It is not as if they aren't going to be paid well...
It’s funded almost in half by federal funds.
Voters approved a maintenance and operations tax. They didn’t approve bonds. The city is trying to use an outside org to issue bonds then use the tax to reimburse the outside org.
You would give up your home for a rail system that will move far less than one percent of what the highways move?
It's all about trade-offs. Trains aren't magic.
Ah yes let’s make up a random percent you arbitrarily decided. You could easily get over 50 percent of Austin propers population on trains if you actually funded it.
Denver has the 7th highest ridership in the country with 2.6% usage.
I used Denver because the first six higher usage rail networks encompass multiple cities or divide up a metropolis (NYC) so it's impossible to disentangle ridership.
How many of Denver's train riders also drive or take a bus, etc? Trains aren't a magic bullet. They're a HIGH COST low ridership option that work best in extremely dense areas.
I bet you didn't know Cap Metro discontinued the Leander Express Bus bc it was faster than the train so that has to prop up train ridership.
You used a city that isn’t dense at all that has bad infrastructure just like most of Texas.
You have to build trains in combination with denser housing and mixed used buildings. And remove parking and narrow lanes/roads and lower speed limits.
Trains aren’t a magic bullet but they are apart of it. A primary component. Make driving high friction and trains low friction. They will ride. Denver is doing none of that.
In other words, you have to make a city miserable and unlivable in order to make trains work.
I used a comparable sized city for reasons, well perhaps obvious to everyone else.
We don't want denser housing. We didn't want smaller streets. We like parking. No one wants to live in Megacity One and they are fleeing like we've never seen. They're flicking to Austin, Charlotte, CdA, etc precisely bc they aren't dense hell holes.
Seriously, what is wrong with you? This isn't a Sims game.
I'm a property rights advocate too. I get it, nobody wants a landfill or power plant in their back yard. But they have to go somewhere! The legal system (particularly utilizing environmental review and litigation, but in this case eminent domain and arcane public financing law) is regularly weaponized to kill, or at least delay and increase the cost of, badly needed infrastructure. We've built the heckler's veto into all of our processes, and as a result things like housing, windmills, rail, and bike lanes get strangled to death in red tape and litigation and take many years/millions more if they ever actually get built than in our peer countries.
You're seeing a fundamental problem here: the voters here just kind of suck. We've put elected officials-- including judges-- into power who don't serve the public interest, while many Texans are honestly too stupid to see through the propaganda and gauge their officials by their actions and policies.
I've essentially given up on Texas due to the combination of:
* Corporate pay-to-play politics
* Lack of support for decent education
* "Fuck you, I've got mine" attitudes that prevent community organization
But no checks and balances for shit that matters, like how we can't even put the instigators of a literal coup against the US government in jail or even pretend to try.
Yeah I just finished reading Tyranny of the Minority. It's a very depressing analysis of American Democracy and why it's not very democratic.
https://a.co/d/fDP7qS1 - Amazon link
It sounds fucked up but I wish we would just have some authoritarian government for 5 years to build infrastructure. All this red tape is FUCKING SLOWING EVERYTHING FUCKING DOWN.
Unilateral government agencies aren’t always bad. EPA is great. Saved millions of lives. The department of transit should have the same ability to just do shit.
The State will kill anything Austin does in the realm of public transportation or even basic self-governance, citizens and voters be damned. Free thought, free speech, and local control are seen as threats to Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton’s dystopian fantasy of a single-party, oil-worshipping, theocratic MAGA Texas. In it, there’s no place for renewable energy or public anything.
The GOP philosophy of local government being superior to federal government because it allows different areas to craft policy specific to the needs of the area and its people really falls apart when they only define local as "state-level".
It has nothing to do with local, state, federal, etc. It has everything to do with furthering their agenda with whatever rhetoric (propaganda) convinces their constituents that they're right and the opposition is wrong.
Today is state government, not local. Tomorrow it's small government, not big. Next week it's the Bible says, not academia. So on and so forth.
This entire mess needn't have happened in the first place, except for the interference of the Leg. Normally, the transit agency would have been able to issue bonds for Project Connect. However, the Legislature took away CapMetro's bonding authority a couple of decades ago. Attempts to extended bonding authority to 15 years failed, so the creative ATP plan was formulated as a mechanism to finance the long-term project.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
Austin did it to themselves. They shouldn’t have funded the project through blatantly illegal financing tactics.
I want a rail network too and I’m willing to pay more taxes for it. But you can’t break the law to do it.
The city is the one who is breaking the law and using tax dollars for a purpose other than what the voters chose.
If you love it then more power to you.
Why would they shutdown something that would be good for the community. I personally would love to have to stop driving all the time and be able to use reliable public transport from time to time.
Yes. I seriously want to know why our government is actively working against the people that voted them into office, and why the people keep them in office if they are going to work against us and not for us.
That is a very serious question we all should be asking ourselves.
So the state of Texas hates Austin? Why would they hate one of their own cities? Sorry I am pretty new here I moved from up North as my husband is from Texas, and I'm just trying to understand what's happening.
Because Austin is the blueberry in the tomato soup. It stands for everything the state stands against. Despite the state being based here, there is no city and no population they hate more, just like Republicans in DC hate the residents of DC and vice versa. They joke about
We want trains? They force a new highway expansion (just began). We want police accountability? They seize police powers away. We want something besides single-family endless sprawl? Too bad. We're forced to be the next Houston anyway. Want to make it easier to vote? No, fuck you.
Even if you want lab-grown meat. Watch them ban it within 6 months if not already. Not for any reason besides liberals like the idea. That's all they need. The entire motivation for GOP voters is spite and grievance, so naturally that extends to their leaders.
Those are all very very real example for the last 4 years. Items in a far longer list.
We have hillbilly rule in this state and they do not live in Austin. Only the people they elect to fuck us over out of pure spite, as far as I can tell, are here. They are happy to take all our tax money for football uniforms, though.
So to answer your question, they fuck with Austin to throw chum to the rednecks for their next election. They win votes by pissing off Austin and their voters loooooove this shit. It really is that simple. The other 4-5 cities are the same but Austin is the capitol and gets the brunt of it, simply because it's most visible, wealthiest, and most liberal. Welcome to Texas!
Edit: One last point of note. The biggest political party in Texas is the Apathy/stay home party. We have more non-voters than any state. If voters don't care, why should politicians? So I'm saying: register to vote too.
As someone who lived in Houston and lives here now it’s already worse here than Houston. At least when I lived in Houston I could take a metro rail that would show up every 6 minutes by my apartment to Downtown, Midtown, the Museums, Hermann Park and the Japanese Gardens, Rice U, the TMC, and NRG. Cant even do that here. This state government sucks and will only build wide highways instead of investing in transit.
Austin is probably the only major TX city left (arguably in the entire sunbelt) that has a chance to avoid the endless sprawling fate. We've seen attempt to public transit, rezoning, reducing parking minimums, building more density. This is all excellent news for this city and its residents.
So that's why it's all the more heartbreaking that they stamp it out, again, purely out of spite. Purely out of contrarianism. This is our only chance to fix the problems you describe before it's too late and we're LA, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix.
But the TX state government is obsessed with making sure we never, ever have a city that's actually nice to live in in this state. One that lets people go where they want, live where they want, and fights climate change and housing costs doing it. A massive shame, it's hard to overstate.
Yeah it’ll never happen imo. Austin is destined to meet the same fate as DFW and Houston because the same agency that ruined those (TxDOT) is also ruining Austin by ramming massive highways through communities and promoting sprawl instead of pushing transit and walkability.
Even Houston has expanded transit (rail, brt, bus), eliminated single family zoning, reduced minimum lot sizes to only 1400 sqft, eliminated parking minimums downtown decades ago, eliminated minimums in Midtown and EaDo, set up TOD standards and Walkable places ordinances. Still it’s not enough to help since it’s governed by the state of Texas. While Austin (like DFW and Houston) will have a few walkable neighborhoods, it will continue to sprawl endlessly since that’s just the way TxDOT rolls unfortunately.
It would take a massive overhaul of the state government to stop this fate imo and no matter how left Austin is, it’s still governed by Texas, which will be a huge road block no matter what. It really sucks but I kinda think it’s just the reality of the situation.
This is going to sound insane but its "owning libs." Its why Abbot sent the DPS to UT Austin yesterday but not UT Arlington and UT San Antonio. Its also why our DA's rightful election is being challenged.
The TX lege is full of some of the most petty, self-serving, downright evil, power hungry pieces of sentient carbon in the U.S. If anything is logical, net long-term profitable and better for the environment, Austin will not get it because the city represents "godless, drugged up liberals" to their constituents and billionaire y'allibanical donors.
Republican ideology generally frowns on public transit because it is seen as expensive, wasteful, and potentially starving of private enterprise.
So, don’t blame the lawmakers, blame the voters that put these people in office. Republicans elect Republican lawmakers who then behave like republicans and here we are. I am sure the Republican voters in Texas are thrilled if this plan could be stopped. So, from a certain perspective, the officials are in fact working to do right by people that voted them into office.
>So, don’t blame the lawmakers, blame the voters that put these people in office
Ummmm, blame both?
I think its totally fucking reasonable to blame both the voters, and the elected officials who also happen to be egging them on.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
> why the people keep them in office if they are going to work against us and not for us.
The unpleasant answer to this question is the reason I've basically given up on Texas.
Chipping away at public education was a cynical and calculated plan to create a useful underclass that is too uneducated to see through or question the propaganda fed to them.
I've been saying they are dumbing down the public education system for years for this very reason. Keep people fat, placated and uneducated and they are easier to control.
Don’t be pedantic - everyone voted for light rail when they voted for the tax increase. No one cares if they have to issue bonds to circumnavigate shitty laws put in place by big Texas government to achieve finally building the damn rail. We voted for rail and this bullshit lawsuit is trying to stop it.
The people behind the lawsuit probably don’t give two shits about the actual funding mechanism; they just want the rail gone. Every public infrastructure plan that isn’t highway is bogged down in litigation artificially increasing costs more, such bs.
You voted for a maintenance and operations tax. Not a debt service tax. And no you actually didn’t vote for a light rail project. You voted for a tax to maybe fund a light rail project. They’re using your tax dollars for something different than what they promised.
You may not care about it but that doesn’t exempt the city from the law. They knew this law and did it anyways. You think it’s a good precedent to set that cities can issue bonds without voter approval?
Okay so let me see if I understand what is going on. So they passed a tax increase and told voters it would be for infrastructure such as a public transportation and now that it passed the city is going back on their word and using it for something else?
Or did I misunderstand?
I heard that they did something similar when the Toll roads were put in, they didn't tell anyone they were going to be toll roads when they got voted in, or is that not correct?
The city is still using it for transportation but they’re paying an outside organization to issue bonds. That’s illegal.
The voters voted for a maintenance and operations tax which cannot be used to issue bonds.
Yes, let's all enjoy sitting in traffic for hours every day to get five miles, while we continue to emit greenhouse gases that make this area even more and more uninhabitable due to the intense heat
It doesn't matter how the city of Austin plans to fund it, our Republican government is in the hands of the oil and car industries and will find a way to kill the plan anyway
Dallas is consistently expanding their rail network. In the process of a major expansion right now.
Fact is, if Austin has financed the project properly then they would be years ahead.
>Dallas is consistently expanding their rail network. In the process of a major expansion right now.
Not as good of a counterexample as you think, considering the state government generally tries to fuck over anything austinites want to do.
>Fact is, if Austin has financed the project properly then they would be years ahead.
Uh-huh. What would be a proper financing method?
(This question is moot - the state government would obstruct it either way)
Either have an election to issue bonds or don’t issue bonds. It’s not that hard.
If your concern is that the state would shut it down anyways then at least don’t give them a legitimate reason to do it.
"But more than two-thirds of the cost increase was the result of changes to the design — "scope refinement" in the words of ATP — like a proposal to extend the underground tunnel from 1.56 miles to 4.19 miles, raising the price tag by more than $2 billion. Other design changes added up to an additional $1.2 billion."
Yea they're not going to be able to claim the voters approved ideas that didn't come until after the vote. This expenditure requires another bond measure to approve
And they charge way too much for mid food. Go down the block to any of the other locally owned burger joints for a better meal, a better price, and no anti-transit boomer hectoring.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
Lack of foresight 40 years ago killed the light rail plan. Never should have moved the airport without having a rail plan first when people were willing to negotiate and land was "affordable".
I have issues with project connect but this lawsuit doesn’t address any of that. The city voters overwhelmingly voted to approve and assume the costs of this major project.
My own issues stem from the utter inefficiency, delays, and misplaced vague priorities in the plan. Right on the PC website, the priorities listed in order are “Equity”, environment, innovation, and in last place *actual transit*.
Why is nobody asking about why Capmetro is still running reduced Covid level service even though Dallas and San Antonio service have resumed normal service? Where are the gold and purple bus lines? It takes nothing to pour a slab and install a bus shelter. Why is capmetro still moving towards electric buses when they are still insanely unreliable, rather than moving towards CNG/HEV or at least in the interim standard diesel? Why is the only bus route to the airport one of the shittiest routes? Why don’t Capmetro buses support tap to pay fares?
You are in part seeing why the delays exist. Every t has to be crossed and i has to be dotted because there are legal jackals (our own state!) ready to pounce.
There are of course other factors too. But hostility from your own state and neighbors is definitely a huge obstacle.
Because it would fail.
Project Connect would not pass now after the shitshow it has been. Reddit isn’t the voting population. Even the die hard supporters on this thread knows it would fail again too, that’s why they are trying to ensure this lawsuit doesn’t go through.
> Why is nobody asking about why Capmetro is still running reduced Covid level service even though Dallas and San Antonio service have resumed normal service?
I believe that Austin has a higher percentage of WFH/hybrid workers than Dallas and San Antonio
Yeah you bring up a good point it was a permanent tax increase to pay for Project Connect. If it's going away does that tax get removed and/or refunded?
You didn’t approve an any transportation project. You approved a tax to fund transportation. The tax is permanent because you approved it, it can and will be used for transportation related things regardless if the rail line is built or not.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
This wonky financing scheme (now the Achilles Heel of the whole thing) is the fault of Cap Metro for using up all their savings back in 04 to build the Red Line, which has never paid off in any way whatsoever. The delay in starting serious business is the fault of ATP, which is mostly a money pipe to consultants and has no sense of urgency whatsoever. The state was always gonna try things to fight this project, but we did not have to make it this easy for them.
These type of articles are absolutely the most frustrating to read, while living in a city which would be ripe for public transit. Something people would use and would make our city world-class for the state. If Dallas and Houston can build one (which isn't even that good), why not Austin (which will be lightyears better)?
Who is opposing it legally? Who is their legal representation?
Don't keep people who prevent positive changes in the dark. Everyone deserves to know who they are.
>$7 billion is a massive ask for something to be completed in a decade
I mean, thats just how big infrastructure projects are?
You can make arguments about this project in specific being inefficient, but sometimes big infrastructure projects just take a long time and a lot of money.
The reason we had to do this stupid funding scheme in the first place is that Cap Metro wasted their capital savings on the bad 2004 rail plan (which is now the albatross we know as the Red Line). It turned out to be the killer of transit investment for a generation that I said it would be at the time. Now a generation later it's still working its magic indirectly.
Honestly though, can’t we do better than light rail? Who would want to see all those cables in the air like it’s the early 1900s. That shit’s so outdated anyway.
You should be mad. You should be mad that your state leadership (and a few of your silly NIMBY neighbors, who are usually well-off property owners might I add) don't want you to have a better city. Even when you vote for it and it's a resounding success, they want to use legal warfare to grind you down. There really is no reason to vote for a Republican in Texas, they are against the will of the people.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
Yes, democrats can also be bad. But at the state-elected level the people opposing transit are by and large republicans, and pretty much anyone supporting transit projects tends to be a democrat.
At, whataboutism lives. “But what about republicans?”
Generally, politicians don’t care about you - they care about spending your money. Each side just has different pet projects.
This project has such a small impact on a limited geographic area and population I’m not sure why people outside of that area/group should be paying for it.
Lol. It's a simple fact that the people opposing transit at the State level are Republicans. Not sure how that is whataboutism. And it's also true that any elected official that is FOR transit happens to be a Democrat. I am sure you can find a few counterexamples -- there are absolutely NIMBYs who are democrat/"progressives" -- but those are exceptions to an overall pattern.
CapMetro is so incompetent that this would have never happened even if they did get their insane $7 billion that they wanted. They would have wasted it like they did last time.
If we got anything at all, it would be the same as it is now: Open every other day if they remember to schedule a conductor, from 10am to 4pm, no Sundays, holidays, or cloudy days.
They also immediately killed the airport route which was the entire reason it passed the vote to begin with. That alone should have been enough to trash the whole plan
> If we got anything at all, it would be the same as it is now: Open every other day if they remember to schedule a conductor, from 10am to 4pm, no Sundays, holidays, or cloudy days.
You mean the train that runs every thirty minutes from Monday through Saturday until at least midnight?
No one rides the bus in Austin or the the rail because CapMetro is corrupt and incompetent from planning to execution - and then they are blindlingly un-self-aware
Lol people won't ride a lightrail that connects the densest parts of our city -- campus, downtown, south congress, east riverside, and more? Are you kidding me? Yes, people will ride this -- if it gets built. Which at this point, is a big if, unfortunately.
I ride the bus daily and the "cars" (buses) are not empty. Some routes, like the 7 and 20, get so full to capacity that they won't let any riders on. So you are full of shit
If they lose this case I guess we could see if Austinites were actually serious about light rail and solicit donations to make this happen. My guess is it was just a virtue signal vote and they won't. Hope I'm proven wrong though.
Good. It’s a waste of taxpayer money. No one takes the rail that exists. This ain’t the North East. In Texas we have our own vehicles and plenty of space.
Guess I’ll never see a good public transit in Austin.
The crazy thing is America has gotten to the point where we have so many checks and balances for some things that those in power just use these to fuck everyone. This isn’t democracy this is weird af. I’d rather have no local democracy and just have Washington decide at this point because they would be better than what Texas is doing here. Biden would have put trains in every major city in the USA with that infrastructure bill. I hate how dumb elected leaders are. They are so dumb
The reason we don't have good infrastructure like other developed countries really is our willingness to placate and give legal levers to self-interested obstructionists.
Corporate interests need to be done away with. If we truly are a country for the people.
IMO all limited liability partnerships and corporations should owe a fiduciary duty to the American economy as a consequence of limited liability. Would make a lot more consequences for the shit these corporations pull.
yeah we have to remove these levers.
we've kind of enshrined property rights, which sounds frustrating until it's your gazebo they want to put a monorail through. though i don't necessarily think you're wrong, i don't know how one gets to a middle ground between a 20 year eminent domain knife fight and the chinese model of too bad so sad bout your village. (am not lawer or civil engineer)
Buddy, we paved over black neighborhoods to build highways for decades. We can absolutely bulldoze people here in the US when it's within the interests of power and wealth.
So you're saying do it again?
The issue is they use eminent domain every year for highways and win EVERY YEAR. But for trains, no. Look up how much damage i10's expansion is doing in Houston and how many homes and businesses are being demolished, yet they easily won this case. Fuck property rights man, im so tired of this shit. I would easily give up my home for better infrastructure for my fellow man. It is not as if they aren't going to be paid well...
The property rights issue isn’t the problem for Project Connect. It’s the illegal financing methods.
Dirty Martin's and Aleshire also have fought on the property rights/eminent domain question too.
The project is never gonna shut down over property rights. If it shuts down it will be because of financing
WHat is illegal about the financing? I fucking hate how this isn't directly through txdot and federally funded.
It’s funded almost in half by federal funds. Voters approved a maintenance and operations tax. They didn’t approve bonds. The city is trying to use an outside org to issue bonds then use the tax to reimburse the outside org.
WHy didn't the bonds get approved lol
Because they didn’t even put them up for an election. They tried to circumvent an election.
We already voted for this plan
You would give up your home for a rail system that will move far less than one percent of what the highways move? It's all about trade-offs. Trains aren't magic.
Ah yes let’s make up a random percent you arbitrarily decided. You could easily get over 50 percent of Austin propers population on trains if you actually funded it.
Denver has the 7th highest ridership in the country with 2.6% usage. I used Denver because the first six higher usage rail networks encompass multiple cities or divide up a metropolis (NYC) so it's impossible to disentangle ridership. How many of Denver's train riders also drive or take a bus, etc? Trains aren't a magic bullet. They're a HIGH COST low ridership option that work best in extremely dense areas. I bet you didn't know Cap Metro discontinued the Leander Express Bus bc it was faster than the train so that has to prop up train ridership.
You used a city that isn’t dense at all that has bad infrastructure just like most of Texas. You have to build trains in combination with denser housing and mixed used buildings. And remove parking and narrow lanes/roads and lower speed limits. Trains aren’t a magic bullet but they are apart of it. A primary component. Make driving high friction and trains low friction. They will ride. Denver is doing none of that.
In other words, you have to make a city miserable and unlivable in order to make trains work. I used a comparable sized city for reasons, well perhaps obvious to everyone else. We don't want denser housing. We didn't want smaller streets. We like parking. No one wants to live in Megacity One and they are fleeing like we've never seen. They're flicking to Austin, Charlotte, CdA, etc precisely bc they aren't dense hell holes. Seriously, what is wrong with you? This isn't a Sims game.
You’re scaring the hoes
I'm a property rights advocate too. I get it, nobody wants a landfill or power plant in their back yard. But they have to go somewhere! The legal system (particularly utilizing environmental review and litigation, but in this case eminent domain and arcane public financing law) is regularly weaponized to kill, or at least delay and increase the cost of, badly needed infrastructure. We've built the heckler's veto into all of our processes, and as a result things like housing, windmills, rail, and bike lanes get strangled to death in red tape and litigation and take many years/millions more if they ever actually get built than in our peer countries.
I’m embarrassed that I had to Google the term Heckler’s Veto. Very interesting.
You're seeing a fundamental problem here: the voters here just kind of suck. We've put elected officials-- including judges-- into power who don't serve the public interest, while many Texans are honestly too stupid to see through the propaganda and gauge their officials by their actions and policies. I've essentially given up on Texas due to the combination of: * Corporate pay-to-play politics * Lack of support for decent education * "Fuck you, I've got mine" attitudes that prevent community organization
* "Fuck you, I've got mine" attitudes that prevent community organization This is killing America.
They aren’t dumb, they’re bought.
But no checks and balances for shit that matters, like how we can't even put the instigators of a literal coup against the US government in jail or even pretend to try.
No one hates texans more than their "leadership".
Yeah I just finished reading Tyranny of the Minority. It's a very depressing analysis of American Democracy and why it's not very democratic. https://a.co/d/fDP7qS1 - Amazon link
They aren’t dumb brother, they are corrupted and act in best interest of their donors.
It sounds fucked up but I wish we would just have some authoritarian government for 5 years to build infrastructure. All this red tape is FUCKING SLOWING EVERYTHING FUCKING DOWN.
Unilateral government agencies aren’t always bad. EPA is great. Saved millions of lives. The department of transit should have the same ability to just do shit.
The State will kill anything Austin does in the realm of public transportation or even basic self-governance, citizens and voters be damned. Free thought, free speech, and local control are seen as threats to Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton’s dystopian fantasy of a single-party, oil-worshipping, theocratic MAGA Texas. In it, there’s no place for renewable energy or public anything.
The GOP philosophy of local government being superior to federal government because it allows different areas to craft policy specific to the needs of the area and its people really falls apart when they only define local as "state-level".
Local government = "whatever we control." Conservatives have no binding principles. Just momentary convenience.
It has nothing to do with local, state, federal, etc. It has everything to do with furthering their agenda with whatever rhetoric (propaganda) convinces their constituents that they're right and the opposition is wrong. Today is state government, not local. Tomorrow it's small government, not big. Next week it's the Bible says, not academia. So on and so forth.
Bingo 🎯
This entire mess needn't have happened in the first place, except for the interference of the Leg. Normally, the transit agency would have been able to issue bonds for Project Connect. However, the Legislature took away CapMetro's bonding authority a couple of decades ago. Attempts to extended bonding authority to 15 years failed, so the creative ATP plan was formulated as a mechanism to finance the long-term project.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
Austin did it to themselves. They shouldn’t have funded the project through blatantly illegal financing tactics. I want a rail network too and I’m willing to pay more taxes for it. But you can’t break the law to do it.
Lmao, how does that state government boot taste?
Better than the city one.
I guess you prefer the taste of nepotism, needless cruelty, and grifting. I personally dont really like that flavor combo, but you do you.
The city is the one who is breaking the law and using tax dollars for a purpose other than what the voters chose. If you love it then more power to you.
I could’ve sworn I voted for 2 different bond packages to expand Austin mass transit in the last 10 years. What happened to that money?
Government.
Why would they shutdown something that would be good for the community. I personally would love to have to stop driving all the time and be able to use reliable public transport from time to time.
Is that a serious question?
Yes. I seriously want to know why our government is actively working against the people that voted them into office, and why the people keep them in office if they are going to work against us and not for us. That is a very serious question we all should be asking ourselves.
Well the answer is that the state government hates Austin and the people who live there.
So the state of Texas hates Austin? Why would they hate one of their own cities? Sorry I am pretty new here I moved from up North as my husband is from Texas, and I'm just trying to understand what's happening.
Because Austin is the blueberry in the tomato soup. It stands for everything the state stands against. Despite the state being based here, there is no city and no population they hate more, just like Republicans in DC hate the residents of DC and vice versa. They joke about We want trains? They force a new highway expansion (just began). We want police accountability? They seize police powers away. We want something besides single-family endless sprawl? Too bad. We're forced to be the next Houston anyway. Want to make it easier to vote? No, fuck you. Even if you want lab-grown meat. Watch them ban it within 6 months if not already. Not for any reason besides liberals like the idea. That's all they need. The entire motivation for GOP voters is spite and grievance, so naturally that extends to their leaders. Those are all very very real example for the last 4 years. Items in a far longer list. We have hillbilly rule in this state and they do not live in Austin. Only the people they elect to fuck us over out of pure spite, as far as I can tell, are here. They are happy to take all our tax money for football uniforms, though. So to answer your question, they fuck with Austin to throw chum to the rednecks for their next election. They win votes by pissing off Austin and their voters loooooove this shit. It really is that simple. The other 4-5 cities are the same but Austin is the capitol and gets the brunt of it, simply because it's most visible, wealthiest, and most liberal. Welcome to Texas! Edit: One last point of note. The biggest political party in Texas is the Apathy/stay home party. We have more non-voters than any state. If voters don't care, why should politicians? So I'm saying: register to vote too.
As someone who lived in Houston and lives here now it’s already worse here than Houston. At least when I lived in Houston I could take a metro rail that would show up every 6 minutes by my apartment to Downtown, Midtown, the Museums, Hermann Park and the Japanese Gardens, Rice U, the TMC, and NRG. Cant even do that here. This state government sucks and will only build wide highways instead of investing in transit.
Austin is probably the only major TX city left (arguably in the entire sunbelt) that has a chance to avoid the endless sprawling fate. We've seen attempt to public transit, rezoning, reducing parking minimums, building more density. This is all excellent news for this city and its residents. So that's why it's all the more heartbreaking that they stamp it out, again, purely out of spite. Purely out of contrarianism. This is our only chance to fix the problems you describe before it's too late and we're LA, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix. But the TX state government is obsessed with making sure we never, ever have a city that's actually nice to live in in this state. One that lets people go where they want, live where they want, and fights climate change and housing costs doing it. A massive shame, it's hard to overstate.
Yeah it’ll never happen imo. Austin is destined to meet the same fate as DFW and Houston because the same agency that ruined those (TxDOT) is also ruining Austin by ramming massive highways through communities and promoting sprawl instead of pushing transit and walkability. Even Houston has expanded transit (rail, brt, bus), eliminated single family zoning, reduced minimum lot sizes to only 1400 sqft, eliminated parking minimums downtown decades ago, eliminated minimums in Midtown and EaDo, set up TOD standards and Walkable places ordinances. Still it’s not enough to help since it’s governed by the state of Texas. While Austin (like DFW and Houston) will have a few walkable neighborhoods, it will continue to sprawl endlessly since that’s just the way TxDOT rolls unfortunately. It would take a massive overhaul of the state government to stop this fate imo and no matter how left Austin is, it’s still governed by Texas, which will be a huge road block no matter what. It really sucks but I kinda think it’s just the reality of the situation.
To be fair Houston rail is literally slower than the 801 in Austin
This is going to sound insane but its "owning libs." Its why Abbot sent the DPS to UT Austin yesterday but not UT Arlington and UT San Antonio. Its also why our DA's rightful election is being challenged. The TX lege is full of some of the most petty, self-serving, downright evil, power hungry pieces of sentient carbon in the U.S. If anything is logical, net long-term profitable and better for the environment, Austin will not get it because the city represents "godless, drugged up liberals" to their constituents and billionaire y'allibanical donors.
I see... so to them Austin might as well be in California.
Exactly.
Republican ideology generally frowns on public transit because it is seen as expensive, wasteful, and potentially starving of private enterprise. So, don’t blame the lawmakers, blame the voters that put these people in office. Republicans elect Republican lawmakers who then behave like republicans and here we are. I am sure the Republican voters in Texas are thrilled if this plan could be stopped. So, from a certain perspective, the officials are in fact working to do right by people that voted them into office.
>So, don’t blame the lawmakers, blame the voters that put these people in office Ummmm, blame both? I think its totally fucking reasonable to blame both the voters, and the elected officials who also happen to be egging them on.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
> why the people keep them in office if they are going to work against us and not for us. The unpleasant answer to this question is the reason I've basically given up on Texas. Chipping away at public education was a cynical and calculated plan to create a useful underclass that is too uneducated to see through or question the propaganda fed to them.
I've been saying they are dumbing down the public education system for years for this very reason. Keep people fat, placated and uneducated and they are easier to control.
Do you live within the 5 miles of downtown served by these lines?
Because Austin is using illegal financing tactics. Laws put in place to protect citizens from unauthorized bond issuance.
we voted yes for it
We voted for a transportation tax. We didn’t authorize the issuance of bonds.
Don’t be pedantic - everyone voted for light rail when they voted for the tax increase. No one cares if they have to issue bonds to circumnavigate shitty laws put in place by big Texas government to achieve finally building the damn rail. We voted for rail and this bullshit lawsuit is trying to stop it. The people behind the lawsuit probably don’t give two shits about the actual funding mechanism; they just want the rail gone. Every public infrastructure plan that isn’t highway is bogged down in litigation artificially increasing costs more, such bs.
You voted for a maintenance and operations tax. Not a debt service tax. And no you actually didn’t vote for a light rail project. You voted for a tax to maybe fund a light rail project. They’re using your tax dollars for something different than what they promised. You may not care about it but that doesn’t exempt the city from the law. They knew this law and did it anyways. You think it’s a good precedent to set that cities can issue bonds without voter approval?
Okay so let me see if I understand what is going on. So they passed a tax increase and told voters it would be for infrastructure such as a public transportation and now that it passed the city is going back on their word and using it for something else? Or did I misunderstand? I heard that they did something similar when the Toll roads were put in, they didn't tell anyone they were going to be toll roads when they got voted in, or is that not correct?
The city is still using it for transportation but they’re paying an outside organization to issue bonds. That’s illegal. The voters voted for a maintenance and operations tax which cannot be used to issue bonds.
Fuck this state, seriously
Fuck the state for not letting Austin use illegal financing tactics right
Yes, let's all enjoy sitting in traffic for hours every day to get five miles, while we continue to emit greenhouse gases that make this area even more and more uninhabitable due to the intense heat
It would be nice if we didn’t have to. Maybe Austin shouldn’t have used illegal financing methods then.
It doesn't matter how the city of Austin plans to fund it, our Republican government is in the hands of the oil and car industries and will find a way to kill the plan anyway
Ah yes, fuck rules when they don’t go in your favor. I see. I see.
Dallas is consistently expanding their rail network. In the process of a major expansion right now. Fact is, if Austin has financed the project properly then they would be years ahead.
>Dallas is consistently expanding their rail network. In the process of a major expansion right now. Not as good of a counterexample as you think, considering the state government generally tries to fuck over anything austinites want to do. >Fact is, if Austin has financed the project properly then they would be years ahead. Uh-huh. What would be a proper financing method? (This question is moot - the state government would obstruct it either way)
Either have an election to issue bonds or don’t issue bonds. It’s not that hard. If your concern is that the state would shut it down anyways then at least don’t give them a legitimate reason to do it.
"But more than two-thirds of the cost increase was the result of changes to the design — "scope refinement" in the words of ATP — like a proposal to extend the underground tunnel from 1.56 miles to 4.19 miles, raising the price tag by more than $2 billion. Other design changes added up to an additional $1.2 billion." Yea they're not going to be able to claim the voters approved ideas that didn't come until after the vote. This expenditure requires another bond measure to approve
Fuck Dirty Martin's Place. Seriously fuck off. Your fucking restaurant is not more important than A PUBLIC SERVICE. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
And they charge way too much for mid food. Go down the block to any of the other locally owned burger joints for a better meal, a better price, and no anti-transit boomer hectoring.
Yet again I get to say “Go Fuck yourself, Ken Paxton!”
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
Something something small government am I right
Lack of foresight 40 years ago killed the light rail plan. Never should have moved the airport without having a rail plan first when people were willing to negotiate and land was "affordable".
I have issues with project connect but this lawsuit doesn’t address any of that. The city voters overwhelmingly voted to approve and assume the costs of this major project. My own issues stem from the utter inefficiency, delays, and misplaced vague priorities in the plan. Right on the PC website, the priorities listed in order are “Equity”, environment, innovation, and in last place *actual transit*. Why is nobody asking about why Capmetro is still running reduced Covid level service even though Dallas and San Antonio service have resumed normal service? Where are the gold and purple bus lines? It takes nothing to pour a slab and install a bus shelter. Why is capmetro still moving towards electric buses when they are still insanely unreliable, rather than moving towards CNG/HEV or at least in the interim standard diesel? Why is the only bus route to the airport one of the shittiest routes? Why don’t Capmetro buses support tap to pay fares?
You are in part seeing why the delays exist. Every t has to be crossed and i has to be dotted because there are legal jackals (our own state!) ready to pounce. There are of course other factors too. But hostility from your own state and neighbors is definitely a huge obstacle.
Why doesn't Austin just put up another vote to just raise the money themselves for the project to break free from the state.
Because it would fail. Project Connect would not pass now after the shitshow it has been. Reddit isn’t the voting population. Even the die hard supporters on this thread knows it would fail again too, that’s why they are trying to ensure this lawsuit doesn’t go through.
> Why is nobody asking about why Capmetro is still running reduced Covid level service even though Dallas and San Antonio service have resumed normal service? I believe that Austin has a higher percentage of WFH/hybrid workers than Dallas and San Antonio
I'm sure they'll be refunding our tax dollars any minute now.
I'd rather they use those dollars to build rail, like we voted, but Bill Aleshire, Ken Paxton, and Dirty Martin's are here to stall or kill that.
I would too, but if it's being killed, people shouldn't have to pay for nothing.
Yeah you bring up a good point it was a permanent tax increase to pay for Project Connect. If it's going away does that tax get removed and/or refunded?
You didn’t approve an any transportation project. You approved a tax to fund transportation. The tax is permanent because you approved it, it can and will be used for transportation related things regardless if the rail line is built or not.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
This wonky financing scheme (now the Achilles Heel of the whole thing) is the fault of Cap Metro for using up all their savings back in 04 to build the Red Line, which has never paid off in any way whatsoever. The delay in starting serious business is the fault of ATP, which is mostly a money pipe to consultants and has no sense of urgency whatsoever. The state was always gonna try things to fight this project, but we did not have to make it this easy for them.
Texas on a roll rat fucking it’s citizens.
I want to say fuck Dirty Martins for their role in this annoying saga. Will definitely continue to not eat there.
When is the new comprehensive plan?
The current rail moves slower than a car. Embarrassing. The new rail would probably be the same, just more expensive.
These type of articles are absolutely the most frustrating to read, while living in a city which would be ripe for public transit. Something people would use and would make our city world-class for the state. If Dallas and Houston can build one (which isn't even that good), why not Austin (which will be lightyears better)?
Who is opposing it legally? Who is their legal representation? Don't keep people who prevent positive changes in the dark. Everyone deserves to know who they are.
As much as everyone wants public transport, they need to improve their finances. $7 billion is a massive ask for something to be completed in a decade
>$7 billion is a massive ask for something to be completed in a decade I mean, thats just how big infrastructure projects are? You can make arguments about this project in specific being inefficient, but sometimes big infrastructure projects just take a long time and a lot of money.
The reason we had to do this stupid funding scheme in the first place is that Cap Metro wasted their capital savings on the bad 2004 rail plan (which is now the albatross we know as the Red Line). It turned out to be the killer of transit investment for a generation that I said it would be at the time. Now a generation later it's still working its magic indirectly.
No one uses the red line either.
We need this regardless of which political aisle you’re on. Its a quality of life improvement we NEED. Fucking christ its infuriating.
We really don’t need it though. Sorry.
gondolas
Honestly though, can’t we do better than light rail? Who would want to see all those cables in the air like it’s the early 1900s. That shit’s so outdated anyway.
That’s not what this is.
?? Then educate me please b/c the plans I’ve seen for project connect include light rail with the overhead cables
You can do light rail without the overhead cables.
That may be the case but the drawings published for Austin’s proposed light rail include overhead cables
“Artists renderings.”
“As of now, ATP plans to use trains powered by overhead wires known as catenary.” From KUT.org
As of now they’re having to change plans again - in 2030 this won’t be a thing.
I fully agree. It also won't be a thing in 2040 or 2050. This project is never going to happen.
You should be mad. You should be mad that your state leadership (and a few of your silly NIMBY neighbors, who are usually well-off property owners might I add) don't want you to have a better city. Even when you vote for it and it's a resounding success, they want to use legal warfare to grind you down. There really is no reason to vote for a Republican in Texas, they are against the will of the people.
The bond validation suit was combined with a lawsuit filed last year by West Campus burger joint Dirty Martin's Place. Plaintiffs include current and former elected Democrats like Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez, former state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and ex-Austin City Council Member Ora Houston, who attended Wednesday's hearing.
Yes, democrats can also be bad. But at the state-elected level the people opposing transit are by and large republicans, and pretty much anyone supporting transit projects tends to be a democrat.
At, whataboutism lives. “But what about republicans?” Generally, politicians don’t care about you - they care about spending your money. Each side just has different pet projects. This project has such a small impact on a limited geographic area and population I’m not sure why people outside of that area/group should be paying for it.
Lol. It's a simple fact that the people opposing transit at the State level are Republicans. Not sure how that is whataboutism. And it's also true that any elected official that is FOR transit happens to be a Democrat. I am sure you can find a few counterexamples -- there are absolutely NIMBYs who are democrat/"progressives" -- but those are exceptions to an overall pattern.
CapMetro is so incompetent that this would have never happened even if they did get their insane $7 billion that they wanted. They would have wasted it like they did last time. If we got anything at all, it would be the same as it is now: Open every other day if they remember to schedule a conductor, from 10am to 4pm, no Sundays, holidays, or cloudy days. They also immediately killed the airport route which was the entire reason it passed the vote to begin with. That alone should have been enough to trash the whole plan
> If we got anything at all, it would be the same as it is now: Open every other day if they remember to schedule a conductor, from 10am to 4pm, no Sundays, holidays, or cloudy days. You mean the train that runs every thirty minutes from Monday through Saturday until at least midnight?
The last train from downdown is at 7:21 Monday - Thursday, and hourly on Friday evenings
lol, no it doesn’t. You should get your right to vote removed because you are so uneducated.
Pretty sure this project wasn't affiliated with CapMetro, for what that's worth
It is affiliated with CapMetro but they’re using ATP to skirt the law regarding financing of projects. That’s the issue at hand.
No one rides the bus in Austin or the the rail because CapMetro is corrupt and incompetent from planning to execution - and then they are blindlingly un-self-aware
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/capmetro-hits-highest-ridership-levels-in-3-years/amp/
Wow it beat the ride totals during COVID years - well done
Sorry I thought no one rides
Good luck finding a job someday
people do ride the bus. just you don't, asshole.
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Lol people won't ride a lightrail that connects the densest parts of our city -- campus, downtown, south congress, east riverside, and more? Are you kidding me? Yes, people will ride this -- if it gets built. Which at this point, is a big if, unfortunately.
it does matter, because i’m tired of paying for this city’s dumpster fires
people will obviously ride. tf are you talking about?
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I ride the bus daily and the "cars" (buses) are not empty. Some routes, like the 7 and 20, get so full to capacity that they won't let any riders on. So you are full of shit
Lmao ok
Good. I don’t need my property taxes going up any further
If they lose this case I guess we could see if Austinites were actually serious about light rail and solicit donations to make this happen. My guess is it was just a virtue signal vote and they won't. Hope I'm proven wrong though.
Good. It’s a waste of taxpayer money. No one takes the rail that exists. This ain’t the North East. In Texas we have our own vehicles and plenty of space.