That is what happens when TxDOT prioritizes highway expansions more than actual mass transit.

This is all nonsense. This work should be prioritised immediately and building should begin. Every single city in the world that invests in a large network experiences success. Look at all the small or medium town cities in Europe. There's no time to drag feet. The more it drags the more idiots will invest in highway expansions cos "one more lane will fix it!"

oh when they want to build a highway getting the land to do so is easy but public transit is so hard…

Correction on Denver, they have 6 light rail lines and 4 heavy regional rail lines. 120+ miles of electrified rail built out in ~25 years at around $50 million per mile. The downside to using existing right of ways is that it doesn’t always go where the people are, but at the same time it’s cheaper, so there’s an ability to build more + build out new dense mixed use developments to transform new stations into places people wanna live, work, and play. I hope Austin is able to build a lot of rail over the coming decades, y’all are gonna need it!

As a construction professional involved in many large international projects around the world, projects in the USA take far to long to plan, execute and complete.

Keep stalling and the price keeps rising.

Get it done Austin. Even Houston got to expanding the train lines and it’s been great for helping 1 million celebrate World Series downtown. Rodeo season too. Car dependency sucks.

The US has an aversion to elevated rail in urban cores because of the existing examples here (New York City's outer boroughs, Chicago's downtown), and that has affected "aesthetics" and practicality. There are cities around the world that have built them to minimize visual "pollution" and cut down cost. Austin is already nearing 1 million people if not there already (with the metro area nearing 2 million) and really needs that rail transit spine that the light rail would augment in addition to the Red Line. One thing is clear: building at-grade rail will affect service especially in downtown areas: that's why Dallas is now building an underground corridor because its surface capacity is starting to strain. I say this as someone who lives in a city with a heavy-rail metro and is only just now connecting its international airport (Dulles) in mid-November after 20+ years of back and forth and construction. The faster those shovels are in the ground, the better for Austin's livability. And, if you really want surface rail, consider a streetcar line **in addition** to light rail, similar to Charlotte, Cincinnati, or Kansas City (all pretty successful projects).

This is a really great piece of journalism! Well produced and informative. Well done :)

Make Austin Walkable Again! Hell, make America walkable again!

Thank you so much for doing a piece on this! Public transit is a underappreciated but vital part of a community's identity

Should be a light metro

I’m from Phoenix here. Our one long light rail line is splitting to become two lines, and we have a streetcar line so technically 3 lines.

It’s always about the cost never about the major benefits of an efficient transit system. Why do we always worry about cost when this will make life 1 million times better. It’s just a USA thing to spend millions on 10 lane highways hut overlook public transportation.

Honestly it should be mandatory for airports to have public transit connections to all the big city downtowns

That is a great job on this informative & interesting investigative news story.

“More is lost through indecision than wrong decision.” - Tony Soprano

I would go with the airport to downtown alignment first then head north to UT campus. From there, you would get the ridership & revenue to expand abroad.

I like that you mentioned Denver!

How does a $5B project double in cost over a period of only 2 years?

I am really disappointed that nobody asked either of the obvious questions: 1) what has happened to the tax revenue the city has collected so far? 2) Is there evidence that there is demand for the lines that exceeds the disruption to surface transit? Journalists would ask.

I want dates by March. 2 years of dragging feet is ridiculous

We real need the light rails

I don't understand why they're going with diesel trains when they could've gone electric. Electric trains are just better overall. They're quicker to accelerate and decelerate, they don't burn fossil fuels, they require less maintenance and they reduce cost in the long run.

Should be elevated between the downtown subway and at grade in the outskirts

Oh my god, don’t do surface rail. Why would you design a metro that can get stuck in traffic? Take a look at on-time percentages in San Francisco’s surface running light rail. They’re abysmal.

At least Austin has SOMETHING. I live in San Antonio and this city is absolutely hopeless.

Build ‘em up

Just go right down guad or Lamar it’s not that complicated. Look at Portland just build above ground.

Austin really needs to densify its core with more housing and less parking lots, otherwise public transit becomes useless (ppl don’t wanna walk 30 minutes to the next stop and will drive). Abolish single family house zoning and parking requirements near downtown! Grow up and become an actual city for God’s sake.

As long as it's not built at surface-level, idc

As current bus operator. I heard from one of the customer he wants to abolish public transit.

This is why you need price caps.

Every international airport should have some form of rail to downtown.

Dallas and Denver are some of the worst performing rail systems in the country when you look at rail miles per population.

DART canceled the Dtown Subway line

This reporter has such an early 00s look

"How to include more people" = How can we NGOs shake down the government for more grift.

The thing is that invest

Did they go out of their way to find the two people with the worst vocal fry?

My new idea san antonio will have this bring in thousands of jobs also my new idea Rochester ny to have this to nyc bring in thousands of jobs

At grade, light rail in Houston is horrible. Slow, it floods, and lots of collisions with cars. Learn something from Houston's mistakes.

Sounds like this is never going to get done, TBH.

Rail to the airport Rail to the airport Rail to the airport

It's in the $$$$!

hello Boring Company

As with ‘any’ construction in Austin, please allow 30 years for such stupid studies such misplacing an endangered butterfly 🦋 species, before even one line is constructed. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Has there ever been a light rail project that made the slightest dent in freeway traffic?

"Pick up steam?" really? this pun isn't even correct. These aren't steam powered trains.

dallas is better.

🕵🏼🕵🏼🕵🏼 they should investigate I think they’re just stealing money by using their people I was happening other cities as a private investigator. We had to investigate a water board and they were all stealing money from the city.

Those two years when you were denied work because of the pandemic, these people got paid also got their health care and nothing to show for it.

Anyone else think cars will drive themselves by the time this thing is done? And in the process all we've done is raise property tax & rent in the process?

Was it Newsom who started something like this and never Completed the project! He kelp several million dollars!

Wasteof time and money, you gotta have a car in the land of milk and honey😎

No get rid of this it is so bad, and actually makes traffic worse ! Waste of taxpayers money