Huge thanks to Council Member @paige-ellis.bsky.social and co-sponsors @zoforaustin.bsky.social, R. Alter, A. Alter, and Vela for the Austin City Council resolution saying that the Mopac South project should not increase vehicle miles traveled or greenhouse gas emissions! 👏👏👏 - ThreadSky

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rethink35.org • 75 days ago

Huge thanks to Council Member @paige-ellis.bsky.social and co-sponsors @zoforaustin.bsky.social, R. Alter, A. Alter, and Vela for the Austin City Council resolution saying that the Mopac South project should not increase vehicle miles traveled or greenhouse gas emissions! 👏👏👏

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coreyward.dev•75 days ago

We're clapping for more traffic when sustainable transit options are further out of our reach than ever? Our hands are tied on light rails and personal vehicles are increasingly more environmentally friendly. How are 2.5M people in the greater Austin area supposed to get around in 10 years?

coreyward.dev•75 days ago

@zoforaustin.bsky.social Really curious about the plan here. Even NYC relies on personal vehicles and they have 9x the density of Austin and they have over 650 miles of subway and 5,800 busses. We have 32 miles of light rail and ~60 busses.

coreyward.dev•75 days ago

NYC and Austin are about the same land area, so we'd likely need about 618 additional miles of light rail. At a glance, the cost-per-mile is $500M+. So we'd need at least $300B to catch up to NYC on that despite not having the population to use it. Even if we target 100 miles, we can't afford it.

coreyward.dev•75 days ago

So let's look at busses instead. NYC has 1 bus for every 1,500 people (city pop, not metro). To hit that same number, we'd need 650 busses. We're short by nearly 600 busses, or $600M, plus operating costs, and that's insufficient without light rail (or a higher % of cars). Again, we can't afford it.

coreyward.dev•75 days ago

Which is all to say I don't what magic puts us on target to be able to grow our population while maintaining the number of cars we have on the road today without investing vast sums of money we don't have in public transit. Gridlocking our roads doesn't produce support for public transit!

austintesla.bsky.social•75 days ago

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