AURA will host a press conference Tuesday, November 17 at 8:30 am at City Hall
November 17, 2015
Austin, Texas
AURA, an urbanist grassroots non-profit that works toward an Austin for Everyone, along with a diverse coalition of organizations strongly urge Austin City Council to adopt the draft ordinance on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)—known colloquially as granny flats, garage apartments, or backyard cottages.
This draft ordinance is the result of a lengthy, thorough process with numerous opportunities for public input from a wide variety of Austin citizens. Since June 6, 2014, when City Council passed the resolution directing the City Manager to produce a draft ordinance, the public input process has included:
Three public hearings before the Planning and Neighborhoods Committee, on June 9, 2015; August 17, 2015; and September 21, 2015.
Public hearing before Planning Commission, on April 28, 2014.
Two public hearings before the Codes and Ordinances Subcommittee of the Planning Commission on February 5, 2015 and March 17, 2015.
“The data shows that backyard cottages are affordable, so we should build more of them,” says Eric Goff, an AURA Board member. “Austin’s Fair Housing Action Plan identifies limits on ADUs as a barrier to affirmatively furthering Fair Housing.”
In addition to the substantial public comment in favor of the changes, more than 1,000 Austinites have signed AURA’s petition urging Austin’s City Council to allow granny flats and other small houses everywhere in Austin.
“All eleven council members campaigned heavily on alleviating rapidly rising housing costs in Austin,” says Cory Brown, AURA member. “The proposed changes to allow more backyard cottages is a win across the board: renters and people with modest incomes get more housing options, while homeowners get another tool to offset their tax burden.”
Join us at City Hall on Tuesday, November 17 at 8:30 am as we show Austinites the broad coalition of support for backyard cottages as a tool to provide more housing options that benefit renters and homeowners citywide.
AURA is a grassroots urbanist organization focused on building an Austin for everyone by improving land use and transportation through policy analysis, public involvement, and political engagement.
Should you and I, as residents of Austin, have a say on CodeNext, the first major rewrite of Austin’s Land Development Code in 30 years?
Yes.
Should you and I, as registered voters of Austin, get to vote on CodeNext, the most important policy question facing our city in at least 5 years?
No.
Despite what the political groups Community not Commodity and IndyAustin say, you and I should not vote on CodeNext in a referendum. These groups claim that such a referendum would be more democratic and would lead to a more robust debate. But, as Austin’s own dark history with the Fair Housing ordinance of 1968 shows, a CodeNext referendum, far from guaranteeing democracy or debate, will subvert our representative democracy and disenfranchise the most of vulnerable of our citizens.
Let’s start with the claim that the proposed CodeNext referendum is “about democracy” as Fred Lewis, from Community not Commodity stated in a recent Austin Monitor article.
In 1968, the Austin City Council courageously passed Austin’s own Fair Housing ordinance to prohibit all forms of discrimination in housing. But a certain group of Austin property owners, who said they wanted to “give democracy a chance”, petitioned to put the ordinance to a vote. The referendum that followed rejected Fair Housing with 57% voting against and 43% voting in favor. Only 27% of registered voters and 10% of the total population voted in the election. That’s hardly representative of the will of the people. Worse still, as the map below attests, the overwhelming 59% of east Austinites that voted for Fair Housing were crushed by the 61% of West and South Austin that voted against.
1968 Austin Fair Housing Referendum Results by Precinct
Some things have changed since 1968. Austin no longer has legal segregation and is now seen as a progressive haven in an otherwise conservative state. But some things have not changed. We still face the same turnout challenges: less than 17% of registered voters cast a ballot in the last referendum. Worse still, while 30% of Austinites live east of I35, they only make up 24% of the registered voters. In fact, the map below showing registration percentage from 2017 looks strikingly similar to the map above showing percentage AGAINST the referendum from 1968.
2017 Voter Registration by Precinct
Under the 10-1 council system, East Austinites have a fair say in CodeNext through the representatives they elected. In a referendum, they do not.
After the 1968 referendum, then-mayor Harry Akin said, “if there had been half as much interest in the election as there has been in the football game, we would have had a fairer measure of the will of the people”. A CodeNext referendum risks the same. That doesn’t sound like democracy to me.
Next, let us consider the claim from Indy Austin‘s Linda Curtis that “if you put it on the ballot it will cause a big debate such that you might have a chance of informing a lot more people”.
We should not expect a more informative debate on CodeNext. The fact is most people don’t have the time to brush up on Land Use Regulation in their spare time. As Curtis herself said “find a regular Austinite who is just trying to pay their mortgage or rent, they’ll go: ‘Code what?’”
When the people voted for their representatives to sit on the city council dais under the 10-1 system, they placed their faith in those representatives. We should not lose our faith in those representatives or the 10-1 system that Curtis herself campaigned for.
This proposed referendum is not about democracy or debate. It is about delay. Because of the property owner’s referendum in 1968, minorities of Austin had to wait decades for another fair housing ordinance. Half a century later, we cannot afford to make the same mistake. We cannot afford the same decades of delay with our land development code.
We absolutely should have a say on CodeNext. And we do – by talking to our council members, who we elected, and encouraging them to develop the best CodeNext they can. We count on our representatives to pass a code that helps erase the vestiges of our city’s dark past and create an Austin for Everyone. If they don’t, it is our duty to hold them accountable at the ballot box.
I am President of the Board of Directors of AURA and write to you today to support Connections 2025 in the strongest possible terms. I know you have been hearing many different things about the Connections 2025 service changes. I urge you to approve these changes tomorrow and implement them in summer 2018, as planned.
I’m not afraid to criticize CapMetro when I think they make mistakes, but Connections 2025 is not one of those mistakes. It is an important first step toward getting bus ridership growing again and making Austin a transit-friendly city. In our Transit City report, AURA called for a high frequency bus network and with Connections 2025, CapMetro has delivered on that in a big way. AURA recently gave CapMetro a grade of A- on our Transit City report card, due in large part to the promise of Connections 2025.
It is necessary that to remake Austin for transit, we must make some tough decisions. Some of those decisions may involve sharing neighborhoods with more neighbors, or making it slightly more difficult to use your car, so that more people can benefit from transit. Another tough decision is cutting a few—a very few—bus routes, so that literally thousands more riders can use transit effectively. For some, this may allow them to perhaps make the decision to live car-free or car-light lifestyles. For others, it may be the cost savings that allows them to access their jobs and continue to afford rent in the city by reducing their transportation costs. High frequency networks unlock the city by allowing people the confidence to ride without the fear of missing the next bus.
I was highly encouraged by ADAPT’s endorsement of the new service plan as well.
I am unable to come speak to you in person tomorrow, but I urge you to please, please approve Connections 2025.
AURA supports Proposition B: Parks and Conservation Easements.
As seen in the bond project list, too much funding in Proposition A goes to expand sprawl-serving roads and travel infrastructure. Despite the inclusion of some bicycle projects, Proposition A mostly subsidizes sprawl. In contrast, Proposition B includes parkland dedication and conservation easements outside the city limits as a way to preserve green space and make sprawl that much more difficult.
More information on the bonds is available at the Travis County bond website.
AURA is a grassroots urbanist organization focused on building an Austin for everyone by improving land use and transportation through policy analysis, public involvement, and political engagement.
Over the last two years, AURA members have advocated a bold, visionary overhaul of Austin’s land use rules that would create a more environmentally friendly, livable, and affordable city.
The release of the CodeNEXT Draft 2 last weekend made clear that consultants and staff are unwilling to rise to the task of making meaningful strides toward AURA’s goals. Both drafts leave in place most of the barriers to abundant housing that have been driving up rents and accelerating displacement. Continuing this broken status quo is not acceptable.
AURA demands a CodeNEXT that provides the following measurable improvements in affordability, alternative transportation use, and environmental quality:
We need a code that makes Austin more affordable by encouraging the construction of new housing stock in the central city where people want to live. In particular, we need a code that will create the conditions to actually add at least 150,000 new homes on the ground in Austin’s city council District 9 within ten years, in addition to new housing elsewhere in the city. Actual construction is different from “zoning capacity”—building 150,000 new units will require entitlements for half a million.
We need a code that makes Austin more affordable by adding a significant amount of “missing middle” housing—triplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes, and row homes—the cheapest housing to build: at least 40% of the new units added under the new code must be missing middle housing, not counting ADUs.
We need a code that makes Austin more affordable by affirmatively furthering Fair Housing: at least 75% of the land area in every urban core neighborhood must be eligible for a realistic affordable housing density bonus, as called for in the 2016 fair housing resolution.
We need a code that gets people out of their cars and into alternative modes of transportation that alleviate Austin’s gridlock and reduce carbon emissions: the number of Austinites getting to work some other way than driving alone mustdouble from 25% to 50% within ten years as a result of land use reform under the new code according to realistic, credible forecasts. We need zoning that takes the share of solo trips by car below 50%.
We need a code that minimizes impervious cover at the metro area level: CodeNEXT should minimize our geographic footprint by encouraging housing in places and forms that use less impervious cover per person in order to mitigate flood risk and improve water quality.
CodeNEXT Draft 2.0 makes some incremental progress toward these goals:
It allows construction of ADUs in more places
It allows residential uses in commercial zones
Despite these improvements, the draft still falls short on the AURA goals enumerated above. To wit:
By City consultant firm Fregonese’s own admission, the new drafts adds only 19,481 new housing units in District 9— and that’s capacity, not a true forecast.
That District 9 number is far less than the 32,231 projected net new units in District 1. This allocation of housing capacity continues pushing development out of Central Austin into the East Side.
Only 18% of the projected new units under Draft 2—again by Fregonese’s own admission—are in missing middle housing. For the most part, missing middle will still be missing if nothing changes from here. That’s a small improvement over the status quo, but it is not the bold reform we need.
From the Affordable Housing Bonus Program maps we’ve seen, it appears essentially zero neighborhoods will be even 50% density bonus eligible. Even with improvements that extend the density bonus program to more places, eligible land is still a tiny portion of most neighborhoods and completely unavailable in our most common zones.
We have not seen numbers on mode shift, but it strains credulity to believe that the draft’s mere tinkering around the edges of the status quo will produce the car-independence we need.
The broken system of lot-level impervious cover percentages, which has resulted in the paving of tens of thousands of acres of hill country, forest, and prairie in and around Austin, remains in place. This approach has long been recognized as counterproductive by the EPA. We need smarter, more holistic approaches.
Cities are growing, dynamic entities. If we do it right, CodeNEXT can give Austin the tools it desperately needs to allow our neighborhoods to provide enough homes for the next generation. Providing enough homes will require change—a meaningful departure from the broken status quo that has created the housing shortage that is devastating our community with high rents and rapid displacement all over Austin. AURA calls on our City staff, consultants, and leaders at the Planning Commission and City Council to show courageous leadership and use CodeNEXT to create an Austin for Everyone.
This post is part of a series on Imagine Austin’s priority programs, in light of Austin’s current CodeNEXT rewrite process. View the entire series here.
This program is focused on conserving water resources and improving watershed health. This includes issues such as public health, recreation, conservation, and water supply. Austin’s Water Utility is municipally owned, which allows Austin Water to work more closely with all departments that have an impact on water supply and watershed health.
In the past four years, we have gone through significant drought, highlighting the need for careful conservation of our water resources. We have also had some significant floods which have damaged many homes, particularly in the Onion Creek area. These events have highlighted the need for watershed protection to ensure creeks and streams are healthy and can handle heavy rains. Because of Austin’s location in “flash flood alley” this concern was built into Imagine Austin with this priority program.
Key updates in the past four years include:
PRESERVATION OF LAND
1,700 acres of land over the critical Edwards Aquifer recharge zone has been preserved from development. Preservation is a key step in ensuring that our water supply as well as that of San Antonio’s is protected from pollutants.
City council approved buyouts of homeowners living in the floodplain of Onion Creek. This action was taken after devastating floods in which many families lost their homes. Much like Boggy Creek and its floodplain, the homes purchased will be demolished and the creek will undergo restoration and protection as natural wetland to ensure safety for residents as well as proper runoff in storm events.
WATERSHED PROTECTION ORDINANCE
This ordinance was adopted by city council and Travis County Commissioners Court in 2013. It’s a huge document and you can read all of it here if you want to. The most important part is this—a large community of stakeholders worked together to balance the needs of the environment with desire for development (all the new residents to Austin have to live somewhere). Stream buffers keep development far enough away from streams and creeks to remain safe from floods as well as to prevent erosion. With the increased setbacks, the city plans to restore creek beds as well as provide trails for people to walk and cycle, serving to connect communities and provide options for healthy transportation.
REDUCED WATER CONSUMPTION
Through water restrictions as well as rebates for rain harvesting and newer homes built with more water-saving features, Austin has decreased water consumption significantly city-wide.
Austin is well on its way to better protection of our water resources now and in the future. Although we have had heavy rain this year and lakes are now full, the programs which have been put into place will help with conservation and protection no matter what, as our area is prone to flood as well as drought. Because of the progress we’ve made we are more resilient in the face of any changes in our climate.
One year ago this week, AURA released its Transit Vision for the city of Austin. It recommended a set of small, incremental improvements that collectively would have a greater effect than a multibillion rail line or set of rail lines. For transit, we recommended frequent bus routes and transit priority rather than a single magic bullet. We recommended disincentivizing parking and driving to work by reducing parking minimums across the city, enacting parking maximums in downtown, and creating cash-out programs at major employers instead of free parking. Other steps like finishing the sidewalk and bike network, increasing connectivity, and allowing more housing near transit corridors set up an urban space where walking, biking, and using transit is encouraged rather than discouraged. AURA still believes that these steps are critical to enabling a more multimodal transportation system. The rest of this post steps back from the day-to-day grind of transportation planning in Austin to evaluate how the major transportation agents have achieved or not achieved these goals.
CAPMETRO: GRADE: A-
Capital Metro, for all its problems, has been the most successful at implementing the transit vision.
STEP: IMPLEMENT A FREQUENT NETWORK:
Most critically, In March 2017, the CapMetro board approved the framework for Connections 2025, a long-range plan that will create a network of frequent routes across the city. This is a very encouraging step that will go a long way to providing improved bus service for CapMetro’s customers. Although there were concerns that some riders would lose access to their current jobs, a joint analysis by AURA and Farm & City showed that the new network would provide frequent access to transit and, with it, greater economic opportunity to 10,000 low-income households. AURA urges CapMetro to implement Connections 2025 as quickly as possible.
STEP: FARE PARITY BETWEEN METRORAPID AND LOCAL ROUTES:
In January, Capital Metro eliminated the fare differential between the MetroRapid routes and its local routes. The higher fare for MetroRapid had long created a two-tier system where wealthier riders could choose a better service. This step has already caused ridership to increase on the MetroRapid corridors. Some riders are switching from the locals to the MetroRapid, but the change has likely attracted new bus riders as well.
STEP: IMPROVE BUS SHELTERS
Currently, far too many bus shelters in Austin are totally bare bones with no shade or even no bench. This makes them practically unusable in the hot summer months, as well as unwelcoming to those with mobility challenges who cannot stand for long periods of time. Capital Metro has a new, cheaper design for bus shelters, which will enable the agency to deploy them at many more stops. Unfortunately, these new shelters still do not consistently provide shade or protection for the elements. AURA calls for CapMetro to find a shelter design that can be widely implemented and actually provide basic shelter.
FOR 2017-2018
Going forward, Capital Metro’s major initiative right now is Project Connect 2.0, which is concluding its first phase in June. The first phase recommended 16 different corridors for future study, including 3 commuter routes, 10 “connectors” on major arteries through the city, and 2 downtown circulators. AURA is concerned that the process may end up committing too many limited transit dollars to low-value suburban commuter projects, but we are also encouraged by the inclusion and high scores of many high ridership bus corridors, especially the strong result for the Lamar-Guadalupe connector corridor.
CITY OF AUSTIN: GRADE C-
The city of Austin has made halting steps towards a more multimodal city, but they let themselves be hamstrung by forces that would maintain a suburban status quo.
STEP: FULLY FUND THE BICYCLE MASTER PLAN AND HIGH PRIORITY SIDEWALKS
The city of Austin half-accomplished this step with the Go Big Mobility Bond, passed by voters in November 2016. That bond commits $137 of its $720 million to local mobility projects, mostly sidewalks, urban trails and bike lanes. It is true, as the mayor says, that this is the largest investment the city has ever made in active transportation. Unfortunately, it is still woefully inadequate, since it allocates only a quarter of the estimated $400 million to implement the bike plan and high priority sidewalks. It is also peanuts compared to regional highway funding: the US 183-A expansion will cost $650 million; the cost overrun alone on the MoPAC express lanes was $200 million.
The largest part of the mobility bond is reserved for the corridor plans: seven existing plans for major roads in the Austin area. The city is still determining which projects identified in the corridor plans it will fund, and those decisions will determine whether this effort is a success for transit or not. Projects range from excellent—like the transit priority lanes on Guadalupe, to the misguided—like bus pullouts on major corridors, to the disastrous—like the $110 million plan to widen and speed up FM 969 east of 183, creating yet another sprawl accelerator to the periphery of the city. The ultimate success of the mobility bond will depend on the city choosing projects wisely.
STEP: ALLOW AND PROMOTE ABUNDANT HOUSING NEAR EXISTING TRANSIT.
The major driver here is Austin’s land development code, currently being rewritten as CodeNEXT. The goal of CodeNEXT was to enact the Imagine Austin plan and “promote a more compact and connected city” by enabling more missing middle housing in the urban core and upzoning the corridors identified for future density. At these tasks, it has thus far failed completely. The new code is more complex than the current code, does not enable abundant housing, and may in fact make it more difficult to build small-scale infill housing. Inexplicably, the new zoning map largely replicates our existing housing map rather than supporting Imagine Austin’s mandate and goals.
Absent substantial changes between the current draft and the final product, the timidity of the CodeNEXT result ensures that Austin’s most desirable, most transit-friendly neighborhoods will fail to provide housing sufficient to meet demand and will persist as low density enclaves for the wealthy. Scarce and unaffordable housing in the central city will also continue to drive young families to the suburbs, where transit options are limited and driving is required for almost every trip.
STEP: TRANSIT PRIORITY
Transit priority is arguably the single most important thing Austin can do to help Capital Metro provide effective bus service. The city has made some strides here, with some signals getting transit priority treatments, but there are many lost opportunities and very little political will to enact change.
Center for Transportation Research study table showing Scenario 1 – with a transit lane in each direction on Guadalupe – reducing travel times
The Guadalupe corridor is illustrative. The city started a study of the Guadalupe Corridor, i.e. the Drag, in 2014. Almost all of Austin’s major bus routes use this corridor, where they get caught in significant traffic going past the University. An AURA study showed that at rush hour there are nearly as many travellers riding buses as in cars, despite the buses taking up a tenth of the space. In Spring 2015, modeling from the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas showed that implementing transit priority lanes on Guadalupe would accelerate buses and cars (see table above). In 2016, the City’s draft corridor report recommended transit lanes.
The case could not be clearer. And yet, at a recent urban transportation committee (UTC) meeting, Austin Transportation Department’s director for strategic planning refused to commit to transit priority on Guadalupe, awaiting the results of the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan (ASMP). While it is good to have a strategic mobility plan, and AURA has provided feedback on transit priority in the ASMP, transit priority lanes, especially in a corridor where they are as badly needed as they are on Guadalupe, should not have to wait four years and multiple planning cycles for implementation.
OTHER STEPS: CONNECTIVITY, CASH-OUTS, PARKING REQUIREMENTS
AURA recommended several other steps to reduce car dependency and promote alternative modes of transportation, like increasing grid connectivity, giving an option for employees to take cash instead of a free parking spot, and reducing requirements for parking at new developments across the city. The city of Austin has made halting progress in these areas. Connectivity is a part of the Mobility Strategic Plan. The city does not have a cash-out for parking program yet, but it has started offering paid time off for employees who don’t drive every day. Unfortunately, parking minimums have not been reduced. The minimum number of parking spots required has been slightly decreased for some uses in the draft version of CodeNEXT, but they remain untouched or even increased in other areas of the proposed code. In particular, AURA is concerned about the persistent high levels of parking required for bars and cocktail lounges, which is just an invitation for people to drive to alcohol, and then to drive home drunk. The city needs to seriously consider the effect requiring so much parking has on our city, and the behavior of its citizens.
FOR 2017-2018:
In the next year Austin will finish its strategic mobility plan and its new land use development code. These major projects must make serious commitments to transit priority on our streets and more housing in our neighborhoods. It may be unpopular with some, but it is the only step forward to make a multimodal city.
OTHER REGIONAL PARTNERS: GRADE F
TxDOT, CTRMA, and CAMPO continue to pay lip service to alternative modes of transportation while greenlighting and building major highway projects all over the city, spending billions of dollars to swallow more land for cars.
Even these organizations’ meager efforts towards multimodality are undone by the harm their highways do. CTRMA is committing to build park-n-rides connected to the city of Austin by express bus lines. But park-n-rides are not an effective way to get people out of their cars. To move even 100 commuters a day requires a parking lot an acre in size. To make a substantial dent in the percentage of single occupant vehicle commuters, then, would require paving over 10 or 20 square miles, or building expensive multi-story garages, neither of which is cost-effective.
These organizations aren’t even succeeding at providing decent car mobility because of induced demand, the phenomenon by which new highway capacity is rapidly absorbed by new highway drivers, resulting in even more congestion than before the capacity was built. An example in Austin is 183-A, a toll road built to the rapidly growing suburbs of Cedar Park and Leander. 183-A was one of CTRMA’s first highway projects; it opened as an empty, brand new road in 2007. Less than ten years later CTRMA has proposed building two express lanes at a cost of $650 million, equivalent to funding both Austin’s bicycle plan and the high priority sidewalks. CAMPO, the agency in charge of responsible transportation in the Austin area, was not consulted.
183-A also directly competes against CapMetro’s Red Line to Leander, crippling its effectiveness.
FOR 2017-2018:
As they look to the future, these agencies must admit that geometry is against them. They cannot provide enough highway capacity to satisfy the demand their highways will generate, nor can they build enough parking lots to accommodate meaningful transit commuters. Instead of paying lip service to transit, they must make meaningful commitments. For instance, rather than build highways that compete with commuter transit, CTRMA could fund the operating costs of Express Buses or the Red Line.
CONCLUSION
A year after its publication AURA’s transit vision still charts necessary and important steps to creating a city where alternatives to a car dependent lifestyle are more widely accessible. Some of these steps will require hard choices that disrupt Austin’s status quo of a city built for cars. But they are desperately needed as we seek to become a more sustainable city. The region and the planet simply cannot keep up with a vicious cycle of suburban housing leading to highways, feeding even more suburban sprawl, leading to more highways. Some progress has been made in the last year, but the focus for 2017-2018 for the city and its regional partners must be to really commit to a future where transit is viable.
AURA Board Member and Multimodal Citizen Advisory Committee member Susan Somers offers her suggestions on responding to the latest Project Connect survey.
In April, Capital Metro released a survey about potential high-capacity transit corridors under study as part of their Project Connect planning process. The survey allows community members to help “choose the corridors” that will move to Phase 2 of the project as finalists. During Phase 1, Cap Metro has gathered together transit proposals from the past 20 years and assigned quantitative metrics to rank each project. Community feedback on the various corridors is the qualitative aspect of Phase 1 and the survey is a vital aspect of that feedback. As a member of Project Connect’s Multimodal Citizen Advisory Committee, I have heard that some urbanists have been unsure how to respond to the survey. So I thought I’d provide a handy guide on how to respond.
First off, let’s review some of the basics about Project Connect:
This Project Connect study is a new process; the failed 2014 road-rail bond is no more.
Project Connect is studying both new high-capacity transit investment corridors and enhancements to current high-capacity transit; this survey and blog post address only the investment corridors portion of Project Connect
“High capacity transit” can mean rail, bus rapid transit, or other modes (gondola, anyone?). Project Connect Phase 1 is mode neutral; mode options for the corridors that advance will be studied in Phase 2.
We’ve been told that the ultimate goal is to identify multiple projects and create a system master plan for high capacity transit—potentially in the multi-billion dollar range. (Of course, once you create a master plan, then phasing becomes an important concern for urbanists. We want to make sure the most cost-effective, high-ridership lines get built first.)
The investment corridors are divided into three categories. “Commuter” corridors connect suburban areas outside Austin with central Austin. “Connector” corridors are within Austin and correspond with major city streets. “Circulator” corridors move people around within a specific, concentrated business district—usually downtown. Some urbanists and transit advocates have criticized this tripartite breakdown, since it seems to ensure that high-subsidy “Commuter” corridors will make their way into the final package.
Cap Metro has already released the Phase 1 quantitative analysis and proposed finalists for Phase 2 (see image below). However, there is still the opportunity to lobby for additional routes through the survey tool, with adjustments likely to happen before the final list of corridors goes before the Cap Metro board at their June meeting.
Question 1:Which of these commuter corridors would you support to meet community needs? Select up to three corridors.
I can’t recommend investment in any commuter corridors at this juncture. Austin taxpayers should not utilize precious resources to subsidize transit lines that will only serve those outside the city and Cap Metro service area, create safety issues for pedestrians attempting to access stations, and incentivize sprawl. Additionally, some of the proposed lines (in particular I-35 Bus Rapid Transit) will require the support and collaboration of TxDOT, a dubious partner that has historically shown little interest in transit. Also note that the Union Pacific line was effectively ruled out when UP backed out of their agreement with the Lone Star Rail district in early 2016. The bottom line: bear in mind that our current commuter rail service, the Red Line, already posts a staggeringly high per-rider subsidy. When Cap Metro implemented the Red Line, they had to cut bus routes and frequency elsewhere. Like the Red Line, these commuter corridors are likely to require riders to drive to a park and ride from their home, board the line, and upon arriving downtown, undertake either a long walk or board a circulator route. Evidence shows us that the more transfers like that, the less likely an individual is to choose the commuter service over their car. Thus my doubts that any of these lines will generate high ridership. Although I expect that in the coming months we’ll hear that innovative partnerships may emerge to cover construction costs for some of these lines, I’m concerned that the operational costs will kill Cap Metro’s bottom line and kill our chances for true urban light rail in the future. If you feel compelled to choose a commuter corridor, choose the Airport line. Rail to airports, although often a popular concept with the public, has been a losing financial proposition for many cities. However, this particular iteration of airport rail may at least merit further study.
Question 2: Which of these connector corridors would you support to meet community needs? Select up to 5 corridors.
AURA recommends selecting “connector corridors” based on bus lines with high ridership. Keeping in mind that we’re still mode-neutral until Phase 2, high ridership rail lines save CapMetro money on operational costs since more people fit on light rail vehicles than on buses. Cities that build rail that has high ridership on day 1 can reallocate operational dollars back into the bus network, and will have the finances and political buy-in to build additional rail lines in the future. Cities that build low-ridership rail will struggle to build future lines, and may have to cut bus service (as Cap Metro did after the Red Line). The data at hand shows us that the 801 and 803 corridors are our highest-ridership bus lines: that’s why they were selected for MetroRapid service. Riverside is also a high-ridership line surrounded by residential density; that’s why it’s proposed as the next MetroRapid expansion. So that would give us: North Lamar/Guadalupe, 45th/Burnet, S. Lamar, Riverside and Congress. That’s all five choices. The good news is that all five of these routes are currently slated to advance to Phase 2. (As seen in the image above, right now, the finalists, based on the quantitative analysis alone, would be N. Lamar/Guadalupe, Highland/Red River/Trinity, Congress, Riverside, 7th/Lake Austin, Manor/Dean Keeton, 45th/Burnet, and S. Lamar.) However, there are two other corridors at risk of being cut out of Phase 2 that deserve a chance to advance. Those two corridors are Pleasant Valley and Oltorf. Why? Both are fairly high ridership corridors. Pleasant Valley in particular serves low income families. And both of these routes provide coverage of areas of the city not served in the projected finalist group. By swapping in Pleasant Valley and/or Oltorf when you vote, you help bolster the argument a number of MCAC members have made for these corridors to be analyzed in Phase 2. Ultimately, any of the seven corridors I’ve discussed here are very valid options for your vote.
Question 3: Which of these circulator corridors would you support to meet community needs? Select up to two corridors.
I recommend the Downtown Circulator. Ever since the ‘Dillo service was canceled, Austin has lacked a downtown circulator to help distribute commuters and visitors around the Central Business District. With most lines running along a central corridor, circulator routes could be a boon for potential riders who need to get to the far ends of downtown. They could also prove an excellent resource for people who need to make short trips during the day. I recommend the circulator be free of charge. Collecting fares on a short route will bog down the boarding process and slow the circulators to the point of uselessness. The beginning of fare collection on the ‘Dillo was widely—and accurately—regarded as the death knell for the service. Capital Metro should not make the same mistake twice.Do you like this post?
Mayor Adler was right: the maps are wrong. “The CodeNEXT maps revealed yesterday are so deeply flawed that further tinkering block by block around the edges of a few neighborhoods and corridors will not be enough to enable CodeNext to meaningfully address Austin’s worsening affordability, mobility, environmental, and segregation problems,” said Josiah Stevenson, a member of AURA’s Working Group on CodeNEXT.
AURA members, along with many other community advocates and Austin taxpayers, are in disbelief that the City of Austin spent $6 million and over two years only to maintain the status quo. The nominal differences between current and future land maps are a slap in the face to the Austinites who have spent hundreds of volunteer hours in the hopes of improving our city.
The draft maps fall far short of AURA’s CodeNEXT and Mapping Expectations. AURA believes that we need at least urban neighborhood zoning (T4) throughout the entire urban core, and for that zoning to unequivocally allow missing middle housing types. Among the biggest problems with the maps:
There is not enough increased housing capacity in Central and West Austin to offset the inequitable housing pressures on East Austin. We must recognize that our current land use code has been a major catalyst for gentrification and displacement. Failing to address this inequity will only further segregation.
Allowable density is actually decreased in some areas of the central city compared to what is allowed under today’s regulations! For example, some homeowners who were previously allowed to construct ADUs now cannot. Some apartments have been mapped out of compliance. Heights and zoning capacity in many single family zoned areas are even further restricted. We should not be moving backwards.
Missing middle housing is still missing from most central city neighborhoods. Rowhouses in particular are only allowed right along major arteries. We must remove barriers to constructing the new missing middle building types in the draft code text and zone more areas with the transect zones that allow them. A moderate density zone that would include rowhouses and other medium density building types was added to the toolbox on Tuesday—put it on the map!
There are too many missed opportunities to allow living space to be built along major corridors (Airport, South 1st, etc), where density is needed to increase public transit ridership and reduce sprawl. Consultants, staff and Austin’s political leadership must optimize CodeNEXT for more and better transportation options, paying special attention to potential transit ridership and transit corridors of opportunity.
The maps also lack useful “transition zones” between major corridors and single-family areas. Rather than transitioning density over several blocks, corridors like South Lamar are mapped with a very narrow ribbon of high density directly next to single-family zoning. Instead, we should widen the high density corridors and transition gradually to the medium densities appropriate for the interiors of urban core neighborhoods.
Finally, CodeNEXT fails to make Austin’s code simpler and clearer—instead, it makes matters worse. CodeNEXT would effectively give the city three separate zoning paradigms: transect, non-transect, and unmodified legacy zones. The result is more than sixty zoning categories and very few increases in by-right entitlements.
AURA members are very concerned with the direction of CodeNEXT; a recent internal survey asked AURA members to rate their level of concern with the current CodeNext draft on a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being very concerned.) 42% believe the code “needs a large number of edits” and rated their concern at a 4; 58% are “very concerned” about the direction of CodeNEXT at 5. Zero members expressed a 1 through 3.
There are a few bright spots that AURA applauds. The map of downtown comes a lot closer to implementing the Downtown Neighborhood Plan than the current code. Some areas along major corridors that are currently zoned “commercial” have been replaced with zones that permit mixed and residential uses, allowing more housing to be built in those areas. However, limited improvements in only a few areas will ensure the continuation of Austin’s current development patterns leading to even more sprawl, congestion, gentrification and segregation.
Replacing the old code with nearly the same one at such a high price tag is an insult to all Austinites, but especially to middle and working class homeowners and renters who are being squeezed out of Austin by the quickly-rising cost of living in their homes. This displacement epidemic is the result of an acute housing shortage that is directly caused by our land use regulations.
Mayor Adler has the opportunity to lead Austin past the decades of segregation and poor land use choices in our past. We hope that he and our City Council will take Austin into a future where everyone can afford to live in Austin, and CodeNEXT is the first real opportunity in years to accomplish that.
“We are in the midst of a housing shortage, and our leaders are not doing enough to fix it. This is not a time for Austin to ‘chill out.’ It’s a time for all Austinites who truly care about addressing our affordability and mobility challenges to demand the positive changes we need,” said Stephanie Trinh on behalf of AURA.
AURA is a grassroots urbanist organization focused on building an Austin for everyone by improving land use and transportation through policy analysis, public involvement, and political engagement.
Press Contact:
Josiah Stevenson, AURA CodeNEXT Working Group, josiahstevenson@gmail.com, 832-466-2785
In August 2016, AURA released its CodeNEXT Expectations. Although these expectations lay out broad policy priorities for CodeNEXT, a well-written code with a feeble on-the-ground implementation could still spell disaster. Austinites need a zoning map that’s designed to solve for Central Texas’ critical challenges. A broad rezoning of the urban core is critical to ensuring affordability, fair housing, efficient transit, sustainable growth, and an Austin for Everyone. Here are our expectations for the CodeNEXT maps that will be released on April 18:
AFFIRMATIVELY FURTHER FAIR HOUSING AND CREATE AN INCLUSIVE CITY
AURA calls for equitable zoning throughout the city. Austin has a long history rife with racist and exclusionary zoning, the vestiges of which we still see as a racially and socioeconomically segregated city. Austin’s first Latino Council Member, John Trevino, noted in 1983, “Low density development eliminates most minorities… Are we building an elitist community? Yes, we want to enjoy the environment. But none of my folks will be able to move in.” Thirty-four years later, this sentiment still rings true. Our lower-income neighborhoods have smaller homes, smaller lots, and denser developments; but as Austin has grown, our overly restrictive code has pushed our housing pressures disproportionately into East Austin and pushed our low-income residents out. Unfortunately, there are little to no opportunities for those residents to move into other central areas, as wealthier neighborhoods continue to resist higher density infill and lower-cost housing options. CodeNEXT is the opportunity to allow housing throughout the urban core at all income levels and ensure that all urban core areas adjust for population growth. More housing in high opportunity areas will allow more people at varying income levels to live centrally, near amenities and transit, and help alleviate the inequitable housing pressures on our low-income areas.
ALLOW MISSING MIDDLE THROUGHOUT THE URBAN CORE
Our land use code gives few options between single family homes and large apartment complexes. Medium-density buildings, such as multiplexes, row homes, cottage courts, and small apartment complexes, are great small-scale infill options that are more affordable than detached, single-family homes. Austin’s central neighborhoods are desirable areas to live — they have easy access to Austin’s (slowly) improving transit, central city amenities, and the best that Austin’s culture has to offer — yet living there is not accessible to most working families today. Missing middle housing allows families to live closer together and create walkable neighborhoods that are safer and more conducive to transit. Missing middle housing should be allowed throughout the urban core, and not just near corridors, so that more people can access the heart of our neighborhoods. Allowing attractive housing options in only a few limited areas will not improve Austin’s affordability, but will ensure only high end development.
ENSURE ABUNDANT HOUSING CAPACITY
The CodeNEXT maps must ensure Austin has enough housing for however many people want to live here. When 100 people move to Austin every day, and we don’t build enough housing units to accommodate them, low-income residents will be displaced as the wealthy will always be able to outbid the poor. This economic displacement lies at the heart of Austin’s gentrification challenge. An inclusive zoning map would substantially grow our zoned capacity and allow Austin to adapt to its needs rather than set arbitrary caps on our neighborhoods’ populations.
DISINCENTIVIZE SPRAWL
CodeNEXT should emphasize compact, connected urban infill rather than suburban sprawl to meet our housing demand. Despite its reputation as a city that cares about the environment, in actuality, a substantial portion of Austin’s growth is greenfield growth on the edges of the city. This development pattern is problematic for the environment, city resources, traffic, and household affordability. Development on undeveloped land increases runoff and destroys natural green spaces, wildlife habitat, and farmland. Growth of single family development also strains the City’s resources and infrastructure. Single-family neighborhoods consume substantially more water and sprawled areas are harder for city services such as police, fire, and public transportation to reach. Additionally, suburban residents often drive long distances to work in the urban core, straining our roads, adding to our traffic, and hastening the progress of climate change through vehicle emissions. Families living in these edge developments spend staggering amounts of money and time on transportation to access to Austin’s job centers, straining their budgets and reducing their quality of life. While some households may still choose a suburban lifestyle, the land development code should provide options for those who want a more walkable, sustainable urban lifestyle.
MAXIMIZE FORM-BASED ZONING
AURA would like to see Austin zoned substantially, if not entirely, under form-based code; we argued in favor of doing so when City Council selected the “code approach” back in 2014. A good form-based code, one that is aligned with our other expectations, helps create “complete communities” (as referenced by the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan) where residents can access their daily needs without using a car. At its best, a form-based code creates more diverse areas where you may find jobs, restaurants, schools, and grocery stores near where people live. Non-transect zones are supposedly intended for areas that are car-dependent, but we implore the city to allow Austinites throughout the city to live, work, and play in their neighborhoods and reduce their dependency on single occupancy vehicles. Having two parallel codes limits transparency and community engagement, increases costs of development, and further complicates the zoning and rezoning process. Non-transect zones should be used sparingly.
