Public Notice: Cars Off Guadalupe? Project Connect rail plan envisions a transit throughway – News

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At two public community design workshop meetings on the Wednesday we went to press, Project Connect staff presented two ways to navigate the narrowest and most heavily congested stretches of road in their entire transportation system map. And the key – obvious to some, terrifying to others – is getting cars off the “The Drag” section of Guadalupe next to the UT campus.

As mentioned earlier, there are two options on the table at this point. But both include two dedicated train lines in the middle of the street; Previous briefings described the diversion (convictions and demolitions) required at each end of the drag to clear the turns at MLK on Jan.

Option A would actually leave a lane in each direction to allow buses and cars to share. But anyone who drives on Guadalupe now already knows that the right split lanes are a slow death, so it’s hard to imagine that they will be usable for cars in the new plan. The executive summary of the staff meeting notes that with this option “common lanes may slow down all traffic in the area”; They also suggest that it allows for “narrower sidewalks and fewer trees” and “no separate bike paths” so it might feel like this is the less preferred option.

Option B is an end-to-end shopping mall – no lanes at all (although buses may share the right of way). This enables separate cycle paths and “wider sidewalks, more trees, more meeting points”. Again, cars (and buses?) Would be directed a few blocks west to Nueces, San Antonio, or Rio Grande.

As for the schedule, “completion could take 8-10 years depending on the process” – unfortunately that is the same timeframe in which TxDOT intends to have the I-35 ripped open. And with the city apparently just giving Red River Street to UT for some reason, it looks like getting north to south in the next decade will be a real drudgery. But by 2035 or so we’ll be sitting nicely – as you can see from the artist renders in the presentation or probably on projectconnect.com if you read this.

And next Tuesday, December 14th, another PC design workshop will be held that will focus on the Blue Line Downtown Tunnel, which is slated to run across the city under Fourth Street, all the way from Trinity Street to Guadalupe. Register at capmetro.org/get-involved.

Pet food pantry at the future Austin Humane Society site: Free pet food for struggling pet parents and a view of the future home of AHS at 7625 N. I-35 (currently Red Rocks Church; car park entrance on US 183 eastbound). It’s a transit this Saturday, December 11th, 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., first come, first served. More information is available at austinhumanesociety.org.

And as a reminder: December 17th is the deadline for organizations to apply as material suppliers for this year [RE]Verse pitch competition. What the hell is that? See last week’s column or reversepitch.org.

Submit gossip, smut, innuendo, rumors, and other useful information to nbarbaro on austinchronicle.com.

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https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2021-12-10/public-notice-cars-off-guadalupe/