US stade govr: We gonna demolish 30 apparment buildings, 100 local buissines 15 churches and multiple social areas so more people can enjoy their local traffic jam together
👍🏽 Make great sense. Facilitating traffic flow facilitates commerce. You can’t make money if people don’t want to waste 5 hrs in a car driving to your business
Austinite here. Some important context. Voters in Austin just passed an $5 billon transit package that will add a 3 light rail lines, and another commuter rail line (we already have one). Voters also have passed about $2 billion in alternative mobility bonds. There are plenty of other options. Interestingly, voters won't have a chance to approve the I-35 expansion. Most likely because TXDOT knows what the result would be. Thanks for highlighting our fight down here in Austin!
Yeah I really wish City Beautiful would do a video on Project Connect. It’s a massive endeavor that deserves more attention. To bring up transportation in Austin and not discuss or even bring up how huge project connect is weird to me
As London almost learned the hard way back in the 60s, widening roads doesn't actually alleviate your traffic problem because it just encourages more people to pile onto that road. The only viable solution for long-term sustainability is massively reducing our dependence on cars by building mixed-use suburban neighborhoods with lots of bike lanes good public transit (preferably by some kind of grade-separated rail, or at least rail with right of way over street traffic).
@@zthirtyblue and why is that?! London is massive, so are many european cities yet only americans build such low density cities where one out of four meters is allocated to a parking lot... get out of your car centric mentality and start buiding proper cities, or at least stop destroying those that are already there.
That seems like advice for local roads. A lot of the traffic just goes through the city. None of what you proposed would really help the traffic from Mexico going to the rest of the country.
As a Boston resident, this is fascinating to see. Here, we have been actively trying to move highways out of the center of the city and making sure they disrupt less communities. It’s interesting to see how the rest of the county is doing the opposite.
There's no reason a major highway should go through any city center, that defeats the purpose of the density of the urban core. Manhattan's west side highway, which still a giant armpit, is a step in the right direction.
Yeah, I've never understood why the USA loves to put highways in its cities, it sounds absolutely dystopian. Who wants to live next to one? And highways benefit from having as few entrances and exits as possible, so not really all that beneficial to cities anyway.
You don't mention the gorilla in the room: more lanes do not speed up urban traffic. I have seen this with my own eyes. If you build a lane, cars will come and fill it.
He has in other videos. I actually think he has spent too little time on opposition to the induced demand argument. I am generally against more and wider freeways but I feel like "induced demand" has become a bit of a strawman argument. Proponents of more freeways are often aware of induced demand but think they are a good idea anyway. And institutions like this channel advocating for more rational city planning should be talking about this in a little more depth.
An important thing to note for people unfamiliar with Austin: where I-35 sits today used to be a boulevard that separated a predominantly white part of town from a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood. Black residents were forced out of the neighborhoods to the west of that boulevard and moved east. As Austin has grown, East Austin has heavily gentrified, which has pushed Black residents to suburbs like Pflugerville. If you want to get from Pflugerville to downtown… yes, you guessed it, the most reasonable way of getting there today is I-35. There’s also a state highway running parallel to I-35 (known as Mopac) which has been widened in the last few years with toll lanes added, but it is mainly used by locals and does not carry interstate truck traffic.
Another highway through a black neighbourhood? Huh. It's crazy that people of colour always happen to live along the best alignment for a highway. What a crazy coincidence.
As an Austin resident I also feel like a bit of this is somehow just state antagonism against Austin specifically. I've never lived anywhere before where the state government comes down so hard opposing local governance - I wouldn't be surprised if TXDot isn't accepting alternative proposals from locals partially because they just don't give a shit about Austin and want traffic to get through no matter the impact.
The best way to get the DoT to stop building highways is to bulldoze the DoT's office and say that they're building a new freeway there and that the freeway is "necessary infrastructure"
Just looking at I-35 on Google maps alone, I noticed that Austin lacks something a lot of other cities use, a loop or diversion around the city for traffic not destined for Austin. Maybe an auxiliary 235 to split off somewhere between Georgetown and Round Rock then rejoining I-35 around Buda? Circumventing the city on the west side and avoiding downtown.
Neighborhoods sprung up faster than a ring road could be built, now 360 could work as a functional ring road, and it kinda does, except it is full of TRAFFIC LIGHTS. ON A MAJOR HIGHWAY. A DOZEN TRAFFIC LIGHTS. IT IS TRAFFIC HELL. IT MAKES ME WISH I COULD'VE BEEN DRIVING ON THE SO CALLED KATY FREEWAY PARKING LOT. TRAFFIC LIGHTS ON A HIGHWAY THAT HANDLES 50000 CARS A DAY.
Nobody could anticipate the collapse of California and all of them moving there and having enough time to plan a highway expansion. Plus most of the houses and apartments are built by California developers cashing in and charging outrageous rates.
Austin is the 11th largest city in the US and the only one in the top 20 to not have a interstate bypass other than Phoenix, which is kind of its own thing.
In Shreveport, Louisiana, they are planning to build a brand new highway through the middle of the city against the will of the city. Ridiculous this is still happening in 2021 but the city and parish (county) have no real power to stop it, and the DOT is dead set on finishing the highway even though a bypass already exist.
Funny how the government will reroute I-95 to the DC beltway because we can't cut our capital city into pieces with an expressway right down the middle. Makes you think about what they know about urban highway construction
Houston has an interesting case, where the state wants to expand a highway whereas the federal, county and local government are stopping it. So far the state wants to proceed, but the federal lawsuit (I think) will make it dead before then
I wish money for highways were reallocated to METRO, who can use the funding to build light rail instead of brt. Trains funded infrastructure for cars in the 50s & 60s.
I live locally in downtown houston and I support the expansion. Going from 4 to 2 lanes is awful at 69 and 45. Pierce elevated has no shoulder for safety. My commute will be hurt by the expansion and rerouting, but it is for the good for the rest of the city/area and my personal nimbyism shouldn't limit progress. I will say there isn't much point after this expansion and hope more innovative solutions are available.
*American governments: "It's too expensive to build a high speed rail. Think about the cost to buy all that property!"* *Also them: "We're going to widen the highway from 10 lanes to 20 lanes"*
Inertia is the reason. Americans (especially Republicans which dominate the state Government of Texas) are used to adding more lanes to solve the problem, not building HSR which is a more “foreign” solution to most Americans.
Texas state politicans have been proven to give ZERO FUCKS about Austin. If anything, they go out of their way to spite the city by stripping local powers away from Austin and consolidating it at the state level.
I love it when some deluded Texans say TX is all about small government, but then the State govt is one of the most authoritarians and always banning cities/municipalities from doing objectively positive things.
@@souvikrc4499 It probably isn't all of them. Just the ones that have been in power since... Wait a second, why *have* they been in office so long again? (Looks at Texas's history of gerrymandering) Oh god damn it.
Idk how we continue collectively granting legitimacy to entities that don't even let us have a real say in anything. We know what's best for you, pick one of these fake choices. And it's actually what is best for some industry or something...
This is exactly how bad Georgia's DOT is. GDOT is literally prohibited by law by the state government, from building mass transit and can only build highways, freeways, and state roads.
@@tyman2323 Theoretically MARTA should receive financial support from GDOT, pretty much every other large public transit agency in North America receives funding from their State or province's DoT. Also MARTA only operates in the Atlanta area, it doesn't have any authority to build mass transit in most of Georgia.
houston did that 3 times with 610, beltway 8, and now the new grand parkway 99 being built. highways don't usually build into cities as much as they used to, cities build into and along highways in my state.
I think the lessons learnt by the developed world helps us in the developing world like in India. India has been focusing on making ring-roads around it's major cities so that traffic that doesn't need to enter the city, doesn't have to. This not only takes traffic off the cities but also reduces pollution (and inturn, cost of logistics) as vehicles are running at highway efficiency instead of the stop and go traffic of the city. Props to the lessons for that.
We're running into this problem in Virginia, too. The VDOT is overruling a lot of locals who don't want highways expanded (and don't want largely, traditionally African American areas destroyed & upturned so those highways can go through).
I reported a couple flashing lights as safety hazards, explaining that they make it much harder for me to walk down affected stroads or cross them. So they called me up and explained that they were adding these lights to every intersection. I asked how I was supposed to cross any street with this. They explained that they were adding these lights to every intersection. I don't know what I can do. Are there any groups trying to stop vdot and work towards safer infrastructure?
This is the EXACT opposite of the zoning problem. The problem in zoning is hyper-local control, the problem with these highways is a combination of too high a level of control (local residents be damned) PLUS VERY bad research/myopia/planning/incentives.
"They're calling for the highway to be replaced with a surface boulevard and the highway lanes either completely tunneled..." Oh man, as a Seattle area resident *that* sounds familiar. Good luck with that Austin...
The sketch of what it would look like looks really cool, but I don't think it would work for a highway that big. They could definitely do something like this on smaller roads though.
@@mylesbarrett2031 Sure the tunnel finally got built (years late and massively over budget), but the new surface street part is *still* under construction...
Also cars and tunnels are a notoriously dangerous combination. If you think a crash on the surface is bad just wait until you see a crash in a closed space.
Thanks for spotlighting Austin. Another reason the concerns of local residents doesn't matter much is the antagonistic relationship between the City and the State elected officials that visit Austin every other year. Due to political differences, the State seems to enjoy putting the boot on Austin as much as possible.
I grew up in Austin in the 80's. So, I've seen all of the changes there over the last 40 years. The State government doesn't put "the boot" on Austin nearly as much as Austin itself does. The city council has been starting and stopping growth initiatives for decades each time the controlling party changed. Now, it has been in the hands of one party for too long that cares nothing for economic progress. And you see what has become of it. The city is a blight and all growth is in neighboring counties. It truly saddens me to see what has become of my hometown. BTW, I predict nothing will happen to I35. It's easily just as hot a topic as any salimander conservation issue. Thus, no one will agree and nothing will happen.
What isn't mentioned in this video is the fact that 35 is a MAJOR trade artery from Mexico to the rest of the US. As it is, anyone who doesn't want to get stuck in traffic while passing through will usually head out east and get on the toll road that bypasses the city completely.
@@danieldaniels7571 are you telling me that cities around the world do not have goods delivered to them?! do you seriusly think paris is having an hard time delivering goods to it's shops? what about old historic cities like Milan or London? look outside the US sometimes, most of your problems are self inflicted.
The boulevard replacement is going to be a challenge given the significance of 35, but there's no good reason it couldn't be routed on SH 130 to bypass the city
The boulevard replacement includes sinking I35 underground and building the boulevard over top. It's actually a really great idea and would finally connect East Austin and Downtown in a way that would enormously benefit not just the health and walkability of those that could take advantage of it, but all of that new, densely zoned commercial and residential space would sell SO fast and be an economic boon for the city. If I had to speculate, there's likely some part of the Texas Government that would want to actively sabotage that from ever happening
Agreed. 130 should be widened, and then 35 should be rerouted there. Then the old 35 through Downtown Austin would become a toll road, and the former 130 would no longer be a toll road.
I visited Texas couple months ago and their highways reminded me of a kid going wild with Sim City. Its like highway porn all over the state. Whether it was Houston or Dallas or even Austin, its level on levels of highways. Everything was so freaking spread out it was crazy. I dont know how people put up with the suburban sprawl there, but it definitely made me dislike Texas overall. Even in my car dependent suburbs of NJ, everything is still somewhat within reach and feels closer. I did like Austin as a city but that highway is definitely a blemish on it. They should build highways around the city, not thru it....
One of the major issues with Austin is that you can only really build highways on one side of the city due to the geography. Fun fact, Austin was supposed to have far more highways cutting through the city center, but those were never built.
Its because you guys are misunderstanding the point. They're not expanding the highways to eliminate traffic, they're being expanded to allow more traffic to flow through the rapidly growing cities. That's why these projects will continue.
A traffic accident can close down 2-3 lanes after highway patrol arrives. 5-6 Lane highway can still move traffic even if it's bottlenecked by people gawking at the scene.
Of course, but with these cities in Texas the traffic increases not because of more lanes but population growth. Metro Houston added 1.3 million, and Austin is the fastest growing city in north America of course there's going to be more traffic with more people moving there
So what about induced demand? Even if they do widen the highway, won't that just increase demand so that congestion will go back to where it was? (So event those regional residents who would benefit won't actually.)
Correct. Funny enough, TxDOT famously did the same thing in Houston--they widened the Katy Freeway (West I-10 corridor) and added three free lanes and two toll lanes in each direction, making it the widest freeway in the nation. As a result, traffic time rose by nearly 30%. So it's not like they don't have data on this already.
@@mmhoss I think there is a median. The maximum width of a motorway should be around 4 lane. Sydney still has 2 lane motorway which I have no idea how they decided to build 2 lane motorway in 21st century
Hey, so I just found this channel called "Oh the Urbanity" that made a great video on induced demand and why it applies differently to cars than to public transport. They have also made a great video about the suburban position towards car traffic that I think would be worth to check out :)
If they would build a train line, and a bike path/pedestrian space the overall capacity would be much higher (measured in people/hour), and a lot of valuable space still would be free for a walkable city.
Exactly, that's what we want - unfortunately that's probably not what's going to happen. Also Urban Rail would be a hard sell in Texas overall. So many cities here are so dispersed and suburbanized that creating effective stops that are walking distance to as many people as possible is extremely difficult. There are still some more dense parts of Austin that would really benefit from more Light Rail, and retro-fitting sprawled out neighborhoods to be more dense and walkable could go a long way too, but it's going to be a long time before Mass Transit can actually take off in Texas, and in most of America in general, in a way that actually benefits everyone. Decades of sprawl and forcing your populace to buy cars has effectively ensured that basically everyone has a car, and if you don't you're a second-class citizen who's forced to use underfunded public transit. It's really sad and it's awful for our cities, environment, social lives, and health
@@cbalan777 It is useful only when combined with public transport. A perfect and cheap solution to the last mile problem. I lived my childhood in a car-dependent suburbia. I was unable to go anywhere on my own. (And of course I was too young to drive a car.) Now I live in the inner city. It is very convenient. I can do everything (go to work, buy groceries, meet a friend, etc...) on bike or i just hop on the tram or metro that comes every 2-5 minutes. For me it is freedom. And also space efficient. In my city, the 60% of the travels are on public transport and still the cars are stuck in the traffic. If everybody wants to go by car alone, we should demolish half of the city to build 8-10 lanes highways instead of the 2-4 lane roads/streets.)
I work for a company that does alot of business with TxDOT. (Light post, beams for highway signs and more) And let me tell you, TxDOT will NEVER admit when they're wrong. And will double down if you call them out on it.
It took 3-4 years to build a partial cloverleaf intersection in my city (Victoria BC) at the most congested section of the highway called the McKenzie Interchange project. Ridiculous timeline for basically 0 improvement. Now 3 crowded lanes must merge over into the same 2 lanes going north… Now the pandemic is over and the project has been tested. The commute time has basically remained identical now that we’re back to full traffic. The Katy freeway is a parking lot in Texas with this same idea in mind. This fixes nothing. It’s disappointing the study is commissioned by the authority that will always advocate for cars and trucks.
Austin’s geography makes building ring roads impossible, meanwhile other Texas cities have tons of ring roads. The longest ring road in the world goes around Houston. It’s called the Grand Parkway.
@@historythyme You don't necessarily need ring roads, a bypass is sufficient. The point is not to build freeways into urban areas, and if you do they should be grade separated (tunneled or elevated) so not to disturb the urban fabric. Exits/entrances also should be forbidden within the urban centers so traffic can spread out into the grid instead of it all being dumped in one location. TLDR, freeways purpose should be to travel large distances between cities, not the daily commute.
City of Raleigh just made above-the-curb protected bike lanes part of the UDO of avenue street design. Probably should look into that, I feel like this would have made bigger news if it was anywhere else. Raleigh also stopped a highway from going through the city in the mid-20th century.
And yet we (Raleigh) are also in the midst of a huge, expensive, highly disruptive, and not necessarily all that progressive or visionary highway-widening project on the west side of town, too, so…
it's insane to me that almost all US cities have highways running straight through the city centers, and it's even worse that those highways are being expanded
Recently moved to Austin for university and have really enjoy the coverage of I-35. We need more visibility to stop its widening. Luckily we have project connect on the way, which will help. If anyone ever needs footage from Austin let me know!
I'm also a student here, came in 2017 and I've had a car or motorized vehicle of some sort the whole time. While I don't plan on staying here post-grad, it really would be a shame if this went through. While it would benefit people on the edges of town... space is already tight enough inside of the city and losing / displacing all the small businesses will hurt what makes Austin unique from DFW or H-Town.
Ever been on I-35 through Austin, it’s way too congested, a couple more lanes would help traffic greatly, especially for when I have through that city.
@@PokemonScott I know that’s the intuitive solution, but it completely disregards choice in trip generation and thus ignores induced demand. If you do some research on induced demand you’ll realize why “just add a few more lanes” doesn’t always work.
I think it has something to do with the identity of expansionist empires (which the US is) where endless growth is seen as an overall good instead of a cancer.
I live in Texas. Have lived in and around Austin, Dallas, Houston, etc. The interstate system sucks. It kills the cities and subsidizes the suburbs. Most folks are apparently blind to this. If the highways were gone in an instant, I bet many of the suburbians would move right back into the city, as they have little loyalty to their cul-de-sacs and stroads. Really disappointed in Texas DOT that they are not engaging with updated evidence on the effects of their actions here. It takes a long time to do projects like this, but even longer to do them and later reverse course.
You ignore the fact that there are reasons other than traffic which discourage suburbanites from moving into cities. I won't do so because the cities tend to be crime-ridden, and they levy that I pay extra taxes that I don't have to pay if I live outside of the city. The extra taxes are particularly frustrating in light of the refusal of large cities to take action to reduce crime.
@@greytooth898 first off, most large cities are pretty safe nowadays. Even Chicago’s crime rate is overblown. And secondly, the taxes are higher in cities because they’re paying for your suburbs. Suburban living is subsidized by us city residents, I mean you do realize it’s way more expensive to build roads and pipes and infrastructure in suburbs than cities right? If cities were able to spend their money solely on the city itself or switch from expensive roads to cheaper rail and bike paths, they’d have way more resources to invest in social services, homes, and crime prevention. You’re the one stopping cities from addressing crime.
Cities in Texas are such a mess. The entire middle-class who work in the city will flee to the suburbs to avoid city taxes but then happily end up spending that same money on miniature tank-esque pickup trucks so they can blow 500 hours a year commuting. It’s mind bogglingly inefficient
I travel through Austin via i-35 almost every week to/from San Marcos, and I have to say I absolute despise it. It is a major shipping lane so it is clogged by semi trucks, there is almost always a wreck that slows down everyone, and the perpetual construction just makes things worse. We need more transportation options, maybe even a rail line from North Austin to San Antonio.
5:37 I think this is the most important point to make. Something that I have recently learned in IR was organizational process model, or the idea that bureaucracies tend to follow standard operating procedures. A lot of the issues of DOTs as mentioned in the video stem from this fact, and a lot of good can be done by changing those SOPs.
Gotta love the fact that the report they use to justify widening I-35 because of congestion also has the Katy Freeway as the 2nd most congested highway...ya know...the widest highway in the country
As an austinite, this is a really important issue, the city is so wonderful but so challenging to get around, it’s important for people like you to explain the power balances of an issue like I-35
This video isn't really a review of Austin. But Austin is great! It was my second time there and I've enjoyed visiting each time. Downtown is changing so fast, and everything you might need is within walking distance.
@@CityBeautiful I enjoy downtown as well. I live in one of the outer towns since the skyrocketing housing costs displaced my family, and have been trying to bring awareness to getting better public transport and not widening the highways. I really hope to improve the city.
I live near Austin. TXDOT needs to get someone with common sense. A lot of I35 traffic through Austin is bypass traffic, including trucks. An expensive toll road(130) was built around Austin, but because of the expense(and crappy billing procedures) most bypass traffic does not use it. Simply use that money to make this free and expand if necessary. This would probably cost a lot less than what is proposed. A lot of I35 issues would go away. (Hint-I think TXDOT wants to toll these "managed" lanes in the future if they can-a reason in itself to be against this).
They could consider taking over the 130 and making it I35 and removing the tolls. Then the old I35 can have a congestion charge placed on it for through traffic
lots of us use the toll roads everyother trip just depends on where u live in the metro austin. like if you live on 35 your stuck with that road if you live by 130 etc then i35 is kinda useless cause you gotta go out of your way.
The problem with Austin's horrific traffic pattern is that it is a major city that is in itself also a pass-through city along a major freeway connecting to two other metro areas. It's like a super sized Waco or Temple. There is just simply no easy way to around it. SH 130 is only worth the very long detour if it's during the peak times and your car can take advantage of the higher speed limits.
I spent my entire college degree driving on a highway that was getting widened. It's complete now and it's much better than it used to be! But of course, it doesn't now really meet the current demand and one section is still backed up in rush hour some days, and it certainly won't get any less crowded!
California proved decades ago that, no matter how many freeways you build, they will*always* be jammed. It's kind of weird how DOT's still haven't figured this out. Or they have, but they don't care.
We the American people need to get off our asses and pressure our state legislatures to strip these state DOTs of their power and force them to submit to the will of we the people. All levels of American government work for us. We are the boss. The power of eminent domain needs to be pared back or we will lose our cities, towns, and communities to land gobbling highways that benefit only a few.
@@r.pres.4121 Actually, if the area is seen as poor, run down, and not very valuable, then it makes it more of a target for getting plowed by a highway
Yeah 35 should have been built around Austin. Not only is 35 a suburban computer fair, but also a thorough fair between north and south Texas which encompasses many cities on the way. On road trip I would drive mostly 35 the whole way and it's hell.
The traffic problems on I-35 in San Marcos are worse than in Austin (but they're widening it, too!) The whole San Antonio to Dallas and Ft Worth corridor is hours of hell. Driving even part way is physically and mentally exhausting.
Yeah, but if the State doesn't expand/build more highways how will the State get more money to expand/build more highways? If the State doesn't have that money how will they give contracts to their friends? Bet you didn't think about that! [/s]
The thinking is that if suburbanites aren't willing to drive through all the traffic they jointly create, then obviously that's the death of the city. It doesn't matter if the traffic returns, it means they're doing a good job and the city lives to see another decade.
As someone born and raised in Austin, it really makes me sad to see the state pushing this project on us. Austin has an opportunity to grow sustainably and be an example for good urban planning for the rest of the country, but instead suburban development will once again be subsidized by widening I-35 highway while the city suffers the cost. Look at the Katy freeway in Houston, it has 26 lanes and still has terrible traffic, that will never solve the problem. Here's to hoping we have real highway revolts once again.
As you know, SH 130 was built on the east side to alleviate through traffic on I-35, but then they tolled it. The result was that most through traffic took the free option on I-35, even with all of the gridlock. They should have tolled I-35 and made SH 130 and SH 45 free. They spent four years and a billion dollars to "expand" Mopac, and once they were done, it had exactly the same number of free lanes. But the billionaires can enjoy the $8 express lane while they laugh at the huddled masses at a dead stop during rush hour.
No offense to Texas but TxDOT builds these things to such an obscene scale too that it's basically a giant middle finger to humans who aren't driving through at 70mph. They are just 75' high tangles of white concrete soaring overhead. It's planning run amok. Every minor town has a ring road around it.
The issue isn’t the highway necessarily. The issue is that the city used mopac and I-35 to box in the core of the city so every care wanting to get into downtown has to funnel themself back in. And considering the Main Street roads are natural choke points there’s no alleviation of the traffic. You only have a few roads between 35 and mopac to cross the river 130 makes sense if you want to bypass Austin entirely but if you need to get into the city it doesn’t have much of a function
"Why are we still widening highways in US cities?" Money. Easy money is the reason. Those are juicy contracts for some companies. Easy to build, wilth lots of concrete and asphalt. Many interests are concealed into this process. At least that's the reason in Canada.
TxDOT receives 80% of its funding from the federal government. As much as Texans boast about small government, the truth is that they suckle at the gubmint teat as much as anybody. That is why they love their big highway projects, especially the ridiculous flyovers 100 feet in the sky!
It's because a lot of voters want more highways that they imagine will be less congested, and cities want highways because they think they bring jobs and workers and shoppers and residents to the city and enlarge its tax base. Highway contractors are just a small part of it. If everyone else were opposed, the highway contractors would have to go fishing.
Oh my God! I grew up in Austin from '45 to '65. It was a blessed place to be and to grow up in. So, at 2:51 I see this city. I have no idea where it is or why you're showing it. But then I see the Texas capital building is in the center. What! I have walked through the capital building so many, many hundreds of times from my grade school, near UT, to catch a bus home on Congress. So familiar, a part of my life. None of the buildings we now see existed when I lived there. It's alien to me now. I guess, who cares about my reaction. But I just had to say something. As Thomas Wolfe has told us, You can't go home again.
I used to live in Austin from 2004 to about 2008. Loved it, but the freeways were a mess even then. The answer was to build a tollway around the whole city and suburbs (SH130). That didn't work, obviously. Everywhere I've ever lived I've seen freeways that were said to be too small get widened. It takes years, it's expensive, and it never works.
Thank you for covering the ill-advised expansion of I-35 through downtown Austin. All it will do is destroy buildings, communities, and all without actually dealing with the traffic problem!
Well Austin needs to stop blowing its horn to the whole world and stop welcoming new business and people that it cannot accommodate. Austin is too big for its britches and needs to discourage anymore growth. Austin is not designed or meant to be a big major city. It is not meant to be like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth. It is time to discourage anymore growth in Austin and tell them to go elsewhere.
@@MichaelPrell R. Pres has a point. If Austin actually cared about growing with out additional traffic, it will need to do a lot more infill development of the city core. As it is, you have loads of SFH very close to the downtown, and very poor alternatives to driving to get around the city. Commercial zoning is still super car friendly with all their parking spots. The people of the city of Austin don't want the city to be bigger, as evidenced by their feet dragging on zoning changes.
@@Jack-fw4mw Those are all salient points! I don't disagree with you at all; those are huge issues impacting Austin! But to zoom out a bit, I'd point out that those are issues are not Austin-specific - and would, in fact, argue that they are a particularly unique *American* problem with city growth. R. Pres pointed out to other cities in TX who have all experienced the same issue, but at different points in their development cycle, and none of them have solved it, either; it just appears to be "worse" or "more extreme" (or whatever terms you want to use) in Austin because Austin happens to be in the midst of a huge population boom, right now, at this very moment. American cities, from California to TX, from Georgia to Oregon, are all strangling themselves for a variety of wildly varied yet interconnected reasons. Austin is no exception. The more we can do to convince residents that in-fill development is great, that parking requirements are bad, and that every investment in public transportation is a net gain for both drivers and non-drivers alike, the more we can make our cities healthier, safer, and more livable. People (as a whole) are resistant to change, but it's only by adapting that we as a species have been able to do so much. I have faith that my fellow Austinites will come around and create a city that our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be proud to call home in a hundred years. Baby steps are still steps forward. ;)
It's expected from those living in the suburbs an express route to get in and out of downtown, which is its own neighborhood, quickly no matter the cost. These freeway expansions rarely benefit the communities they're plowing through and only further subsidize and incentivize suburban living.
Sweet!! So glad you made a video about this. We are fighting as hard as we can but txdot seems to just overrule everyone. Weird that for transit everyone has to vote to fund it but for this highway nobody said a thing
I wish for everybody’s sake there that the huge subsidies for roads could just be shifted-over to other forms of local transit. Or at least just remove them from roads so they can compete on an equal field of people seeing how expensive they really are against each other.
Loop 130 was originally intended to be an alternative for IH 35, but when they started construction they decided to change it to a toll road that does not help with the congestion on 35
As California has seen, too much local control of local planning issues can be a disaster. Too many cooks spoiling the broth has made the high-speed rail project far more expensive than it needs to be and high-speed rail doesn't have the same potential while you have local areas which can keep areas for single family homes only (high housing density around public transit interchanges is helpful). Spain can build high-speed rail lines for a fraction of the cost because of the high housing density in cities (a lot of the rest of the country is empty) and once the government decides it wants to build a railway through your land, there are few legal avenues to stop it, but Spaniards aren't generally dying due to lack of freedom as a result.
It is such a paradox. I love the fact that I didn't grow up in a North-American suburb and being so car dependent, but instead I grew up and live in the Netherlands, where you can safely cycle from A to B and where you aren't dependent on the car to get to a shop. However, I am impressed by the infrastructure in Texas. Those massive highways, even with frontage roads, and their huge interchanges continue to amaze me. It is obvious that the widening of I-35 is necessary, because of the way that new suburbs are build in the USA. The solution? Create higher density, less car dependent, neighbourhoods with good public transport connections. Also make sure that the places where people go to work are concentrated as well, instead of being spread out along highways and busy roads.
Austin just invested $8billion in light rail, metro, and commuter rail. It has also changed its zoning laws to allow for more mixed use zoning. We already have a pretty comprehensive bike network- for an American city, and we’re expanding it.
And The Netherlands turned away from highway dominance in the 1970s to minimize children being killed by cars, and to avoid dependence on foreign oil. If only Americans cared more about their children than about their cars.
@@danieldaniels7571Why not take the tolls off 130 and expand it(and the 45 connection roads). This would take a lot less money and cause a lot less trouble. I agree that traffic is bad on 35, but be smart about the expansion.
@@pattyeverett2826 That could actually be a perfect solution, as long as the entire resulting route was redesignated as I-35. Since the toll road is operated by a private company it doesn’t seem to be looked at as an option, though.
The "hammer and nail" metaphor at times might be applied to this channel. Leaving aside historical injustices in the initial locating of many freeways going through urban areas, moving a route as economically important to the state, national, and international economies is no small matter. I-35 carries a tremendous amount of trade from the Mexican border at Laredo to Dallas and beyond. Now you would not find one trucker opposed to a nice new bypass around Laredo. I remember having all too much time to examine some of the finer points of new Austin architectural themes as I sat in the middle of creeping traffic during rush hour. But too often there's a willful blindness, exhibited by committees against highways as well as City Beautiful, to the fact that while some auto traffic can be displaced to transit, etc, you can't do that with trucks and other vehicles using highways like I-35 as the intercity transport routes they were initially conceived as. So, while the idea of turning the freeway into some sort of boulevard is nice in theory, where do you get the money then to relocate I-35 - and then redevelop the old corridor? Will locals support the massive costs required for the projects? Even if it means cutting spending in other important areas, or raising taxes? One other question - was this highway in the middle of the city when it was built? I'm not familiar with the history of Austin, but I know it's far from uncommon to see highways and bypasses originally built outside of urban areas swallowed, especially for those growing most quickly. One example is the 401 in Toronto. It cuts right across what's now the middle of Toronto, but when it was laid out and the land purchased, it bypassed what was then Toronto and its largest suburbs by a fair ways. It was designed and referred to as the "Toronto Bypass", and rerouted the then being built 401 away from the initially planned route closer to Lake Ontario. When this happens, I'm less sympathetic to those opposed to its expansion or (especially) existence. Much like someone who moves into a house by an airport, factory, or such, that's your choice. Don't figure you have any right to try and remove that which predates you, and which you knowingly moved in next to. I'd be interested in seeing some more suggested solutions from City Beautiful, along with the criticisms. Because while we'd all love to see many of the ideas here implemented, there are generally large, complex problems that need to be resolved first. Not impossible to overcome - just difficult. But you need to start somewhere.
In Austin, the I35 came after the city center. I think it is better create a ring road in I35 parameters around austin e divert trafic to this new road
Your analogies about airport and "don't figure you have any rights to remove which predates you" is just silly. Oh, the airport has always been here like the old gods, how dare us move close to it and demand that it be changed to suit the changing population? Guess what? the old gods take my and my neighbor tax dollars. The old gods didn't complain when I and many others changed empty fields to productive buildings and lands. And for as long as people is a live, things that we build serves us. If you would like to turn the highway into a new god, you can, but don't take my money to do it. When we have flying cars will you be one of those demand that we "save the highway" still? Silly is it not? As for funding, that's a tough one. But it's just that, a difficult problem, not an impossibility. As far as I see, just like Katy, traffic will catch up with the expassion. We'll be still in traffic and "think about traffic'", the only difference is we sit in traffic on a bigger highway. So might as well save the money and heartache and leave it be. Justlet the people on the highway bemoan aboutthe highway, because they'll do it on a 4 lanes road or a 10 lanes road.
As an Austin resident, I'm especially thankful for videos like this that shine a light on the juggernaut that is state DOT highway projects. Contributing to the problem in Texas specifically, a huge number of public officials and construction firms are corrupt and self-serving, and these multi-billion-dollar projects are poorly regulated and go without robust auditing and enforcement. Embezzlement and no-bid contracting is the norm here.
I first started visiting Austin in the early 1970s because of the many track meets there. They were double-decking I35 even then. This stretch of road will always be a problem unless radical changes are made to how we deal with traffic.
As a Round Rock resident who often travels through Austin to San Antonio it would help if 35 wasn’t the only non toll freeway option to drive from North to South Austin...out of 4. So I’ll advocate for de-tolling those over widening the footprint. Though a reasonable alternative transport option would be nice too (we don’t even have buses on weekends up here)
I think that bit about the entire purpose of these organizations being to build roads is the most important one in your video. Whenever you create something like that you end up with something doing stupid stuff to justify its own continued existence.
Same story in SC. I used to work for an RPO and we oversaw our regions transportation money. Everything was basically widenings or resurfacings. Little to no transit or bike/ped projects. Also, what do you use to do your mapping animations? They're super smooth and really help visualize what you're talking about.
5:18 let me guess, the institute of transport study/report didn't include other modes of transport like for example the *train*? Texas TOD: Nope we already went through all alternative roadway options.
It isn't the states responsibility to provide local public transportation. That falls on the shoulders of the city. The state is taking action based on what they control, and what they need.
Great video! However, I think you're missing a couple important talking points. I live in Austin and it's true that widening I35 will displace hundreds of people and make an even more horrendous barrier right down the middle of the city. It's also true that I35 is quite slow during rush hour. If widening I35 solved the problems then the costs could be weighed carefully, BUT widening I35 will NOT solve any problems -- in fact it will only make those same problems even worse! On the outskirts of Austin suburban developments are propping up everywhere. It's easy to understand why this is. People can live far from the city inexpensively but commute downtown quickly with their car, and the value of their house will grow over time. The problem this creates is traffic. Since they live far out, they must use their car to go to the grocery store, bars, cafes, work, and everything else. Then since they have to drive everywhere, they demand that the city has wide roads and lots of parking. This makes the city less walkable and less desirable to live in or visit. So that's the problem. The problem gets worse when highways are expanded because instead of a development having a 35 minute commute (which might dissuade some people from living there) it will have a 25 minute commute. Then when more outskirt developments are built, the newly widened highway gets backed up again and the 10 billion dollar project now just made traffic worse than it was before. The solution: Austin has A LOT of low density areas close to downtown. These areas need to be able to build up. They should build apartments over one story restaurants, they should turn houses into duplexes, townhouses, or apartments. The reason this isn't happening isn't because people don't want to live close to downtown -- they do. It's not happening because in many places it's ILLEGAL. They made single family zoning laws and parking minimums that make it impossible to create a walkable downtown like humans enjoyed in the past. We need to repeal these laws now and build up which will make Austin more walkable and solve the traffic problem. And the good news is that it's free, and we can use that $10 billion to add better public transit.
On the bright side though, having so many lanes makes it simpler to convert one lane in each direction into transit/light-rail tracks. Some cities just don't have space for that.
Thanks your knowledge. I don't live in the US but I am learning a lot about things I didn't learn from you. In Vancouver there is a very, very small portion of the city that has a freeway and the rest is more about getting around places through transit, cycling, carpooling, ride sharing, and walking. For those who wish to see their communities have less freeway widening, advocating is important and my hope for the best of luck to you
Ha, ha, ha. You had me until Hello Fresh, delivered by truck via I-35 right to your door. I-35 is not only about suburbanites driving into Austin, (although massive development along the I-35 corridor is a big factor) it is the major North-South interstate and international artery in the region if not the entire state. A lot of dangerous driving and fatal accidents already, all due, in part, to congestion. A partial solution until others are found would be lower speed limits from about Georgetown to South Austin. Some of the extension projects that will allow traffic to avoid I-35 will help too. Turning I-35 into a boulevard would only shift the problem as it would have to be replaced by a beltway encircling the city. All the interstate and international traffic will keep flowing one way or the other.
This was already built and completed years ago. SH 130 was built and is the intended ring route around Austin & San Antonio for Mexico based trucking. TAMU did a study in 2015, and only 1% of traffic on I35 (in Austin) is trucks. Only 14% of total I35 traffic in Austin is drive through.
Once we get rid of oil and car companies' lobbyists in our government, educate the american people and correct their misconceptions about what makes an efficient city, and get americans to vote for change in public transit and city design. In other words: never. We're better off just emmigrating to a country that cares about their quality of life.
Been a subscriber for 2 years. Kinda cool to see you cover my city (& office building) in one of your videos! ATX has a ton of issues including I-35. I'd love to see you cover the effects/causes of agglomeration and the large migrations like we have seen to small/medium metros cities like Austin/Salt Lake/Denver. Excellent video 👍
I lived in Austin in late 90 and early 2000 on W 6th street, love the city. Revisited Austin a few years ago and found the city much larger and more surprisingly more expensive than I thought. Compared to where I live now in SoCal, the housing price is not cheap.
Welp, time to hop my flight to Austin! Also not mentioned is the huge nice toll road that goes around Austin that's often open. It should be easy to just designate that as the new I-35, although I know there's lots of bureacracy and red tape preventing that. Another good thing getting started is Austin's new transit plan that was finally voted in.
redesignating that toll road as I-35 is the no-brainer solution that no one seems to be looking at. Because this really isn’t about Austin, it’s about the fact that I-35 is a major international trucking corridor.
As someone who has played a bunch of cities skylines and also driven on motorways before and after expansion, I’ve realised that this is a farce and a real waste of time, 70% of the time traffic jams on motorways won’t be solved by more lanes, instead solving the delay up ahead causing everyone to jam up will help, and although an extra lane could help avoid these jam areas by letting unrelated traffic go forwards faster, it would just be dodging an issue rather than really solving it. Usually new lanes will just allow more cars on the same road, increasing the density, but usually not really helping the traffic flow much, the only time where more lanes will always help is during sections where lane mathematics are required, if you have 2 entry skip lanes and 1 exit slip further ahead having 4 lanes would help split the traffic into the right section to avoid merging/splitting in places that would slow down the traffic, instead having a main lane that just goes forward as fast as possible, and the other lanes handling the splits and merges, or if you have an unavoidable congestion point and you just need to help as much traffic as possible get around it.
I-35 from Laredo to Ok City is high volume freight route. Austin is terrible for commercial trucks. The only route is I-35 straight thru the city. No belt roads or bypass roads. Ugh 😩.
The state has power on the subject because they are roads built to move people around the state, not just the city. It’s an interstate, meaning a road meant to move people among and between states.
If that was the actual goal, then they would just expand SH 130; This road starts on I35 south of San Antonio, goes around both San Antonio & Austin, before connecting back up with I35 away from the population centers. There are connections to the road from I 35 between the cities as well. As of 2015, 86% of the traffic on I35 in Austin was local traffic. This is a local road in an international network.
Keep up the good fight! This video should be on prime time TV because you have educate. If people don't know they just continue as old. Just curious, is that a Charles Wilson T shirt?
Here in India traffic in some cities is horrible....but still gets managed by wide boulevards especially in the city where I live where there is no space for expressway construction through the city with exceptional cases in some places. Public transportation like a metro or light rail should be encouraged.
US stade govr: We gonna demolish
30 apparment buildings, 100 local buissines 15 churches and multiple social areas so more people can enjoy their local traffic jam together
brilliant
EXACTLY! Because they're crazy!
TBF, do we really need those 5 churches? There's practically a church on every street corner in the US as it is. The rest? Yeah, that's BS.
'Bout the size of it.
👍🏽 Make great sense. Facilitating traffic flow facilitates commerce. You can’t make money if people don’t want to waste 5 hrs in a car driving to your business
City Beautiful once again asking the important questions.
Is it a coincidence that he made a simular video today
We're double trouble with these Monday uploads.
I swear i just saw your video about the same thing 10 minutes ago lol
@@CityBeautiful true.
Saw your video, then right after i was notified of a new video from City Beautiful.
Austinite here. Some important context. Voters in Austin just passed an $5 billon transit package that will add a 3 light rail lines, and another commuter rail line (we already have one). Voters also have passed about $2 billion in alternative mobility bonds. There are plenty of other options. Interestingly, voters won't have a chance to approve the I-35 expansion. Most likely because TXDOT knows what the result would be. Thanks for highlighting our fight down here in Austin!
The SJWs have stolen the city.
@@michaelmullin3585 stay on topic this is about transport infrastructure.
Yeah I really wish City Beautiful would do a video on Project Connect. It’s a massive endeavor that deserves more attention. To bring up transportation in Austin and not discuss or even bring up how huge project connect is weird to me
@@michaelmullin3585 then this time i agree with the SJWs
@@michaelmullin3585 clearly the wrong channel for you bud
As London almost learned the hard way back in the 60s, widening roads doesn't actually alleviate your traffic problem because it just encourages more people to pile onto that road. The only viable solution for long-term sustainability is massively reducing our dependence on cars by building mixed-use suburban neighborhoods with lots of bike lanes good public transit (preferably by some kind of grade-separated rail, or at least rail with right of way over street traffic).
Ok, but what if the traffic problem is already extremely bad. Local freeway is rural but is bumper to bumper all the time.
Austin is way to big to only need a bike it’s not like manhattan where you can bike anywhere in the city
@@zthirtyblue and why is that?! London is massive, so are many european cities yet only americans build such low density cities where one out of four meters is allocated to a parking lot... get out of your car centric mentality and start buiding proper cities, or at least stop destroying those that are already there.
@David Moore they did find a way to make the US like it is right now, there must be a way to reverse the damange
That seems like advice for local roads. A lot of the traffic just goes through the city. None of what you proposed would really help the traffic from Mexico going to the rest of the country.
As a Boston resident, this is fascinating to see. Here, we have been actively trying to move highways out of the center of the city and making sure they disrupt less communities. It’s interesting to see how the rest of the county is doing the opposite.
honestly any highway system in a city should be underground like boston
@@the.abhiram.r Or just nonexistent. Boston does fine with hardly any highway lanes.
@@ocschwar
Because they are all underground?
Well, not the entire rest of the country, but certainly the Sun Belt.
@@BaggyMcPiper true
There's no reason a major highway should go through any city center, that defeats the purpose of the density of the urban core. Manhattan's west side highway, which still a giant armpit, is a step in the right direction.
They should have demolished it, built the Westway and finished the missing piece of I-495.
@@johnathin0061892 haha. No. Cities are for people. Not cars.
I saw that story on the climate protesters blocking that west side highway
Yeah, I've never understood why the USA loves to put highways in its cities, it sounds absolutely dystopian. Who wants to live next to one? And highways benefit from having as few entrances and exits as possible, so not really all that beneficial to cities anyway.
@@mike140298 It's beneficial to people who commute into the cities from suburban areas.
You don't mention the gorilla in the room: more lanes do not speed up urban traffic. I have seen this with my own eyes. If you build a lane, cars will come and fill it.
I learned that myself playing Cities Skylines.
he's the one who taught me about it..i think. and the more i live, the more i see it being true
its called induced demand
He has in other videos. I actually think he has spent too little time on opposition to the induced demand argument. I am generally against more and wider freeways but I feel like "induced demand" has become a bit of a strawman argument. Proponents of more freeways are often aware of induced demand but think they are a good idea anyway. And institutions like this channel advocating for more rational city planning should be talking about this in a little more depth.
We need to give people financial incentives to use public transportation and give up the automobile.
An important thing to note for people unfamiliar with Austin: where I-35 sits today used to be a boulevard that separated a predominantly white part of town from a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood. Black residents were forced out of the neighborhoods to the west of that boulevard and moved east. As Austin has grown, East Austin has heavily gentrified, which has pushed Black residents to suburbs like Pflugerville. If you want to get from Pflugerville to downtown… yes, you guessed it, the most reasonable way of getting there today is I-35. There’s also a state highway running parallel to I-35 (known as Mopac) which has been widened in the last few years with toll lanes added, but it is mainly used by locals and does not carry interstate truck traffic.
ah yes, amerikkka
Why does a highway go through a city at all, instead of around it?
Another highway through a black neighbourhood? Huh. It's crazy that people of colour always happen to live along the best alignment for a highway. What a crazy coincidence.
@@rogerwilco2 look it up. It started in LA
As an Austin resident I also feel like a bit of this is somehow just state antagonism against Austin specifically. I've never lived anywhere before where the state government comes down so hard opposing local governance - I wouldn't be surprised if TXDot isn't accepting alternative proposals from locals partially because they just don't give a shit about Austin and want traffic to get through no matter the impact.
The best way to get the DoT to stop building highways is to bulldoze the DoT's office and say that they're building a new freeway there and that the freeway is "necessary infrastructure"
Just looking at I-35 on Google maps alone, I noticed that Austin lacks something a lot of other cities use, a loop or diversion around the city for traffic not destined for Austin. Maybe an auxiliary 235 to split off somewhere between Georgetown and Round Rock then rejoining I-35 around Buda? Circumventing the city on the west side and avoiding downtown.
Ring roads are difficult to build here due to the rough terrain on the west side of the city.
U.S. 183 should be the bypass around the east side of downtown.
Neighborhoods sprung up faster than a ring road could be built, now 360 could work as a functional ring road, and it kinda does, except it is full of TRAFFIC LIGHTS. ON A MAJOR HIGHWAY. A DOZEN TRAFFIC LIGHTS. IT IS TRAFFIC HELL. IT MAKES ME WISH I COULD'VE BEEN DRIVING ON THE SO CALLED KATY FREEWAY PARKING LOT. TRAFFIC LIGHTS ON A HIGHWAY THAT HANDLES 50000 CARS A DAY.
Nobody could anticipate the collapse of California and all of them moving there and having enough time to plan a highway expansion. Plus most of the houses and apartments are built by California developers cashing in and charging outrageous rates.
Austin is the 11th largest city in the US and the only one in the top 20 to not have a interstate bypass other than Phoenix, which is kind of its own thing.
In Shreveport, Louisiana, they are planning to build a brand new highway through the middle of the city against the will of the city. Ridiculous this is still happening in 2021 but the city and parish (county) have no real power to stop it, and the DOT is dead set on finishing the highway even though a bypass already exist.
Oh crumbs, can you spam them with great videos ?! I’ve just watched a new ‘Not Just Bikes’ video about London Ontario, cancelling a widening project.
Does Louisiana even have the budget to do that?
Well then we should give the DoT a taste of their own medicine by building a highway through the middle of their offices.
Funny how the government will reroute I-95 to the DC beltway because we can't cut our capital city into pieces with an expressway right down the middle. Makes you think about what they know about urban highway construction
@@iancypes5911 Most of DC is a cesspit, best thing they could do is pave it over.
Not Just Bikes and City Beautiful videos in the same day. I'm loving it
And about the same topic, really.
Hmmm
@@AldanFerrox Which absolutely zero city planners in the US will ever be able to implement lmao.
Americans: *existential dread time*
@MikeN Ike you do know what a street is right?
Houston has an interesting case, where the state wants to expand a highway whereas the federal, county and local government are stopping it. So far the state wants to proceed, but the federal lawsuit (I think) will make it dead before then
I wish money for highways were reallocated to METRO, who can use the funding to build light rail instead of brt. Trains funded infrastructure for cars in the 50s & 60s.
Texas DOT is absolutely bonkers.
Thomas Nimmo Because the state government in general is bonkers, and it’ll stay that way until we vote the current people out.
Thank god, Houston is a sprawling nightmare. The i10 expansion through Katy TX has been a disaster
I live locally in downtown houston and I support the expansion. Going from 4 to 2 lanes is awful at 69 and 45. Pierce elevated has no shoulder for safety. My commute will be hurt by the expansion and rerouting, but it is for the good for the rest of the city/area and my personal nimbyism shouldn't limit progress. I will say there isn't much point after this expansion and hope more innovative solutions are available.
*American governments: "It's too expensive to build a high speed rail. Think about the cost to buy all that property!"*
*Also them: "We're going to widen the highway from 10 lanes to 20 lanes"*
later....
"Wait why is there more traffic??"
@@Ezekiyam382 later: 4 more lanes will fix it
It is to expensive and rail is inefficient as shit
Inertia is the reason. Americans (especially Republicans which dominate the state Government of Texas) are used to adding more lanes to solve the problem, not building HSR which is a more “foreign” solution to most Americans.
@@highway2heaven91 because building more lanes is the best alternative
"Shouldn't the local residents get the final say?" Harhar. Nice one, CB.
Texas state politicans have been proven to give ZERO FUCKS about Austin.
If anything, they go out of their way to spite the city by stripping local powers away from Austin and consolidating it at the state level.
I love it when some deluded Texans say TX is all about small government, but then the State govt is one of the most authoritarians and always banning cities/municipalities from doing objectively positive things.
@@souvikrc4499 It probably isn't all of them. Just the ones that have been in power since... Wait a second, why *have* they been in office so long again?
(Looks at Texas's history of gerrymandering) Oh god damn it.
@@HHopebringer My state also has a heinous history of gerrymandering, and it has only gotten worse over the past 10 years.
Idk how we continue collectively granting legitimacy to entities that don't even let us have a real say in anything. We know what's best for you, pick one of these fake choices. And it's actually what is best for some industry or something...
This is exactly how bad Georgia's DOT is. GDOT is literally prohibited by law by the state government, from building mass transit and can only build highways, freeways, and state roads.
Isn’t that was MARTAs role is?
That's insane.
FDOT in Florida at least is letting Brightline Rails to go into service.
@@tyman2323 Theoretically MARTA should receive financial support from GDOT, pretty much every other large public transit agency in North America receives funding from their State or province's DoT. Also MARTA only operates in the Atlanta area, it doesn't have any authority to build mass transit in most of Georgia.
No mass transit is the only thing keeping Georgia from becoming a post-apocalyptic wasteland like California.
Highways should not go into cities, but around them.
Cars too tbh
houston did that 3 times with 610, beltway 8, and now the new grand parkway 99 being built. highways don't usually build into cities as much as they used to, cities build into and along highways in my state.
I think the lessons learnt by the developed world helps us in the developing world like in India. India has been focusing on making ring-roads around it's major cities so that traffic that doesn't need to enter the city, doesn't have to. This not only takes traffic off the cities but also reduces pollution (and inturn, cost of logistics) as vehicles are running at highway efficiency instead of the stop and go traffic of the city. Props to the lessons for that.
Lubbock Tx loop 289
in my opinion the circular spider web highway layout is the best.
We're running into this problem in Virginia, too. The VDOT is overruling a lot of locals who don't want highways expanded (and don't want largely, traditionally African American areas destroyed & upturned so those highways can go through).
Insanity. Acting like it’s the 1950s we don’t need more highways!
Hey, but at least we'll get new bike trail with the widening of I-66!
A bike trail 6 feet away from the highway with no sound barrier...
@@thomasaly7624 Hurrah!
@@thomasaly7624 It's sad when we have to accept it because it's better than nothing
I reported a couple flashing lights as safety hazards, explaining that they make it much harder for me to walk down affected stroads or cross them. So they called me up and explained that they were adding these lights to every intersection. I asked how I was supposed to cross any street with this. They explained that they were adding these lights to every intersection.
I don't know what I can do. Are there any groups trying to stop vdot and work towards safer infrastructure?
This is the EXACT opposite of the zoning problem. The problem in zoning is hyper-local control, the problem with these highways is a combination of too high a level of control (local residents be damned) PLUS VERY bad research/myopia/planning/incentives.
The people who bought properties right next to a freeway with a country known for widening its freeways are VERY BAD at planning indeed.
"They're calling for the highway to be replaced with a surface boulevard and the highway lanes either completely tunneled..."
Oh man, as a Seattle area resident *that* sounds familiar. Good luck with that Austin...
The sketch of what it would look like looks really cool, but I don't think it would work for a highway that big. They could definitely do something like this on smaller roads though.
It worked though. It was a pain in the ass, and it took way longer than it was supposed to, but the tunnel got built.
@@mylesbarrett2031 Sure the tunnel finally got built (years late and massively over budget), but the new surface street part is *still* under construction...
Also cars and tunnels are a notoriously dangerous combination. If you think a crash on the surface is bad just wait until you see a crash in a closed space.
@@mylesbarrett2031 and no exits to downtown so you have to get into downtown before hand or after.
Thanks for spotlighting Austin.
Another reason the concerns of local residents doesn't matter much is the antagonistic relationship between the City and the State elected officials that visit Austin every other year.
Due to political differences, the State seems to enjoy putting the boot on Austin as much as possible.
Yeah, the Texas state legislature seems to be full of control freaks.
If Austin was not run by gay snowflakes, maybe.....
I grew up in Austin in the 80's. So, I've seen all of the changes there over the last 40 years. The State government doesn't put "the boot" on Austin nearly as much as Austin itself does. The city council has been starting and stopping growth initiatives for decades each time the controlling party changed. Now, it has been in the hands of one party for too long that cares nothing for economic progress. And you see what has become of it. The city is a blight and all growth is in neighboring counties. It truly saddens me to see what has become of my hometown. BTW, I predict nothing will happen to I35. It's easily just as hot a topic as any salimander conservation issue. Thus, no one will agree and nothing will happen.
@ghost mall sounds like that's a personal experience
@@michaelmullin3585 reported for spreading false/misleading information.
What isn't mentioned in this video is the fact that 35 is a MAJOR trade artery from Mexico to the rest of the US.
As it is, anyone who doesn't want to get stuck in traffic while passing through will usually head out east and get on the toll road that bypasses the city completely.
I35 is a major illegal alien and drug freeway. Blow it up.
I was also thinking that. It seems very disingenuous to leave that information out.
In the rest of the world highways go around cities... But the US wish to be different
@@herlescraft the purpose of the highways is to service the cities so that goods can be delivered to and from them.
@@danieldaniels7571 are you telling me that cities around the world do not have goods delivered to them?! do you seriusly think paris is having an hard time delivering goods to it's shops? what about old historic cities like Milan or London?
look outside the US sometimes, most of your problems are self inflicted.
The boulevard replacement is going to be a challenge given the significance of 35, but there's no good reason it couldn't be routed on SH 130 to bypass the city
The proposed option would include to put the highway underneath
Completely agree!. SH 130 would need to have the tolls removed for this to work though. Especially given the record of the Texas toll agency.
The boulevard replacement includes sinking I35 underground and building the boulevard over top. It's actually a really great idea and would finally connect East Austin and Downtown in a way that would enormously benefit not just the health and walkability of those that could take advantage of it, but all of that new, densely zoned commercial and residential space would sell SO fast and be an economic boon for the city. If I had to speculate, there's likely some part of the Texas Government that would want to actively sabotage that from ever happening
Agreed. 130 should be widened, and then 35 should be rerouted there. Then the old 35 through Downtown Austin would become a toll road, and the former 130 would no longer be a toll road.
Locals would take mopac or 183 to move N/S and E/W instead. Trucks would be more on the outskirts. 👍🏻
I visited Texas couple months ago and their highways reminded me of a kid going wild with Sim City. Its like highway porn all over the state. Whether it was Houston or Dallas or even Austin, its level on levels of highways. Everything was so freaking spread out it was crazy. I dont know how people put up with the suburban sprawl there, but it definitely made me dislike Texas overall. Even in my car dependent suburbs of NJ, everything is still somewhat within reach and feels closer. I did like Austin as a city but that highway is definitely a blemish on it. They should build highways around the city, not thru it....
Everything is bigger in texas 🤠
One of the major issues with Austin is that you can only really build highways on one side of the city due to the geography. Fun fact, Austin was supposed to have far more highways cutting through the city center, but those were never built.
And then the city grows and the highway ends up going through it. Just pull up the map of Houston, TX and you'll see what I'm talking about.
@@jameshou7911 Theres a difference between a city naturally growing though and artificially slicing thru a city with a highway.
@@historythyme if those other freeways were built, the congestion on 1-35 wouldn’t be so bad.
That is so unfair, in Austin at least, how people can oppose highway expansion and yet be ignored.
You can add all the lanes you want. Traffic will always be a thing.
Amazing too that Texas continues to pull this shit despite the fact that Houston has proven time and time again that expanding highways does not work.
Its because you guys are misunderstanding the point. They're not expanding the highways to eliminate traffic, they're being expanded to allow more traffic to flow through the rapidly growing cities. That's why these projects will continue.
A traffic accident can close down 2-3 lanes after highway patrol arrives. 5-6 Lane highway can still move traffic even if it's bottlenecked by people gawking at the scene.
Of course, but with these cities in Texas the traffic increases not because of more lanes but population growth. Metro Houston added 1.3 million, and Austin is the fastest growing city in north America of course there's going to be more traffic with more people moving there
@@Distress. right? congestion will still exist however more cars can move in the same amount of time
So what about induced demand? Even if they do widen the highway, won't that just increase demand so that congestion will go back to where it was? (So event those regional residents who would benefit won't actually.)
In fact congestion will get worse with more lanes
yeah but try explaining that to those old greed pigs...
Correct. Funny enough, TxDOT famously did the same thing in Houston--they widened the Katy Freeway (West I-10 corridor) and added three free lanes and two toll lanes in each direction, making it the widest freeway in the nation. As a result, traffic time rose by nearly 30%. So it's not like they don't have data on this already.
@@mmhoss I think there is a median. The maximum width of a motorway should be around 4 lane. Sydney still has 2 lane motorway which I have no idea how they decided to build 2 lane motorway in 21st century
Hey, so I just found this channel called "Oh the Urbanity" that made a great video on induced demand and why it applies differently to cars than to public transport. They have also made a great video about the suburban position towards car traffic that I think would be worth to check out :)
If they would build a train line, and a bike path/pedestrian space the overall capacity would be much higher (measured in people/hour), and a lot of valuable space still would be free for a walkable city.
Austin is about to start on a subway and light rail line. Two in fact!
@@saxmanb777 I think capmetro put a pause on one of the train lines crossing 35 because of texdot
Exactly, that's what we want - unfortunately that's probably not what's going to happen. Also Urban Rail would be a hard sell in Texas overall. So many cities here are so dispersed and suburbanized that creating effective stops that are walking distance to as many people as possible is extremely difficult. There are still some more dense parts of Austin that would really benefit from more Light Rail, and retro-fitting sprawled out neighborhoods to be more dense and walkable could go a long way too, but it's going to be a long time before Mass Transit can actually take off in Texas, and in most of America in general, in a way that actually benefits everyone.
Decades of sprawl and forcing your populace to buy cars has effectively ensured that basically everyone has a car, and if you don't you're a second-class citizen who's forced to use underfunded public transit. It's really sad and it's awful for our cities, environment, social lives, and health
Why does everyone always think the solution is more bike paths?
@@cbalan777 It is useful only when combined with public transport. A perfect and cheap solution to the last mile problem.
I lived my childhood in a car-dependent suburbia. I was unable to go anywhere on my own. (And of course I was too young to drive a car.)
Now I live in the inner city. It is very convenient. I can do everything (go to work, buy groceries, meet a friend, etc...) on bike or i just hop on the tram or metro that comes every 2-5 minutes. For me it is freedom.
And also space efficient.
In my city, the 60% of the travels are on public transport and still the cars are stuck in the traffic.
If everybody wants to go by car alone, we should demolish half of the city to build 8-10 lanes highways instead of the 2-4 lane roads/streets.)
City Beautiful once again shoving itself into my recommended videos
I work for a company that does alot of business with TxDOT. (Light post, beams for highway signs and more)
And let me tell you, TxDOT will NEVER admit when they're wrong. And will double down if you call them out on it.
I can just feel the humidity through my screen.
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It took 3-4 years to build a partial cloverleaf intersection in my city (Victoria BC) at the most congested section of the highway called the McKenzie Interchange project.
Ridiculous timeline for basically 0 improvement. Now 3 crowded lanes must merge over into the same 2 lanes going north…
Now the pandemic is over and the project has been tested. The commute time has basically remained identical now that we’re back to full traffic.
The Katy freeway is a parking lot in Texas with this same idea in mind. This fixes nothing. It’s disappointing the study is commissioned by the authority that will always advocate for cars and trucks.
building cloverleaf intersections in the 21st century sounds like a joke. Disappointing to hear
All those "upgrades" near the iron workers bridge did nearly nothing
Everywhere around Europe: let's make ring roads
USA: ah yes, city centre - the perfect place for a highway
Some cities here have ring roads, instead of or in addition to through the cities.
@@johnathin0061892 in fact, most semi-major cities in the US have one or more rings in addition to highways going through the cities.
Austin’s geography makes building ring roads impossible, meanwhile other Texas cities have tons of ring roads. The longest ring road in the world goes around Houston. It’s called the Grand Parkway.
US has some of both
@@historythyme You don't necessarily need ring roads, a bypass is sufficient. The point is not to build freeways into urban areas, and if you do they should be grade separated (tunneled or elevated) so not to disturb the urban fabric. Exits/entrances also should be forbidden within the urban centers so traffic can spread out into the grid instead of it all being dumped in one location.
TLDR, freeways purpose should be to travel large distances between cities, not the daily commute.
City of Raleigh just made above-the-curb protected bike lanes part of the UDO of avenue street design. Probably should look into that, I feel like this would have made bigger news if it was anywhere else. Raleigh also stopped a highway from going through the city in the mid-20th century.
Yeah, as someone who has family that lives in the Triangle, that is a good thing.
Durham though, wasn’t so lucky.
Portland has plenty of state roads stopped by locals. The same for a lot of cities.
That's good news, thanks for sharing!
And yet we (Raleigh) are also in the midst of a huge, expensive, highly disruptive, and not necessarily all that progressive or visionary highway-widening project on the west side of town, too, so…
it's insane to me that almost all US cities have highways running straight through the city centers, and it's even worse that those highways are being expanded
Imagine if it gets to the point in which entire cities end up getting consumed by these highways.
One of my favorite channels I’ve binged all the videos
Recently moved to Austin for university and have really enjoy the coverage of I-35. We need more visibility to stop its widening. Luckily we have project connect on the way, which will help. If anyone ever needs footage from Austin let me know!
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I'm also a student here, came in 2017 and I've had a car or motorized vehicle of some sort the whole time. While I don't plan on staying here post-grad, it really would be a shame if this went through. While it would benefit people on the edges of town... space is already tight enough inside of the city and losing / displacing all the small businesses will hurt what makes Austin unique from DFW or H-Town.
same!
Ever been on I-35 through Austin, it’s way too congested, a couple more lanes would help traffic greatly, especially for when I have through that city.
@@PokemonScott I know that’s the intuitive solution, but it completely disregards choice in trip generation and thus ignores induced demand. If you do some research on induced demand you’ll realize why “just add a few more lanes” doesn’t always work.
I think it has something to do with the identity of expansionist empires (which the US is) where endless growth is seen as an overall good instead of a cancer.
I live in Texas. Have lived in and around Austin, Dallas, Houston, etc. The interstate system sucks. It kills the cities and subsidizes the suburbs. Most folks are apparently blind to this. If the highways were gone in an instant, I bet many of the suburbians would move right back into the city, as they have little loyalty to their cul-de-sacs and stroads.
Really disappointed in Texas DOT that they are not engaging with updated evidence on the effects of their actions here. It takes a long time to do projects like this, but even longer to do them and later reverse course.
You ignore the fact that there are reasons other than traffic which discourage suburbanites from moving into cities. I won't do so because the cities tend to be crime-ridden, and they levy that I pay extra taxes that I don't have to pay if I live outside of the city. The extra taxes are particularly frustrating in light of the refusal of large cities to take action to reduce crime.
@@greytooth898 first off, most large cities are pretty safe nowadays. Even Chicago’s crime rate is overblown. And secondly, the taxes are higher in cities because they’re paying for your suburbs. Suburban living is subsidized by us city residents, I mean you do realize it’s way more expensive to build roads and pipes and infrastructure in suburbs than cities right? If cities were able to spend their money solely on the city itself or switch from expensive roads to cheaper rail and bike paths, they’d have way more resources to invest in social services, homes, and crime prevention. You’re the one stopping cities from addressing crime.
@@legoboy468 so laughably inaccurate that you're not even worth a response
Cities in Texas are such a mess. The entire middle-class who work in the city will flee to the suburbs to avoid city taxes but then happily end up spending that same money on miniature tank-esque pickup trucks so they can blow 500 hours a year commuting. It’s mind bogglingly inefficient
@@kaixiang5390 no they don't.
I travel through Austin via i-35 almost every week to/from San Marcos, and I have to say I absolute despise it. It is a major shipping lane so it is clogged by semi trucks, there is almost always a wreck that slows down everyone, and the perpetual construction just makes things worse. We need more transportation options, maybe even a rail line from North Austin to San Antonio.
I go to TXST, I live north of Austin so when i drive home I take the farm roads to get to mopac and avoid 35 all together
Austin has become a JOKE. This what happens when you literally have loops around the city but insist on them being a all toll roads.
Same with Orlando
5:37
I think this is the most important point to make. Something that I have recently learned in IR was organizational process model, or the idea that bureaucracies tend to follow standard operating procedures. A lot of the issues of DOTs as mentioned in the video stem from this fact, and a lot of good can be done by changing those SOPs.
Exactly right.
This is backwards thinking.
Look at that concrete absorbing heat and the radiating it at local level increasing the mean average temperature of surrounding area and communities.
Gotta love the fact that the report they use to justify widening I-35 because of congestion also has the Katy Freeway as the 2nd most congested highway...ya know...the widest highway in the country
As an austinite, this is a really important issue, the city is so wonderful but so challenging to get around, it’s important for people like you to explain the power balances of an issue like I-35
My grandfather lived there when I-35 was a 2 lane shell road to the Capitol and U.T. That was about it. The city grew around the road.
Yes!!! I’ve really been wanting to know your thoughts on Austin!!
This video isn't really a review of Austin. But Austin is great! It was my second time there and I've enjoyed visiting each time. Downtown is changing so fast, and everything you might need is within walking distance.
@@CityBeautiful I enjoy downtown as well. I live in one of the outer towns since the skyrocketing housing costs displaced my family, and have been trying to bring awareness to getting better public transport and not widening the highways.
I really hope to improve the city.
@@CityBeautiful did you watch F1 this weekend?
I live near Austin. TXDOT needs to get someone with common sense. A lot of I35 traffic through Austin is bypass traffic, including trucks. An expensive toll road(130) was built around Austin, but because of the expense(and crappy billing procedures) most bypass traffic does not use it. Simply use that money to make this free and expand if necessary. This would probably cost a lot less than what is proposed. A lot of I35 issues would go away. (Hint-I think TXDOT wants to toll these "managed" lanes in the future if they can-a reason in itself to be against this).
They could consider taking over the 130 and making it I35 and removing the tolls. Then the old I35 can have a congestion charge placed on it for through traffic
lots of us use the toll roads everyother trip just depends on where u live in the metro austin. like if you live on 35 your stuck with that road if you live by 130 etc then i35 is kinda useless cause you gotta go out of your way.
The problem with Austin's horrific traffic pattern is that it is a major city that is in itself also a pass-through city along a major freeway connecting to two other metro areas. It's like a super sized Waco or Temple. There is just simply no easy way to around it. SH 130 is only worth the very long detour if it's during the peak times and your car can take advantage of the higher speed limits.
@@panzer_TZ yes. good points. temple is kinda a sknny road only a 4 lane rural style interstate.
Rename 130 to I-35 East
I spent my entire college degree driving on a highway that was getting widened. It's complete now and it's much better than it used to be! But of course, it doesn't now really meet the current demand and one section is still backed up in rush hour some days, and it certainly won't get any less crowded!
California proved decades ago that, no matter how many freeways you build, they will*always* be jammed. It's kind of weird how DOT's still haven't figured this out. Or they have, but they don't care.
We the American people need to get off our asses and pressure our state legislatures to strip these state DOTs of their power and force them to submit to the will of we the people. All levels of American government work for us. We are the boss. The power of eminent domain needs to be pared back or we will lose our cities, towns, and communities to land gobbling highways that benefit only a few.
@@r.pres.4121 Actually, if the area is seen as poor, run down, and not very valuable, then it makes it more of a target for getting plowed by a highway
Yeah 35 should have been built around Austin. Not only is 35 a suburban computer fair, but also a thorough fair between north and south Texas which encompasses many cities on the way. On road trip I would drive mostly 35 the whole way and it's hell.
Why was it so hard for them to think of a belt route?
The traffic problems on I-35 in San Marcos are worse than in Austin (but they're widening it, too!) The whole San Antonio to Dallas and Ft Worth corridor is hours of hell. Driving even part way is physically and mentally exhausting.
Had to jump over here from Nebula to say Great Video CB! Heads up, we pronounce the state transportation department as "Tex-Dot"
No one else can make infrastructure sound so interesting! Your talent and intelligence are a beautiful mix!
I thought it was fairly well established at this point that more lanes don't solve congestion
Yeah, but if the State doesn't expand/build more highways how will the State get more money to expand/build more highways? If the State doesn't have that money how will they give contracts to their friends? Bet you didn't think about that! [/s]
That assumes the purpose of widening the road is to reduce congestion during rush hour.
The thinking is that if suburbanites aren't willing to drive through all the traffic they jointly create, then obviously that's the death of the city. It doesn't matter if the traffic returns, it means they're doing a good job and the city lives to see another decade.
Especially if they are controlled lanes. The fees during peak times are astronomical. So, people seldom use them.
Makes me question if the Texas DOT even bothers to hire urban planners and instead hires oil execs.
City beautiful in MY city? Thanks for the spotlight, and I hope you enjoyed your stay!
As someone born and raised in Austin, it really makes me sad to see the state pushing this project on us. Austin has an opportunity to grow sustainably and be an example for good urban planning for the rest of the country, but instead suburban development will once again be subsidized by widening I-35 highway while the city suffers the cost. Look at the Katy freeway in Houston, it has 26 lanes and still has terrible traffic, that will never solve the problem. Here's to hoping we have real highway revolts once again.
As you know, SH 130 was built on the east side to alleviate through traffic on I-35, but then they tolled it. The result was that most through traffic took the free option on I-35, even with all of the gridlock. They should have tolled I-35 and made SH 130 and SH 45 free. They spent four years and a billion dollars to "expand" Mopac, and once they were done, it had exactly the same number of free lanes. But the billionaires can enjoy the $8 express lane while they laugh at the huddled masses at a dead stop during rush hour.
No offense to Texas but TxDOT builds these things to such an obscene scale too that it's basically a giant middle finger to humans who aren't driving through at 70mph. They are just 75' high tangles of white concrete soaring overhead. It's planning run amok. Every minor town has a ring road around it.
The issue isn’t the highway necessarily. The issue is that the city used mopac and I-35 to box in the core of the city so every care wanting to get into downtown has to funnel themself back in. And considering the Main Street roads are natural choke points there’s no alleviation of the traffic. You only have a few roads between 35 and mopac to cross the river
130 makes sense if you want to bypass Austin entirely but if you need to get into the city it doesn’t have much of a function
@@craigjensen6853 No offense taken - even Texans are repulsed & horrified by the DoT dolts who ignore the past, making all of us doomed to repeat it.
"Why are we still widening highways in US cities?" Money. Easy money is the reason. Those are juicy contracts for some companies. Easy to build, wilth lots of concrete and asphalt. Many interests are concealed into this process.
At least that's the reason in Canada.
TxDOT receives 80% of its funding from the federal government. As much as Texans boast about small government, the truth is that they suckle at the gubmint teat as much as anybody. That is why they love their big highway projects, especially the ridiculous flyovers 100 feet in the sky!
It's because a lot of voters want more highways that they imagine will be less congested, and cities want highways because they think they bring jobs and workers and shoppers and residents to the city and enlarge its tax base. Highway contractors are just a small part of it. If everyone else were opposed, the highway contractors would have to go fishing.
Oh my God! I grew up in Austin from '45 to '65. It was a blessed place to be and to grow up in. So, at 2:51 I see this city. I have no idea where it is or why you're showing it. But then I see the Texas capital building is in the center. What!
I have walked through the capital building so many, many hundreds of times from my grade school, near UT, to catch a bus home on Congress. So familiar, a part of my life.
None of the buildings we now see existed when I lived there. It's alien to me now.
I guess, who cares about my reaction. But I just had to say something. As Thomas Wolfe has told us, You can't go home again.
And most of the change you see has really taken place in the last 10 years or so. It has been amazing to watch.
Imagine if it was 9/1 for metros. The US would be great.
Yeah
I used to live in Austin from 2004 to about 2008. Loved it, but the freeways were a mess even then. The answer was to build a tollway around the whole city and suburbs (SH130). That didn't work, obviously. Everywhere I've ever lived I've seen freeways that were said to be too small get widened. It takes years, it's expensive, and it never works.
Thank you for covering the ill-advised expansion of I-35 through downtown Austin. All it will do is destroy buildings, communities, and all without actually dealing with the traffic problem!
Well Austin needs to stop blowing its horn to the whole world and stop welcoming new business and people that it cannot accommodate. Austin is too big for its britches and needs to discourage anymore growth. Austin is not designed or meant to be a big major city. It is not meant to be like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth. It is time to discourage anymore growth in Austin and tell them to go elsewhere.
@@r.pres.4121 We will have to agree to disagree on this!
@@MichaelPrell R. Pres has a point. If Austin actually cared about growing with out additional traffic, it will need to do a lot more infill development of the city core. As it is, you have loads of SFH very close to the downtown, and very poor alternatives to driving to get around the city. Commercial zoning is still super car friendly with all their parking spots. The people of the city of Austin don't want the city to be bigger, as evidenced by their feet dragging on zoning changes.
@@Jack-fw4mw Those are all salient points! I don't disagree with you at all; those are huge issues impacting Austin! But to zoom out a bit, I'd point out that those are issues are not Austin-specific - and would, in fact, argue that they are a particularly unique *American* problem with city growth. R. Pres pointed out to other cities in TX who have all experienced the same issue, but at different points in their development cycle, and none of them have solved it, either; it just appears to be "worse" or "more extreme" (or whatever terms you want to use) in Austin because Austin happens to be in the midst of a huge population boom, right now, at this very moment. American cities, from California to TX, from Georgia to Oregon, are all strangling themselves for a variety of wildly varied yet interconnected reasons. Austin is no exception. The more we can do to convince residents that in-fill development is great, that parking requirements are bad, and that every investment in public transportation is a net gain for both drivers and non-drivers alike, the more we can make our cities healthier, safer, and more livable.
People (as a whole) are resistant to change, but it's only by adapting that we as a species have been able to do so much. I have faith that my fellow Austinites will come around and create a city that our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be proud to call home in a hundred years. Baby steps are still steps forward. ;)
@@MichaelPrell No, he was correct
It's expected from those living in the suburbs an express route to get in and out of downtown, which is its own neighborhood, quickly no matter the cost. These freeway expansions rarely benefit the communities they're plowing through and only further subsidize and incentivize suburban living.
Sweet!! So glad you made a video about this. We are fighting as hard as we can but txdot seems to just overrule everyone. Weird that for transit everyone has to vote to fund it but for this highway nobody said a thing
I wish for everybody’s sake there that the huge subsidies for roads could just be shifted-over to other forms of local transit. Or at least just remove them from roads so they can compete on an equal field of people seeing how expensive they really are against each other.
Loop 130 was originally intended to be an alternative for IH 35, but when they started construction they decided to change it to a toll road that does not help with the congestion on 35
It kinda does. Only 1% of I35 traffic is trucks that pass through. TAMU did a study in 2015 if you are interested in looking at some numbers.
i don’t understand how the evidence against highway widening can be so overwhelming and shockingly clear, yet it happens again and again
voters dont care so they keep doing it. very few americans would change their vote over the construction of highways
Because it is not evidence. It's a biased RUclips video
As a lifetime driver, I have experienced the exact opposite, whenever lanes are added, my wait time has been less in traffic.
As California has seen, too much local control of local planning issues can be a disaster. Too many cooks spoiling the broth has made the high-speed rail project far more expensive than it needs to be and high-speed rail doesn't have the same potential while you have local areas which can keep areas for single family homes only (high housing density around public transit interchanges is helpful). Spain can build high-speed rail lines for a fraction of the cost because of the high housing density in cities (a lot of the rest of the country is empty) and once the government decides it wants to build a railway through your land, there are few legal avenues to stop it, but Spaniards aren't generally dying due to lack of freedom as a result.
It is such a paradox.
I love the fact that I didn't grow up in a North-American suburb and being so car dependent, but instead I grew up and live in the Netherlands, where you can safely cycle from A to B and where you aren't dependent on the car to get to a shop. However, I am impressed by the infrastructure in Texas. Those massive highways, even with frontage roads, and their huge interchanges continue to amaze me.
It is obvious that the widening of I-35 is necessary, because of the way that new suburbs are build in the USA.
The solution? Create higher density, less car dependent, neighbourhoods with good public transport connections. Also make sure that the places where people go to work are concentrated as well, instead of being spread out along highways and busy roads.
Mixed use zoning is key. Make city neighbourhoods self-sufficient villages within themselves.
Austin just invested $8billion in light rail, metro, and commuter rail. It has also changed its zoning laws to allow for more mixed use zoning. We already have a pretty comprehensive bike network- for an American city, and we’re expanding it.
And The Netherlands turned away from highway dominance in the 1970s to minimize children being killed by cars, and to avoid dependence on foreign oil. If only Americans cared more about their children than about their cars.
@@리주민 That’s la dolce vita right there, y’all! 🤩
From San Antonio to Dallas, the I-35 is always congested.
True, when I travel to my home state of Oklahoma, I always take I35W through Fort Worth. Less traffic and 10 miles shorter.
And all the way through to Oklahoma
Which is exactly why it needs expanded over the objections of the complaining NIMBYs in Austin.
@@danieldaniels7571Why not take the tolls off 130 and expand it(and the 45 connection roads). This would take a lot less money and cause a lot less trouble. I agree that traffic is bad on 35, but be smart about the expansion.
@@pattyeverett2826 That could actually be a perfect solution, as long as the entire resulting route was redesignated as I-35. Since the toll road is operated by a private company it doesn’t seem to be looked at as an option, though.
The "hammer and nail" metaphor at times might be applied to this channel.
Leaving aside historical injustices in the initial locating of many freeways going through urban areas, moving a route as economically important to the state, national, and international economies is no small matter.
I-35 carries a tremendous amount of trade from the Mexican border at Laredo to Dallas and beyond.
Now you would not find one trucker opposed to a nice new bypass around Laredo. I remember having all too much time to examine some of the finer points of new Austin architectural themes as I sat in the middle of creeping traffic during rush hour.
But too often there's a willful blindness, exhibited by committees against highways as well as City Beautiful, to the fact that while some auto traffic can be displaced to transit, etc, you can't do that with trucks and other vehicles using highways like I-35 as the intercity transport routes they were initially conceived as.
So, while the idea of turning the freeway into some sort of boulevard is nice in theory, where do you get the money then to relocate I-35 - and then redevelop the old corridor?
Will locals support the massive costs required for the projects? Even if it means cutting spending in other important areas, or raising taxes?
One other question - was this highway in the middle of the city when it was built?
I'm not familiar with the history of Austin, but I know it's far from uncommon to see highways and bypasses originally built outside of urban areas swallowed, especially for those growing most quickly.
One example is the 401 in Toronto.
It cuts right across what's now the middle of Toronto, but when it was laid out and the land purchased, it bypassed what was then Toronto and its largest suburbs by a fair ways. It was designed and referred to as the "Toronto Bypass", and rerouted the then being built 401 away from the initially planned route closer to Lake Ontario.
When this happens, I'm less sympathetic to those opposed to its expansion or (especially) existence.
Much like someone who moves into a house by an airport, factory, or such, that's your choice. Don't figure you have any right to try and remove that which predates you, and which you knowingly moved in next to.
I'd be interested in seeing some more suggested solutions from City Beautiful, along with the criticisms.
Because while we'd all love to see many of the ideas here implemented, there are generally large, complex problems that need to be resolved first. Not impossible to overcome - just difficult.
But you need to start somewhere.
In Austin, the I35 came after the city center. I think it is better create a ring road in I35 parameters around austin e divert trafic to this new road
Your analogies about airport and "don't figure you have any rights to remove which predates you" is just silly. Oh, the airport has always been here like the old gods, how dare us move close to it and demand that it be changed to suit the changing population? Guess what? the old gods take my and my neighbor tax dollars. The old gods didn't complain when I and many others changed empty fields to productive buildings and lands. And for as long as people is a live, things that we build serves us. If you would like to turn the highway into a new god, you can, but don't take my money to do it. When we have flying cars will you be one of those demand that we "save the highway" still? Silly is it not?
As for funding, that's a tough one. But it's just that, a difficult problem, not an impossibility.
As far as I see, just like Katy, traffic will catch up with the expassion. We'll be still in traffic and "think about traffic'", the only difference is we sit in traffic on a bigger highway. So might as well save the money and heartache and leave it be. Justlet the people on the highway bemoan aboutthe highway, because they'll do it on a 4 lanes road or a 10 lanes road.
As an Austin resident, I'm especially thankful for videos like this that shine a light on the juggernaut that is state DOT highway projects.
Contributing to the problem in Texas specifically, a huge number of public officials and construction firms are corrupt and self-serving, and these multi-billion-dollar projects are poorly regulated and go without robust auditing and enforcement. Embezzlement and no-bid contracting is the norm here.
I first started visiting Austin in the early 1970s because of the many track meets there. They were double-decking I35 even then. This stretch of road will always be a problem unless radical changes are made to how we deal with traffic.
When will people ever learn that more capacity doesn’t mean less traffic
So y not reduce a lane from highways? Actually there is no traffic if there is no highway.
@@gameonyolo1 good idea
as long as you realize it's more capacity of anything including trains
Wrong look at the gulf states
@@neutrino78xtrains are lame and inefficient
As a Round Rock resident who often travels through Austin to San Antonio it would help if 35 wasn’t the only non toll freeway option to drive from North to South Austin...out of 4. So I’ll advocate for de-tolling those over widening the footprint. Though a reasonable alternative transport option would be nice too (we don’t even have buses on weekends up here)
I think that bit about the entire purpose of these organizations being to build roads is the most important one in your video. Whenever you create something like that you end up with something doing stupid stuff to justify its own continued existence.
DOT's also handle trains.
Same story in SC. I used to work for an RPO and we oversaw our regions transportation money. Everything was basically widenings or resurfacings. Little to no transit or bike/ped projects.
Also, what do you use to do your mapping animations? They're super smooth and really help visualize what you're talking about.
5:18 let me guess, the institute of transport study/report didn't include other modes of transport like for example the *train*?
Texas TOD: Nope we already went through all alternative roadway options.
It isn't the states responsibility to provide local public transportation. That falls on the shoulders of the city. The state is taking action based on what they control, and what they need.
@@evancombs5159 Why is that?
@@AlCatSplat why is what?
Great video! However, I think you're missing a couple important talking points. I live in Austin and it's true that widening I35 will displace hundreds of people and make an even more horrendous barrier right down the middle of the city. It's also true that I35 is quite slow during rush hour. If widening I35 solved the problems then the costs could be weighed carefully, BUT widening I35 will NOT solve any problems -- in fact it will only make those same problems even worse!
On the outskirts of Austin suburban developments are propping up everywhere. It's easy to understand why this is. People can live far from the city inexpensively but commute downtown quickly with their car, and the value of their house will grow over time. The problem this creates is traffic. Since they live far out, they must use their car to go to the grocery store, bars, cafes, work, and everything else. Then since they have to drive everywhere, they demand that the city has wide roads and lots of parking. This makes the city less walkable and less desirable to live in or visit. So that's the problem. The problem gets worse when highways are expanded because instead of a development having a 35 minute commute (which might dissuade some people from living there) it will have a 25 minute commute. Then when more outskirt developments are built, the newly widened highway gets backed up again and the 10 billion dollar project now just made traffic worse than it was before.
The solution: Austin has A LOT of low density areas close to downtown. These areas need to be able to build up. They should build apartments over one story restaurants, they should turn houses into duplexes, townhouses, or apartments. The reason this isn't happening isn't because people don't want to live close to downtown -- they do. It's not happening because in many places it's ILLEGAL. They made single family zoning laws and parking minimums that make it impossible to create a walkable downtown like humans enjoyed in the past. We need to repeal these laws now and build up which will make Austin more walkable and solve the traffic problem. And the good news is that it's free, and we can use that $10 billion to add better public transit.
Well, California highway engineers have had all the road contracts for decades. This is what we got.
Soon the whole state will be just one giant highway.
On the bright side though, having so many lanes makes it simpler to convert one lane in each direction into transit/light-rail tracks. Some cities just don't have space for that.
Ha!
Eh, if you do that you'll end up with hostile stations and sub-optimal adjacent land use. No one (outside of a car) wants to be next to a freeway.
“The Power Broker, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York” is a great book in the realm of this subject
Thanks your knowledge. I don't live in the US but I am learning a lot about things I didn't learn from you. In Vancouver there is a very, very small portion of the city that has a freeway and the rest is more about getting around places through transit, cycling, carpooling, ride sharing, and walking. For those who wish to see their communities have less freeway widening, advocating is important and my hope for the best of luck to you
Loved the simplified Civics 101 lesson. Local government law is taught in law schools. It’s very fascinating!
Ha, ha, ha. You had me until Hello Fresh, delivered by truck via I-35 right to your door. I-35 is not only about suburbanites driving into Austin, (although massive development along the I-35 corridor is a big factor) it is the major North-South interstate and international artery in the region if not the entire state. A lot of dangerous driving and fatal accidents already, all due, in part, to congestion. A partial solution until others are found would be lower speed limits from about Georgetown to South Austin. Some of the extension projects that will allow traffic to avoid I-35 will help too. Turning I-35 into a boulevard would only shift the problem as it would have to be replaced by a beltway encircling the city. All the interstate and international traffic will keep flowing one way or the other.
Yes, it’s funny how this video completely focuses on Austin and neglects to mention that I-35 is a major shipping corridor from Mexico to Minneapolis.
This was already built and completed years ago. SH 130 was built and is the intended ring route around Austin & San Antonio for Mexico based trucking. TAMU did a study in 2015, and only 1% of traffic on I35 (in Austin) is trucks. Only 14% of total I35 traffic in Austin is drive through.
This is so nuts. When will we learn that the only solution to cars is fewer of them.
Once we get rid of oil and car companies' lobbyists in our government, educate the american people and correct their misconceptions about what makes an efficient city, and get americans to vote for change in public transit and city design.
In other words: never. We're better off just emmigrating to a country that cares about their quality of life.
Been a subscriber for 2 years. Kinda cool to see you cover my city (& office building) in one of your videos! ATX has a ton of issues including I-35. I'd love to see you cover the effects/causes of agglomeration and the large migrations like we have seen to small/medium metros cities like Austin/Salt Lake/Denver. Excellent video 👍
That rethink 35 proposal looks like something a Dutch planner would do with that road, love it
I-10 at downtown El Paso, TX is going to “bury” the highway in order to place a public park on top, should be a great video. Greetings.
That’s how I-10 is through downtown Phoenix and it’s really nice.
Austin should make city parking expensive and reduce car parks in protest
I just came from watching the new Not Just Bikes video. This is heaven!
I lived in Austin in late 90 and early 2000 on W 6th street, love the city. Revisited Austin a few years ago and found the city much larger and more surprisingly more expensive than I thought. Compared to where I live now in SoCal, the housing price is not cheap.
Austin native here. Traffic is horrible from 9 am to 8 pm, Mon - Fri. A lot of travelers and new incoming residents have added to this strain.
Welp, time to hop my flight to Austin! Also not mentioned is the huge nice toll road that goes around Austin that's often open. It should be easy to just designate that as the new I-35, although I know there's lots of bureacracy and red tape preventing that. Another good thing getting started is Austin's new transit plan that was finally voted in.
redesignating that toll road as I-35 is the no-brainer solution that no one seems to be looking at. Because this really isn’t about Austin, it’s about the fact that I-35 is a major international trucking corridor.
Speed limit 80
They're gonna widen the highways so much that, at some point, it'll be larger than the whole city lol
I understand why the US is doing this. The bigger question is... Why is the Netherlands still doing this?
As someone who has played a bunch of cities skylines and also driven on motorways before and after expansion, I’ve realised that this is a farce and a real waste of time, 70% of the time traffic jams on motorways won’t be solved by more lanes, instead solving the delay up ahead causing everyone to jam up will help, and although an extra lane could help avoid these jam areas by letting unrelated traffic go forwards faster, it would just be dodging an issue rather than really solving it. Usually new lanes will just allow more cars on the same road, increasing the density, but usually not really helping the traffic flow much, the only time where more lanes will always help is during sections where lane mathematics are required, if you have 2 entry skip lanes and 1 exit slip further ahead having 4 lanes would help split the traffic into the right section to avoid merging/splitting in places that would slow down the traffic, instead having a main lane that just goes forward as fast as possible, and the other lanes handling the splits and merges, or if you have an unavoidable congestion point and you just need to help as much traffic as possible get around it.
Great video and great point about communication power and action!
"Why are Australia, Canada, and the US still widening highways in cities?"
I-35 from Laredo to Ok City is high volume freight route. Austin is terrible for commercial trucks. The only route is I-35 straight thru the city. No belt roads or bypass roads. Ugh 😩.
The state has power on the subject because they are roads built to move people around the state, not just the city. It’s an interstate, meaning a road meant to move people among and between states.
If that was the actual goal, then they would just expand SH 130; This road starts on I35 south of San Antonio, goes around both San Antonio & Austin, before connecting back up with I35 away from the population centers. There are connections to the road from I 35 between the cities as well.
As of 2015, 86% of the traffic on I35 in Austin was local traffic. This is a local road in an international network.
Keep up the good fight! This video should be on prime time TV because you have educate. If people don't know they just continue as old. Just curious, is that a Charles Wilson T shirt?
Here in India traffic in some cities is horrible....but still gets managed by wide boulevards especially in the city where I live where there is no space for expressway construction through the city with exceptional cases in some places. Public transportation like a metro or light rail should be encouraged.