Short paragraphs to describe the problem & opportunity to reinvent I-35

Proposed by Sinclair Black

Failed Public Policy

Purpose in Need is a formal statement baked into federal policy of the Department of Transportation (DOT). The statement is used to justify every highway project placed into the project mill. This statement always says the same thing, “this highway has problems, and we need to fix them.” The answer then is obvious, at least to them, i.e., just spend billions of taxpayer dollars to cure problems their agency created in the past by rebuilding the highway and widening it. The world’s best example of the failure of this concept is the Katy Freeway in Houston. Now TxDOT Austin wants to repeat that disaster in the I-35 corridor. The project mill has become a project treadmill…. rebuild and widen again and again. Remember the famous truism, “there is no problem any city in the world has that is not the direct result of failed public policy.”

Citizens: Purpose and Need

PURPOSE: Remove the physical, social, economic, and racial barrier that has been the tragic legacy of I-35 since its construction.

NEED: Re-integrate the I-35 corridor into the city fabric, reconnect Austin and create billions in tax base.

MEANS: Depress the main lanes, narrow the ROW, and reconnect the city grid with EAST AVENUE PARKWAY. All of this can be achieved with the creation of a tax increment finance zone and a new special purpose Development Commission.

SEQUENCE:

1. Create the tax increment zone for the entire corridor and all adjacent land benchmarking current taxable value which is presently zero on 136 acres of TxDOT land.
2. Implement the designation switch, which was recommended by a TxDOT study, and allow traffic to rebalance before construction begins. Trucks use 130 like it or not.
3. Temporarily widen the existing access roads to carry more traffic and rethink the use of three major arterials just west of the corridor in downtown.
4. Remove the existing freeway main lanes and proceed to reconstruct them below grade through Downtown, UT, and North Central neighborhoods.
5. Cap the entire corridor from Town Lake to just past Airport Boulevard and create a surface Boulevard with in-line stations at the centerline for buses and future rail.
6. Implement the new DA (direct access) lanes below and remove the temporary access roads at the surface. Proceed to reclaim the redundant ROW.
7. Identify the development opportunities for rebuilding the city fabric on the new land, with the clearly stated goal of creating an enormous new tax base to generate revenue in perpetuity.
8. Create the Development Commission that would oversee and coordinate all progress, based on a detailed Critical Path schedule, just as many other cities have done.
9. Recruit qualified private sector developers for the many new development opportunities created on the reclaimed land and identify tax base opportunities.
10. Coordinate all development activity, both public and private, including access rights, open space opportunities like WATERLOO GREENWAY, construction disruption, and manage all north /south and east /west traffic during the construction process.

What is a Stitch?

The term “stitch” is not a planning concept that anyone ever heard of before TxDOT’s use of it in the I-35 context. It only applies to a small number of bridges in the far north end of the “central” portion of I-35. A stitch is very different from a “full cap concept” that has been a practical solution to urban roads, rail-corridors and even storm sewer systems for several centuries, a technique known as cut and cap. The stitch offered by TxDOT’s plans is the “albatross” of urban planning. Too small to be useful and far too expensive to be taken seriously.

The idea was created from smoke in order to block the city from creating the East Avenue Boulevard and the billions of taxable opportunities that come from transforming the access roads into a walkable tree lined boulevard placed in the same footprint of the main lanes below, i.e., using the land twice, and staying well within the existing R.O.W. Through the TIF or TIRZ financing the “RECONNECT AUSTIN” vision pays for itself, now and leaves the tax base to enhance the quality of life in Austin in perpetuity.

A Possible Future for Austin

Imagine if you were in an entirely new district in Austin. Not in suburbia, not away from downtown but in an integral part of downtown. Such a district is proposed in the I-35 corridor. A 20-block Parkway with wide walkable sidewalks on both sides and thousands of trees to help with global warming. Through traffic below and only local traffic on the reinstated grid. Now imagine the uses of such a reinvented district. Affordable housing, market rate housing, workforce housing, student housing, a new location for Austin’s community college, grocery stores, pharmacies, gyms, and flexible space for the innovation district. Both sides of the Boulevard could be as exciting as Second Street has become. Dangerous traffic would be gone, pedestrians would be everywhere, in the shade, and residents could walk to almost all necessities and amenities to support a very high quality of life.

Sprawl, Congestion, Safety

I entered the University of Texas in Austin in the spring of 1958. I have watched that highway (I-35) built, tweaked, rebuilt repeatedly, always with a claim of increasing safety. What actually increases are the cost, the number of lanes, the endless sprawl that the highway promotes and the congestion that results. The most rapid of these increases within the corridor however is the number of crashes and deaths. At this point, the I-35 corridor accounts for 25% of all deaths in the entire City of Austin i.e., 325 sq miles. Vision Zero is a stated goal of the city as well as for TxDOT, but there is little or no evidence of that concern in the current proposed alternatives.

Racial Divide…. Must End

The decision to locate the I-35 corridor intentionally created a physical, economic, and racial divide that still exists today. The location decision was not the only local, state, and national policy steeped in racism, but it is clearly the most permanent monument to and the symbol for segregation. In this time of widespread numerous cries for social justice this monument to our racial history needs to be erased. It is time to erase that barrier and RECONNECT AUSTIN after more than 60 years.

Public Space for People: EAST AVENUE PARKWAY

The PARKWAY scheme, as proposed by RECONNECT AUSTIN, does not pretend to be a highway plan, just as TxDOT plans do not pretend to enhance the quality of urban life. Citizens of Austin must step up and demand the removal of Austin’s greatest liability, to be replaced by what could be one of Austin’s greatest assets.

Taxes you pay and lose forever.

Since we are all very concerned about the taxes we pay, here is a little bit of insight. You pay income tax and property tax separately. The income tax collected by the federal government is redistributed to various agencies like TxDOT. TxDOT then spends your tax money on projects in your city and in other cities. The Federal tax you pay is higher in order to pay for things like highways that have little or no benefit to you. With this situation, the property taxes are higher because a certain portion of the tax potential has been compromised by the presence of a highway that you did not ask for, it’s a no-win situation. RECONNECT AUSTIN proposes the creation of literally billons of taxable value. TxDOT’s proposals are all about cost on cost, RECONNECT’ s proposal is all about tax income in perpetuity from new development.

Actual Access

Over the years, as citizens have demanded a civilized and reinvented I-35, the “highway department ” alias TxDOT, has insisted that they will never give up the access roads or any of their excessive right of way. Their reasoning is that if they give up anything, they can’t have it back. TRUE. The agency is pathologically committed to the idea of access roads, as they understand them. Fair enough, how about four forms of real access, not just a redundant highway.

1. Consider an urban Parkway at grade as part of the existing downtown street grid i.e. “Great Streets”.
2. Collector distributor lanes should be reimagined as DIRECT ACCESS lanes located underground with traffic separated by destination i.e., either downtown by way of the next three ramps or beyond via the main lanes. Speeds would be lower in DA lanes and no lane switching, with short ramps directly to the surface.
3. Local rail service at grade and commuter rail service below grade with in-line stations. Located along the center line of the I-35 corridor. The one and only uninterrupted path through Central Texas, connecting Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties.
4. The highway planners have never considered the parallel north/south streets that could distribute traffic throughout downtown.

Massive Investment for Short Lifespan

Longevity is the expected lifespan of something. In the case of an elevated freeway, that lifespan is expected to be 40 years. I-35 has lasted for more than 60 years. Hence the need to rebuild it before it falls, a very real concern of the DOT. The underground freeway proposed by RECONNECT AUSTIN could last 400 years especially if it is sunken, capped and constructed by poured in place concrete. In this case, the freeway is no longer compromised by vibration and weather, two of the forces that shorten the lifespan of precast concrete elements.

Long Distance Mobility at the Expense of Local Access

The phrase “improving mobility” appears in virtually every sentence ever published by DOT, i.e., TxDOT in Austin. Mobility can be defined as the ability to get from somewhere you do not want to be any longer to somewhere you think you may want to go. “Access” on the other hand is the ability to get from someplace you are to somewhere you need or want to go, such as work, school, the grocery store, or Starbucks. Mobility implies the use of an automobile while access can be automobile, bicycle but always implies walking. Mobility is often achieved at the expense of access. For example, I-35 provides north and south mobility at the expense of the urban grid i.e., access to everything the city offers. You gain access by leaving the highway to enter the urban grid, the ultimate provider to access.

The “Sunk Cost” Tactic

Probably the most effective tactic employed by all DOT’s is a policy known as the “Sunk Cost theory”. If you start two projects at a distance from each other the argument then becomes, “well, we spent all that money and now we have to connect the projects.” Of course, that’s exactly what TxDOT is doing with their three-part I-35 rebuild. Since there is little opposition north or south of Central Austin, TxDOT proposes to move as fast as possible on both ends to justify the central segment project.

The Great Sidestep

TxDOT has been planning the I-35 “Capital Express” project through Austin for decades. During their first virtual scoping comment period, between November 12th and December 31st, 2,300 people, including myself submitted good faith comments and ideas for an improved design i.e., the “community alternative”. Naturally, we expected a good-faith response from TxDOT but that did not happen.

On March 5th, just before round two of comments started, TxDOT published their response to the comments from round one. Their response insults the intelligence of all the citizens that took their time to comment. TxDOT’s official response can only be labeled the “Great Sidestep”, or the most completely duplicitous display of manipulation that one can imagine. Their response was nothing more than a collection of prefabricated responses describing the plan that they have had for years. They freely quoted other agencies ‘ policies as if they supported their plan. Any specific issue raised, such as lowering the design speed, they quoted a number of guidelines and promised to study the issue. If you believe that, they have a freeway to sell you.

Bypass to cure Congestion?

SH 130 E. Austin was sold to the voters as a bypass for I-35, as well as a rail corridor. Highway planners quickly nixed the idea of rail. SH 130 was constructed by a private company which used tolls to return their investment. This obviously created a disincentive to use SH 130 and an incentive to continue to use I-35, leading to massive congestion problems we live with today, including the streams of trucks that choose not to pay the tolls.

Public Opinion?

TxDOT is required by federal law to listen to the general public through what they call public comment periods. The federal law does not provide the detail on how to conduct this process, so the highway planners set the required comment periods with very short time frames in order to limit the public’s ability to participate. Involved citizens who are concerned about the welfare of the community are almost always members of organized groups with bylaws dictating meeting times and voting processes. i.e., in other words, it takes a lot of time for citizen groups to comment. Is this just another example of voter suppression and denial of public opinion?

Congestion, Congestion, Congestion!

Complaining about congestion has become a regional pastime. This complaint almost always refers to I-35. In a massive study conducted by Transportation for America they looked at 100 cities in the US and analyzed traffic over a 24-year period, only to find out that adding more lanes never reduced congestion. More lanes only promotes more cost, more sprawl, and therefore more congestion and resulting pollution.

The “Scoping Scam”

Highway planners have spent years designing and redesigning I-35, usually with yet another consultant. When they have decided what they choose to do and designed the highway then but only then, they ask for public help in determining the “scope”. The last time they tried out a plan for I-35, a few years ago, they got a tremendous amount of public input, mostly negative. Since they did not appreciate public opinion, they simply declared a new start and threw it all out. If you do not like their plans TxDOT will simply announce that they have decided to give your money to Houston.

A Real First Step

The first step for a huge project as required by federal law is a purpose and need statement to justify what they already intend to do. The published “purpose and need” statement by TxDOT has one metric: seconds saved over long distances. When in reality, metrics of a community should be based on enhancing the quality of life. For instance, metrics could consider lives NOT lost in the I-35 corridor, property values NOT diminished by the noise pollution, intellectual development NOT compromised by pollution from I-35, housing and urban economy NOT lost to scaleless and banal highways. And most importantly, our once in a lifetime chance to do our part for global climate change is NOT lost.

Land Use: Compact, Connected and Robust

The segment of I-35 from the river to Airport Boulevard MUST be capped. The cap allows the reintegration of Austin with East Austin. The cap also allows for the major problems of air and noise pollution to be solved once and for all. By sinking the freeway and capping it through downtown, the Medical District and the University of Texas and by combining access roads into a civilized urban boulevard thereby creating a human scale, walkable, mixed-use PARKWAY, Austin would enjoy several billion dollars of enhanced tax base to pay for the cap with a tax increment bond. That bond would be easily paid off in less than 20 years, and the investments would flow from the taxes forever. The tax base could provide for all forms of community enhancement: parks, playgrounds, schools, and Great Streets.

Urban Design First

All large-scale high impact projects should originate as urban design visions. Urban design visions require consideration of hundreds if not thousands of often competing issues. Traffic engineering on the other hand considers very few issues beyond saving time for a few drivers at the expense of many in the community. Traffic engineering is an integral part of urban design, but only one issue for consideration and only in the context of the universe of other issues. Traffic engineering routinely ignores the universe of urban issues. Who in their right mind would engineer a building for which there was no need or design?

Where is Rail? The Only Solution to Regional Transportation

Texas Highway Department was converted, by name only to the Texas Department of Transportation, meaning ALL forms of Transportation. This expanded role of course is routinely ignored by TxDOT while consistently blocking other agencies from considering and implementing efficient and long-term cost-efficient systems like rail transit. The fact that traffic engineers are not educated to design rail systems, is no reason not to pursue rail as a significant solution to the problem of congestion, ultimately the only solution. The I-35 corridor offers the best opportunity we will ever have to commit to regional rail, there is no other equally good opportunity.

Urban Design first, Listen to the Urban Land Institute

Urban design as a discipline deals with a vast universe of concerns: human, economic, technical, and political. Regarding I-35, TxDOT policies are carefully designed to limit all concerns beyond moving traffic leading to federally funded disasters in cities. Virtually every city in the US has groups of citizens trying to fight the unresponsive heavy hand of the department of transportation or “DOT”. TxDOT is the Texas branch of the federal department of DOT. The recent weeklong charrette conducted by the national organization; Urban Land Institute recommended a two-level planning process beginning with a locally generated urban design plan, “the community alternative” before moving later to an implementation phase by TxDOT. Remember, thoughtful design always comes before construction. TxDOT is first and foremost a construction agency.

Freeways without Futures

President Dwight D Eisenhower, having experienced the autobahn system in Germany in 1952 signed The National Interstate & Defense Highways Act. He fully understood the value of the national highway system linking cities and industries as a critical part of advanced planning in case of war. Highways were an essential part of the national defense system linking cities, he also understood that that same highway should not exist INSIDE the urban fabric. The highway industrial complex did not pay any attention to former President Eisenhower’s understanding of cities and moved as fast as possible to put highways through urban areas. This of course explains why most cities are now trying to roll back the incredible damage done to cities by urban highways. Imagine how much human capital is wasted trying to reverse the mistakes of the urban highway system.

Scale: Human or Otherwise

Human scale is that elusive and magical quality that a person experiences when they feel immersed in their surroundings. Most countries in the world manage to create human scale environments in the absence of the automobile. American cities have yet to figure this out. This of course is why people travel to other places, primarily Europe. Very few places in Austin exhibit human scale, among those places that DO exhibit human scale would be the University campus, Congress Avenue, and the relatively new 2nd Street District in downtown. The absence of human scale is pervasive but especially within the I-35 corridor. Applying the successful principals of 2nd Street District to the I-35 corridor would transform it from a hideously scaled, destructive liability into a world-class linear park known as East Avenue Parkway.

“Community Created Alternative”

TxDOT is unable to listen to or respond to any suggestion regarding a better corridor. They have their philosophy from the 50s and their playbook of tricks from the 60s and 70s. Cities around the country have suffered untold negative consequences from the DOT but their extension in Texas i.e., TxDOT is constitutionally unable to see the world as a happy, joyful, prosperous place for example like 2nd street in Austin. For TxDOT, its cars and trucks and wider freeways…end of concern, period.

TxDOT fully intends to re-build their previous mistakes only wider based on bogus assumptions about the future. Tax money paying for their construction projects is all they care about.

Unless and until the community steps up and speaks with one voice through a consensus “Community Created Alternative” TxDOT will simply plow ahead. Such a “Community Created Alternative” can only be achieved by doing the following.

1. Pick up where the DAA stopped in the process creating a truly representative urban design plan that considers the hundreds of issues that constitute a successful city.
2. That plan could then be represented in writing by one letter to the world signed by all leaders in the city: our senator, our mayor, our city manager, our community commissioners, our city council members, and our head of ATD.

If at that point TxDOT ignores the “Community Created Alternative”, the leaders could ask the DOT in Washington to stop the planning of yet another disaster and support an entirely different process, one that represents the city’s best interest and serves as a prototype for all other cities that are plagued by scaleless and dangerous highways.

Racist Policies of TxDOT

As we see virtually every day in the news, conversations regarding racism are rampant. It is everywhere even in good old’ Austin Texas. Look behind the veil of TxDOT’s plans for widening I-35 through the city.

• There isn’t even lip service to the problems of air pollution in the highway corridor. The corridor of maximum air pollution is defined by I-35, which directly impacts minority communities including Sanchez Elementary School, 97.2% minority students and less than 2 blocks to the east. And then there is the Medical School, the Hospital District and UT itself.
• The Downtown Alliance created a special working group comprised primarily of minority community leaders in order to ensure adequate representation as I-35 is reformed and rebuilt. That group has complained on 3 separate occasions in writing that TxDOT is ignoring them.
• Early plans coming from TxDOT include taking land from Mt. Calvary Cemetery which has historically been where people of color have been buried.

A City is a Very Complex Organism

DOT i.e., TxDOT is a limited purpose monoculture dedicated to the construction of roads, MORE roads, and WIDER roads. This culture is oblivious to concerns of climate, economy, equity, and the quality of life in the communities where they build the highways. Their obsession with building requires them to ignore all concerns of communities.

Federal DOT rules and the purpose of EIS (environmental impact statements) explicitly spell out the goal of listening to the community to be impacted. TxDOT systematically violates the intent of those rules and never accepts the will of the community. TxDOT sets up public meeting after public meeting with predetermined plans and no intention at all to listen to anyone from the community. It’s no wonder that they have endless ways to ignore the input they get from any given community since it is usually negative regarding their very bad ideas.

When TxDOT gets angry they threaten to take your appointed dollars and spend them where the public is less organized and informed. Please remember that they are playing the game with your tax money.

The Magic of “Grade Separation”

For the past 100 plus years, the golden rule of transportation facilities has been “grade separation”, for rail systems, and always for highways. This, of course, is the obvious rationale for I-35, some of which takes highway traffic above and sometimes below the daily activity of the city, which otherwise is always at grade. The principle of separation is obvious, i.e., the highway is disruptive and dangerous. That is, highway traffic is totally incompatible and could never coexist with the thriving fabric of daily life. I-35 is a classic example of “grade separation” and the success of that solution for highways but not for cities. I-35 has become a disaster for Austin and every city that has been invaded and disrupted by the Federal Program to build a system of roads for defense against invasions. Highways that connect regions through the rural countryside make sense. Freeways that blast corridors through cities make no sense.

RECONNECT AUSTIN simply adopted the grade separation principle as logical and required to protect the city, but turned it on its head, calling for the disruptive and dangerous highway to go underground and for the local travel involving day to day life and economic dynamic of the city to re-occupy the surface of the very same corridor. Presently, the corridor we live with today known as I-35 should be known as “Disaster 1.0”. TxDOT’s hideous plan to rebuild it wider and higher should be referred to as “Disaster 2.0”.

The Promise: “No Wider, No Higher”

The only solution to I-35 that is acceptable based on promises of “No Wider, No Higher” made by former Senator Kirk Watson and Bruce Bugg, the chairman of the Transportation Commission in February 2020 is to work only within the existing right of way (ROW). This month TxDOT revealed that they plan to purchase or TAKE by eminent domain 32 acres of existing land with 142 parcels: many homes and an equal number of small businesses. In other words, TxDOT plans to break the promises made by regional leaders. The dirty little secret is that they can accomplish everything they want to do easily within the existing ROW. Not only that but it frees up 30 acres of land for creative city building resulting in the creation of enormous new tax base for the state and Central Texas.

Austin’s Tax-Based Future

RECONNECT Austin proposes a net gain of taxable development in the 30 acres presently wasted on ramps and access roads. This could result in 3.2 billion dollars in taxable development. The taxable value in developable property pays for the civilizing of the whole corridor and continues to fund schools and parks in perpetuity. This is of course of no concern to TxDOT.

The enormous gain in taxable property with the tax increment (TIF) proposal of RECONNECT AUSTIN can become funding for affordable housing as well as a regional rail system connecting the three counties of Central Texas located on the center line of the I-35 corridor. Such a robust commitment to efficient and safe movement would create eligibility for any number of additional funding programs. For example, FTA New Starts new grant program could support the regional rail. All that funding would leave more TIF funds for schools, parks, trails, libraries, and pedestrian/bike systems throughout the city.

Affordable Housing

The ULI Report on I-35 makes mention of the need for affordable housing. This could be accomplished by a set-aside to fund affordable housing. Under Texas state code, section 311.008 funds can be within the corridor and beyond. “Affordable Housing production must be expanded to meet the goal of 60,000 new units.” RECONNECT AUSTIN has proposed private development of 4,000 housing units in the I-35 corridor, 1,000 of these (25%) could be affordable. If the TIF zone is expanded as has been recommended by ULI, that number could grow considerably.

Parks…Really?

TxDOT shows us photos of Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, which they were totally unaware of one year, after it opened, in hopes that you would somehow be thrilled. There are at least two catch 22’s: First, caps shown by TxDOT will need to be paid for by Austin taxpayers, did they tell you that? Second, the caps or the so-called parks would be cut off from the city by TxDOT’s “access roads” and associated ramps. One of the most important linear parks in the U.S. is being completed right here, right now in Austin Texas, Waterloo Greenway. As long as there are “service roads” i.e., access roads there will be no access to the so called “parks”.

Missing The Point #1

THE ULI Report contained a number of good ideas, already recommended by RECONNECT AUSTIN.

• First, is the tax increment financing mechanism (TIF).
• Second, is to expand the zone beyond the existing ROW where values range from $0 dollars currently to billions in the future.
• Third, use the expanded TIF zone over the existing Waller Creek TIF to pay off the original bond used to create the Waller Creek tunnel.

However, there are a number of issues missing with the TxDOT/ULI proposal. There is NO information at all regarding the structural systems configuration of the two-remaining proposed “alternatives” despite their claims to have “fully baked plans. RECONNECT AUSTIN offers a clear simple solution to ALL structural conditions.

Missing the Point #2

TxDOT/ULI’s proposals make no mention at all for solutions to the enormous traffic disruption that will inevitably result from a decade of construction. There is NO plan for handling the problems that inevitably result in chaos.

RECONNECT AUSTIN has a simple straight forward solution to mitigate the traffic problems resulting from the re-build process. RECONNECT AUSTIN recommends following an earlier TxDOT proposal which was to switch designations between I-35 and SH130 and make SH130 free for the decade of construction.

Among other issues not even mentioned by the TxDOT “alternatives”, are air and noise pollution, climate change, safer speeds, vision zero and flood mitigation. RECONNECT AUSTIN addresses all these issues and more. TxDOT only pays lip service to pedestrian and bicycle facilities as well as emergency services planning with no details offered.

This op-ed can be downloaded here.