Austin's light rail system starts to take shape
The city has big transit ambitions, but will they be canceled out by a similarly large freeway expansion?
Fast-growing Austin is coming into its own as a metropolis. Its mushrooming skyline will soon be punctuated by two supertall towers, each over 1,000-feet-high. On the outskirts of town, Tesla recently opened Gigafactory Texas, the company’s new corporate headquarters and one of the largest factories in the nation. Change has been so fast and so dramatic that investigative journalist Lawrence Wright spent 13,000 words in The New Yorker last month attempting to determine whether Austin is still, in fact, weird.
Despite its recent transformation, Austin lacks a modern rail transit system. Voters approved the outlines of such a system, known as Project Connect, in a 2020 ballot initiative, but since then progress has been slow-going. Now, the city has announced that the project is kicking back into gear with the selection of a design team.
Austin is bringing on a consortium of three world-renowned design firms, HKS, UNStudio, and Gehl, to plan stations and other elements of the light rail system. The consortium, colloquially known as HUG, will be doing a lot more than taking measurements and drafting blueprints, said Chi Lee, office director for HKS in Austin. Rather, designers will spend the next several months working with community members to envision a transit system that feels uniquely Austin.
“We did not go into this with any kind of preconceived notion of design direction,” Lee said. “What we do know is that we want to preserve the Austin vibe,” including the city’s diversity, its culture, and its ecology. “People here are very nice. It’s a very comfortable place to live. We have natural environments that kind of flow through our city,” Lee added. “All of those need to be preserved.”
Anna Muessig, a director at Gehl working on the project, says the design team aspires to create an iconic transit experience that will someday become part of the image the city broadcasts to the world. “At its best, Project Connect can be emblematic of the spirit of Austin,” Muessig said, “and it can elevate the culture and community of Austin.”
At the same time, the project will need to convince people to try new ways of getting around, and to change residents’ and visitors’ relationship to the city. As of 2020, 70% of Austin commuters drive alone to work, and as the city has grown, so have its traffic jams.
“What we’re talking about is not only a piece of infrastructure, it’s about a city transformation,” Muessig said. “It’s about rethinking how people experience mobility in the city.”
What that looks like remains to be seen. But Muessig said Austinites can expect stations with “seamless transfers” to buses and micro mobility, public art, and shaded, comfortable public spaces.
From an operational perspective, Austin’s light rail system will likely be comparable to those in other 21st century boomtowns like Seattle and Denver. But the involvement of the HUG consortium this early in the process signals a deeper commitment to architecture and urban design than is typically seen in American transit systems. If UNStudio’s recent work on Doha, Qatar’s metro system serves as precedent, Austin’s light rail stations could look quite a bit different than anything else stateside.
The announcement of the design team comes at a critical juncture for Project Connect. Last spring, city officials revealed that the price tag for the planned light rail system had nearly doubled, from $5.8 billion to $10.3 billion, due to inflation, supply chain bottlenecks, and Austin’s rapidly appreciating property market. City leaders pledged they wouldn’t go back to voters for more money, which means the system might need to be pared back to fit within its existing budget.
One idea that planners have floated is the reduction or elimination of the downtown subway tunnel at the heart of the system. Another possibility is the elimination of one of the two light rail river crossings.
Cost savings can also be wrung out of station design, said UNStudio principal Ben van Berkel. In its work on other metro systems, like the one in Doha, UNStudio has used a modular kit of parts allowing contractors to mass produce, rather than custom build, station components. “The advantage is that it not only keeps the project financially under control, but it can also speed up the building process,” van Berkel said.
The Project Connect plan voters approved in 2020 would include three new light rail lines, upgrades to an existing commuter rail line, and significantly increased bus service. The plan also reserves $300 million for anti-displacement and affordable housing programs. Working class East Austin, bougie South Congress, and other important destinations like Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the Texas State Capitol would all be linked by the light rail system. The famous strip of bars and restaurants facing the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, known as The Drag, could be converted into a car-free transit mall.
An announcement on a refined project blueprint is expected at the end of March, revealing which elements, if any, will be on the chopping block.
Local transit activists have mixed feelings about the possibility of losing the downtown subway tunnel, said Chris Riley, a board member of Safe Streets Austin and a former Austin city council member.
“While a subway downtown would be cool, some urbanists would prefer to see the activity at grade”—the technical term for street-level—Riley said. “One upside to having light rail at grade is it would require taming car traffic downtown to avoid conflicts with rail. The Drag will be a great place once cars are out of the picture. We could use some streets like that downtown, too.”
Project Connect is not the only transportation megaproject on the docket in rapidly changing Austin. The Texas Department of Transportation is planning to expand I-35 through the core of the city, where it bisects downtown and East Austin. The $4.9 billion freeway expansion—which, unlike Project Connect, was never subject to a vote—has proven controversial.
For Adam Greenfield, executive director of Rethink-35, the activist group leading opposition to the freeway expansion, these two monumental transportation projects represent competing visions for Austin’s future. “Why on earth are we spending billions of dollars on encouraging people to take public transportation while also spending billions of dollars on encouraging more people to drive?”
“Project Connect isn’t just infrastructure,” Greenfield said. “It’s a sign of where our values are. The public voted on this and the public said very loud and clearly this is the kind of world we want to live in.”
This article originally appeared in Fast Company. It is republished here with permission.