Is the airport the top priority?
Project Connect wants to get to AUS.
In his newsletter today, Mayor Kirk Watson triumphantly announces that the Austin Transit Partnership will soon begin planning to extend the Project Connect light rail line to the airport.
Time out. An extension? Doesn't there need to be a rail line in place before we can talk about extending it?
Today's sponsor:
I lost my Council seat in 2024. I kept the habit of reading all the staff memos. From Mackenzie covers City Hall, the Capitol, Austin history, and whatever else I can’t stop thinking about. Free, sourced, and occasionally funny.
Phase 1 of the light rail route will hopefully be built by 2033 or so. But what ATP hopes is that relatively shortly thereafter it will be able to extend the route to the airport. By American infrastructure standards, "shortly" means several years, rather than a decade.
(Remember, even if we include the priority extensions, the above map is a considerable setback from the Phase 1 vision presented to voters in 2020, which included rail all the way up N. Lamar to US-183 and all the way down S. Congress to Stassney)
By every objective transit metric, extending rail to the airport should be a lower priority than extending it to Crestview. By ATP's own projections, Crestview would generate far greater ridership than the airport and providing affordable, reliable daily transit to tens of thousands of Austin residents does far greater good than than saving tourists an Uber ride.
