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110 comments on TOD Local Open Thread: What's your town doing about high gas prices?
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Austin has a reputation for tree hugging that goes back to the previous energy crisis 30 years ago; in fact, it's probably less 'green' these days, and more 'greenwashed corporate welfare'.
Around our house we frequently refer to Austin as "Austin dot Org", as it is the land of the trustafarian slacker and others who live the good life on other people's money. Whether it's UT, or the Texas Lege, or any of the myriad of non-profit lobbying organizations, it seems about half the economy here is based on such arrangements. So it's like a resort town in some ways -- an affluent, but transient, population. Lots of oversize gas guzzlers on the roads, and some of the worst drivers this side of India.
Of course there are some industries, Freescale, AMD, Dell, and a couple of other wafer plants that come to mind (maybe some hope for a solar PV industry here soon). To some extent Austin's technology industries are staffed with refugees from California. Up to about two years ago, a techie could sell his or her little 2 bedroom duplex in Silicon Valley and get a paid-up 3500 sq.ft mcmansion here.
One of the popular Austin (pro-pedestrian?) strategies, and I have heard this from lifelong residents, has been to delay the building / widening of streets. Don't build it ant they won't come, or something like that. ... In a recent news story, the Austin Lyric Opera had a bunch of angry patrons when they couldn't get into the parking lot. So, yeah, Austin is pedestrian-friendly, more or less. Or automobile-hostile.
In other news, the city has lavished millions of dollars on commercial real estate developers to build the Domain and Arbor Walk "Transit Oriented Development" projects near my own location. The entrances to these sites are infuriatingly hard to find off of MoPac, and we doubt that they are getting the same level of customer traffic as their predecessor shopping venues had. It remains to be seen whether future public-transit riders will be shopping at Nordsrom's and eating at California Pizza Kitchen, or whether the whole mess will simply go out of business. At least it'll be near the railroad tracks.
Then there's the Triangle project. Apparently it's a stab at emulating that nice pedestrian neighborhood in Addison, but it doesn't look nearly as attractive. For one thing, the buildings are right on an extremely busy street, and it's just a matter of time until some drunk drives through the brick veneer into someone's living room. The other objection I have is that the living units are designed around a parking garage instead of having individually secured parking areas for each unit. Even in a world without cars, it would be nice to have a garage to stash your crap in.
But as I mentioned above, Austin has a longstanding reputation as a center of treehuggery. The Yellow Bike Project has been around for more than 10 years. Since I live in the 'burbs I haven't actually seen any of their bikes, however. It has a greenbuilding program, incentives for efficiency / renewable energy, and "smart growth", whatever the heck that is.
And on the free-market side of things, we have:
Best hopes for a solar Austin,
DIY
DIY, I agree with much of what you wrote.
I think Austin's home grown treehuggery has deep local roots. It may be overshadowed at present by commercially driven development but it won't be easily eradicated. I don't see a history of high profile, well funded green initiatives here. What I see instead is just enough widespread tolerance of alternatives to allow adding a new bike path here, a bus route there and a pedestrian bridge in the other place. Over time it adds up.
I also like the Yellow Bike Project. It never had much success with putting free yellow bikes out around town for public use. Rumor has it that they are quickly spray painted and converted for private use. Yellow Bike's main positive effect, in my opinion, is to spread know-how about bicycle repair in the community. I've volunteered at Yellow Bike a couple of times and also gone to them for assistance in keeping my old steel bike running. The latest development for Yellow Bike seems to be that the city is helping them to arrange for a long term home. I don't think the local private bike shops feel threatened by competition from Yellow Bike. In fact I've been referred by them to the "Communist Bike Shop" especially for help with obsolete bike parts.
It's true that Austin's economy is a little different from, say, Houston or Dallas. Thus, as you imply it's possible that whatever we have going here has no applicability to cities that are big commercial centers. However, Dell for example is certainly one substantial home grown company. The company I helped go from startup to eventual takeover was of much less significance. Like many other Austin tech startups, it had a heritage going back through Tracor, Applied Research Labs and ultimately back to the University of Texas.