On a sunny fall day in Austin, pedestrians stroll along South Congress Avenue clutching shopping bags and peering into the plate glass windows of stores. Clusters of friends stop at iconic landmarks for photos, while families enjoy meals under the shade of oak trees at sidewalk cafes. With classic local establishments like the Continental Club, Allens Boots, and Hotel San José, this little stretch of road is a bastion of Austin’s culture. However, the past decade has ushered in a sea change for the strip, with longstanding stores like Lucy in Disguise and Tesoros traded out for bougie international brands like Hermès and Soho House. Many locals have bemoaned the death of the district in light of those shifts.
However, all that transformation pales in comparison to the radical reimagining of the area set to take place when the construction of the new light rail commences. Much has been made about Project Connect’s effects on North Austin: Beloved burger joint Dirty Martin’s clamored to have the rail’s path altered, and community grocery store Wheatsville Co-op announced it would depart next year when its lease is up.
But no one is really talking about how drastically the new transportation line will alter South Congress forever.
“They’re going to scrape the entire street from storefront to storefront,” says Alie Twigger, co-owner of Heritage Boots, which sits in the 1700 block of South Congress. She serves on the board of the South Congress Merchant’s Association and says that many of the shop owners are alarmed about the impending redesign of the district.
Eventually, the light rail will run directly up the street from downtown to a stop at Oltorf Street. To accommodate its installation, virtually all street parking in the area will be eliminated, and the road may be reduced to one lane in each direction to accommodate the tracks. It’s also possible that two lanes of traffic in each direction will remain, but that will mean less room for bike lanes and sidewalks. And those are just the high-level considerations in a sea of endless details.
In January, the local government corporation responsible for implementing the new train system, Austin Transit Partnership (ATP), released their Draft Environmental Impact Statement, a study required by any project receiving federal funding that examines how it will affect the existing environment, from natural features to the economic infrastructure. The total document is more than 16,000 pages long, which underscores the scope and extent of the initiative.
The final decisions on the exact specifications of the street have not yet been made and won’t be for some time. That’s not expected to occur until closer to 2027, when construction is slated to begin. And the light rail isn’t expected to actually launch service until 2033, meaning we have years of construction ahead of us.
In the meantime, ATP has been holding community meetings and soliciting feedback from stakeholders like Twigger. One of the organization’s executives, Jennifer Pyne, says that the opinions they’ve heard vary widely and are often contradictory, which is to be expected when asking the thoughts of dozens of people.
Regardless of what the final recommendations are, Pyne echoes Twigger’s assessment of the situation. “When the light rail comes in, you’re essentially rebuilding the street,” she says. And keeping the unique character of a place during a complete overhaul is no easy task.
But the preciousness of the district isn’t lost on Pyne, who says, “It’s a special place, and this project is going to make it easier for people to get there—but you have to make sure you don’t lose the attraction, and that’s our intention.”
ATP says that it will be able to maintain car access to the area throughout construction by working on one side of the road at a time and diverting traffic. Still, it’s almost certain that the district will see a decline in patron activity. For huge international brands like Hermès, it might be no big deal, but for locally owned shops, a lag in business could be catastrophic. ATP’s plan does call for supporting businesses with financial assistance. “I worked on building a light rail in Phoenix, Arizona, and we had business assistance programs in place,” Pyne says. “Something that was effective was to reimburse bills.” Such measures can’t replace earnings, but they can cut down on overhead costs.
For Twigger and other business owners in the area, it’s not just the construction that’s a concern, but simply how much the project has changed. To really understand the context of this moment, you have to go all the way back to a bond measure in 2020. Fifty-eight percent of Austinites voted in favor of the Project Connect light rail, setting in motion a massive undertaking.
However, at the time, the proposal consisted of around 20 miles of track, 31 stops, and access to the airport. Now, the plan has been reduced to under 10 miles of track and just 15 stops, with the last at Yellow Jacket Lane—which is, frustratingly, just one stop short of the airport.
“Everyone’s been bait and switched,” Twigger says. Her assessment of the situation is valid in terms of the net effect, but the underlying reasons are far more complex. The most major factor is that the project’s $7.1 billion budget just doesn’t cover as much as it was expected to when the plan was drafted thanks to supply chain issues and inflation (especially with regard to construction materials like steel and concrete). There’s also the fact that a substantial portion of the funding was slated to come from federal grants, but those are all far from certain in a political climate that has consistently scaled back spending on public projects.
Twigger recalls initially being excited for the idea back in 2020 and remembers the plan calling for more stops along South Congress. The shop owner generally welcomes growth and isn’t averse to progress. “Change is inevitable,” she says. “But this is just a bad idea.” The latest iteration has a stop near the beginning of the district and then a terminus at Oltorf Street, meaning the two stations closest to Heritage Boots are a half mile in either direction. Pyne says that ATP is considering one more station located near Lively Middle School, which would drastically increase access to the shopping district, but nothing is guaranteed.
Zooming out, the friction surrounding the public transportation project is somewhat surprising given Austin’s general political leanings. You get the feeling that everyone’s hungry for an omelet, but no one is ready to break the eggs. Which is understandable considering how much is at stake for small business owners.
When Kirk Watson was reelected after a two-decade gap in his mayoral tenures, Austin Monthly asked him what he wished he’d done differently the first time around. His first thought was of the failed rail proposal 25 years ago. At that time, Austin seemed big enough already to the local hippies who’d been calling it home since the ’70s. But there’s no denying that sweeping infrastructure change would have been much easier back then. Now, if only $7.1 billion could buy a time machine, we wouldn’t have such a mess.
Train of Thought
A look at the numbers surrounding the forthcoming light rail project.
9.8 miles
The length of track for the new light rail.
10,000
The estimated number of jobs created by the light rail’s implementation.
$7.1 billion
Total budget slated for the light rail’s planning and construction.
20
Minutes of expected travel time from 38th Street to Oltorf Street via the light rail.
28,500
Estimated number of riders served daily by the light rail in 2040.
Great Job Bryan C. Parker & the Team @ Austin Monthly Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
