Endorsement: Prop A’s Project Connect is a steep but overdue investment

Austin will keep growing. And in time, whenever the pandemic recedes and normalcy returns, traffic will get worse.

Transportation woes regularly top Austinites’ list of concerns for good reason. The typical Austin commuter wasted 66 hours in congested traffic and lost $1,391 in time and fuel in 2017, according to the most recent edition of the Urban Mobility Report by Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute. Those costs had risen by 15 hours and $403 from just a decade earlier. And there’s no reason to expect a reprieve. The population of the Austin metro area is projected to double in the next 30 years.

We can curse these developments from the driver’s seats of our cars, our roadways clogged with traffic, our air choked with pollution. Or we can embrace the kind of comprehensive transit plan needed in America’s 11th-largest city.

Project Connect is the system we wish Austin could have built a decade or two ago. The investment in this $7.1 billion transit network, though steep, is long overdue. Austin voters on Nov. 3 should approve the city tax hike in Proposition A to build Project Connect.

Produced by Capital Metro after an exhaustive two-year study and public engagement effort, Project Connect includes a mix of light rail, commuter rail, expanded bus service and new areas for on-demand pickup/dropoff services.

The priciest pieces of the plan are the two light rail lines: The Orange Line traveling down the city’s spine along North Lamar Boulevard and South Congress Avenue, and the Blue Line connecting the airport and East Riverside Drive to downtown, then up North Lamar. Improvements to the existing Red Line would add stops at the Domain and the Austin FC soccer stadium site. Construction of the new Green Line, using existing freight track, would connect Colony Park to downtown Austin.

To be sure, this is a long play. Red Line improvements and expanded bus routes would arrive in three to five years. Construction of the light rail lines will take the better part of a decade. But once everything is up and running, Capital Metro projects the entire transit system would see 276,000 boardings a day — up from the roughly 100,000 daily boardings it saw last year.

Funding such an expansion would require a significant — and permanent — tax hike on Austin property owners. The item before voters calls for raising taxes 8.75 cents per $100 in valuation and dedicating that revenue toward Project Connect. For the owner of the typical Austin home worth $325,000 after exemptions, the increase amounts to $284 on the annual tax bill.

That is a lot. Voters, of course, will decide whether it is too much.

Though it will be lumped into the city of Austin tax rate, it’s worth thinking of Project Connect as its own piece of the tax bill. The $284 is less than what the owner of the $325,000 home pays in taxes to support Austin Community College ($344) or Central Health ($358).

Critics argue that not everyone will ride public transit. That’s true. Not everyone takes classes at ACC or uses the CommUnity Care services provided through Central Health, either. But we recognize them as worthwhile investments because they provide access and opportunity to our neighbors, making our city more livable and prosperous. A comprehensive transit system is no different.

Cap Metro expects 45% of the cost to build the system — about $3.2 billion — would be covered by federal grants. Some Austinites understandably view this claim with skepticism, given the transit agency’s failure to pull down federal dollars as promised when it launched the Red Line a decade ago. It didn’t help that the Red Line came in well over budget and below initial expectations on ridership.

But the once-mismanaged transit agency has been under steadier leadership in recent years. Cap Metro CEO Randy Clarke, who took the helm in 2018, says Project Connect was designed to meet the criteria for Federal Transit Administration grants. A key consideration for the feds: A transit system should have a reliable source of local revenue to put toward construction and upkeep of the new routes. Austin voters are being asked to provide those very dollars in Prop A.

Full transparency and rigorous oversight will be essential if voters approve Prop A. The experts appointed to serve on Project Connect’s governing board must be willing to ask difficult questions and challenge assumptions. Many critical details will need to be worked out, including the final engineering of the system, the logistics of a downtown tunnel and the plan for spending $300 million to keep residents near the transit lines from being pushed out by rising housing costs.

We recognize this is a tough call for voters, especially during an economic downturn when some people have seen diminished paychecks or lost their jobs altogether. Mindful of that, the city and Cap Metro scaled down the package going before voters from the original $10 billion plan to a $7.1 billion “initial investment.” Officials could return to voters years from now to request money for expansions, such as replacing a rapid bus route with a light rail line from ACC’s Highland campus to downtown.

Prop A carries a sizable price tag. But there are also costs if voters decide not to pass it: more time wasted in traffic, more fuel burned by idling cars, more strain on our quality of life as Austin’s population grows without the infrastructure it needs.

The tradeoffs are real. We urge voters to make the better choice and go with Prop A.

Make your call

The Statesman is publishing endorsements in select local, state and federal races between now and the start of early voting, which runs from Oct. 13-30. Election Day is Nov. 3. Visit votetravis.com for information on polling locations.