Project Connect Unveils Vision of a Car-Free Drag

This diagram shows projected traffic in the year 2045, with no intervention, and with two proposed plans. Option A: Light rail + general traffic and/or bus/GT combo. Option B: Transit mall. (courtesy of Project Connect)

Project Connect planners unveiled a new plan for Guadalupe Street at a community meeting Tuesday, June 14, that would entail banning cars along the Drag – from 22nd Street to 29th Street – in an effort they say could more than triple the people-moving capacity of the congested corridor.

The updated design would claim parts of the roadway currently used by automobiles to transform the area into a new transit mall. (Emergency vehicles would still have street access.) Planners are considering two options: In one scenario, cyclists would share a lane with buses (which would likely travel at speeds no greater than 15 mph), running alongside the Orange Line's light rail tracks. In the second scenario, cyclists would have a dedicated lane and buses would share the Orange Line's light rail guideway. Both come with trade-offs – either inferior bike facilities in the first scenario or reduced rail performance in the second. Either option could move more than 21,000 people through the Drag per hour, compared to 6,470 under current conditions.

Peter Mullan, chief of architecture and urban design at the Austin Transit Partnership, described the Drag as an "iconic" piece of Austin's urban space, but echoing what he told the Chronicle earlier this month, he added that "the idea of the Drag right now is a little more powerful than the reality." Even still, pedestrian use of the Drag already dwarfs that of other areas in the central city. The 2021 UT Engineering Capstone Study, conducted for Project Connect, found that between 4-5pm, 1,854 pedestrians used the Guadalupe/24th Street intersection, compared to just 239 in the same time window at the Guadalupe/Cesar Chavez intersection Downtown (near City Hall).

The latest design for the Drag incorporates feedback gathered from prior community input and more iterations will follow after more input is collected. Project Connect planners will present later this summer a 30% complete design, with new cost estimates, for the "initial investment" in the transit system overhaul.