Envision
this: more than 400 miles of new hike- and-bike trails along creeks throughout Travis, Hays, and Williamson Counties.
City dwellers could hop on their bikes and ride one continuous trail from Town
Lake to McKinney Falls. Or how about a long, scenic trail along Walnut Creek
that East Austinites could hike or bike up to northwest Austin or down to the
Colorado River? While this may sound like a dream to the folks at the Austin
Metropolitan Trails Council (AMTC) — the trail advocacy coalition that
recently distributed its proposal for just such a plan — some property rights
advocates predict that the proposed trails linking the city to the ‘burbs will
give rise to a nightmare.
“If you make continuous trails out to these rural areas, you’re going to be
reading about rapes and murders,” warned Slaughter Creek resident Eric Anderson
at the Austin Transportation Study’s meeting on October 14, adding that he has
already had to hold off a burglar at gunpoint and break up transient camps on
his land. “These are vicious people coming out there. You’ll condemn us to a
life of living hell.”
Another irate property owner who surprised the usually thick-skinned ATS
politicos last month with the intensity of her speech was Suzanne Gasparatto.
“I can tell you and you and you that none of you are getting my land,” declared
the Onion Creek property owner as she stared daggers at the members of the ATS
panel. “It’s my land, it’s my creek, it’s my home.”
Ye Olde Property Rights Fight
That the AMTC’s recently released Vision Map has already stirred up such ahornets’ nest of opposition from residents along Onion and Slaughter Creeks
south of Austin has caught quite a few trail advocates off-guard. Only a year
ago, the AMTC appeared to represent environmental interests so broad-based as
to be beyond political controversy. After all, the trails advocacy coalition’s
only pitch is for preserving greenways and building more hike-and-bike trails
along area creeks, goals that it looked like everyone from the Real Estate
Council to Earth First! could support. In fact, the list of 25 organizations
and government entities that form the AMTC reads like a pantheon of municipal
respectability. AMTC members include the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA),
Austin Parks Foundation, Texas Parks and Wildlife, the Save Barton Creek
Association, Travis County, and the cities of Austin, Lakeway, Round Rock, and
Pflugerville.
In 1994, when the AMTC helped win over $4 million in federal grants to
expand hike-and-bike trails on Town Lake, and along Barton, Shoal, and Waller
Creeks, environmentalists were jubilant. But trail advocates forgot to factor
in the local property rights movement that has sprung up in recent years in
opposition to such nature preserve programs as the Balcones Canyonlands
Conservation Plan (BCCP). When creekside property owners became aware of AMTC’s
plan to link their neighborhoods to foot traffic from the city, some of these
irate landowners sprang to action.
Property owners descended on the ATS last month after Travis County requested that federal funds controlled by the ATS be allocated to build an
AMTC-proposed trail along Slaughter Creek between Slaughter Creek Metropolitan
Park and Mary Moore Searight Metropolitan Park. To listen to the fiery speeches
of the protesters, one would have thought the proposed Slaughter Creek trail
was to lead to their front doors. However, residents like Anderson, who are
opposing the trail, live on a section of Slaughter Creek downstream of Searight
Park where trail extension is not proposed. The fear for the
neighborhood is that trail advocates, despite present assurances to the
contrary, will eventually decide to “fill the gap” in the trails system. And,
the logic goes, in will rush the criminal elements from the city.
Ironically, the proposed trail would most benefit the subdivisions of
Circle C and Shady Hollow. Many cyclists still remember with disgust how
$368,000 of the $2 million that Austin voters had approved in the early 1980s
to improve bicycle mobility on city streets instead went to build Circle C’s
veloway, a circular bicycle track they say primarily provides weekend exercise
for suburban commuters. Were the ATS to go ahead with the Slaughter Creek trail
plan and spend $660,000 of the $2.68 million it has set aside for
bicycle/pedestrian funding to again benefit the swank Edwards Aquifer
subdivision, howls of protest from inner-city cyclists might join the chorus
now coming from the property rights group. (Travis County has also asked the
ATS for $240,000 to fund a project not in the AMTC Vision Plan: a bicycle
tunnel under Slaughter Lane to connect the former Maple Run MUD to Circle C’s
veloway.)
Takes a Child to Raze a Village
Because of the vocal property owner opposition, Travis County is likely topull back its plans for Slaughter Creek, and instead focus on getting $768,000
for a concrete bike trail along Gilleland Creek in Pflugerville. Meanwhile,
Slaughter Creek residents remain unimpressed by official assurances that no one
is after their land. “I see an orchestrated effort coming out of the Clinton
Administration,” says Anderson, “It’s the same social engineering mindset as
Clinton’s `It takes a village to raise a child.’ They think that if you put
gang kids in the backyards of everybody that lives on hike-and-bike trails,
somehow we’re going to hold the little vipers to our hearts and love them and
hug them and they’ll have a miraculous change of heart.”
Gasparatto sees the proposed trails system as part of a greater scheme by
Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to make Austin the national model for a
socialistic land grab in the name of environmental protection. To substantiate
her view, she points to a September article in a Wall Street Journal publication called Smart Money. The article’s author, John Anderson,
argues that the BCCP is a Babbitt-backed scheme in which developers and
environmentalists banded together to deprive property owners of fat capital
gains they would have otherwise realized from selling land lying on the fringes
of metropolitan sprawl.
AMTC representatives protest that their Vision Map showing a 400-mile trail
system is designed mainly to provide an inventory of creeks where trails could
potentially be built, and to rank proposed projects for need and feasibility.
The trail system would take decades to implement, they say, emphasizing that it
is better to have trail plans in place before subdivisions spring up along the
creeks. Skip Cameron, president of the Bull Creek Foundation, says that the
AMTC always works with landowners, and will not encourage use of public
condemnation proceedings to acquire land for trails. He points out that
national trail experts say that they know of no case in the United States where
private land has been condemned for the building of hike-and-bike trails.
But Cameron’s reassurances do not satisfy Slaughter Creek resident Bettie
Carrington. “Their intent is to take one creek at a time and one property owner
at a time — thereby preventing a massive united front in opposition,” says
Carrington. She fears that not only will city and county bureaucracies allied
with the AMTC condemn property for trails, but that they will declare that
owners’ properties in the flood plain have little value and hence pay them
little compensation.
Fat Isolationists
On October 29 and 30, the AMTC hosted a series of public meetings conductedby Charles Flink, a nationally recognized authority on trails and greenways.
Flink stresses the importance of greenways for preserving quality of life in
the wake of rapid population growth and urbanization. In automobile-based urban
development, roadways and parking areas typically use about one-third of
available space, says Flink. Water pollution, flooding, and erosion caused by
rainwater runoff from this mass of impervious cover can be partially mitigated
by preserving a wide buffer of natural area along streams, he says. This
natural area would soak up rainfall, allowing water to percolate more slowly
into aquifers, rather than running off rapidly into the Colorado River. The
same buffer zones would provide spaces for trails, which are increasingly
needed for the health and recreation of city dwellers, Flink maintains.
Health experts blame much of Americans’ problem with obesity and heart
disease on an automobile-dominated transportation system that has eliminated
the need for walking as a part of the daily routine. People need natural
walking areas protected from the rush of traffic and located near where they
live and work in order to get regular exercise, stresses Flink. He also touts
trails as a way to unify communities. “People smile, greet each other and feel
more human on greenways,” he says. “It’s a place to meet people when you’re not
travelling 50-70 miles per hour in a mechanized box.” Cities like Chattanooga
and Louisville have systematic programs to combine trails with greenway
corridors for water protection, while Portland and Denver already have
extensive networks of commuter trails linking the inner city to the suburbs.
However, some Austin suburb dwellers see no value in trails leading to their
backyards. “You can make a case for hike-and-bike trails in the inner city,”
says Anderson, “but these little Sierra Club yuppies with their $200 hiking
shoes and $1,000 bicycles don’t know what we have to put up with in rural areas
with no protection. I can’t go down to the creek without carrying a weapon.
People throw trash on my property and cut down trees. I’ve had them throw rocks
at me and threaten to come back and get me at night.”
As for Flink’s contention that creek buffer zones are needed to control
flooding and prevent water pollution, Anderson sees this as a BCCP style
trade-off in which environmentalists get preservation of wide swaths of creek
greenways, while developers are allowed to cover surrounding areas with
subdivisions. Meanwhile, creekside dwellers will be cheated by having their
property declared to be in a redefined flood plain, and hence devalued for
development. Anderson predicts a Take Back Texas style revolt when “thousands
of people with homes backing up to creeks in the three metropolitan counties
wake up to the fact that their land can be condemned and given over to the
public.” Furthermore, he accuses the AMTC of pretending that what are
essentially recreational trails will have practical use as transportation
corridors in order to justify receiving federal transportation funding.
Happy Trails,
or Crime Corridor? What the city needs is a model to show how trails can benefit the economy and
provide viable commuting corridors as well as recreational opportunities,
counters AMTC president Ted Whatley, who also serves on the Austin Independent
School Board. Whatley believes that a proposed trail along Walnut Creek could
well serve as Austin’s model. The trail would pass through the center of much
of north Austin’s high-tech corridor, providing commuting connections to IBM,
Austin Diagnostic Clinic, ACC’s Northridge Campus, National Instruments, the
Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission and several elementary and
middle schools as it winds between MoPac and I-35.
The city already owns 98% of the right of way on this 4.3-mile corridor, which
also includes Balcones Park and Walnut Creek Park. East of I-35, Walnut Creek
turns south and passes through mainly undeveloped rural land, passing near the
future site of Samsung, as it cuts through Pioneer Farm and Big Walnut Creek
Nature Preserve on its way to the Colorado River. Whatley says that a Walnut
Creek greenbelt would be North and East Austin’s version of the Barton Creek
greenbelt. Winning the $2.75 million needed for the segment between MoPac and
I-35 is a high priority for the AMTC, which may ask the ATS for partial
funding. Whatley also hopes to get contributions from corporations near the
trail by emphasizing the health and recreational benefits for their
employees.
Ted Siff, director of the local field office of The Trust for Public Land,
says that nationwide experience shows that opposition to trails usually fades
after they are built and the public’s fears about them fail to materialize. He
points to Austin Police Department statistics that show that fewer than 1% of
the city’s crimes occur along hike-and-bike trails or on parkland.
Ren� Barrera, president of the South River City Citizens’ Neighborhood
Association, agrees that the notion that trails are crime corridors is a myth.
His association supports the continuation of the Blunn Creek trail from Travis
Heights’ Stacy Park to Town Lake — even though a homeless person was murdered
at the creek underpass at Riverside Drive this year. The area is also littered
with used syringes, graffiti, and other signs of gang and transient activity.
“We’ve given up that area like we have much of the inner city,” says Barrera.
“But we can do something about it by integrating a trail system through it. The
community polices itself when it has a stake in coherent amenities like trails.
Where you have a continuous flow of people, there is less opportunity for
crime.”
Property owners’ fears of city-based crime commuting to the suburbs could
throw a monkey wrench into AMTC’s Vision Map, but Siff says the plan is still
in “the beginning of a process.” He predicts that the Vision Map — which
represents the work of more than 2,000 volunteers over a two-year period —
will go through many changes in routes, corridors, and trail designs. Siff
points out that the momentum helped along by the $4 million in funding that
Austin scored two years ago for some major new trail connections should bring
confidence to trail advocates. Siff says, “Austin is destined to become one of
the nation’s great trail and greenway cities.” n Note: The ATS will hold a public hearing on Monday, Nov. 18, at which
citizens may speak their minds on new trail proposals, as well as on dozens of
other transportation projects that the ATS is considering. The hearing begins
at 6:30pm at the Thompson Conference Center on the UT campus, next to the LBJ
Library at 26th & Red River. The ATS will vote on the projects on Dec. 9.
This article appears in November 15 • 1996 and November 15 • 1996 (Cover).