Like Superman, City Council candidate Roger Chan is ready to stop that powerful locomotive. Er, unless he’s not.
Reading the website of the challenger to Place 1 incumbent Chris Riley, one might think his campaign platform was written by staunch rail opponent Jim Skaggs. “We must avoid the temptation to siphon $1,000,000,000 from our community coffers to build fad transportation trends like Downtown Light Rail,” he writes, in direct reference to the city’s proposed urban rail plan. “Not only can [bus rapid transit] serve more people in more areas of town, it is a far cheaper investment for the community than CapMetro’s $1,000,000,000 Downtown Light Rail Plan.” (Let’s overlook the fact that it’s a city of Austin plan, not Capital Metro’s, just so we can move on.)
Before Skaggs or fellow vocal opponents such as Gerald Daugherty and Mike Levy send out their endorsements, they may want to read what Chan told the Chronicle about the city’s proposal, a line that would run roughly from Mueller to UT and Downtown, then east on Riverside out to the airport: “I love that,” Chan says, “if it can work. But there’s a lot to making that work. The concept’s great. … In terms of that being relief for traffic – no, not really. But it’s a great form of transportation, and it’s great to have in our arsenal, in terms of our overall collection. If you look at any single part, none of them really are easily justified; only collectively it is. … Every piece of the puzzle has its place.”
So Chan would be willing to possibly put this urban rail plan on the ballot (as Mayor Lee Leffingwell hopes to do by November 2012)?
Oh, no.
Well, maybe.
“My problem is, it’s sort of like the other things this council keeps doing where you don’t have the full picture that you’re trying to vote on,” Chan says. “I think it’s irresponsible and premature.”
So he’s against it? “No, not necessarily,” he says. “But if they come up with the proper answers and a true plan of what we’re going to decide on, I’ll support it at that point if it makes sense.”
This reasoning sounds eerily familiar – just like Leffingwell’s position, actually. (See “Why Rail?,” April 8, including the sidebar with Leffingwell’s 30 crucial questions about the rail proposal that must be answered before moving ahead.) It also sounds somewhat like Riley’s position: Both Chan and the man he would unseat say rail is no silver bullet.
But Chan’s comments do sound distinctly different from those stated on his website. Chan also sends mixed messages on whether rail could work at all. In an endorsement meeting, he told the Chronicle that rail in Austin was limited by “physics,” going on to explain that for “rail to exist at any level, it all is subject to the same laws of physics – and that means a 1 percent grade. … You’re limited to a few flat streets.” He later clarified that he didn’t mean that 1% is a maximum grade – indeed, the city’s urban rail engineering study says 5% is a “maximum desirable grade,” with 9% as an absolute maximum – but he says it is the “ideal,” according to consultants from Cap Metro’s failed 2000 light rail initiative. He said sticking to that 1% would prevent the spiderlike rail network that some might envision.
But on some corridors? “Absolutely. I’m a huge fan.”
Hmm. Voters may need to check the schedule to figure out which way the train is running.
This article appears in April 22 • 2011.