Austin Mobility Plan Seeks To Curb Traffic Congestion

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Austin City Council members recently laid out an ambitious plan to mitigate traffic congestion on city streets in the future — a plan that includes cutting down on solo commuters, fortifying the public transit system and encouraging ride sharing.

Council adopted the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan at its April 11 meeting. A key component of the plan is to curb solo commuting from 74 percent to 50 percent over the next 20 years. Council members envision achieving this solo-commuting drop by urging people to explore public transit or telecommuting, among others, as options.

The plan calls for increasing the number of commuters choosing public transportation as an option to reach destinations. City leaders envision increasing the percentage of commuters using public transit from 4 percent to 16 percent by 2039.

Other traffic-curbing ideas outlined in the plan include:

• Strengthening the city's public transit system.
• Encouraging the practice of ride-sharing.
• Bulking up and improving the municipal system of walking trails.
• Revamping street design.
• Adding hundreds more miles of sidewalk paths.
• Increasing the number of bike lanes as part of a plan to increase cycling commuters from 1 percent to 4 percent.
• Exploring the addition of self-driving cars.
• Improving pedestrian safeguards to encourage a jump in walking commuters from 2 percent to 4 percent.

Some of the ideas being mulled would require issuance of public debt. Plans are afoot to ask voters to decide on a 2020 bond election aimed at approving a north-south mass transit lane running through the city's middle dubbed the Orange Line Project. The size of the that bond referendum has yet to be determined.

The urgency of the plan comes as Austin emerged as the nation's 14th most traffic-congested city. Data show a typical Austin driver wasted 104 hours while on the road last year while stuck in traffic. That scenario will inevitably worsen as the population grows. The upshot: The city's newly approved Austin Strategic Mobility Plan as an answer to those traffic trends.

“By aggressively shifting the growth of total trips to other modes and strategically expanding roadway system capacity, where feasible, we responsibly manage congestion into the future,” the plan reads in part.