Two years ago, Austin voters said yes to Project Connect. Where do things stand?

The McKalla MetroRail station is only a small part of the rail transit plans under Project Connect.
Aaron E. Martinez, Austin American-Statesman

Austin American Statesman
Sarah Asch - Austin American-Statesman
November 14, 2022

It has been two years since Austin voters overwhelmingly passed a dedicated tax to pay for a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the city’s transit system — by far the largest ballot measure ever approved locally. With engineering and planning underway, local transit officials say the program is on track.

“We’ve had some early successes only two years in, but there’s lots of work ahead, no doubt about it,” said Greg Canally, interim executive director of the Austin Transit Partnership, the entity created to manage Project Connect. “This was always a multiyear project.”

Project Connect was presented as a generational opportunity to remake Austin's mass transit system. The plan calls for two light rail lines, a downtown Austin tunnel and multiple new bus routes. The plan also includes housing funds, equitable development planning and more city park-and-ride options. Two years in, several projects have broken ground, but officials say there is still a long way to go, especially for the new light rail lines. 

Some construction underway

Much of the progress has come on the existing MetroRail red line and with bus line expansion. Capital Metro interim President and CEO Dottie Watkins said the first Project Connect groundbreaking was an infrastructure project to improve resiliency and reliability on the red line. 

“We also did a groundbreaking on the McKalla rail station at Q2 Stadium on the red line. That is currently under design and will be under construction imminently,” she said. “We've also done groundbreakings on both the Pleasant Valley and Expo Center bus rapid transit lines, and those are under construction right now.”

Metro rapid bus routes run more often and make fewer stops, to make travel times faster. Watkins said. The existing metro rapid routes include the 803, which runs up and down Burnet Road and Lamar Boulevard, and the 801 which runs down Lamar and to South Congress Avenue. Project Connect includes plans for four metro rapid lines and the possibility of additional metro express dedicated commuter lines that run from suburban areas to the city’s urban core. 

Watkins said early work on new bus lines include designing and installing bus stations and building 40 new buses to support the routes. Some of these routes were in the works before Project Connect funding passed and were subsequently folded into the project. 

Canally said that as part of the vision for Project Connect, CapMetro has also implemented new zones for circulator buses, which provide on-demand pickup and drop-off to locations within certain neighborhoods.

In addition to the construction work that is planned or underway, the bureaucratic infrastructure designed to support Project Connect has been put in place, Canally said. A big part of this was the creation of the Austin Transit Partnership, an independent entity responsible for working with the city and CapMetro on overseeing the program.

Light rail updates expected in spring

The biggest change to Austin’s transit system through Project Connect is the addition of the blue and orange light rail lines. These lines are not expected to be operational until closer to 2030.

The original vision for the project showed the orange line at about 21 miles with 22 stations, connecting North Austin and South Austin running from Tech Ridge Boulevard to Slaughter Lane along the North Lamar/Guadalupe corridor. The blue line is planned to run about 8.2-miles connecting 20 stations from downtown to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, providing service along East Riverside Drive across Lady Bird Lake to the Austin Convention Center and west on Fourth Street to Republic Square.

However, Canally said exact plans for light rail are still up in the air and will depend on cost. An implementation plan and schedule for the light rail lines is expected in the spring, he said. After the plan is in place, the next steps include finishing the engineering, getting contracts in place and confirming local and federal funding sources, he said.

The design of the light rail lines will have a huge impact on the overall cost and timeline of the project, since the orange and blue lines are the most expensive part of Project Connect — and that cost is going up with inflation. The Austin Transit Partnership announced in April that Project Connect’s estimated price tag had jumped from $7.1 billion in November 2020 when voters approved the funding to $11.6 billion.

Higher prices for acquiring property and surging inflation that has driven up costs for materials and labor are partly to blame, local transportation officials say. But in a memo to the Austin City Council, Project Connect's managers also say the estimated cost for a proposed tunnel under Lady Bird Lake has doubled from $2 billion to $4 billion due to environmental concerns and because the original plan would have violated Austin's Capitol view corridor rules.

Given this increase in cost, Canally said alternative design options are on the table for light rail. 

“Light rail was always intended to take really between nine and 11 years to design the plan, design, finance, implement construct, and so we're still early years,” he said. “Part of that on the engineering side is starting to do some work around (where we put) our lines. ... One of the factors we're looking at from a system perspective as well as from a cost containment perspective is do we need to cross the lake twice? Or do we need to cross the lake once?”

An updated light rail funding estimate and a more nailed-down design will both be part of the plan presented in the spring, Canally said. 

How much has been spent so far

Since the beginning, more than half of Project Connect's cost has been expected to be funded by federal grants. Watkins said it is still too early for individual projects to have received federal money — the first two MetroRapid lines are finalizing the agreement to receive federal dollars and the light rail projects are in the development phase of the federal grant process.

However, the 8.75-cent property tax set aside for Project Connect locally has yielded $316 million already. The total price tag of Project Connect so far, from January 2020 before the vote to this past August, is $113 million, according to the Austin Transit Partnership. 

The Austin Transit Partnership has spent $36.2 million on operations, $5.6 million on MetroRapid bus lines and $2.9 million on the new red line station. The biggest cost has been the planning work that has gone into the light rail, which totals $68.3 million.

CapMetro also contributes funding to the Austin Transit Partnership's budget annually. To date, the agency has chipped in $66.8 million. The Austin Transit Partnership also gets a small amount of revenue from parking on-site and from interest on funding that hasn’t been spent. 

The Austin Transit Partnership currently has $271.3 million in unspent funds. It has allocated $100 million of that money to anti-displacement programs and initiatives administered by the city of Austin. This fund will go to initiatives designed to keep families from being pushed out of neighborhoods when transit goes in. The remaining funds are being saved for future expenditures.

Canally said the most important thing for residents to know is that the Austin Transit Partnership plans to stay within its budget and there are no plans to ask for another tax increase. 

“We're going to live within the budget allotments that we have for light rail,” he said. “We're going to phase in the light rail, which is how other cities have done it.”

Some have criticized the emphasis on no tax increase, given that the project’s cost is still going up. Austin lawyer Bill Aleshire, a former Travis County judge and an open government advocate, said he is concerned that the project's cost could continue to grow because the ballot language did not define the project's scope, put a limit on its cost or set a timeline. 

While the local tax rate increase approved by voters for Project Connect might not rise, Aleshire said the higher cost could lead to the tax increase remaining in place for a longer time, which would, in fact, cost local taxpayers more.

What’s next?

With light rail plans still in the works, Watkins said CapMetro plans to keep working on projects that are already underway. One of the biggest factors in construction timing is the supply chain, which Watkins expects to cause delays. 

“The supply chain is just a mess,” she said. “It's all the domino effect, ... something that normally takes you two weeks to get your hand on is taking us like two months.”

City commissions, including the zoning and planning, have also been discussing an ordinance that would speed up approval for permits related to Project Connect. The ordinance would allow entire transit lines to be approved under a consolidated fast-track site plan process, instead of requiring the process to be undertaken in chunks. Other changes to city code include extending the site plan expiration period to 10 years for transit projects, allowing rail maintenance facilities on land zoned “Public.”

Bill McCamley, a former New Mexico state representative who now leads the local nonprofit Transit Forward, said this ordinance is a key step in accomplishing Project Connect’s goals quickly. 

“Without this change it could really cost more and also cause more delays,” he said. “So the fact that the city and ATP are trying to do that now before any shovels go in the ground is a really positive step.”

Transit Forward was founded late last year to advocate for Project Connect, and McCamley said his focus is making sure people understand all the benefits of a comprehensive transit system. With this ordinance passed, Austin residents will start to see those benefits sooner, he said.

“It’s good to remind folks that a good mass transit system does reduce traffic, it does take cars off of the highway and allows more people to flow more freely around the city in a comprehensive way. It’s safer than driving,” he said. “I just want to make sure that people understand from affordability, job creation, the state of greenhouse gas emissions, this is so important and why we need to continue to support it going forward. It's going to make this community better for us all.”