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Local officials unveiled an expanded version of the light rail tunnel, which will now go under Lady Bird Lake to South Congress Avenue rather than over it, according to local reports.
The announcement arrived after the Texas Legislature failed to pass a bill that would have leased the underground property of Republic Square and Brush Creek Park—historic state property—to Capital Metro so that it could build the downtown tunnel as proposed.
Peter Mullan, chief of architecture and urban design for the Austin Transit Partnership, which is overseeing the implementation of Project Connect, told KUT: "We've had to basically modify our plans a little bit so that we are not touching basically Republic Square at all with any of our construction."
There were other concerns that factored into the decision, including traffic conflicts and flood zone risks on either side of Lady Bird Lake, according to Community Impact Newspaper.
Preliminary maps of the downtown tunnel show its rough pathway is south from 11th and Guadalupe streets to Republic Square; east along Fourth Street to the Downtown Station, which is between Trinity and Red River streets. From there it would head north along Trinity to 12th Street and south to the Mexican-American Cultural Center on Rainey Street, where one of the proposed light rail lines would then progress above ground across Lady Bird Lake to the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
Earlier plans for the downtown tunnel, mapped out here by the gray-and-yellow line, saw it crossing Lady Bird Lake above ground. New plans will it go underneath. (Capital Metro)
The new route will see the underground rail platforms originally intended to go beneath Republic Square shift north, under Guadalupe Street between Fifth and Sixth streets, according to KUT. In addition, the tunnel will now extend under the lake just west of the First Street bridge, with an underground stop at Auditorium Shoes, as reported by KVUE. It's not yet clear where the tunnel will give way to an above-ground track, with one option taking it near Academy Street on South Congress Avenue and another taking it as far down as Leland Street.
"In the case of the crossing of the lake, we learned more about some of the conflicts associated with the bridge alignment that led us to think that going underground would really be the more feasible strategy," Mullan told KVUE.
The cost of the expanded tunnel remains unknown, but ATP staff said it won't require asking voters for more money. "We have to work within the budget constraints of the funding that was provided for us by the voters … and it's up to us to figure out how to make that happen," Mullan told KVUE.
Austin voters overwhelmingly approved a property tax rate increase to help fund Project Connect last November. It will bring two light rail lines and expanded bus service in addition to the underground tunnel over the next 10 to 13 years.
The tunnel route may still change, as construction on the light rail lines isn't due to start for at least three years. In the meantime, ATP staff will present the updated plans to the ATP board on July 21. Capital Metro is also hosting a series of virtual and in-person community events to discuss changes in late July and early August.
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The 2020 census was plagued by the pandemic and politics at the state and federal level. But Austin outperformed other cities across Texas in terms of its self-response rate. (Stock photo)
1. There may have been an undercount.
Texas gained two congressional seats as a result of population growth tallied during the 2020 census, more than any other state in the country, but the state was widely projected to gain a third.
Along with the pandemic and a lack of state investment in census outreach, the former Trump administration's attempt to add a citizenship question may have contributed to an undercount. "There was a lot of damage done with just that early confusion," Wheeler said.
Regional data will be released in late September, which will provide more insight into where an undercount may have occurred. But there are already indications that a gap occurred. The census tracts with the lowest self-response rate in the city of Austin are mostly concentrated on the East side.
Additionally, nearly 0.9% of Texas addresses remained unresolved—meaning members of those households did not respond to the questionnaire or census takers who followed up in person, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is a 71% increase compared to the 2010 census, when 0.52% of Texas addresses remained unresolved.
2. Even a small undercount could have large financial repercussions for Austin.
The city of Austin 2020 population estimate is 995,484. Assuming this is an undercount of 0.9%—which would be at the low-risk end of the spectrum, according to a 2019 report by the Urban Institute—it would leave 9,041 Austin residents uncounted.
For every person uncounted, the community loses $1,500 in annual federal funding, Wheeler said. So this gap would cost the community $135.6 million—in Medicaid funding, Title I school grants and public transit programming—over the next decade.
Although such federal funding has constraints in terms of what it can be used for, such dollars could help offset the costs of programs like:
- The $3.85 billion in local funding required over the next 15 years for Project Connect.
- The $168 million estimated investment required to fund a new city plan to house 3,000 homeless people in three years.
- A $12 million proposal to transform the local early childcare system.
(Capital Metro)3. Austin's racial and ethnic groups are growing at unequal rates.
Between 2010 and 2020, the city of Austin's overall population grew by nearly 26%, according to census data. But this growth varied across racial and ethnic groups.
The city's Black or African American population grew at about the same rate between 2010 and 2019, the latest year for which such data is available. The non-Hispanic White and Hispanic or Latino populations grew at slightly lower rates—22.8% and 19.5%, respectively—over the same period. But the city's Asian population skyrocketed, growing by more than 50% over the last decade.
4. Austin outperformed other large Texas cities in counting its population.
Although the state of Texas saw its self-response rate ranking fall to 39th place in 2020 from 25th in 2010, Austin-Travis County improved its performance over the same period. In fact, it was the only large city-county pair in Texas to beat its 2010 self-response rate, City Demographer Lila Valencia said Tuesday. "I'm really optimistic for Travis County and Austin," she said, attributing the improvement to local investment in the counting process.
(Pexels)
5. It's not too soon to start thinking about the 2030 census.
John Lawler, 2020 census program manager for Austin-Travis County, laid out a number of things the city and county could do in the meantime to improve accuracy, including:
- Staffing up earlier to improve local outreach efforts
- Building on relationships with grassroots community organizations, which proved critical in reaching hard-to-count populations
- Jointly funding an organizing entity that improves civic participation overall, and not just during census years
"Frankly, we should start tomorrow planning for the census in 2030," he said.
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