ATX Walk Bike Roll: Choosing Our Path

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Over the past year, we’ve heard from thousands of community members through polls,  online surveys , virtual meetings, and out on the street through our  Community Ambassador   program.

Using this community input, we’ve created three scenarios for the future of  urban trails ,  bikeways , and  sidewalk  routes as well as related programs and policies.

Below, you’ll find information on four key topics we need your feedback on:

• Transportation policy questions – we want to hear if you support these ideas that could make walking, biking, or rolling safer and more equitable for residents.
• Three ways urban trails and bikeways could be built in the future. Help us decide what types of connections we should prioritize in order to have the greatest positive impact for people walking, biking, or rolling.
• Shared Streets, a way to build safer places to walk in less time and at a lower cost than constructing sidewalks. Tell us if you want to see more Shared Streets in Austin.
• Pedestrian street crossings, rate how important these are at select locations to help us determine where to build them first.

We are at a key moment in this project where we are making major decisions about how to move forward, and we need you to help decide! To make this easier, we have created Community Profiles based on the public input received. These profiles describe the diversity of people who walk, bike, and roll in Austin—and their individual needs. We used these profiles to guide the creation of options for how we prioritize investments.  

All of this is described below.  Give feedback on these scenarios and additional transportation policy questions online  by October 23. We will also be out in the community seeking feedback, with the goal of engaging diverse populations.  

ATX Walk Bike Roll focuses on building and maintaining new urban trails, sidewalks, and bikeways. However, there are many factors that must be considered to equitably address transportation in Austin. 

This section describes policy options being considered. When adopted, policies are "rules" adopted by the City of Austin that guide how the City deals with a given issue. 

Community input, particularly from historically underrepresented populations, emphasized the affordability and displacement crisis in Austin. Many Austinites are being priced out of Austin and are moving to surrounding cities. This move increases transportation costs, furthers car-dependency, and makes it more difficult to access transit or to walk or bike places.

At the same time, large investments in transportation projects can make homes less affordable and cause displacement. This is a complex problem, and the solutions are also complex. While investment in affordable housing and implementation of anti-displacement tools, policies, and programs are the most important actions to address the crisis, we are considering transportation related strategies to improve affordability that we want your feedback on.   

The policy ideas below are all meant to reduce transportation cost in an equitable way and address the hidden subsidies and funding bias that currently favor automobiles above all other transportation options. We're asking residents if they support the following ideas.

• Making transit and bikeshare completely free for all residents
• A "Guaranteed Basic Mobility Program" (transportation debit card for low-income residents that can be used for transit, bikeshare, rideshare, scooters, taxis, etc.)
• Explore ways to provide a fair allocation of transportation services for transit, biking, walking, and rolling.
• Subsidies for residents to purchase an e-bike or scooter (equal to how the City currently subsidizes electric cars and chargers)
• Increased lighting on sidewalks, bikeways, urban trails, and pedestrian crossings

Austin has separate programs for developing the Urban Trails and Bikeways networks, each with their own funding. Through ATX Walk Bike Roll, the future of these routes are being planned together. 

  Urban Trails   are wide, hard surface trails designed for use by people walking, biking, skating, using mobility assistance devices and other human powered forms of transportation for both getting around and recreating.

  Bikeways  are defined places for people to ride bikes, scooters, or other similar devices along streets. They include protected bicycle lanes, paths along high-speed roadways, neighborhood bikeways (traffic calmed neighborhood streets) and crossings of major streets.

• 60+ miles of urban trails, 30 of which have been built since 2014 when the last Urban Trails Plan was adopted
• 215 miles of on-street bikeways designed for people of all ages and abilities, including 50 miles of bikeways that are fully separated from car traffic

Our Urban Trail and Bikeways networks are growing! Voter-approved Mobility Bond money is already at work; now we’re deciding how to prioritize future investments. We’re thinking about different ways to focus, including prioritizing:

• Connections to parks, open spaces, and trails
• Access to job centers and citywide destinations, such as downtown and universities
• Connections to neighborhood destinations, such as corner stores and schools
• Streets that have the greatest safety concerns
• Connections across major barriers, such as highways, railroads, and creeks
• Improved access to transit

We want to know what’s important to you, and what you think is best for all Austinites! 

Within the scenarios, there are additional considerations when deciding how to allocate funds to have the greatest positive impact for people walking, biking, and rolling. We could emphasize various types of projects:

• Closing short gaps and building community connectors
• Building longer projects that expand the backbone of the networks
• Upgrading existing trails and bikeways. For example: widen them, create separate paths for people walking and people biking, or increase separation from cars.
• Including trees, water fountains, benches, signage, lighting, and bike parking.

The City is actively expanding the sidewalk network; however, there are still hundreds of miles of streets without them. It could take up to 100 years to build sidewalks along all streets in Austin. 

One solution the City is exploring to more quickly expand places for walking are  Shared Streets  on neighborhood streets with low amounts of traffic, low speeds, and no or few sidewalks. Shared Streets use traffic calming devices, such as bollards, paint, or planters to make residential streets more comfortable for people walking, biking, or rolling. 

Although Shared Streets do not provide the same level of separation from car traffic as sidewalks, this approach would create safer places to walk in less time and at a lower cost. We can build 3 to 4 blocks of shared street for the same cost as 1 block of sidewalk. 

To test the concept, the City is building shared street pilot projects that will allow us to test different designs and get feedback from neighbors. Learn more about shared streets:  AustinTexas.gov/SharedStreets  

To explore the benefits of shared streets, we created three scenarios that mix levels of sidewalk and shared street investments. Scenario 1: Mostly Sidewalks – If we continue to focus on mostly building sidewalks, then most neighborhoods will only have sidewalks along major streets and near commercial areas and transit, with some neighborhood streets getting sidewalks on one side. Scenario 2: An Even Mix – If we also build shared streets, then busier streets and areas with higher amounts of walking activity would continue to get sidewalks, but we would also cover more neighborhood streets with shared streets. Scenario 3: Lots of Shared Streets – If we invest more heavily in shared streets, then we’ll be able to cover more neighborhood streets across Austin. Major streets and streets with lots of walking activity will still get sidewalks.

The three scenarios are described and compared below, highlighting how much each could increase access.  Each scenario is based on the same budget level.

In addition to building sidewalks and shared streets, we’re investing in pedestrian street crossings and want your input on how we prioritize projects. Making street crossings safer is an important part of Austin’s  VisionZero  program and an important action for equity.

We’re considering various ways to focus, including:

1. Near K-12 schools   
2. Near transit/bus stops 
3. Streets with a history of serious or fatal pedestrian crashes
4. Near neighborhood commercial districts
5.   Busy streets with many cars or cars moving quickly   
6. Improved connections across major barriers like highways, railroads, and creeks

ATX Walk Bike Roll’s approach to engagement is centered in equity. We prioritized hearing from People of Color, people with low incomes, and others that historically haven’t been as engaged in conversations about walking and biking. 

We created four community profiles to summarize what we heard from our focus populations. These profiles are based off public feedback and are included here to demonstrate how planning decisions could impact the lives of various Austin residents.

Residents gave input on three possible scenarios for urban trails, bikeways, shared streets, policy ideas, and pedestrian crossings through the Choosing Our Path Survey from September 7 - October 23, 2022.

The project team is now analyzing public feedback which will inform the drafts of the Urban Trails, Sidewalks, and Bikeway Plans. Draft versions of each will be posted online in early 2023 for public review and comment.