 We want to see Anderson Ln evolve over the coming 20 years from a car-friendly environment to a people- and bike-friendly environment. Traffic will kill the VMU vision
Our vision is in alignment with the intention of City policies like VMU. However, we feel that the VMU ordinance is either not the right tool to accomplish our vision, or needs to be updated to better support the town center goals of community, walkability and transit use.
What VMU does well is create an attractive street scape along the main arterial. This is a great step forward from existing street environments around Austin. However, there is a risk that, without considerable additional planning and investment, VMU streetscapes in mid-town areas will fail to achieve their purpose. Traffic on mid-town corridors like Anderson is already high and will certainly increase as more residents are added, deterring pedestrians. You can see this effect along parts of Cesar Chavez, where there are sidewalks and trees, but no sense of pedestrian buzz. It's just too noisy and smelly. Successful main streets like 2nd Street, or the Main Street project in Alhambra, California, are built on smaller streets next to big streets that deflect traffic away. Another example is N. Congress Ave., which is part of an extended street grid that distributes traffic. Anderson does not have a "traffic deflector" companion street, and is not part of a downtown street grid. It is a major east-west traffic corridor and will stay that way for years. Finding ways to manage traffic on this corridor will take ingenuity and a lot of money.
Unlike TOD's, VMU does not coordinate land use changes with transportation, parks and walkability planning. We still don't know when or where robust mass transit will appear on Anderson and Burnet - we can only guess. New Urbanist principles suggest putting most of the new density within easy walking distance (about 800 ft, or even less in Texas) of where the transit hubs will go. Living near a transit hub greatly increases the likelihood that people will actually use transit. Academic research confirms the self-evident - people hate to use bus stops, particularly in mid-town or suburban areas where the commuting distances and number of transfers is higher. VMU distributes people evenly up and down the corridor, raising the chance that many of the people farther from the transit hubs will drive. The likelihood of driving goes up again because VMU only addresses walkability issues along the arterial. Developers who do VMU actually get "bonuses" that include a waiver on connectivity requirements envisioned for straight commercial development. Town centers in particular need connectivity to destinations beyond the arterial to encourage community, walkability and transit use.
We understand that VMU is intended to be just the first step. But in some ways it's the easy first step that neighborhoods fear will be the last step, leaving North Central Austin with thousands of more people crammed into narrow, vehicle-congested corridors.
Address the traffic, and Anderson could thrive Sustainable Neighborhoods is working on multiple fronts to implement an attractive town center on Anderson. The key is doing everything possible to convert vehicular traffic into alternative transportation.
We are participating with Council Member Brewster McCracken on the one-year review of the Commercial Design Standards and VMU ordinance, with an eye to strengthening ped/bike connectivity requirements for areas defined as town centers.
We have contributed to the Parks Department's planning process, urging that high population density within walking distance be a criterion for new park or trail selection.
We are also supporting neighborhood efforts to remove VMU from small properties far from future town centers. Instead, we would like the City to create a new "live-work" zoning category that would reuse existing small commercial buildings, allowing owners to add a second-story loft.
We are also encouraging efforts to shape bicycle routes that run through our neighborhoods and the future town centers.
We want to reach out to CapMetro and CAMPO to crystallize future plans for mass transit on Burnet and Anderson. This more than anything can inform land use policies, both for the City and for developers. In particular, a TOD at the intersection of Mopac and Anderson that includes a park and ride to absorb east-bound traffic before it gets onto Anderson and Shoal Creek could have a transformative effect on further development throughout the corridor.
We are strongly opposed to CAMPO's current recommendation that Anderson be widened into six lanes. This would be a huge set-back to the town center vision, and would effectively lock the North Shoal Creek and Wooten neighborhoods off from the rest of the City. We know these changes can't be achieved overnight. But we hope that, by creating a positive vision, we can focus the energies of City policy makers, residents, and property owners on a direction that will benefit everybody.
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