Bus Riders Union of Austin, Texas | El Sindicato de Pasajeros

Watson, looking to avoid 'mistakes of the past,' steered rail group to craft new, detailed way of analyzing proposals.

By Ben Wear
Austin American-Statesman
Sunday, May 18, 2008

When Austin Mayor Will Wynn used his annual "state of the city" speech in October to plant the seed of rail, what he hoped would sprout was a November 2008 referendum on a central city streetcar or light rail system.

As recently as a month ago, Wynn enthusiastically served as emcee for the unveiling of the outlines of such a project, arguing that it is crucial to build a rail line connecting the airport, downtown and other "activity centers" in Central Austin.

But what bloomed from Wynn's initial effort was a "decision tree," a multibranched set of questions that supporters of any future Central Texas rail project will now have to answer as a starting point.

Momentum for the public vote that Wynn and Council Member Brewster McCracken were looking for has gone dormant, both admit.

"I don't want to predict when the election would be," McCracken says now.

As recently as late April, McCracken (rumored to be eyeing a 2009 mayoral run) was still pushing for a November vote on the light rail project, which would follow a 32-mile commuter line between Austin and Leander that is set to open late this year or early next year.

"The first principle is that we have to get the details right. ... That takes precedence over any election deadline," McCracken says now.

In short, downtown rail is once again in political limbo.

Every month it spends there, rail supporters say, is another 30 days of an increasingly congested downtown and ever-rising construction costs. Slowing down, others say, should produce a better plan with a better chance of getting public approval.

What happened between Wynn's Oct. 25 speech to the Downtown Austin Alliance and now was an intervention by Democratic state Sen. Kirk Watson, a former Austin mayor who supports rail but often speaks about his frustration with the spitball nature of Austin's rail debate over the years.

Wynn had called for a task force to work out how to pay for building rail from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to downtown and then northeast to the Mueller redevelopment (and possibly a couple of other central city destinations). With Capital Metro no longer able to pay for or operate more rail lines on its own, Wynn and McCracken have said that rail could be financed by combining money from the transit agency, the city, other governments and perhaps private developers.

Instead of a task force focused on Wynn's suggested rail project, Watson, who is chairman of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, the area's main transportation decisionmaking body, formed a CAMPO "working group" with a much broader mission. Wynn was named chairman, and Watson acted as a facilitator, at times basically running the meetings while standing by a flip chart off the dais.

In the end, what that 14-member group produced was not a rail project but a way to scrutinize rail projects.

After meeting almost weekly for more than five months, and on May 5 approving that decision tree and its almost 100 questions, the Wynn transit group is on indefinite hiatus. It's unclear if that group will ever actually work through those questions on the downtown rail plan or if the full CAMPO board will take over the vetting process.

A city-sponsored rail design effort by consultant ROMA Design Group, at one point scheduled to come before the council May 8, now has a similarly indefinite delivery point.

"My perception is that ROMA still has weeks' worth of work to do," Wynn said. "They are just now beginning the pricing work, drilling down through the preliminary engineering piece. The economic analysis is going to take even longer than the preliminary engineering. ... The decision tree we have created sets the bar so high that it creates a bunch of work" for those proposing a rail project.

Which points to the underlying question: Why did Watson, who through his elective position and skill in the political arts exerts considerable control over Central Texas events, steer the working group in this direction?

"I am a strong supporter of rail. We're going to have to include it in our mix of transportation options," Watson said this week. "The goal is to reach more rational, fact-based answers to (rail) questions, rather than answers that are based on politics and instinct."

The point, Watson said, "is for us to avoid making the mistakes of the past."

Most rail supporters acknowledge that one of those mistakes was the rushed and unspecific nature of the $1.9 billion light rail proposal that Capital Metro put before voters in November 2000. The details of the 52-mile plan emerged only as the agency board called the election in September. In the heated and brief campaign that followed, opponents were able to attack not only what the rail project clearly would do and would cost but also what remained unclear.

The referendum lost by less than 1 percent of the vote. Capital Metro came back in 2004 with a much cheaper, simpler commuter rail plan (just one route, at about 5 percent of the 2000 plan's cost) that passed easily.

What ROMA unveiled in late April had even fewer specifics than the 2000 plan, with most of a suggested route, but not all of it; a recommendation for light rail technology, but with allowance for the possibility of streetcars instead; costs expressed only as a wide possible range; and no mention of where the money would come from to pay for it.

In the wake of the negative reaction from editorial writers and some politicians, including Watson, Wynn and others said that it was intended to be seen not as a plan but as a starting point for public discussion.

But days before the proposal emerged April 22, Wynn in a working group meeting had talked of taking it to the council May 8 and then to the working group for its evaluation. Their business, he said to the working group, might be done in three to five more meetings. If it wasn't a plan April 22, the light rail proposal certainly seemed poised to become one shortly.

Ask Wynn why he was so eager to have a rail referendum this fall, and he will point to the expected large turnout in the presidential election. It's simply more democratic, he has said, to have the most people possible voting on a rail proposal.

But this fall probably will also be heavily Democratic, with a capital "D."

In 2000, the presence on the ballot of Texas' own GOP candidate for president, George W. Bush, brought out a lot of Republicans, and rail passed in only a quarter of the precincts won by Bush. About half the precincts won by Democrat Al Gore approved the rail plan.

This year, in Austin, in Texas and in almost every other state that has held a primary, Democratic turnout has been setting records.

And under state law, Capital Metro can only call a rail referendum on November election dates of even-numbered years for any expansion of the system longer than 12 miles. Unless that law is changed — something Watson could probably see to in the 2009 legislative session — bypassing this year would probably put off a rail vote until at least 2010.

"I've been pushing for two years to have an election immediately," said state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Williamson County, a member of the transit working group and a former rail skeptic who now supports it. "We're two years too late. Our downtown is literally in crisis.

"I think any specific, reasonable plan that moves people around downtown Austin efficiently would pass. Absolutely, no doubt in my mind."

Watson's view is that if properly applied, the new decision tree will bud the kind of specifics and reasonableness that will assure not only that a rail plan passes public muster, but also that the plan is actually good public policy.

Central Texas, it appears, will have to wait until at least the 2009 growing season for that harvest.

bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698