Goals & Objectives

• Goal 1 - Improve Place Connectivity: Improve the regional transportation system by connecting existing and emerging destinations within Central Austin.
• Goal 2 - Improve Transit Connectivity: Improve the regional transportation system by providing connections among modes, including the commuter rail, intercity commuter rail, and bus.
• Goal 3 - Improve Circulation within Central Austin: Provide internal transit circulation within Central Austin and among key districts within the core to encourage transit ridership and improve overall mobility.
• Goal 4 - Maximize Community Benefits: Develop transit services that enhance and reinforce the characteristics of the existing and planned land uses and community environment.
• Goal 5 - Maximize Accessibility: Maximize the accessibility of existing and proposed transit services by selecting cost effective and appropriate transit modes, routes, and alignments that provide frequent, accessible passenger boarding opportunities.
• Goal 6 - Maximize Environmental Benefits: Develop transit services that maximize the positive benefits to the natural environment.
• Goal 7 - Maximize Economic Benefits for the Community: Develop transit services that help increase economic opportunities and build wealth for local communities, while minimizing demands for increased local expenditures.

Corridor Needs

Range of Initial Alternatives

Alternative Screening

Alternatives analysis has been a key part of the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA’s) process for advancing local fixed guideway transit projects for over 25 years. At its core, alternatives analysis is about serving local decision-making. An effective alternatives analysis answers the questions: What are the problems in a corridor? What are their underlying causes? What are viable options for addressing these problems? What are their costs? What are their benefits?

Refinement Process

Alternatives are identified for further review. Concerns such as ridership potential, likely cost-effectiveness, and financial feasibility are addressed.

Further analysis is focused on narrowing the range of alternatives to a manageable number to carry forward in the selection process. This analysis uses broad criteria to sort among the various alignment and operating options, and to develop preliminary definitions of alignments, standards, and operations.

Detailed Screening Evaluation

The detailed descriptions provide sufficient information for each of the technical disciplines to begin detailed analysis. The engineering and environmental teams are given specific guidance regarding the horizontal and vertical alignments, station locations, typical sections and stations, vehicle loading standards, and initial specifications. Design standards developed by the local transit operator, the State highway agency, AASHTO, APTA, and other sources are identified.

A detailed definition of alternatives report describes the transit service currently in the corridor and describes the service levels, operating plans and policies for each alternative in the opening and forecast years. The operating plans describe routing, locations of stations or stops (or average stop spacing), peak and off-peak headways, and peak and off-peak speeds for each bus and/or rail route, including the feeder system. The operating plans should be described in sufficient detail to permit a careful review by participating technical staff and to permit the demand forecasting team to code the transit network for each alternative. Important operating policies include peak and off-peak fares, loading standards, parking charges at park/ride lots in the corridor, and the supply and/or price of CBD parking (if applicable).

Policy options, institutional arrangements, and financial strategies should also be described, providing input to the relevant technical analyses. Where land-use options are to be evaluated, the report would describe these options in terms of possible differences in the location and scale of new development, to guide the associated ridership, environmental, and financial analyses. As appropriate, the report should also identify the different institutional arrangements and financial strategies to be evaluated in the study.

The detailed screening report should be written in such a way that the reader could appreciate the interrelationships among decisions on the mode, alignment, service and other policies, institutional arrangements, and financing options to be considered.

Locally Preferred Alternative

Typically, evaluation measures are selected to assess how well (or poorly) each alternative meets these goals and objectives. Common categories of goals, objectives, and (therefore) measures include

• Effectiveness - the extent to which alternatives solve the stated transportation problems in the corridor
• Impacts - the extent to which the alternatives impact --- positively or negatively – nearby natural resources and neighborhoods, air quality, the adjacent transportation network and facilities, land use, the local economy, etc.
• Cost effectiveness – the extent to which the costs of the alternatives are commensurate with their benefits
• Financial feasibility – the extent that funds required to build and operate the alternatives are likely to be available;
• Equity – that is, the costs and benefits of the alternatives are distributed fairly across different population groups