That feeling when your state (Texas) and local governments spend more money on roads than almost anywhere else in the world, and the roads just keep getting worse.
Part of the backstory as I heard it for the 2004 UNO (University Neighborhood Overlay) upzoning of Austin’s West Campus is that Council Member Brewster McCracken ended up at a CNU (as in an actual Congress, basically an annual conference) and was like “yeah this all makes sense, let’s do urbanism.”
Luckily, the Texas Department of Transportation and Texas research institutions have studied how to implement credit-based congestion pricing (the correct answer) for the Austin region fairly extensively.
Let’s do this!
Montserrat Garibay seems to be winning perhaps the most important state house race on the Texas Democratic primary side of things – for those that care about urbanism, equity, the environment, fair markets, etc.
Thank you Chris Riley and Brewster McCracken (among others) for putting Austin in the stratosphere of climate responsible city policies (at least in West Campus).