Scattered Work

Low traffic, expensive downtown

The Express-News reports that San Antonio’s congestion rates are lower than any big city in Texas. A trip in San Antonio during rush hour takes 16% longer, on average, than it does during free traffic flow times; in Dallas, that figure is 22%, Houston clocks in at 25%, and Austin is the worst at 28%. (The number of hours each person wastes in traffic each year is lower in Austin than in Houston or Dallas, however, presumably because people living in Austin have shorter commutes.)

Anyone who spends time in these cities knows that San Antonio’s traffic is pretty mild, especially if you manage to avoid the area around 281 and 1604. But it occurred to me as I was sitting in SmartWay SA meetings last year that this low level of congestion could be hampering San Antonio’s will to diversify transportation options. After a light rail plan was voted down in San Antonio in 2000, the idea was effectively killed for a decade. Now we’re coming back around to the idea, although it looks like a slower (and probably more politically savvy) strategy is in place: start with Bus Rapid Transit and downtown street cars, and slowly warm voters up to the idea of light rail. Meanwhile, Dallas, Houston, and Austin already have functioning light rail systems in place.

I wonder if there’s an analogy here with downtown San Antonio’s reliance on tourism. I’ve heard that because the city can fill big hotels downtown, real estate is pricey, so offices and residential developments are difficult to finance. (Although developer Ed Cross thinks it’s possible, and certainly has put his money where his mouth is). So while the tourism industry has kept the core of the city somewhat lively during the decades of urban decay experienced throughout the United States, it may be holding back growth now that people are actually ready to move back into urban centers. We usually see the number of downtown residential units pegged at around 3,000 (although depending on what you consider “downtown,” the figure could be as high as 23,000); it’ll take a lot of Vistanas — at under 300 units a pop — to get to Cross’ magic number of 10,000 downtown residents.

If San Antonio’s successes in highway infrastructure and downtown tourism are analogous in that they both create a risk of complacency, they are also linked in a more literal way: a thriving downtown will partly be driven by a robust and diverse transit system. The City is working on both these problems simultaneously, as are developers prescient enough to see the long-term trends and ignore the immediate lure of Stone Oak’s high income levels. But educating voters about the need for these improvements will be that much harder; after all, traffic isn’t that bad, and downtown seems more like a nice tourist stop than a rotting core in desperate need of attention.

Tags: development, downtown, Ed Cross, hotels, light rail, tourism, traffic