Thursday, December 4, 2025, 1 p.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Mobility Committee
The Mobility Committee's final meeting of 2025 heard public comment on distracted driving enforcement, the Sixth Street mobility plan (speakers favored Option 3 without bike lanes), I-35 cap-and-stitch timing, and use of TxDOT park mitigation funds. The Urban Transportation Commission presented a recommendation for a roughly $331 million transportation package for a potential 2026 bond, favoring programmatic funding over named projects. Staff briefed the committee on the I-35 Capital Express Central project, including TxDOT's split of construction into two packages, a construction delay to 2029, an advanced request for cap deck commitments by May 2026, increased financial risk to the city, northern stitches alternatives, and parkland impacts with an estimated $19 million mitigation. Staff also recommended keeping the two-vendor scooter moratorium while transitioning to a contract model, and provided an update on the curb management study. The urban trails briefing was postponed to January, and the meeting adjourned.
0:03 All right. Welcome everybody.
0:06 I will call to order this meeting of austin's mobility committee.
0:10 It is 1:02 pm and we are here in chambers.
0:13 I am chair Ellis.
0:14 I'm joined by vice chair cadry and council members, lane and ella here on the daas.
0:20 And this is our last committee meeting of the year.
0:23 I know there's a lot of them happening during this week, so it's been a very busy week
0:26 for us here at City Hall.
0:29 We ended up having eight people sign up for public communication, so we've asked that everyone keep their
0:35 remarks to two minutes so that we can hear from the additional folks that that signed up here
0:40 in this moment. And I will, before we call any of the speakers, I just want to make
0:46 a note that the urban transportation commission item item six, ended up lower on the agenda.
0:53 We're gonna go ahead and take that in order.
0:54 So we'll hear from speakers.
0:56 We will adopt the minutes, and then we're gonna, um, be able to turn it over to susan summers,
1:02 the chair of the urban transportation commission, so that she can get on with the rest of her
1:06 day. And then we will move into the briefing items.
1:10 So I will turn it over to our coordinator to start calling our speakers.
1:14 If I can have scott johnston, followed by blake thomas and chris flores.
1:28 Good afternoon, uh, chair Ellis and council members.
1:31 My name is scott johnson, as you know, uh, Council Member elli and Council Member Vela knows I led
1:37 the effort on getting the city to adopt a distracted driving ordinance in 2014.
1:42 Here's some information, and the purpose of my testimony today is to make you aware that I'm very
1:48 interested in convening a working group that the public safety committee or this, and, or this committee can
1:53 support that would raise awareness for the current ordinance because there are many people that moved here since
1:59 the enforcement has been reduced.
2:01 And there's some creative ways that we can perhaps work towards bitter, uh, implementation or, uh, getting the
2:09 ordinance followed. So, recommendations.
2:11 The seeds of this started in 2005 with a bicycle safety task force that I was on.
2:17 And in 2009, we had a texting while driving ordinance put into place.
2:21 Those are not effective though in 2012 with no one working in this space, I began advocating for
2:27 this and went out to utc, urban transportation commission, public safety commission community technology commission, and talked to
2:34 it up with them.
2:35 I recruited bianca benson, who's still the chief prosecutor for the city to speak to them.
2:40 That was a very good decision.
2:42 Next page, please, and scroll down.
2:44 And then we brought it forward 2014.
2:47 It was adopted in August.
2:48 It was effective date 2015, and we had a lot of citations written in 20 teens, uh, after
2:56 2015 and forward. And an attempt was made to lessen it by the state, and we fought it,
3:04 and we still have the ordinance.
3:05 And along with a pd and sapd, we went down there.
3:09 The citations are $200 or more.
3:12 There is a diversion program that was put together by the law department with bianca benson taking the
3:18 lead. And other cities in travis county, fortunately, and other cities statewide have followed our ordinance was one
3:25 of one of the first ones in the region or in the state.
3:29 Scroll down, please. In, in recent years, the enforcement hasn't been good.
3:34 I'm certainly not here to criticize the police department.
3:36 I've been the coordinator, coordinator for neighborhood watch for 17 years in my neighborhood.
3:39 I work closely with them.
3:41 And here are the citation numbers from 20 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19.
3:46 Fatality numbers are below and at the bottom, the 10 most used apps, while drivings, surprisingly, the phone
3:53 is number 10. Questions and a video from thank you tpw on vision zero, distracted driving awareness.
4:03 Thank you. Did you email that to all of us so we can review that video?
4:06 I can. I already spoke, spoke to ms. Love, and she's planning to to, to do that.
4:10 And I've sent it to the psc members.
4:12 Okay, thank you very much.
4:13 Thank you so much.
4:14 We appreciate it.
4:22 Hi, good afternoon. Hi.
4:25 Good afternoon. There you go.
4:26 My name's blake thompson.
4:27 I'm a district 10 resident, a district nine property owner and business owner, an avid cyclist and a
4:35 board member of the sixth street, uh, pecan street owners.
4:39 Uh, and I'm here to speak just in on an open item that is gonna come you guys
4:45 way probably in the early 2026, which is gonna be a recommendation from transportation and public works, uh,
4:52 sixth street mobility and revitalization plan.
4:56 And as a representative of the cons street owner association, we represent 113 property owners and over 60
5:04 businesses with 80 storefronts on historic sixth street.
5:08 And we've been very involved with anna martin and richard mendoza's group, um, to go through all of the
5:13 charettes and the workshops and the designs that they've put forth.
5:16 There's three alternatives. Our, uh, pecan street owner association has unanimously, um, with 113 property owners and 60
5:25 plus businesses unanimously voted in favor of option number three.
5:30 And that, um, the, it makes this conversation not an antibi conversation.
5:35 As I said, I'm an avid cyclist.
5:37 I bike six days a week.
5:39 I love bike infrastructure in Austin.
5:41 Um, it makes us a, a, a healthy and a fit city.
5:45 Um, but we do have to recognize that on sixth street, we just simply have a math problem.
5:49 We have 80 feet from building to building, and, um, we have 30 million tourists that come downtown to
5:56 that area. And I, I would encourage you guys, we'd love to invite you to our board meeting,
6:01 um, or do a walk down sixth street.
6:03 It's incredibly busy in the evenings, and we would love to, um, accommodate the programming that's already going
6:10 on down there and having two lanes of traffic and one lane that's a loading unloading zone.
6:15 And we feel like this, uh, programs the street to, uh, putting sixth street back in its right
6:21 standing as america's one of america's greatest streets.
6:24 Thank you for your comments, and I'd love to invite you guys to our board meetings on, uh,
6:29 the first Wednesday of the month.
6:31 And, uh, we'd just love to, uh, help you guys understand more about how that street is programmed.
6:37 Um, if you have any questions, that's great.
6:39 Thank you for being here.
6:40 We appreciate your comments.
6:44 Hi everybody, my name is chris flores and I am a resident of district 10.
6:48 I came to speak to you today about the $25 million, uh, from txdot that is, uh, supposed to
6:57 go to build a boardwalk around the hyatt hotel, is my understanding.
7:02 This is park mitigation money.
7:05 And, uh, I would like to ask that this money be, uh, uh, instead of put made to
7:16 be, uh, paying for a boardwalk, that it be given to the parks department so that the parks
7:21 department can buy parkland in the quadrant of the city that's losing parkland, and that would be an
7:28 east Austin. Um, the hyatt does not need a boardwalk in these times of, uh, financial, uh, budget,
7:37 uh, budgets being tight.
7:39 A boardwalk is frivolous.
7:42 I think, uh, the choke point where the trail is runs in front of the hyatt can be
7:47 resolved without a $25 million, uh, boardwalk.
7:51 Thank you. Thank you for being here today.
7:56 If we can have paul bowman followed by kevin reem, sean and sean crinkle.
8:07 Hi, welcome. Thanks for having me.
8:10 Paul bodom of stream realty partners.
8:12 I'm leading our sixth street historic preservation and sort of repurposing effort for sixth street.
8:18 I'm here also to talk about the three different transportation options on sixth street.
8:24 Um, it is stream's desire and hope that this committee in the city of Austin selects option number
8:30 three. Um, similar to blake, this is not an antibi conversation in my mind.
8:36 This is a, what is the future of sixth street look like?
8:39 And as a property owner who represents over 30 properties that are currently under construction and an active
8:45 lease up, our main goal is to transition sixth street away from a purely nightlife destination into an
8:51 18 hour neighborhood street for all of downtown.
8:54 And that includes recruiting a significant amount of restaurants.
8:58 And if you go look at the success of second street, which has a ton of restaurants, I
9:03 think you'll look at, there's the north side of the street and the south side of the street.
9:07 What is the most successful side of the street?
9:09 On second street? It's the wider sidewalks with the outdoor dining under the proposed bike lane solution.
9:16 That solution only leaves nine and a half feet of sidewalk to accommodate outdoor dining.
9:22 And if you go look at the outdoor dining in Austin, the only ones that I've been able
9:27 to find that have been successful are 11 feet or larger.
9:30 So bare minimum, we're running into blake's point a math problem.
9:34 This isn't an antibi problem.
9:36 This is what is the best and most positive solution to allow sixth street to transition away from
9:41 what it is now into a productive neighborhood street for everybody in downtown to enjoy from the morning
9:47 all the way to night.
9:48 So I encourage you all to please come down, walk sixth street and be happy to host you.
9:52 We have a leasing office down there, sort of walk you through what our plan is and explain
9:56 more in detail of, you know, why we're pushing for option three.
9:59 Thank you for your time.
10:00 Thank you. Appreciate your comments.
10:07 Good afternoon. My name is kevin rain.
10:09 I'm on the board of the texas bar and nightclub alliance.
10:12 I have owned and operated businesses on historic sixth street for over 18 years.
10:16 Currently own and operate 11 locations on the three and 400 blocks of east sixth street.
10:22 In addition to those 11 establishments, today, I'm representing an additional 17 businesses on the three and 400
10:27 blocks, who unanimously agree that historic sixth streets should not have bike lanes.
10:33 This entertainment district is a destination that's densely populated with pedestrians.
10:37 The tens of thousands of people who come to the district on any given night need as much
10:42 sidewalk space as possible to be able to freely move throughout the district.
10:47 I've attended the transportation planning meetings regarding the three alternative design proposals for sixth street.
10:52 I highly encourage both the members of the transportation and the members of this mobility committee to come
10:58 to the district at nighttime.
11:01 We would host you any time, but you have to be there at nighttime to understand the district
11:06 and the challenges we are facing in regards to pedestrians not being able to move freely throughout the
11:12 district. Sixth street is a unique, historic famous entertainment district, and it should be treated as such by
11:18 the city. Major entertainment districts are pedestrian friendly and do not have bike riders riding through them.
11:26 The businesses on sixth street, the property owners on sixth street, and the customers of these establishments all
11:32 agree that sixth street does not need bike lanes.
11:34 The city should listen to the stakeholders and not include bike lanes in any future plans for historic
11:39 sixth street. Thank you.
11:43 Thank you for your comments.
11:50 Hello, my name is sean quiel.
11:52 Um, I wanna speak on the sixth street transportation plan.
11:56 Sixth street is a historic and entertainment district that is very unique in a special place and should
12:01 be treated as such.
12:03 It consists of 80 storefronts and less than half a mile of length with a current mixture as
12:09 is of hotels, retail, restaurants, gyms, bars, music venues, and comedy clubs.
12:16 That mix is continuing to develop with more restaurants, retail, and apartments, as a celebration of its historic
12:22 pedestrian and entertainment district for visitors and locals.
12:26 There are roughly 30 million people who visit Austin downtown each year.
12:31 The distance that we're talking about is less than 0.0003% of the proposed bike lanes over the next
12:39 six years. In the city of Austin, which I am a supporter of, there are no dedicated bike
12:44 lanes east of 35 on sixth street.
12:46 There are no dedicated bike lanes west of congress on sixth street.
12:50 So any proposed, uh, lanes in the redesign would be lanes to nowhere.
12:56 Their design only removes the opportunity for cafe for safe pedestrian space for a pd fire department and
13:03 vendor usage. The district has the highest density of pedestrians in all of the city, if not the
13:10 state, consistently on a weekly, monthly basis.
13:14 It is rare in the city of Austin or any community for there to be so much consensus