Thursday, February 12, 2026, 1 p.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Mobility Committee
The Mobility Committee, chaired by Paige Ellis with Vice Chair Qadri, Mayor Pro Tem Vela, and Council Member Harper-Madison present, approved minutes from its January 15, 2026 meeting and heard several briefings. Staff reported on Urban Transportation Commission actions from February 3, gave a detailed update on sidewalk and urban trail program progress, gaps, and funding needs, and briefed the committee on tele-driven vehicles (remotely operated by human drivers), including the city's planned MOU with a company and possible future ordinance. The committee also took up memos on the I-35 cap and stitch program (with a work session planned for March 24), a bond project recommendation memo, and a director's report covering the winter storm response, the Wishbone Bridge opening, the Congress Avenue urban design groundbreaking, and I-35 CapEx construction updates. Three members of the public spoke during public communication, two about the Festival Beach Food Forest and a proposed Austin Water pipeline through parkland.
0:05 Afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the mobility committee.
0:08 It is 1:02 pm and I am the chair of the mobility committee, Paige Ellis.
0:13 I am joined by council members Natasha Harper Madison, our vice chair zoe cadre, and Mayor Pro Tem
0:19 Chito Vela. I don't believe that Council Member lane is going to be able to join us today.
0:23 So we will just have the four of us working through this agenda today.
0:30 We've got two public communication speakers.
0:34 I just had one more sign up.
0:35 Okay, so we have three, all right, three public communication speakers.
0:38 Let's go ahead and take those.
0:40 If I can have
0:46 phillip wiley.
0:56 Uh, good afternoon everyone.
0:57 Um, my name's phillip wiley, downtown resident and I will be your host of mobile jeopardy.
1:03 Today, uh, we have three questions and answers to go through.
1:07 Unfortunately, you're not gonna be able to speak, so I'm gonna do it all for you.
1:11 Uh, the first one is, this was the busiest central city transit area and mode during the recent
1:19 freeze shutdown. Tick, tick, tick, tick.
1:24 The answer is, why are all those pedestrians using the rio grande bike lane from 21st to 24th?
1:32 Well, the reason is because the ice melted there first, it had a lot of traffic.
1:37 Um, and there's only one lane of traffic.
1:40 It's, it's actually the template for what we should try to be doing, which is using mobility and
1:48 mobility restrict restrictions to create, uh, main street type of atmospheres.
1:53 Second question, please. This airport has the us longest average walking distance from entrance to gate.
2:05 Now, if you wanna get the answer to this, you can ask a lot of similar type of
2:09 questions of whatever ai you're using, but it, there seems to be a consensus that it's dallas fort
2:15 worth, and I used to go through there all the time.
2:18 The average distance is a mile and a half to over two miles, and these other statements are
2:22 generic for airports in the us.
2:24 68% Of travelers spend at least an hour walking.
2:30 So why are people telling you that 10 minutes is all that people will walk to a transit
2:35 station? That's because it's a different problem that they're trying to solve.
2:41 Uh, um, solve 40% of passengers report report annoyance at the walk link.
2:48 So if we talk about statistics, sometimes when we talk about averages, we're talking about different people.
2:55 There are different, uh, categories.
2:57 Last, uh, question please.
3:00 This residential site, the speaker who is me, considers the epicenter of compact and connected.
3:07 If you could add 10,000 residents to one site in Austin to support that vision, where would it
3:13 be? This is undeniably the most important question of the three.
3:19 So if we look at it, it's, there's a site directly located next to the two major job
3:25 centers in the city.
3:27 That is, uh, you can go back.
3:29 Well, you can stay there, uh, that's fine.
3:31 You, so in, uh, the university of texas is just north of the ana site and the capitol
3:39 complex that extends from 15th to 19th, where the state is putting up all of those beautiful new
3:45 buildings. This is also the only residential site that's adjacent to the capitol complex.
3:51 It's also the single closest site to two of austin's three most heavily trafficked, trafficked museums.
3:59 Uh, and it's the only private property.
4:10 Thank you for speaking with us, and I appreciate getting to attend the mobility jeopardy in person at
4:15 some point at a local establishment <laugh>.
4:19 Up next, we're gonna have o'brien james, or sorry, james o'brien.
4:25 Greetings. Um, james, my friends call me santiago.
4:30 I, um, am here today.
4:32 Uh, can that presentation up?
4:34 Um, theoretically this is, uh, in your email as well.
4:40 Um, I'd like to talk about community preferred alternatives, which is part of, uh, chapter 26, um, texas
4:48 state code. Um, and it is with regard to festival beach food forest, which most of you have
4:54 probably heard something about.
4:56 Uh, last council, um, there was an approval of $17 million to be allocated to the parks and rec
5:04 department for acquisition of new parkland within two miles of the impacted mitigation sites for the reconstruction of
5:12 I 35 at the colorado river.
5:15 Um, my concern today is the disruption of, uh, a current use of parkland, uh, which is, uh,
5:28 over the past five years, development of a contract with the city of Austin parks department to, uh, have
5:36 a community volunteer led organization steward this parkland.
5:40 And part of the phase two expansion was to implement urban forestry grant funds and develop this parkland.
5:47 Uh, the green line that is going through that parkland is a four foot, uh, diameter wastewater pipeline
5:54 that will be abandoned at the end of this project.
5:57 Um, the purple line that's at the top is my, uh, preferred alternative and the community's preferred alternative
6:05 to, uh, you can see this sort of like dashed line that is intercepting both of those eng
6:11 angles to the top right corner.
6:13 That's the four foot wastewater pipeline.
6:16 If, uh, if we go to the next slide, please.
6:21 Um, my recommendation is to use, uh, part of that, uh, mitigation funds to, uh, do a process
6:30 called a road vacation.
6:31 And speaking with city staff, um, it's possible to go through the real estate office and to go
6:37 through a council resolution to abandon these two roads, which have been closed since September, uh, and will
6:44 be continued to be closed for an Austin energy transmission tower that's going in and continued, uh, construction.
6:51 All of this maron lines are roads that are currently closed.
6:55 If, uh, those two blocks were parkland, then a easement, utility easement could be done.
7:02 And if we went back to that previous slide, um, that purple line could then be a viable,
7:08 feasible option. And, uh, so I'm here to, uh, request a mobility study, essentially to see what the
7:16 potential impacts for multimodal, uh, local traffic and ultimately keeping interstate traffic on the highway and not in
7:24 our parklands to, to defer latent latent, uh, costs for the city.
7:29 Thank you for your time.
7:31 Thank you for coming to speak with us.
7:32 I'll, I'll look further into the communication that you sent us, but we've been in contact with a
7:37 couple of folks with the, with the food forest and really wanna make sure that we're looking at
7:41 all these impacts and, um, it's, it's a high profile topic right now, so we appreciate you bringing
7:46 that to our attention.
7:47 Thank you. Up next we have angelina lanis.
7:53 Um, hello, I'm angelina lanis.
7:55 I'm also here with the food forest project.
7:57 Um, we've heard from a lot of people that, because this has already passed through the board and
8:03 the council approval that it needed to do, it's kind of in text dot hands, and there's nothing
8:07 that the city can do at this point.
8:09 Um, and I've heard that, and I think santiago and I just wanted to make sure that we're
8:14 pushing as hard as we can, and that's really the truth.
8:17 Before we let this piece of parkland get destroyed.
8:20 Um, it's my understanding that this Austin water pipeline, uh, proposal was drafted in order to save several
8:27 historic old growth trees.
8:29 Those trees have already been removed and killed by txdot.
8:32 I am under the understanding that this pipeline was proposed to protect some like city utility, like lighting
8:37 for community safety reasons that lighting has already been taken down as a result of the construction for
8:41 this project. And so it's pretty obvious that tdot wasn't totally forthcoming with all the impacts we would
8:47 feel from their construction.
8:48 And so we're curious, given these unforeseen impacts, if there's another route that wasn't explored.
8:54 It also looks like from the publicly available information that we've seen, that truly not all possible alternatives
9:01 were considered when looking at this pipeline because the engineers were operating from the framework that this wasn't
9:07 used parkland. When that wasn't the case, the engineer directly lied to a board member and told nicole merritt
9:14 on parks and rec's board that food forest would not be impacted by this project.
9:17 Either that was a li a lie or just like an egregious error, but we had already been
9:21 planting and stewarding and caring for the soil in that land.
9:24 And so I'm really concerned that a board member, um, advocated for this project and like sent the
9:29 recommendation to council with false information.
9:32 And so we just wanna make sure that if there are other alternatives, they are explored, even if
9:36 that means delaying a month or two to make sure that those are, um, addressed.
9:41 So yeah. Thank you.
9:42 Thank you.
9:48 That's everyone. Thanks danielle.
9:51 We'll move into our item number one, approval of the minutes from the January 15th, 2026 mobility committee meeting.
9:58 Motion is made by vice chair cadre, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Vela.
10:02 All in favor say aye.
10:05 All right, that is all of us, all four of us in attendance today.
10:10 Item number two is a briefing about the urban transportation commission regarding actions from February 3rd meeting.
10:22 Hello, council members. Um, I'm natalie leone.
10:24 I'm a business process consultant for Austin transportation and public works.
10:29 I also serve as the staff liaison to the urban transportation commission.
10:34 Um, on February 3rd, we had three action items moved through.
10:40 Um, first was a recommendation regarding six street design options, um, including suggestions for other downtown streets based
10:48 on the staff recommendation.
10:50 The second was a recommendation to c-t-r-m-a or for c-t-m-r-c-t-r-m-a, uh, mpac south project, which supported previous resolutions
11:01 passed by City Council as well as letters sent to c-t-r-m-a by council members.
11:07 Um, and the third was establishment of a working group to create a fiscal year 27, uh, recommendation
11:14 on the budget. And you should be able to expect that recommendation from the March 3rd meeting.
11:23 Okay, we appreciate that.
11:25 My office also was able to recently have a, a, a circle up meeting with c-t-r-m-a about mopac
11:32 south and trying to look at kind of where they are in their planning stages, what dates can
11:36 people expect to see more information, and how to best engage with that process.
11:40 And so I'm glad to see that the utc has been taking this up as well.
11:45 I think vice chair cadre May have a question.
11:47 You had a quick question on that last recommendation that you, you listed out.
11:50 Is that a recommendation only for bond recommended projects?
11:53 So this would be a budget recommendation that they expect to pass in March.
11:59 Thank you. No problem.
12:02 All right. Any further questions for natalie?
12:05 If not, we will move on to item number three, which is the briefing on urban trails and
12:10 sidewalks, program updates, gaps, and funding needs.
12:13 We have john eastman joining us.
12:15 I appreciate your patience.
12:17 I think we had this on December and then had to postpone it because our discussion got so
12:21 beefy and, um, so informative that we ended up running out of time.
12:26 So we appreciate you being able to revisit this with us today.
12:30 Absolutely. And, uh, pleasure to be here.
12:32 Pleasure to talk about the work of sidewalks and urban trails division.
12:35 Um, good afternoon council members.
12:37 So we're gonna go pretty high level.
12:39 There's a lot of work going on.
12:41 Um, so my name's john eastman.
12:43 I'm the division manager for sidewalks and urban trails within the Austin transportation public works.
12:49 Um, I'm lucky enough to get to work with this great team.
12:52 It was a lot of fun at the wishbone bridge opening to hear all the appreciation for staff.
12:56 There's a, a lot of people working on wishbone bridge in that picture.
13:00 Um, and we're gonna focus mainly on the work of the sidewalk program, urgent trails, the things that
13:06 are getting built. But I, I did wanna include a slide that kind of provided an overview of
13:11 the scope of the work, um, that that team does.
13:15 So, starting in on the sidewalk program over the last 20 years, the city of austin's just made
13:22 tremendous progress in, in building out its sidewalk network.
13:26 We've gone from less than 50% of the sidewalk network to just slightly over 80% now.
13:31 Checked the numbers this morning, we're actually up to 2,909 miles of sidewalk in the city.
13:38 Um, and, you know, a lot of, a lot of great work done, but still almost just over
13:44 seven actuates down to 690 something miles of planned sidewalks.
13:49 So we've got almost 700 miles of gaps in the system still.
13:52 Um, the network itself, um, the quality of that network has, has improved tremendously.