Thursday, March 5, 2026, 1 p.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Mobility Committee
The Mobility Committee met March 5, 2026, hearing public comment largely urging conversion of downtown one-way streets to two-way. The committee approved minutes and received a Project Connect / Austin Light Rail Phase 1 briefing, where Austin Transit Partnership staff reported the FTA record of decision, a medium-high federal rating, and award of the first design-build contract, with construction anticipated in 2027. Transportation and Public Works staff briefed the Austin Core Transportation Plan (ACT Plan), which recommends some two-way conversions but keeps Fifth and Sixth Streets one-way; the plan is headed to Council on March 26, and Vice Chair Qadri presented a draft motion sheet for discussion without action. The committee also heard a briefing on the missing middle and mixed-use zoning study memo, a TPW manager's report on Vision Zero results, and discussed future agenda items including a planned letter regarding Waymo following the West Sixth Street mass shooting.
0:04 Welcome everyone to the mobility committee meeting.
0:07 Today is March 5th, 2026. It is 1:05 pm and we are meeting here in the chambers of the Austin city
0:15 council. We have a number of items to get through today, and I am joined by vice chair
0:21 cadre Mayor pro tela, and Council Member Krista lane.
0:26 We have a number of speakers today, so I think we have one that is general public communication.
0:31 So we're gonna go three minutes on the general communication, but if it's acceptable to everyone, we have
0:37 eight or more speakers on one of the items today.
0:41 So we're gonna go with two minutes for those so everybody has a chance to speak and we
0:44 can still stay within our, our time limit today.
0:48 Um, on that note, let's go ahead and call our speakers.
0:51 Danielle, if I can have lucy tucker.
1:00 Is lucy tucker here?
1:03 Oh, okay. Yes. Hi.
1:04 Can y'all hear me?
1:05 Yes, we can. Um, I just wanted to submit general public comments, I guess, about, um, walkable city.
1:15 I think, you know, we're spending millions and billions of dollars trying to expand roadways, and that's just
1:22 further incentivizing traffic, and we're gonna get nowhere.
1:26 So we might as well spend that money on transportation that works for people and helps to give
1:32 people other options and, and that way more freedom to move around the city.
1:36 Uh, 'cause we'd probably be spending about the same amount of money on public infrastructure.
1:41 Uh, but I don't know.
1:43 I, I think about like, my own personal experience.
1:46 I get into work pretty early in the morning.
1:48 It's about 10 minutes when I go home and, you know, the roads are full up.
1:52 It's 30, sometimes 40 minutes.
1:55 Uh, and that's just me and my daily life.
1:58 So, yeah. Um, we deserve, I was americans, we believe in freedom.
2:06 We deserve more opportunity, uh, to get around.
2:11 Thanks. I yield the rest of my time.
2:14 Thank you for your comments.
2:16 I appreciate them. And that's everyone for public communication.
2:23 Okay. And then we have some speakers signed up on item number two.
2:27 Yes. If we can have Ryan saunders, who is also going to be a remote speaker.
2:33 All right. And we'll do two minutes for each speaker here so we can hear everybody.
2:41 Hi. Um, my name is brian saunders and I'm here to, uh, speak specifically to the topic of a
2:49 shift from predominant one-way street to two-way street in downtown Austin.
2:54 Um, I'm in commercial real estate, predominantly focused on local, regional, uh, food, beverage, hospitality, and retail clients.
3:03 And I talk to tenants every day, and I can count on one hand how many lifts downtown
3:07 at the target. Um, overall there's a disconnect between transportation and public works.
3:12 Uh, connecting viability of commercial activity based on a volume of vehicles.
3:17 It's a citywide problem, but it's easy to overlook in downtown because it is assumed to be pedestrian
3:23 friendly, even if it is not.
3:25 Um, the more accessible an area is to pedestrians the more value it has to retailers.
3:30 A developer once told me to examine the area and think about what created the current conditions, and
3:35 you can see there is more of what is being rewarded and less of what is being punished.
3:40 Um, conditions rewarded pedestrians on second street, and it's the most successful street in downtown.
3:46 I personally only come downtown if there's a special event at a venue or if I want to
3:50 go out to bars.
3:51 But if I'm looking to grab lunch, brunch dinner, or go shopping, downtown is not on my radar.
3:56 There are businesses that want daytime office traffic, then nighttime party and bars, but how trustworthy is it
4:02 for a business to open based on office traffic when, for example, even fridays, that would be both
4:07 a lunch and happy hour.
4:08 Prime sales day is one of the days that's predominantly, uh, used as work from home day from
4:14 companies. And when you are commuting downtown or, or driving in downtown, uh, traffic is usually worse on
4:22 the one way streets and people are just using it as a cut through because they think it's
4:26 faster than using other roads.
4:27 And you want people to actually come downtown.
4:29 It's a destination. And even in rush hour, traffic is focused on certain streets and others are empty,
4:35 leaving dead blocks. Um, offices that are opening and expanding, even the ut medical campus are choosing the
4:43 domain over downtown. Uh, my opinion is two-way streets, promote the type of environment that encourages retail and
4:49 18 hour uses. Thank you.
4:52 Thank you. Up next we'll have adam greenfield, followed by hayden black walker and sinclair black.
5:18 Just a minute.
5:26 Okay, great. Uh, it's up.
5:34 Seems we have a presentation that maybe we need to see on the side.
5:37 Sorry. Yeah, there's a, there's a few slides.
5:46 Okay. Uh, good afternoon council members, adam greenfield here with safe sheets us, and nice to be with
5:52 you. Uh, we thank staff for all their work on the act plan and for the robust conversations
5:56 around two-way street reversions.
5:58 This is the growing coalition in support of this, and I'm gonna talk about two issues very quickly.
6:04 One is pedestrian safety.
6:06 Um, uh, there was a much cited report from a firm, uh, now part of aecom, the largest
6:13 planning firm in the world.
6:14 And it addresses pedestrian safety, uh, benefits of two way streets.
6:19 It says, the conventional wisdom has always assumed that one way streets were safer and more comfortable for
6:24 pedestrians to cross than two way streets.
6:27 As is often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong.
6:31 In fact, crossing a one-way street presents clear greater difficulties to the pedestrian than crossing two-way streets.
6:37 There are only two possible conflict sequences that pedestrians can encounter in crossing a two-way street on one-way
6:45 streets. There are 16 different conflict sequences.
6:48 Uh, there are many other studies confirming, uh, safety benefits and much empirical evidence supporting the safety case
6:55 for two-way street conversions.
6:58 Um, just to note that the federal crash modification factors clearing house, which is a federal database of
7:05 safety measures, does not address two-way street conversions, and is thus not an appropriate resource for this conversation.
7:13 Traffic flow. Uh, so regarding traffic flow, it is crucial to consider the entire downtown network as a
7:21 system rather than evaluating individual streets.
7:24 In isolation. Streets like fifth and sixth carry a lot of traffic because they are one way, because
7:32 they concentrate traffic on those streets.
7:35 A two-way grid would redistribute traffic more evenly across downtown.
7:39 And downtowns that have done this in other cities have seen exactly that result.
7:45 Many in the community have noted frustration with navigating downtown and how the one way streets thought their
7:50 efforts to get from a to b.
7:52 Uh, we hope council will continue this conversation.
7:55 Thank you very much.
7:56 Thank you. Up next, we have hayden black walker, followed by sinclair black and mateo barn stone.
8:07 Good afternoon. My name is sinclair black.
8:10 Um, I was a member of the group, uh, master planning group for the great streets master plan
8:18 that was, uh, adopted, finished, and adopted 25 years ago in 2001.
8:27 Um, and I, uh, it was a privilege to work on that.
8:33 The city staff did a really great job of organizing both technical and public, uh, concerns.
8:41 And we met alternate weeks with one committee, and for each, every, every two weeks, uh, it was,
8:52 um, I'm real privileged to work on it because it seemed like such an important thing, uh, 25
9:01 years ago it was adopted there and only a few conversions, probably mainly I think second street.
9:09 Second street is a pretty good example of the advantages of a two way street, uh, which is
9:16 designed first for pedestrians and then for tra uh, balance of traffic.
9:22 And, um, our recommendation was that all, uh, the, all the streets in downtown except guadalupe ivanca and
9:31 fifth and sixth be converted to two way.
9:35 Uh, those two pairs would have to, uh, include a lot of additional study.
9:42 Uh, there's a, a, um, a great, uh, economic study that the, uh, it was done about the
9:50 conversion of second street, uh, and done about six years ago.
9:55 I think the city commissioned it, uh, from a national firm, and they came up with, uh, some
10:02 astonishing results. One was that the tax base in the 10 year period, it increased my, my 35
10:12 times during that 10 year period.
10:18 So, and hayden will talk more about that.
10:20 Thank you. Thank you.
10:25 Good afternoon, council members, hayden black walker.
10:27 I just wanted to build on some of the things that, um, sinclair said.
10:31 I'm the current chair of the board for, um, safe streets Austin, and I work with sinclair at
10:35 black and al. Um, I wanted to, um, just reiterate that, um, sinclair and dr. Kinney created the dre
10:42 master plan 25 years ago.
10:44 Thanks to them that second street exists the way we enjoy it today.
10:49 Previously, it was four high speed, one way lanes to get to mopac as quickly as possible.
10:54 Today we know it is a successful place to enjoy cafes, outdoor dining, shopping, the acl theater, and
11:00 a variety of residences, hotels, and City Hall.
11:04 In 2019, the city of Austin economic development department commissioned a consultant, economic and planning systems inc.
11:10 To study the return on investment for both second street and the c home district.
11:16 That study was issued in 2020 and analyzes the return on investment from 2000 to 2018.
11:24 So it's been a while, but I think it's still relevant.
11:27 The study, um, noted that the area added 4,000 housing units, 2 million square feet of commercial and retail
11:33 space. The city's investment in those areas was $315 million.
11:39 The city's tax revenue generated by the area were 10 times higher in 2018 than in 2000, and
11:47 currently yield $22 million a year.
11:49 And that number is eight years old.
11:51 For the second street district, tax revenues to the city in 2018 were more than 35 times higher
11:58 than in 2000. As important as financial concerns are.
12:01 And this is also from the report, this thousand community realized a variety of public benefits, and they
12:06 list many of those affordable housing millions in contributions to the affordable housing trust fund, public safety substation
12:14 at amway downtown, a new state-of-the-art performing art center at acl privately funded great streets improvements, privately funded
12:22 parks, trails, and plazas, privately funded public art and local businesses.
12:29 Thank you. Thank you.
12:31 Up next, we'll have mateo barn stone, followed by carol frazier and travis schneider.
12:39 Good afternoon, members of the mobility committee.
12:41 My name is mateo barn stone.
12:42 I'm making comments in my personal capacity today.
12:46 I want to start by acknowledging the amount of work staff is put into the act analysis.
12:50 Downtown streets are complex systems with many competing priorities, and I appreciate the effort that has gone into
12:56 studying them. I'd like to offer additional considerations regarding two-way conversions.
13:00 However, in short, I think there's a failure to appreciate the benefits of two-way streets and an overemphasis
13:06 on the challenges of such conversions as leading to decisions that are not in the best interest of
13:11 downtown. Um, first, the staff has emphasized signal timing to create a 15 mile per hour green wave
13:19 coordination of signals can certainly be useful for cyclists, but from the standpoint of driver behavior, it's unlikely
13:26 to have much effect.
13:27 The average car can reach 15 miles an hour before it clears the intersection and can easily reach
13:32 30 to 35 miles an hour by mid-block when signalize intersections are spaced more than a football field
13:38 apart. Signal timing alone simply doesn't regulate the speed of human drivers.
13:42 In practice a multi-lane, one-way, streets drivers tend to accelerate quickly and jockey for positions between signals.
13:50 So while signal timing May work well for bicyclists traveling at a steady pace, green waves are invisible
13:56 to cars. Geometry and street design ultimately play the decisive role in shaping driver behavior.
14:04 Second, the analysis assumes that two-way streets require left turn pockets that signalize intersections in intersections.
14:10 In some locations that May be appropriate, but it is not the only option.
14:14 Left turn pockets are not required or used in many signalize intersections.
14:18 Many downtown intersections could function well as always, stop intersections, which eliminates the need for dedicated left turn