All,
@harren and I just finished participating in a focus group on the Project Connect public transportation planning effort.
Frank participated on behalf of Evolve Austin.
I did not realize until I arrived that my invitation came with the expectation I would represent FAN. I ended up representing both my neighborhood association and FAN at the meeting.
It was a well-facilitated session with representatives of a diverse set of groups sharing their views. In representing FAN, I stuck to two positions that the membership has empowered us to take:
- Using Imagine Austin’s complete communities indicators to guide planning efforts.
- Implement the sidewalk and bike master plan, which would provide much-needed transit-supportive infrastructure.
Happy to answer any questions about the meeting.
Roger
I have a ton of questions - but I’ll start with: have they acknowledged the flaws in the previous effort?
1 Like
The clear premise was that the previous effort was flawed. Some of the questions focused on perceptions about the previous effort and ways to do better this time.
Was any attempt made to acknowledge lack of truthfulness / honesty on the FTA and MetroRapid? Or was it a “we did a bad job selling our great plan to you guys”?
The FTA part of it didn’t come up. There was neither an explicit mea culpa nor any attempt to whitewash or justify the previous effort. It was mostly a neutral, facilitated focus group with a variety of stakeholder group representatives freely expressing opinions.
@steboknapp also attended on behalf of CACDC.
Oh, I should have brought up the FTA letter!
We did bring up a failure of CapMetro’s was that they have yet to respond to customer demands to fix problems from MetroRapid (cutting frequency of the 1, stops separate from locals, horrible shade structures, for example) and that they don’t do a good job on working to address feedback and communicate next steps they are taking.
That theme later came up with a reflection on the 2014 PC process of workshops and info sessions where there wasn’t a good feedback loop where engineers and planners could say “You voted highest on X thing last time, but here’s the why and why nots” and instead people just lost interest in continuing with the public involvement process because their prior feedback wasn’t ever really addressed.
But like Roger said, the facilitators were not whitewashing, I think they took all of what we were saying to heart. At least with this go around, they’re trying to get transit advocates involved way early on.
1 Like