Texas 130: Road to a new way of living? Date: Sunday, May 29, 2005

By Steve Scheibal

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Sunday, May 29, 2005

From St. Louis to the Netherlands, Peter Calthorpe has influenced how people live, work and travel. The Berkeley, Calif., planning consultant is working with the Capital Metro Transit Authority to draw up transportation plans for Central Texas and analyzing the way projects will affect development in the region.

Much of the growth will be along Texas 130, a new toll road looping east of Austin and weaving among Creedmoor, Manor, Pflugerville, Round Rock, Hutto and Georgetown. The highway is set to open in less than two years.

Calthorpe sees the Texas 130 corridor as an expanse with vast potential — an almost blank canvas where streets, trails, businesses and town centers grow between the highway and an abandoned railroad, known as the MoKan line, that could be converted to a mass-transit route. Such growth, he said, could draw development away from environmentally sensitive Hill Country south and west of downtown Austin over the Edwards Aquifer.

Calthorpe was in Austin this month to discuss the connections between growth and transportation with Envision Central Texas, the region's pre-eminent planning organization. He also talked with the Austin American-Statesman about the possibilities and challenges in the Texas 130 corridor.

Austin American-Statesman: What's your take on what the region should be doing about Texas 130?

Peter Calthorpe: That whole corridor is the right place for growth. It's outside the aquifer. It's got a potential transit line, and it's got the highway. It's got all the infrastructure you need, so it really should happen. The question is, do you build the same old suburban model of a grid of streets with strip commercial lining the arterial (streets), and subdivisions off on collector (roads), or do you reconceive the structure? How do you structure a whole area so it becomes more diverse and walkable?

What in your mind is the first thing that leaders in the community need to do?

Well, you've got a multijurisdictional environment out there. Cities planning in isolation of one another no longer works. The circulation system runs through various towns, the infrastructure goes through. So they have to agree to collaboratively go at this. They need to reach some consensus that they want to use a new and different paradigm, not just the same old suburban sprawl model. And then they need to do an overall master plan for the corridor, which then can be implemented through the various (cities') general plans. It has to be collaborative.

How difficult is it to get different jurisdictions to agree to a specific sort of model that they want to build toward?

People really do know that the same old pattern that came in after World War II really isn't the best. You know, putting aside all ideology and environmental analysis and all the rest of that, it's a pretty obvious thing that a 50-year-old model may not fit today's world. And so most places are willing to entertain alternatives. They want to look at the impact of the alternatives.

The other thing that's happened that gives you real momentum is, of course, huge shifts in demographics in this region, in every region. We're just no longer a country of nuclear families, Ozzie and Harriet, one guy going off to work and Mom and the kids at home in a big backyard. Only 25 percent of households in America today are married couples with kids. The other 75 percent are other. They're empty-nesters, older people that want a more urban lifestyle.

So the demographics are pushing cities away from the old one-size-fits-all paradigm anyway. The marketplace is. Ironically now, the free marketplace is moving toward these more progressive land use forms, and they're just being held up in many circumstances by outdated zoning.

How difficult is it to get landowners to buy into the vision?

Not hard at all, especially as the momentum is growing and it's becoming clearer and clearer. I don't think it's a bad thing for developers to want to make money. We live in a capitalist society. That's what they're supposed to do. When they follow the market, they're getting led to the realization that if they can create better environments for people, then people will be more drawn to their place than others.

When you look at 130, what do you imagine it could look like? What's possible?

I think what's possible is the next generation of land use at a corridor scale, not just an individual project scale. You would have a series of towns and villages, each one very walkable and quite desirable to live in. You may want to live in a townhouse that's actually in a town, not just sitting out on an arterial somewhere, and be able to walk to shops and parks and cinemas and bookstores and what have you.

There would be an open-space system that really functioned as a secondary network to boulevards and connector (streets), and therefore a trail system that would be pretty well inter-linked throughout, connecting major town centers and major recreational features.

I think you'd see most of the new jobs being focused into these mixed-use town centers instead of off in office parks. You'd still have some zones that were single-use — I mean, an industrial area just doesn't work well as part of a mixed-use environment. Very truck-oriented things would probably be closer to 130, and very urban, people-oriented places would be closer to the MoKan line, so you'd be getting the best of both worlds.

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