Hopefully, I can be forgiven for taking a gander at this morning’s Austin American-Statesman and wondering if, perhaps, the box on the corner had accidentally been filled instead with The Onion. The lead headline this morning, “Smaller Wal-Mart planned,” seems awfully similar to some of the headlines I’ve seen in The Onion, such as “Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare” or “A Statement Followed by a Question Separated by a Colon: An Effective Journalistic Technique?”
The story is far less interesting, focusing on what may or may not be the outcome of a neighborhood battle that’s been waging at least since I moved here about the ever-resilient Wal-Mart company wanting to put a SuperCenter in the middle of a neighborhood whose residents clearly think it’s much nicer and high-class than it actually is, and protesting the same.
This is what happens in Austin. Now, I should mention that in this case, I’m all for Wal-Mart being told to take a hike. I don’t care for Wal-Mart on a basic ethical-bad fashion-ease of crap acquisition level, and if the neighbors of the new SuperCenter don’t want it, good for them.
On the other hand, the NIMBY (“not-in-my-back-yard”) phenomenon has also led to massive urban sprawl (nearly every development project that has been held up in Austin due to NIMBYing has wound up in the ‘burbs. That’s how IKEA wound up two miles from my house – Austin wanted loads of restrictions, Round Rock wanted a big store to come and build so that they could justify annexing several hundred acres of land next to the freeway. Guess where IKEA chose to build?
Interstate 35, the highway that Pat Robertson swears is going to start cleansing us of sin any moment now, is a mess and hasn’t been upgraded since the 1960s. Why? Because local environmentalists are concerned that if the highway is rebuilt, it will encourage more people to drive on it. I have sat in stop-and-go traffic on I-35 in downtown Austin at 2 am, I’ve sat in traffic at noon on a Sunday, I’ve sat in traffic … well, pretty much at any given time of the day. I-35 literally needs to be blown up and started over. However, because of public opposition, the Austin council does what it always does: absolutely nothing. And so the problem gets worse.
I should add here that the usual alternative offered is that we should be “encouraging public transportation.” You’d think that for a city as green as Austin makes itself out to be that we’d have an awesome public transportation system. You’d be wrong. The system is so bad as to be almost non-existent. After at least 10 years of quibbling, a (single) commuter rail line is going into service sometime this fall. Not all of the stations will be open at first because some of them (you guessed it) are leaving an environmental footprint that’s too large, so construction has halted while lawsuits are filed to figure out why. Also, the path the commuter line is taking doesn’t really follow the main commuter traffic flow – they’re building on existing rail lines. Guess why.
I like the environment, I do. That’s why I take the new toll road that zips me home so that I can spend 25 minutes less on the road burning fossil fuels. I know it’s not the most green option, but I don’t have another one — there’s no bus line to my suburb, and the new commuter rail line doesn’t come anywhere near me. If they could come up with another option that cost me less than the $50 a week I spend in gas, I’d be all for it. But even if an option were proposed today (and as far as I know they’re not even thinking of one), it would be another ten years before work even started because of all of the hand-wringing.
By the way, if you think my attitude is bad, consider this: I’m a liberal. I’m actually reasonably pro-environment, although after living in Austin I’m starting to be anti-environmentalist. Closing down Austin and moving everyone somewhere else isn’t going to happen, so can we have some reason injected into the discussion?. Think about how the conservative element who wants to know why the oil derreck in the middle of the UT campus isn’t actually producing oil anymore feels about this whole thing.
All I’m saying is that, for a city of 750,000, we should not be #2 on the list of the most traffic congested cities in the country. We’re worse than Chicago, worse than New York, Washington DC, and Boston. We’re worse than everyone in the country, except for Los Angeles. Is that something to be proud of? Aren’t we supposed to be setting an example? Because so far, we’re not doing a very good job.
