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It’s been nearly six years since a majority of Austinites voted in favor of creating 20 miles of state-of-the-art light rail transit across the city. But since that vote, the total length of the future rail system has been chopped in half. Despite that, the price tag for the project has continued climbing. Some folks who voted in favor are now suing to stop it from happening. An update on Project Connect.
Data from a Travis County mental health diversion pilot is showing some promising early results. The program offers people accused of low-level offenses an alternative. We’ll tell you more.
Which friendship in Austin has lasted the longest? A listener wanted to know. Our ATXplained project found the answer.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] It’s been nearly six years since a majority of Austinites voted in favor of creating 20 miles of state-of-the-art light rail transit across the city, but since that vote the total length of the future rail system has been chopped off in half, and despite that the price tag for the project has continued climbing. Some folks who voted in favor are now suing to stop it from happening. An update on Project Connect coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:32] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:37] Data from a Travis County mental health diversion pilot is showing some promising early results. The program offers people cues of low-level offenses and alternative. We’re gonna tell you more about that. Plus, which friendship in Austin has lasted the longest? The listener wanted to know. Our ATXplain project found the answer. That’s coming up next, right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, you are tuned in to Austin Signal here on community powered public radio. This is KUT news. I’m your host Jerry Kehannel. It is Tuesday, May 26th. It’s election day for the party primary runoffs here in Texas. Polls are open until seven o’clock tonight. We have guides for local and state races over at KUT.org and on the KUT app. And we will be following up on tomorrow’s show with all the results from tonight’s races. Project Connect promised to add 20 miles of light rail to Austin’s public transit system when it was pitched to voters back in 2020. Now some of the same people who voted in favor of the project are suing to try to stop it from happening. Joshua Fector wrote about the project, its ballooning price tag, and the growing pushback against it for the Texas Tribune, where he reports on urban affairs. Joshua, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. So a lot of Austinites are probably familiar with Project Connect and specifically the light rail proposal component of it, but your recent reporting is about how the project has strayed since it was first proposed. Tell us what has happened, what are some of the big changes?
Joshua Fechter [00:02:17] So just to give like a little bit of background, Project Connect was this voter approved initiative back in 2020, which promised to expand the city’s public transportation system. Voters agreed to fund the project, which was tagged at about $7.1 billion with a 21% increase in their tax rate. That expansion included things like new high-frequency bus routes, expanded shuttle pick up service but you know at the centerpiece was the brand new light rail line, right? It would stretch more than 20 miles, it would run through the heart of the city, it would go through downtown, it would stop by UT Austin, and it would end at the Austin Berkshirm International Airport. And now, in the years since, the project’s cost went up. The initial estimated cost was something like $5.8 billion, but then in the year following the vote, it grew by about 75%. To deal with those higher costs, Project officials cut it and basically in half from more than 20 miles to less than 10 It will no longer reach the airport They cut the number of stops from 26 to 15 and you know, the project will now cost the light rail cost alone Will now cost 8.2 billion
Jerry Quijano [00:03:31] Your story focuses on the pushback against the plan, notably a lawsuit brought by some of the people who once supported it. What did you hear from some of the critics of Project Connect?
Joshua Fechter [00:03:41] Critics feel like there was some kind of bait-and-switch. Essentially, they voted for one thing, they voted to pay for that one thing and instead they got another. And so there’s this group of taxpayers that have basically sued the project, arguing that the property tax mechanism that funds it is effectively illegal, in part because they argue the smaller light rail project today is not what voters approved and thus the tax is illegal. But, you know, project officials have really defended the project, saying that they had sort of the leeway to adjust the project in the face of higher costs. And they argue that even at a smaller scale, the Austin Light Rail project is fundamental for the city’s future. You know, you need other ways to get around if the city and the region are going to continue to grow. And even if the Austin light rail project is smaller now, they can expand it in the future is their argument.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:49] Yeah, the light rail plans have gotten smaller, the price tag has climbed. Why has it grown so much, and what have Cap Metro and Austin official had to say about that?
Joshua Fechter [00:04:59] So what Austin officials and officials with the Austin Transit Partnership, which is the nonprofit that is building the light rail, is what they will tell you is that no major infrastructure project in this country was shielded from cost increases during the COVID inflation spike. If you were paying higher gross free tabs or seeing higher rent increases during the COVID pandemic. You know, basically, Project Connect was going through sort of the same thing, right? So inflation drove up the cost of the project. Austinites are aware of this, but obviously Austin real estate took off in the pandemic era and that affected the project’s cost. But a big portion of why costs went up so much is because… When officials asked voters to green light the project, only about 5% of the light rail project had actually been designed. And so that initial lack of design meant the project’s costs were basically certain to go up as the project moved along, which is a problem you’ll find in basically any major project. And that’s because cities often don’t have the money to fully design a project before taking it to voters. Basically, that left the project vulnerable to these big cost increases as inflation took off and the Austin real estate market took off.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:34] Between the lawsuit and the lack of federal funding that you write about, what could ultimately happen to Project Connect? I mean, will some iteration of it still be built, or is there a chance that the project might not go forward?
Joshua Fechter [00:06:47] Austin Transit Partnership officials are pretty optimistic that they will receive federal funds. But in the event that for whatever reason they don’t receive those funds, or there is some alteration to the funding mechanism by the courts, the sense I get is that they will try to build as much of the project as possible with the money they have. But So far, they have not said how far they’d be able to get in either of those scenarios.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:20] Alright, we have been speaking with Joshua Fector, he is the Urban Affairs reporter for the Texas Tribune. We’re gonna have a link to his reporting in today’s show notes. Joshua, thanks for your time. Thanks so much for having me. Travis County has been working to connect people accused of low-level crimes with mental health services in an effort to keep them out of jail. As KUT’s Katie McAfee reports, early data on the program’s success is promising, but there are caveats.
Katy McAfee [00:07:54] Travis County launched the program in the fall of 2024. County officials got the idea after a study estimated about 100 people enter Travis County’s jail a month after committing a crime due to a mental illness. Crimes like criminal trespass, obstruction of a highway, and other low-level misdemeanors. And many of those people are repeat offenders. Marissa Malik helps run the diversion program at Integral Care, the county’s mental health authority. She shared initial data with the commissioner’s court this week.
Marissa Malik [00:08:23] 68% did not receive another crisis episode within 30 days of discharge. 94% were not arrested 30 days post-discharge, and 72% did go into an emergency department.
Katy McAfee [00:08:38] That data is for people who went through emergency psychiatric services. There’s also a longer-term care option where people can stay for up to 90 days. They get help accessing insurance, medication, housing, and employment opportunities. Mental health researcher Deborah Cohen told commissioners the data for that group was even more promising. 99% of people did not have another mental health crisis 30 days after being discharged. She says many people found housing, and…
Friends [00:09:05] There was a number of individuals who actually were able to obtain a job and start working during their stay.
Katy McAfee [00:09:12] The program is intended to keep people out of jail, but Malik says so far, most people are being referred after they’ve been booked in the system.
Marissa Malik [00:09:20] We have over 50 people waiting to be admitted. Average kind of time of admission being anywhere from six to eight weeks. And those are currently individuals that have been referred from the jail.
Katy McAfee [00:09:34] Travis County Judge Andy Brown says the program could accept more people if it had a bigger space, but Integral Care only has 25 beds.
Andy Brown [00:09:41] It kills me that it takes so long to build a building and to get something new up and running in this community. We’ve been looking at this for years. To build something will take another few years.
Katy McAfee [00:09:51] Last legislative session, Brown asked state lawmakers if the county could buy the empty buildings at the Austin State Hospital site for the program. The bill ultimately died, but Brown hopes this data will secure more state support for the project. He plans to ask lawmakers to buy land again in 2027. I’m Katie McAfee in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:10] And a reminder, it’s election day here in Texas. Looking at wait times here in Travis County, just one polling location with a wait longer than 20 minutes. Polls are open until seven o’clock tonight. Go to KUT.org and the KUT app to take a look at what’s on your ballot. This is Austin Signal. Welcome back, this is Austin signal. This month, ATX Plain Live had its 10th live show, another one for the books. If you missed it, don’t worry, the ATXplain podcast will have podcast versions of the stories available in the coming weeks, so you don’t have to get too much FOMO, but we had so much fun we wanted to keep the fun going today and share a story from 2024 about friendship. This story is from KUT’s projects editor and creator of ATXplained, MatLarge.
Matt Largey [00:11:01] When I was in seventh grade, I met a guy named Dave. I don’t remember why we became friends exactly. Neither one of us were particularly popular. We were both into Star Wars and The X-Files. There might have been some Dungeons and Dragons involved. One of my first memories of our friendship was his sleepover at his house. We stayed up all night listening to Stairway to Heaven over and over again so we could memorize the lyrics. In high school, we did theater together. We’re in all the school plays. We did swim team together. We stayed friends after high school. Best friends, I think. He moved to New York to study acting. I moved to Boston to study radio. But we talked a lot. We saw each other pretty frequently. I was in his wedding, his first wedding. Helped him move out after the divorce, his first divorce. He was in my wedding. And after that, things changed. I moved Austin, he moved to California. We both had kids. Life just kinda happened. And for the past few years, I don’t talk to Dave that much. Maybe once every six months, maybe. I haven’t seen him in years. But I think about him all the time. I miss him. And so why am I telling you all this? Well, that’s where our question comes in.
Krista Reitz [00:12:20] So my question generally has to do with kind of long-term friendships in Austin. What are the oldest friendships in Boston and kind of the roots of them?
Matt Largey [00:12:30] That’s Krista Reitz. She was born in Austin, but she didn’t stay.
Krista Reitz [00:12:34] As a kid who moved around my whole life, I don’t have lifelong friends. I picked up and I moved and life was gone and next phase happened. And so, I mean, to me, it’s something to be a little jealous of. She’s right.
Matt Largey [00:12:49] I don’t think we appreciate how rare and special it is to have someone in your life, outside of your immediate family, who’s just always been there. Someone who feels like home. Now, I don’t know that I can answer Christa’s question definitively, but I wanted to try, so I put the word out. And I was honestly a little surprised by the response. Lots of people wanted to talk about their long-time friendship. So I talked to a bunch of them, how they became friends, how they stayed friends.
Friends [00:13:17] Our moms knew each other while they were pregnant, they were in a maternity group together.
Matt Largey [00:13:22] Middle school meetings seem to be pretty common.
Friends [00:13:24] We were in the lunch line, right? I think so. You had just moved to town.
Matt Largey [00:13:28] Sometimes you don’t even remember when the friendship began.
Friends [00:13:30] I feel like Austin has always just been in my life.
Matt Largey [00:13:34] Yeah, there’s like photos that predate my memory. And sometimes you remember exactly how you met. Stacey and Jade met online.
Stacey [00:13:42] We were living in Dallas.
Matt Largey [00:13:44] It was the 90s, they were both into the rave scene. Jade posted on this message board, asking for a ride to a club. They’re complete strangers at this point, but Stacy does give Jade a ride. They get to the club and Stacy gives Jade a task.
Stacey [00:13:58] She’s like, listen, I’m not gonna be friends with some punk, okay? So she’s like you see that man over there looking at you? And I said, yeah. And she said, I want you to get up, walk over to him, push him up against the wall and make out with him. And if you don’t do it, I not gonna to be your friend.
Matt Largey [00:14:13] So Jade walked over and stuck her tongue down the dude’s throat.
Stacey [00:14:17] After a couple seconds, I just backed away and was like, okay, thanks. And then I went back and I was like all right, we’re friends now and we’ve been best friends ever since.
Matt Largey [00:14:24] This is like a foundational memory of their friendship. One of those stories that they tell over and over again.
Jade [00:14:31] I was literally just kidding. I was like, I just want to see what she’s gonna say, but she did it and I was Like this is it. This is the girl’s gonna be my best friend
Matt Largey [00:14:39] Years go by, and like all old friends, they make a history together. All those huge changes that happen in adolescence and early adulthood. Off to college, like Steph and Nancy.
Steph [00:14:50] I came to Austin to go to UT, Nancy went to OU.
Matt Largey [00:14:54] Getting married, like Amelia.
Amelia [00:14:56] I wanted to have a really small wedding and I had to have Kara there.
Matt Largey [00:15:01] Having kids like Sophie and Malay.
Sophie [00:15:03] She was a large influence in me being like, okay, if I’m gonna do this, we should do this together.
Matt Largey [00:15:06] Coming out to their friend, like Nancy.
Nancy [00:15:08] You were the first person I told.
Matt Largey [00:15:09] The bad times, I feel like we’ve seen each other at our worst, and the good ones.
Steph [00:15:13] I feel like she wanted the life that she has now for so long, and so I’m just very happy for her.
Matt Largey [00:15:24] You might get separated along the way, by distance, physical or emotional, new relationships.
Jade [00:15:30] To call her and say, he doesn’t want me to be your friend.
Matt Largey [00:15:33] And you can let them.
Jade [00:15:34] Or not. Are you crazy? Like you get what are you thinking? I had to get rid of the guy so he’s he’s gone.
Stacey [00:15:40] He’s a goner. I remember, we ate him alive.
Matt Largey [00:15:44] In one way or another, a distance developed between almost all the friends I talk to. But if you’re lucky, you find your way back. There’s a kind of luck to keeping a friend over decades. Something like magic. But there are also some things you can do to make your odds better. Some lessons I took away from talking to some of the oldest friends I found. Lesson one, communicate. Debbie and Sharon had crossed paths before. Their partners were good friends and they’d see each other occasionally. But they didn’t really connect until one day, things just finally clicked and they became best friends.
Debbie [00:16:24] Even now, we’ll say or do things, and it’s the same thought about a certain situation. And so I think we’re just kind of cut from the same cloth.
Matt Largey [00:16:39] Now they’ve been best friends for more than 40 years. So how do they do it? It’s what’s in your heart.
Sharon [00:16:44] Heart, how you feel, how are a constant, because we’re a constant.
Matt Largey [00:16:53] Even if they’re not talking on the phone every day, they’re texting, sending prayers, good luck at your meeting, that sort of thing.
Sharon [00:17:00] Like communication, you have to.
Debbie [00:17:02] Yeah, so I think that strategy goes back to being intentional and being deliberate, you know, in your thoughts, words and actions. Yeah.
Matt Largey [00:17:14] Lesson two, tell them how you feel. It was becoming obvious that I might have a serious old friendship disadvantage. One friendship guru told me that the key to a long, deep friendship is to not be a man. And it kinda seemed true. So many of the old friends that responded to me were women, but not all of them. Scott and Greg also met in school. Oh Henry, junior high, right down the road, when we were in the ninth grade, eighth grade. 1961.
Scott [00:17:44] Oh, five.
Matt Largey [00:17:46] A whole group of kids who’d gone to O’Henry, they remained friends to this day.
Scott [00:17:51] We all got along together, but it’s also Austin. You know, Austin kept us all here, and we watched it grow, but at one time it was small, so we always were running into each other. They’ve been friends for almost…
Matt Largey [00:18:03] 60 years now.
Greg [00:18:05] Stay together because basically we all love each other. That’s it It really is no other answer. Is there no no, do you guys tell each other that a lot? No, hell no Worst thing we could do We couldn’t backbite each other anymore
Matt Largey [00:18:26] These rules or these lessons, they might seem kind of obvious. Maybe they are, but I think a lot of us forget this stuff. We take friends for granted. They need tending, understanding, forgiveness, and they need to be told just how much they mean to us. And when you don’t, they can slip away. One more lesson. Lesson three, show up. The last friend group I wanna hear from have been friends since they were very young.
Nell [00:18:54] I know that they had a picture of us at Ann’s second birthday party, which means we were all two.
Matt Largey [00:19:00] This is Nell Johnston-Martin. She’s 84 now. She happens to be Krista Rietz’s mom. You remember Krista, our question asker. There’s Nell’s friend, Nancy Kelly Anderson.
Nancy [00:19:10] Well, we lived in the same neighborhood, and we went to Sunday school together. I don’t know, is that enough?
Matt Largey [00:19:20] And their other friend, Anne Peterson Donovan.
Nancy [00:19:22] I think when you’re two or three years old, you’re friends because your mothers are friends and put you together.
Matt Largey [00:19:29] So they became friends by circumstance, but they stayed friends by choice.
Nell [00:19:35] Tell each other stuff and know it wasn’t going any further and, you know, just laugh together and sit down on the front curb and talk and solve all the problems of the world.
Matt Largey [00:19:45] They’ve been friends for 82 years now.
Nell [00:19:48] It’s just grown and grown and grown into a beautiful friendship. And we have lots of other friends as well that we’ve made. But old friends are good friends.
Matt Largey [00:19:58] Through having kids, divorces, illness, grandkids, just showing up when they needed each other. The little things that might not seem like a big deal, but…
Nell [00:20:07] It is a big deal because I know my life I couldn’t have gotten through without my friends.
Matt Largey [00:20:13] Even when friends moved away for a time or stayed away, they were always welcomed back.
Nell [00:20:18] And it’s not like you can’t go home again, you know. It’s like, oh, what did we do yesterday? You know, if it’s that kind of friendship, then you don’t lose that for some reason.
Matt Largey [00:20:32] Nell and Anne and Nancy might just have the oldest friendship in town. Krista might’ve had her answer all along. I don’t think we can really know. But what Nell said there made me wonder. And maybe it’s just because I’m in my 40s or whatever, but can you go home again? Check, check, check. Check, Check, God, why am I so nervous to make this call?
David [00:21:03] That’s a name I have not heard in a long time.
Matt Largey [00:21:07] Long time. This is Dave, my oldest friend. He goes by David now, which I’ll never get used to. It had been at least nine months since we last talked. How are you? What’s fakin’ in your world? So, a lot of things have happened. I’m not gonna get into all of it here, but we catch up for a while. You know, family stuff, job stuff. We’ve been friends for more than 30 years, but I don’t know that we’ve ever talked about our friendship. But something’s been bothering me after talking to all these people about their old friends. Did we do something wrong? Why do we talk so rarely? Dave was worried that it was his fault that he’d done something to alienate me, but I don’t think that’s true. I’m convinced it’s my fault. I’ll give you an example. He texted me a couple of months ago, nothing major, but I just never responded. Like, I thought about responding. I drafted a reply in my head, but I didn’t write back. And this is not the first time that that’s happened. I’ve done this a lot in the last few years. So I needed to know, am I to blame for us growing apart?
David [00:22:14] I don’t feel that there’s a blame or I think of you as, you know, my best friend. I have a best friend here in Ojai where I live and then I have my best friend from my life and that’s you.
Matt Largey [00:22:32] I mean, yeah, that’s the same way I think about it. That’s the thing, it’s like, I think about you all the time. Yeah? Yeah, and like, I never, I never like send you a text message or just like give you a call, you know? It’s like what is wrong with me? I feel like that is a failing on my part.
David [00:22:53] Well, yeah, I don’t I
Matt Largey [00:22:59] I can totally understand that. Tell me that is a failing on your part.
David [00:23:04] No, I’m not gonna tell you that. If anything, it’s an opportunity to make a different choice.
Matt Largey [00:23:14] Sometimes old friendships mean making a different choice. Sometimes it means choosing that you don’t need to be friends anymore. And sometimes it means choosing to be a better friend. Love you, man.
David [00:23:28] Love you too, brother.
Matt Largey [00:23:29] I’ll talk to you later. Bye. Bye. Anyway, maybe you have an old friend you’re thinking about right now. You really should give them a call. Who knows? You might end up with Austin’s oldest friendship. I’m Matt Largie in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:49] And that is it for today’s show. We’re going to have links in the podcast show notes and at kut.org slash signal.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
