I don't think Austin should prioritize rail right now. Instead it should concentrate that money on (1) Street Safety, (2) Street Connectivity, and (3) Bike and micromobility infrastructure. Those are higher leverage investments that would help the city "thicken up" to make transit more valuable (and viable).

As the mailbag question pointed out, at 3k people per square mile on average, Austin is mostly not transit serviceable. But because it has terrible connectivity and walkability, it has disproportionately awful traffic for a metro of its size.

If Austin (and its suburbs) upgraded the local street network to be better connected and safe for walking and biking, it would greatly improve quality of life, and make it possible for the city to continue growing up from 3k people per square mile to the 10-15k per square mile range where transit service can be high quality.

Austin might also never reach that level of growth. The developed area around Austin is already huge, so the city could easily double or even triple in population and still be low density on average. That level of long-term growth seems likely based on recent trends, but in the face of a US demographic flatline it also shouldn't shock us if Austin's growth slowed down a lot in the future.

If the growth continues, and more pockets of the city are approaching transit-viable densities, then rail should be on the menu of options to connect the dense parts of the metro and enable further development.

Further reading if this tickles your nerd interests: freerange.city/p/the-ge…