Opinion: The Zilker Vision Plan Is Deeply Flawed and Should Be Scrapped: The newly released draft plan is a recipe for how to ruin a park – Columns

When you’ve got ever requested your self, “Ought to I be anxious {that a} music competition in Zilker Park which fees $5,500 for Platinum Entry could result in unhealthy selections being made in regards to the park,” with the newly unveiled draft Zilker Imaginative and prescient Plan you may have an unequivocal reply: Sure. The overarching aim of this plan is evident: to radically remodel a public park that’s closely used for industrial occasions into one that’s constructed to service these occasions and their wealthier patrons. The plan’s concepts for Zilker Park are each devastating and nonsensical.

The place to start out? Let’s start with the purely nonsensical. Barton Springs Highway, which cuts by Zilker Park, is a significant east-west vehicular route, carrying virtually 15,000 automobiles a day. On summer season weekends, at rush hour, or when there’s an accident on MoPac, the stretch of Barton Springs Highway in Zilker Park turns into crowded with automobiles.

So it’s one thing of a world-class head-scratcher that the Zilker Imaginative and prescient Plan proposes to scale back east-west visitors by the park to 1 lane and add parallel parking to the roadway. Thus, visitors could be funneled right down to a single lane coming out and in, and that single lane could be blocked by automobiles ready to parallel park. It doesn’t take a visitors engineer to see that this may create huge bottlenecks. If we wish to enhance automobile idling and ozone inside Austin metropolis limits this looks like an effective way to do this.

Whereas this piece of the plan boggles the thoughts it does slot in with a central aim of the plan that needs to be filed underneath devastating: big quantities of everlasting on-site parking throughout the park.

The plan requires a rise within the variety of everlasting parking areas within the park by virtually 90% to just about 2,500 areas. Along with the abovementioned parallel parking on Barton Springs Highway this may be primarily achieved with the development of three parking garages on park grounds: one on the positioning of the South Austin Baseball discipline on Azie Taylor Morton, one in a large subterranean parking storage on the web site of the polo fields, and one down by MoPac and Stratford Drive. One may have a protracted dialogue in regards to the many logistical query marks raised by these proposed garages. However a philosophical argument right here ought to suffice: Zilker Park is a comparatively small essential public park for a significant metropolis, clocking in at 350 acres. Its house needs to be maximized for ecology and out of doors actions. Town shouldn’t be constructing concrete temples throughout the park to offer transitory houses for automobiles. This can be a unhealthy look and unhealthy coverage. Taking Zilker Park within the path of the Austin-Bergstrom Airport is taking it the incorrect path.

Constructing parking garages in Zilker Park is a surefire method to make it much less equitable for Austinites. These pushing the imaginative and prescient plan argue that the parking storage concept shouldn’t be novel – Brackenridge Park in San Antonio is commonly cited right here. However a key distinction right here is that parking on the Brackenridge garages is free. At a latest public assembly park planners made it abundantly clear that parking within the Zilker garages would not be free.

So, Zilker Park would turn into a spot the place those that can afford to drive there and pay storage parking charges can benefit from the house. One can solely think about the caste parking system that might be applied for occasions just like the ACL Competition. Bought a $5,500 Platinum Badge? Properly shucks, we have got a parking storage spot on your Hummer proper throughout the road from the competition entrance. Yuck.

Let’s spend a second on some devastating park-use losses underneath this plan. The beloved and closely used Frisbee golf course could be razed. In one other main head-scratcher the plan proposes to construct a brand new sports activities space on the web site of the Frisbee golf course. A significant downside right here is that this a part of the park is hilly. Some main earth and tree removing must be finished to perform this. Not low cost or nature pleasant!

There are some easier concepts buried throughout the plan that make sense – a land bridge connecting the pool to the Nice Garden sounds nice, and extra and higher restrooms all through the park appears logical. However the raison d’être for this Zilker Imaginative and prescient Plan – Zilker is damaged – and its proposed treatment – let’s flip Zilker Park into Park Zilker – stinks to excessive heaven.

Zilker Park is simply high-quality as is. The draft Zilker Imaginative and prescient Plan would wreck this crown jewel of Austin, and it needs to be roundly rejected.

David Weinberg is a political advisor who lives in Barton Hills.

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