Putting Del Conte over Plonsky is a step in the right direction. Plonsky really needs to be sent away from the program, and I think this is the bureaucratic first step in getting her out of there, assuming she doesn't meet Del Conte's standards (I doubt it). Del Conte can take control of the program and implement the changes that need to be made, rendering Plonsky irrelevant.
What has Plonsky done poorly? I don't follow much outside of football and men's basketball, but from what I gather, all our womens' sports are doing phenomenally.
Long but thorough piece. https://247sports.com/college/texas...NSKY-UNIQUE-ASSET-OR-DIVISIVE-FORCE-105338916
This space has baseball fields installed on it so it's use by the public is limited. They will be re-located with money paid from the team. This isn't selling parkland to Torchy's. It's providing a recreational service that isn't available to the people of Austin right now. The motion to city staff specifically identified highlighting underused parkland and the understanding with the MLS team is that money would need to be spent to improve the surrounding parkland. This includes building soccer fields for public use wherever their practice area will be (likely east austin). The city of Austin could be looking at free facilities for youth soccer programs and a free stadium that can be used for high school events as well as other events for public entertainment in exchange for relocated baseball fields (that they won't pay for) and the loss of very out of the way parkland that was only surviving a small portion of the population. The team has also promised to help with day of transit options. This is the Austin mindset that has put us in this situation to begin with. People have to break away from "people will always drive" and allow decisions and money to be spent on policies to encourage and improve public transit. The new Cap Metro service plan is going to emphasize frequency of service which helps address a major complaint of passengers. This is similar to the discussion of removing 2 lanes of car traffic from the drag in order to extend the bus only lanes in downtown. These are measure that need to be taken despite the mindset that people in Austin love their cars. If the public transit system improves then more people will use it. Making these improvements (which address a HUGE slowdown for many major bus lines) along with the improvements to south lamar (both of which are competing against a lot of other projects from the corridor program in the 2016 bond) would make getting to downtown/central core/S. Lamar much quicker and more efficient. Here is some info on that plan if anyone is interested: -Remove parking lane from the Drag to refocus the corridor as a transit and not a destination. Parking isn't as big a deal because of recent and upcoming apartment complexes in west campus that have public parking to support 1st floor retail -Convert outside traffic lanes to bus only in order to continue the bus only lanes currently in downtown. -Converts 24th street from Guad to Lamar to 3 lane street with middle turn lane. This will help streamline traffic flow so righthand traffic is always right turn or straight so traffic flows better. -Reconfiguring Nueces Street for two-way operations north of 24th Street to lessen the impact of the reallocation of automobiles on Guadalupe Street by diverting all local traffic access in West Campus from Guadalupe Street to Nueces Street. Here are screenshots of all the reported changes: Spoiler Spoiler Final Report Concept Plans Existing Conditions Traffic Analysis Report and Proposed Conditions The info on the drag is only 1 of 9 different corridor reports who are all competing over 480 million dollars. The total cost of implementing all of the improvements in those reports is more than 2.5 billion. The solution to Austin transit and traffic is as simple as it is off-putting. Money. Until Austin is passing billion dollar bonds, transit won't get that much better. If anyone is interested, the corridors competing for money are the Drag (Guadalupe from MLK to 29th), Slaughter, William Cannon, S. Lamar, the Drag, FM 969 from 183 to Decker, E. Riverside, Airport Blvd, Burnet north of 2222 and N. Lamar north of 183. The 2016 bond commissioned studies for improvements for: Manchaca, S. Congress, S. Pleasant Valley (south of Oltorf), MLK Blvd and the rest of N. Lamar and Guadalupe. EDIT: Is anyone interested in **** like this in Austin? I made an Austin thread in the hangout years ago with this stuff but I think most people found it boring.
I think they are basically doing away with it without taking away her title. Del Conte press conference today was mostly fluff as you would expect for his 1st day. Lots of emotional thank yous. Some Info via Taylor Estes at 247 -Del Conte knows there is a lot of work that needs to be done—new basketball arena, south end zone project, etc.—and its his plan to go to the right people to get the ball rolling in the same direction to get things done. -Del Conte called Tom Herman "a student of the game." He credited Herman for the recruiting class he has right now, which shows he knows what he's doing. -Del Conte called Tom Herman "a student of the game." He credited Herman for the recruiting class he has right now, which shows he knows what he's doing. -Del Conte calls himself the "custodian" of the program. He knows he needs to serve the people who have laid the groundwork here and the coaches who are working towards championships. (Dude sounds like the foot washing Pope) -Chris Del Conte said he is prepared for this job, and as long as you put the student athletes and coaches first, then everything will fall into place. -Del Conte said there are no changes that will come for Chris Plonsky, calling her a "star." (Noteworthy but not really the time and place to fire anyone) -The most important thing for Del Conte is to meet the entire staff and student athletes, first and foremost. (Interesting deviation from Steve Patterson's strategy of looking forward to firing everyone -Why you come to the University of Texas is for the challenge that comes with the job. Del Conte said the standard at Texas has been set long ago, which is to win championships and helping student athletes and coaches achieve their dreams. He knows it's a challenge, but he is up for it and ready to get to work. The new basketball arena and south end zone are both really really important. The South Endzone may not seem important because we don't have a problem with seating capacity but its purpose isn't to add capacity (even though it does by a little). It's to build more suites to generate more revenue without raising ticket prices for everyone else as well as to renovate the football offices which are more or less a part of the current south end zone structure. The arena is critically important because they need it in order to complete the medical school which includes support buildings on to of where the Erwin center is. The current plan is to build a smaller stadium that can only support concerts up to 13,000 people (so not an Erwin Center replacement) and offer a more intimate basketball experience for students. Less seats closer to the action. They want to build it just east of DKR, immediately south of the track stadium. The giant ****ing green elephant is if the city wants to get involved with UT to build a bigger arena that could function as a replacement to the Erwin center. The problem is that there have been about 5 locations identified for an on campus arena and 0 off campus. IT would also require the city to pay for part of the arena which will be a whole thing in itself (ESPECIALLY with the current city council). I think it's very likely UT does what is best for its basketball program and medical school and go ahead and build a smaller on campus arena while the city can focus on building a Erwin Center replacement at the Rodeo/Expo grounds.
I completely disagree. Austin's problem is that it implements mass transit for political reasons instead of actual value. Light rail, for example - any Austin light rail plan should have started with a line directly connecting the inside of the airport to various downtown hubs. It would have been instantly used and filled, gotten a ton of cars off the road, and also save people money (by replacing the more expensive cab), all while highlighting the system and creating something you can then build on. But they didn't want to, because it would piss off cab drivers. So instead they built one that no one uses and takes up space. The bus lanes are similarly poorly thought out. You're literally decreasing potential total road throughput hoping to force people to use the bus system. Instead of ruining other transit so mass transit is more appealing by default, they should actually invest in good mass transit that people will *want* to use. People aren't going to start riding buses because they can go down Guadalupe faster any more than they start riding buses because they go through downtown faster. All it did is create more congestion for everyone else. You see this same nonsense at the state level. The toll road down to Lockhart goes right next to a perfectly functional highway. Not enough people were using the tollway, so they lowered the speed limit on the free option just to make it less appealing. Forcing adoption of things by making the alternatives worse (or even completely unavailable in the case of the Zilker stadium) never works anywhere - it's based on a complete lack of understanding of human behavor, and is basically the definition of terrible government policy making. Create a quality system and people will use it by choice. Force a system on people and you'll get terrible outcomes.
@mikefinger Red McCombs on new Texas AD Chris Del Conte: "The school had kind of gotten off track. They had some people in there that couldn't carry the water. ... We've got to reload, and I think he's the guy to do it." McCombs, by the way, said he was "very disappointed" in Texas' football season. "Quite frankly, I thought (Tom Herman) had put it together, but he didn't. We're on short shrift there. We've got to get it done." I asked Red if that meant he already was losing patience with Herman. He said, "No, I think he's the right guy. Then again, I don't know why he didn't get us further along."
This projection simply isn't accurate. The value in rail to airports is in the number of airport employees. That is where your use comes from. There isn't enough value in an Austin airport line until they build another terminal which could be in 5-10 years and significantly increase the daily work commuters. When that time comes, they have identified a couple ways to get rail to the airport. What is your opinion of the overhaul to the bus routes that was approved for next year? You can work on buses while also working on mass transit. They aren't mutually exclusive. Many cities have rail but buses still share the burden of your system to get going from point A to point B. You can improve that service by getting buses out of traffic by bus only lanes and HOV/Toll lanes on highways. When you do that, you increase the appeal of transit because it provides a better alternative to driving. If taking a bus downtown from the domain took 20 minutes instead of 40 then more people would be inclined to take it. Many people don't take public transit in Austin because it takes forever to get anywhere. Guadalupe and downtown are both parts of the puzzle. When you are making changes that improve bus speed by 3 minutes PER MILE, that adds up as you go down a corridor. You can't just pick a piece of a network change and ask if that makes all of the difference. The drag is a critical artery for many bus lines and improvements there impact many different parts of the city, We don't live in a city where we can afford to build elevated trains everywhere. We don't live in a city where we can eminent domain hundreds of businesses to widen all of the corridors to 6 lanes. There is going to have to be a give and take. There is a difference between making everything worse and making 1 thing better and the expense of another. Improvements to S. Lamar and Guadalupe help build a better mass transit system and that is going to be the answer for people getting around town. I don't understand what you think the solution is to make the city better for cars but I can promise you light rail which largely eliminates lanes for cars AND buses is not going to make the fix you think it will and it is phenomenally expensive. Again, it's certainly possible work to improve multiple modes of transit at once which is what the corridor program does. **It shouldn't change the discussion but I do want to point out that car transit northbound on the drag will improve by 1-4 minutes but car traffic south will get worse by a 2-3 minutes. *** And again, the issue is money. It's simple. If you want to do the MOST you can possibly do for cars it would be spend 2.5 billion on all of the corridor studies which would all improve car flow except for the drag proposal. People don't want to pay that much for anything no matter how angry they are.
what is all this garbage in the UT-Austin football thread for? Please go to city-data for these discussions
Making a staff change less than 10 days before the early signing period is a risk, especially with the class they got going right now. Would love to add Brewster but I'll be happy with a change at OC if nothing else.
Four-star OL Angilau commits to Texas EJ from 247 It’s possible the kid goes on a mission for 2 years and doesn’t enrol until 2020.
Recruiting hasn't been an issue for either school but Brewster in CS certainly makes things a little tougher for Herman and Co. Win and everything else will take care of itself but still hoping Herman shakes up the staff a little. That would certainly be our luck but hopefully we can hit on 2 JUCO guys as well. Few reports made it seem like he had decided to go but sounds like it's more 50/50 with the opportunity to play with his cousin (Vahe) and help his family out.
