Re-envisioning the Austin light rail

Let me tell you a story of my hometown Austin. In Austin we have ambitious GHG reduction goals. One way Austin tried to decrease emissions was by creating a multi-million dollar light rail system that ran diagonally through the city. The city had great hopes for this, but one year later hardly anyone was using it.

Why not? What was missing? It turns out, you can’t just build a transportation system and have people use it. You have to understand what people are currently doing and what they need. 

If Austin had used the design thinking process, this light rail system would have looked incredibly different. The designers would have started by speaking with the people they were designing for. And through doing this, a few new solutions may have panned out:

An environmental way to maintain independence while driving

When speaking to drivers in Texas, the designers would’ve understood that people love the independence in driving. From that they would’ve tested innovative ways to decrease GHG emissions while allowing people to be independent. After iterating a lot, they would likely come up with a solution like incentivizing Tesla, an electric car that’s user friendly and allows people to be independent.

A light rail app that demonstrates how Austinites will beat traffic during work hours

Another thing the designers would hear from people is that many Austinites hate traffic! An app could have been created by the city to demonstrate time saved while using the light rail from their home to their workplace during rush hour traffic. This point of comparison would likely encourage more ridership.

Through understanding the needs of drivers, the Austin light rail system could have been a huge success. While it’s still possible to re-invent this transportation system, we believe it’s incredibly important to understand human behavior upfront to avoid poor financial decisions when addressing climate change.