Austin Metric

Articles by Julio Gonzalez Altamirano

The Longest Chart

CapMetro should release monthly ridership, financial, and performance data in an analysis-friendly format.

phx-ridership-reports

Phoenix's transit agency releases monthly ridership reports

What data is useful?

One can quickly tell if a public sector organization is committed to transparent performance management by the quality of their public reporting. My personal "brown M …

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All the Bright Moves

CapMetro's Board should utilize transit ridership and transit mode share to evaluate the performance of CapMetro's CEO.  Evaluation should focus on the public value created by the executive's actions.

transit-mode-share

How does one determine "value"?

There's a general consensus amongst transportation academics, practitioners, and activists that there are factors external to …

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Bus City Blues

CapMetro bus ridership has remained stagnant for over 15 years even as Austin experienced substantial population growth and bus spending significantly increased. Land use reform by the City and a service strategy shift at CapMetro can end the ridership stagnation era.

ridership-pop-index

The visualizations that follow are based on information provided …

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Homestead Exemption Effects

Adoption of a 20% homestead exemption (HEx) would shift City taxation away from affluent, low-density Council districts towards the middle-class and Latino neighborhoods.

hex-scatter-median-income

The following visualizations compare each district's share of tax cuts/revenue loss against several demographic factors.  The tax data sources are TCAD & WCAD files analyzed by Dylan …

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Quantity & Quality

Improving Austin government's public engagement process requires procedures and tools that separate the two major goals of citizen input: uncovering insightful information and assessing political support.  As long as engagement routines mix both goals together, sub-optimal engagement is likely.

sub-committe-meeting

Quantity

The crowds that show up on key votes or public …

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