AUSTIN — On Monday the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce will host the Future of Regional Mobility Summit in an effort to bring city leaders as well as transportation experts from other cities together to discuss how to better improve traffic and congestion in Austin.
An all-day event, the summit is open to members and non-members to be part of the conversation surrounding some of the biggest transportation and mobility issues the city faces.
Walter Zaykowski, senior director of advocacy and communications for the chamber, explained that as Austin continues to grow, improvement in transit and traffic is a must. He said it's not only a problem to those who currently live in the city, but that the issue itself could also potentially hurt the city's attractiveness.
"Austin is going to double in population over the next 20 years and we need to make sure that we are able to get people where they need to be, whether it's to the office, to Zilker park, home to their families, whatever it might be. We need to make sure that we're doing everything to address congestion," said Zaykowski. "It's lost productivity, it hurts trade, it hurts -- eventually it hasn't yet -- but it could eventually hurt our attractiveness to job creators and talent that want to move to the region."
Zaykowski said that the City of Austin ranked 14 on the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard as the city with the worst traffic in the United States, and that on average, each resident spends more than 40 hours on the roads due to traffic.
"Anybody that has spent time on I-35, or on Lamar or just trying to get around the city in general, we look at taillights quite a bit," said Zaykowski. "That's a lot of time that could be spent doing plenty of other things."
In addition to local city leaders, the summit will also include panelists representing AECOM, American Public Transportation Association, CAMPO, Capital Metro, Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida, CTRMA, Dell EMC, Downtown Austin Alliance, HDR Engineering, HNTB, KVUE, MARTA, Minneapolis Metropolitan Council, NXP, RideAustin and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
Members of the chamber said to expect special announcements from both Austin's airport and Capital Metro at Monday's summit.