The Power of Coalitions? Reflections on the Surprising Success of a Progressive Transit Project in Austin,Texas

Project Connect is a remarkable example of the successful initiation of a new public transit line backed by a progressive coalition in Austin. In “All aboard: Light rail, mobility justice, and the future of public transit in Austin, TX,” Alex Karner and Jonathan Shuster (2025) trace how the emergence of a progressive coalition focused on mobility justice managed to shape and ultimately get a transit plan approved in Austin, Texas after the notable failure of several previous attempts.

Studying the project's evolution and contrasting it with previous failed attempts offers a playbook of sorts to navigate the tensions between delivering transit to underserved communities and causing displacement and gentrification. Where public transportation projects must be approved by public vote, the degree to which the proposed alignment, governance, costs, and so on serve the aims of transit justice can coalesce or divide progressive voters – particularly in urban areas that are rapidly gentrifying and where housing prices are under pressure. Consequently, this research is a valuable resource to transit planners, advocates, and activists as a demonstration of what is possible when broad-based coalitions are cultivated and activated. This piece reflects on Karner and Shuster's (2025) article, highlighting what this example can teach us about the potential of progressive collective action in unlikely places, the challenges of getting infrastructure projects approved in complex political environments, and the utility of concepts like coalition and regime to explain outcomes.

Drawing on the literature on urban regimes, Karner and Shuster (2025) argue that Project Connect was successfully approved whereas other projects failed due in part to the emergence of a new regime that crossed political boundaries. This was possible because of “early and meaningful” engagement of justice-oriented activists and the construction of a pro-transit coalition. History demonstrates that in infrastructure development, the existence, breadth, and power of coalitions can be decisive in getting projects off the ground, even when public votes are not required (Knudson 2009; Legacy and Stone 2019; Legacy 2022). There is always a range of actors that need to be convinced to devote resources, take risks, or make sacrifices to make big things happen (Plotch and Nelles 2023). Infrastructure development in the United States is particularly complicated because there are so many points at which a project can be derailed, even in early planning phases. Projects that cross boundaries in metropolitan areas offer even more complexity as they multiply the number of councils, communities, and politicians with interests that are likely to be affected, either directly or indirectly. As a result, building a broad base of support – across geographies, political scales, interest groups, stewards, advocates, and financial stakeholders – is absolutely essential to launching projects and maintaining momentum to maximize chances of completion in the face of cost overruns, recessions, changing political administrations, and more.

The lens of urban regimes is often used for explaining development decisions (or indecisions) in urban areas. The degree to which this perspective is appropriate to understand the emergence of individual projects, like Project Connect, is unclear. Stone (2001) acknowledges that the coalitions underpinning urban regimes are more changeable and less stable than when he first observed them. Even so, the power of regimes is in their ability to exert observable and consistent influence on urban development decisions to generate value (defined more broadly than rents these days) for stakeholder groups across a variety of policies and over time. They are born of durable and longstanding cooperation and are not usually temporary coalitions, although there is little consensus around the question of how long a regime must be active. Some scholars suggest that it takes decades to develop and consolidate a regime (John and Cole 1998) and others caution against interpreting temporary strategic policy shifts as regime change (Mossberger and Stoker 2001). The open interpretation in Stone's later work suggests that the time frame is less relevant than the capacity of a coalition to shape policy environments and set and support policy directions (Stone 2005) – that the foundation of an urban regime “lies in its competence to implement an agenda, not in its duration” (van Ostaaijen 2024, 442).

This paper presents some enticing evidence of the development of a potential progressive regime in Austin through the gradual emergence of environmentally and justice-oriented groups. The examples that authors provide show that these groups have individually had some successes in advancing a progressive agenda. They also demonstrate that pro-development and environmental groups have found common cause in calling for denser housing and transit adjacent development (although they do note that there are cynical interpretations for these alliances). That a broader group of (often opposing) interests coalesced in support of Project Connect suggests that regime alignments may be shifting, even if that evidence is not yet decisive. There is potentially more work to be done that builds on this research to more clearly define and evidence this regime and better understand the origins and implications of its ascendence for economic development in Austin.

This work could be particularly insightful to understand the power of a regime (again, if we are convinced that one exists) in enacting its agenda and resisting the intrusion of a state government that is actively working to dismantle progressive gains. There is also the potential to engage with different literatures – for instance, on planning coalitions and social movements – to understand the conditions under which progressive coalitions can emerge (or tend to fragment, as in previous attempts to propose transit projects in Austin). Trapenberg Frick's (2021) work, for example, explores tactical coalitions and agonistic motivations in planning interest groups noting that there are “no permanent friends, no permanent enemies,” and may be a potentially more useful tool for understanding the “why now” question inherent in the Project Connect story than the regime lens.

Aside from the question of whether what occurred in Austin amounts to an established regime, regime in the making, or merely a tentative coalition, Karner and Shuster (2025) open questions about how much of Project Connect's success can be attributed to the composition of the coalition – e.g., it's not clear that meaningful and early engagement of justice-oriented advocates would have made a difference in earlier projects. Costs, late addition to ballots, controversies, and more were all influential in tanking previous attempts and it is likely that if progressive coalitions had formed around those plans, they may not have been enough to overcome those flaws.

Similarly, how influential the coalition was in shaping voter opinion is difficult to gauge. While factors like stronger worker protections or anti-displacement measures were undoubtedly important in strengthening a broad coalition than previous attempts, and that mitigated the fragmentation of progressive group support, it is not clear that these were the most important factors in swaying voters. It is likely that more conventional things like a sensible alignment, better economics, a slick marketing campaign, or greater overall tolerance of public transit in the face of increasing congestion may have ultimately tipped the balance towards voter approval. It is not difficult to believe that a version of the project that did not include deeply progressive goals would have been “a non-starter for activists” but that doesn’t mean that they were necessarily essential for winning the day without understanding more about voter motivations. Absent polls or surveys of voters themselves, or evidence of interest group influence, it's quite hard to say what ultimately persuaded supporters. It is also worth noting that 42 percent of voters still opposed the project, so it wasn’t a slam dunk.

Coalitions don’t build themselves (although regimes are more often characterized as emergent). The questions of leadership, or how partners were courted, incentivized, and convinced to come together are not covered in detail in this account of the project's evolution. This may be because of the paper's stated objective to focus attention on the power of groups rather than elites and leaders. Just as well, as too often infrastructure success stories are explained by effective leadership. In reality, coalition building benefits from a confluence of factors – resources, reputation, autonomy, culture, and entrepreneurial leadership (Plotch and Nelles 2023). But unless an argument is being made that the coalition was emergent – that is, leaderless and resulting from uncoordinated individual actions, these factors still need to be mobilized by a central actor. It would be interesting to know more about the origin of the vision and strategy around which this politically diverse set of interests coalesced.

Remarkably, Karner and Shuster (2025) argue that there was little opposition to Project Connect or to the coalition's efforts to get the project approved. This is attributed to the composition of the coalition and its different and inclusive approach and ways of working. However, even if the progressive coalition ultimately prevailed in getting the transit plans adopted it was not broad enough to prevent the emergence of legal and legislative challenges. In 2020, Our Mobility Our Future (OMOF), a coalition of “Austinites, taxpayers, business owners and transportation nerds”, organized to “disconnect” Project Connect arguing that it is expensive, inefficient, and will cause displacement (Small 2020). A group of private citizens recently filed a lawsuit that was dismissed in 2024 (they plan to appeal) in opposition to the partnership's bond issuance (publiclawlibrary.org, 2024). These efforts were supported by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in opinions challenging the legality of the proposed property tax increase and the project's authority to spend it on debt services (Paxton 2023). While this opposition has thus far been unsuccessful, it is notable that since the plan's adoption in 2020, Project Connect has been scaled back by nearly half, including the elimination of the second line and several downtown stops. It is unclear whether or how these changes (or others not reported in local news sources) have affected the strength of the coalition or emergent regime, and with what effect. There is an opportunity for future research to delve into how supporters collectively and individually navigate the many tradeoffs associated with implementing infrastructure projects and the degree to which the coalition has been able to continue to influence public narratives in the face of this array of legal challenges.

Overall, this is an interesting piece of work that achieves its objective of demonstrating the power that mobility justice framing had in this particular case. It is an important contribution to an evolving literature of case studies that delve into the conditions for success in infrastructure planning and containing lessons for ongoing and future attempts at urban transit development.