Parker Welch

@parkerwelch

Transportation engineer, urbanist, Austinite, liberal patriot Board Secretary @aura-atx.org Poems & Essays:

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Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 3d

If you’ve never seen Henry Ossawa Tanner’s paintings before, you should absolutely check them out

“The Annunciation” by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898

A young Mary, the mother of Jesus, sits on an unmade bed with her hands clasped in her lap. She faces the angel Gabriel, who appears as a shimmering arc of light which seems to be projected on the wall and hovering in front of it at the same time. We see a portrait of a young, unreputed peasant girl receiving the news that she will do the impossible.

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 6d

UT’s building a dorm for their law school right now that could be pretty nice, really gonna depend on the final materials though www.la-n-d.com/utlawresidence

Render of the under-construction UT law residence at the corner of Dean Keaton & Medical Arts

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 6d

Wanted to share one of my recent projects, turning a crosswalk into a raised crossing at this middle school! Cars will go slower and kids will be more visible, but the real impetus was actually flooding. Something like a hundred kids a day cross here, but it used to be nearly unusable after storms

Before photo looking east across the crosswalk

After photo looking east across the crosswalk

Before photo looking south over the crosswalk

After photo looking south over the crossing

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 7d

The power of drawing straight-ish lines through the urban core

Map of the original KC streetcar in blue, with Main Street extension in red and the riverfront extension in teal

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 7d

The audio of the entire movie is available on Apple Music btw, in case you want to listen to it as a radio play for some reason

Screenshot of Apple Music showing the album “A Man For All Seasons”, artist Georges Delerue, with four tracks labeled A Man For All Seasons (A), (B), (C), and (D)

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 7d

Pen drawing of an owl I made, with serif lettering wrapped above and below it that reads:
HE MADE ANIMALS FOR INNOCENCE
BUT MAN HE MADE TO SERVE HIM
WITTILY

IN THE TANGLE OF HIS MIND

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 8d

Something like:

Drawing of two bus routes with two stops each and the path from a house to their nearest stop, traveling orthogonally along an imagined street grid

Drawing of the same house with one route eliminated but an additional intermediate stop added. The route from the house to the closest stop is now straight, but longer than before.

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 9d

avmajournals.avma.org/view/journal... I can’t find this exact stat (apparently population average pet lifespans are tricky to calculate), but I did find a paper in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association that agrees dog lifespans have been increasing in large cohort studies!

Supplementary Table S1—Several examples of large-cohort studies that employ various methodologies to estimate dog lifespan via records collected from
multiple sources between 1981 and the present, and the median lifespan values they report.

Table continues past screenshot cutoff. Text within table runs over the alt text character limit. Table pdf is available at https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/262/9/javma.24.01.0068.xml?tab_body=supplementary-materials#:~:text=Supplementary%20Table%20S1%20(PDF%20119%20KB)

Second screenshot of remaining rows in the previous table (as before, there are more columns not shown in this screenshot)

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 9d

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 13d

(I am not a lawyer, just nosy) After requesting a partial judgment, it appears the people suing to kill the light rail filed a motion to re-open discovery, & then it was ATP’s turn to plead the jurisdiction. Hearings scheduled for both. We may learn more soon because the latest action was this:

07/29/2026
OTHER/NOTICE
REQUEST FOR ORDER TO ALLOW MEDIA COVERAGE WITHOUT CONSENT OF PARTIES

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 15d

Really, you don’t think it fits? I could see it

EP Cover for “No Drum and Bass in the Jazz Room” by the band Clever Girl

Album cover for “Anthology” by the band Colour

Album cover for “Juice B Crypts” by the band Battles

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· 20d

TIL someone made an Oregon Trail for the Texas Legislature txlege.netlify.app

DAY 19/140 CAPITAL 43 SUPPORT 60% BILL HB 1957

REPORTED FAVORABLY

The chair calls the roll, the ayes have it, and your bill is voted out of committee. Intact, no less.

You allow yourself one (1) celebratory kolache. The next obstacle is already visible from here.

1. Press on.

> TRAIL LOG (6)

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jul 9

Map of OECD member states for those like me who were curious TIL Costs Rica joined in 2021

Map of the 38 OECD member states

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands (including the Dutch Caribbean), New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom (including the British Caribbean), and the United States

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jul 4

Now why does this remind me of someone

“But everybody's favorite was the plaster tabletop mock-up Speer had made of the plans for Berlin. White marble ministry buildings were massed along new radiating boulevards -- the whole lunatic tangle of Nazi bureaucracy securely enshrined at the heart of the Greater Reich. Every thug and flunky in the party lingered over the display, fondly wondering where his office would be. Hitler himself loved to fuss with it. He could spend hours checking out this or that detail -- calculating the line of sight from the ministry of housing to the triumphal arch, or idly musing on whether the expanses of governmental marble around the ministry of security would need to be broken by some decorative trees. It was profoundly satisfying to him to see how his vision of the future was at last sprouting into such tangible and intricate life.”

From Lee Sandlin’s 1997 essay, Losing The War

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jul 2

Frustratingly difficult to say for sure USDOT releases sampled carload waybill data in a big giant database file that needs a lot of pre-processing I don’t know how to do, but they mapped it for us w/ 2018 data, & on here it looks pretty skimpy Tonnage doesn’t always vary linearly w/ trains tho

Map of US freight rail flows based on the 2018 Surface Transportation Board’s carload waybill sample

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jul 1

That cost includes improvements to the existing Austin and San Antonio Amtrak stations, new sidings & switches, and a new passenger rail station in New Braunfels Service would connect San Antonio -> New Braunfels -> San Marcos -> Austin -> Taylor Build it yesterday!

Track chart showing improvements needed for one of the two selected Union-Pacific line alignments

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jul 1

As best as I can tell, to comply with the supreme court’s order, the district court will schedule a date to hear the plea, probably pretty soon, and then deny the AG’s plea to jurisdiction The AG’s plea argues that the City & ATP do not qualify as EDJA issuers (which is ludicrous, see EDJA text)

“Issuer” means an agency, authority, board, body politic, commission, department, district, instrumentality, municipality or other political subdivision, or public corporation of this state. The term includes a state-supported institution of higher education and any other type of political or governmental entity of this state.

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 26

The wise old parking cat says hi btw

Photo of a brick gas station exterior at night with a large sign depicting a cartoon winking cowboy, beneath it a sign reads “CHOKE CANYON”. At right, a cat with long, pointed ears and light, sand-colored fur perches on one of the concrete parking stop blocks.

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 25

I couldn't find a map of the counties within the (newly-rebuilt) Austin State Hospital service area, so I made a quick one just so it's out there Until 2022, the hospital also served much of the Houston metro area, including Fort Bend, because there was no state hospital in Houston

Map of the 26-county Austin State Hospital service area in red, not including additional counties where the hospital serves only adolescent patients. The location of the hospital is marked in purple.

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 20

If you’ve ever wondered why water quality controls can be so much smaller than water quantity controls (and honestly, who hasn’t), when that means only a small fraction of the rainwater is getting treated—this is why!

Photo taken from Apple Maps of adjacent water quality (outlined in green) pond and a much larger water quantity, or detention, pond (outlined in orange) designed to control runoff from a surface parking lot in Austin

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 19

The Dog’s Head “advanced manufacturing” tenant is supposed to be a Fortune 100 company, not an arms supplier, & not a data center Here’s my list of tenants who could meet that criteria that have an Austin presence: Amazon Apple General Motors NVIDIA Tesla Dell IBM AbbVie HP Intel Broadcom Deere

Map of the annexed Dog’s Head site, with a hatched area on the eastern end reserved for hunting

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 16

Not all at once maybe, but some of us are working on it 😤

Raised terra cotta bike lanes at the Dutch-style roundabout intersection of Teri Rd and South Pleasant Valley Rd in Austin, Texas, completed in 2025. Aerial photo taken from Apple Maps

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 14

Hath not the potter power over the clay to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?

Photo of a mostly empty bread aisle at the Lakeway HEB taken by a redditor during the freeze in early 2026

Photo of the shelves stocked with full, fresh-baked loaves in front of a newly opened HEB bakery in 2016, credit The Seguin Gazette

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 12

Bucking the national trend, Austin continues to make sustained progress on traffic safety (data through May 29th of this year) visionzero.austin.gov/viewer/

32
Fatalities in 2026
Down from 42 this time last year

1,184
Years of Life Lost in 2026
Down from 1,530 this time last year

97
Serious Injuries in 2026
Down from 124 this time last year

4,014
Total crashes in 2026
Down from 4,968 this time last year

A line chart of cumulative fatalities + serious injury crashes for each month this year plotted against the five year average, showing a much slower pace of traffic violence in 2026 compared to the historical average

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 11

Bluesky, the official app of sports

Several different accounts on Bluesky tweeting “wow” “do you believe in miracles” “wow” “omg” “OH MY GOD” “WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL” and “OH MY GOD”

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 8

Today is the first weekday with 10-minute service on the 800 & 837! Other local routes have now also been reconfigured to make transfers with the 800 & 837 at their newly opened transit centers. Hopefully we see a big uptick in ridership for these routes through the rest of the year.

Map of the two project connect BRT-lite lines

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 7

Six units to a floor in each of these, so even one extra story would have allowed 24 more families to live on this block Walking distance from Shoal Creek Trail, fishing pond, dog park, playground, 5 restaurants, convenience store, dentist, hair salon, bus stop, a 5-minute commute to the hospital

In-set from the leasing website showing the floor plan of the multi-family buildings above

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 7

Compare these multi-family units nearby, which could only be three stories (these are built into a hill, so they technically have a fourth story below the grade plane for a garage in the back)

Photo of multi-family buildings in Austin’s Grove development near 45th & MoPac. Each building forms a U-shape around a small courtyard with a stepped entrance to the street

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 7

Some examples of four-story townhomes in Austin; you can see more under construction in the foreground Remains crazy to me that, until last year, it was only legal to build these as 1 & 2-unit buildings

Photograph of a row of townhomes in Austin’s Grove development near 45th & MoPac. Each building stitches two units together, with about ten feet of separation to the next building

Parker Welch@parkerwelch· Jun 6

On that note, construction is about to start on the last of 5 projects needed to “complete the core” of Austin’s reclaimed water network, linking our two existing networks Looping the networks improves reliability & reduces pipe damage from hydraulic shocks caused by sudden shut-offs or outages