Texas Transit Association

Capital Metro in Austin may provide the jump start needed to making commuter rail from Georgetown (to the north of Austin) to San Antonio a reality. The Austin leg under discussion would begin in Georgetown and make its way into downtown Austin and on to the regional airport.

Austin-S.A. commuter rail link may get started up north
05/07/2003 San Antonio Express-News

As the Austin-San Antonio Commuter Rail District begins a study on how to best build passenger rail service between the two cities, the Austin area may begin a similar rail line that could be the first leg of the project.

Imagine passenger rail service from Georgetown to Austin, with one stop at Round Rock’s Dell Diamond, a minor-league ballpark, and an Austin extension to its airport at the former Bergstrom AFB.

Austin transit officials are talking about starting passenger service in as soon as 18 months using part of the 162 miles of freight rail tracks already under operation by Capital Metro Transportation Authority, which runs Austin’s public bus system.

“We’re right on the lip of making it happen,” Capital Metro Chairman Lee Walker said last week. He spoke at the Greater Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council’s regional conference in San Marcos.

Capital Metro’s freight railroad operations are short-line services for industries hauling everything from concrete and lumber to beer. It carries the equivalent of 50,000 trucks worth of freight a year and is growing fast.

“It carries everything but people,” Walker said.

People may be next as the idea is explored between Capital Metro and the new Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority. The authority for Travis and Williamson counties is the first such revenue-raising body in Texas for transportation purposes under a state constitutional amendment approved in 2001.

Such authorities want to create revenues locally for local transportation projects and break the cycle of sending money to Washington, only to get less back.

The implications of an Austin-Georgetown passenger rail for San Antonio are obvious.

“Wherever passenger rail is, people want it to go further,” Walker said. “If it ever gets started, the leadership to execute (the San Antonio-to-Austin service) will get going.”

The chairman of the Austin-San Antonio Commuter Rail District agrees.

“It gives people the chance to kick the tires and see the benefits,” said Tullos Wells, a San Antonio lawyer.

That’s the way the Washington Metro, the subway system for the nation’s capital, expanded.

Metro route maps were pasted all over the district and became implanted in the minds of people who could hardly wait for the expansion to occur, said Curt Johnson, the urban consultant and author who helped run the San Marcos conference.

“No politician would stand in the way of completion,” Johnson added. “Everyone knows the (San Antonio-Austin) corridor is clogged up. How do you connect the frustration with Interstate 35 with hard-to-explain solutions like commuter rail?”

Johnson proposed that the new commuter rail district, formed this year, also widely distribute and post its route options as a way of building public support for the costly project.

The public also has to be educated about how the commuter rail would be integrated into public bus systems in San Antonio and Austin once they travel to those cities.

“There’s clearly a need” for the commuter rail district, said Ross Milloy, president of the Greater Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council. “It is needed for economic development, public safety and air quality.”

“A map would help,” Milloy agreed. “A billion dollars would help more.”

Ah, yes, the money.

It’s clear that it’ll be harder to find funds for the 80-mile San Antonio-to-Austin rail service than it was for the $1.8 billion Texas 130 tollway project, which breaks ground in July.

No state or federal agency exists that can put much money into a commuter rail district like the federal and Texas transportation departments have for Texas 130, which will run between Georgetown and Seguin.

Nevertheless, the 14-member commuter rail district board met Friday in San Marcos after the conference to pull together language for bids on a $5.7 million engineering study.

The board also agreed to push talks with the Bexar County-San Antonio Metropolitan Planning Organization to act as the fiscal agent for the passenger rail district.

The passenger rail line will not solve the area’s transportation problems in the coming decades. Nor will Texas 130.

As Wells put it, though, the passenger rail service “will help make sure we don’t have strangulation with the system we have today.”