Texas Transit Association

Commuter rail lines connecting Leander and Pflugerville to downtown Austin are among the highlights of an extensive transit plan that Capital Metro officials will unveil today.

The “All Systems Go!” project is Capital Metro’s first attempt to sell the public on a long-term transit plan since November 2000, when voters narrowly rejected its plan for a light-rail system. This proposal, while more expansive in its breadth, promises to be cheaper because it relies on a combination of existing freight rail lines and rapid bus routes, Capital Metro officials said. Because the plan is “closer to a blueprint than a plan” and its details could change, spokesman Rick L’Amie stopped short of assigning it a dollar figure. A referendum on portions of the plan is expected in November.

Capital Metro to unveil regional commuter plan today
An express bus service is part of new transportation plan
By Asher Price
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, May 11, 2004

As it now stands, All Systems Go! seeks to draw together disparate parts of the region to counter traffic and air quality problems by stringing together working and abandoned freight tracks and connecting them to nifty new buses in a sort of extensive park-and-ride plan.

Austin’s roads were the most congested in the nation in 2001 when compared with those of other medium-size cities, according to a 2003 Urban Mobility Study by the Texas Transportation Institute.

The plan proposes two types of rail service to alleviate some of that traffic. The first, called the Northwest Corridor and known as commuter rail urban service, would run from Leander down to Cedar Park, then head east and south, roughly following Airport Boulevard toward downtown Austin on existing freight tracks.

“Because Capital Metro already owns the tracks, this line could be up and running quickly,” notes a Capital Metro pamphlet.

The line is currently used to ship freight, but under the Capital Metro plan, passenger and freight trains would coexist on the line.

“If you’re dead with a can of cold beer in your hand we can carry you, but if you’ve a spark of life in you, we can’t,” said Lee Walker, chairman of the Capital Metro board. “We can carry recycled paper, heart transplant equipment, special chemicals; we can carry cadavers. We can carry everything, and we do, except for live human beings.”

Another rail line, known as commuter rail regional service, would use existing tracks along MoPac Boulevard and the unused MoKan railroad corridor east of Austin to provide express service between Georgetown and San Marcos and, possibly, San Antonio. Service might be less frequent than on the Northwest Corridor.

New and expanded bus service would augment the train system.

A rapid bus service would run east-west on Texas 71 from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to Oak Hill and north-south along Congress Avenue, Guadalupe Street and Lamar Boulevard. High-tech buses outfitted with technology that keeps traffic lights green as a bus approaches would run along those routes.

The plan also calls for expanded express and local bus service around Central Austin and along highways leading to the city’s outskirts.

Today’s news conference kicks off an outreach effort by Capital Metro that will also include seven open houses in late May and early June, then seven workshops in June to further shape the plan.

The Capital Metro board will probably decide in July how much of the plan will make it onto the November ballot.

Only the passenger rail service is subject by law to a public referendum. After the public hearings, the board will determine the precise language for the ballot, said L’Amie.

“It’s so sensible and cost-effective, unless you’re an extreme ideologue on the left or the right, it’s going to be difficult to vote no,” said Walker.

Still wounded by the narrow defeat of the light-rail plan in 2000 (the $1.9 billion, 52-mile plan lost by less than 1 percent of the votes), the Capital Metro board opted not to push another transportation referendum in 2002.