Texas Transit Association

At San Marcos’ transit center, Greyhound runs two Austin-bound buses a day and 17 other intercity routes from the San Marcos Station. Amtrak has two passenger trains a day stopping en route between Austin, San Antonio and elsewhere. And Hays County Taxi, the city’s cab company, is setting up shop at a new counter inside the station. “It’s well ahead of its time,” said Michael Aulick, executive director of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, which decides how federal transportation money is spent in Central Texas. Aulick’s group is one of the leaders in the talk of having these transit mixes in Austin. “It’s the first commuter rail station to be built.”

Austin eyeing San Marcos transit center
April 28, 2003, Austin American-Statesman

The thing Austin transit leaders say they want — and say the city really needs if it’s ever to embrace a true alternative to commutes by car — already exists, handles passengers daily and is nearly 2 years old.

In San Marcos.

That city has a true transit center, where local buses, Amtrak trains, long-distance Greyhound buses, taxicabs and regular drivers all converge. There’s even room for commuter rail if a long-theorized San Antonio-Georgetown route ever materializes, with the station crossed by both railroad lines serving San Marcos.

The concept, called intermodalism or multimodalism in the lingo of transportation geeks, is a key element in creating a system that gives commuters the slightest chance to avoid traffic jams. If all the transportation methods are combined in a single transfer point, the theory goes, people are more inclined to use more methods than merely driving, thereby helping overburdened roads.

Though we cringe with its every use, there is a faster phrase to sum up the idea:

“This is a ‘Field of Dreams’ station,” said Dave Marsh, director of the Capital Area Rural Transportation System, which runs the station.

The station, a joint project involving CARTS, the state Transportation Department, Greyhound, Amtrak and the Federal Transit Administration, opened in May 2001. You can find it at 338 S. Guadalupe St., after navigating a slightly confusing array of two-way to one-way streets (gee, is this Austin or San Marcos?) and turning just across from the Cheatham Street bar.

There’s room on the 4.8-acre lot, once home to the Cottonseed Oil Mill, to expand if needed. Marsh waxes passionately about turning an original building left from the mill days into a coffeehouse for passengers waiting in the landscaped courtyard.

There’s already a bit of local lore about the station site: Some scenes of the 1972 film “The Getaway” were filmed there. “So Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw ran around here before,” Marsh said.

Now a typical Thursday finds schoolchildren scampering from one bus to another, a mother and son waiting on a Greyhound ride and a steady mix of train whistles, bus noises and voices.

CARTS runs bus routes around San Marcos that serve the station every 30 minutes. Southwest Texas State University’s campus shuttles have a stop out front (as a longstanding debate on who will control the campus shuttles in the future keeps going back and forth).

Greyhound runs two Austin-bound buses a day and 17 other intercity routes from the San Marcos Station. Amtrak has two passenger trains a day stopping en route between Austin, San Antonio and elsewhere. And Hays County Taxi, the city’s cab company, is setting up shop at a new counter inside the station.

“We’ve just got everything in one place,” Marsh said.

Well, not quite everything. Commuter rail doesn’t exist yet, of course. The station handles only passenger rail, so freight rail — whose 40-plus trains a day idle downtown San Marcos drivers to a degree Austin drivers don’t comprehend — is missing. (Increasing freight rail shipments can cut down on the number of long-haul trucks on the highways, leading to easier drives for local commuters.)

And the number of passengers using the station — a few hundred a day — isn’t going to wallop anyone.

But still, it’s a start that Austin only talks about.

“It’s well ahead of its time,” said Michael Aulick, executive director of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, which decides how federal transportation money is spent in Central Texas. Aulick’s group is one of the leaders in the talk of having these transit mixes in Austin. “It’s the first commuter rail station to be built.”

So how is it that a well-integrated transit station exists in a town that hasn’t even held a vote on a passenger rail system such as light rail, and not in a town that continually argues, plans and replans its transit systems, stations and ideas?

“Well,” Marsh said, “we just do it. It’s just always been part of our mission, the way we work.”

It also plays to the differences between rural-based transit, which depends on linking up with other transportation or social service agencies, and urban transit. (Rural transit services stem from social service needs: getting people to doctors, group outings for seniors and the like.)

CARTS, far less known than Capital Metro, covers Bastrop, Blanco, Burnet, Caldwell, Fayette, Hays, Lee, Travis and Williamson counties. Its services range from daily to monthly. CARTS operates city bus service similar to Capital Metro in Bastrop and San Marcos; the rest of its network uses smaller vehicles, call-ahead reservations for rides and other, more tailored options.

CARTS has other stations along its routes but none that compares with the range of transportation included in San Marcos. “Because San Marcos has an inordinately high level of bus service,” Marsh said. “There is more bus service here than you would normally have in a city of 39,000.”

Part of that comes from SWT and part from the nearby Gary Job Corps training center and its built-in pool of riders.

Why San Marcos is ahead on the mixed transit station is a matter of scale, too. The station cost only $1.8 million, using federal and state grants and money from the transportation companies. It is designed to be a single hub, not the focal point of a larger system, as Austin would seek.

In Austin, the most prominent “what-if” example is the decades-long debate over how to use the former Seaholm Power Plant. The various ideas usually include some talk of a transit hub that could link rail, bus, bicyclists and commuters. It’s all still a work in progress, however.

After all, it took 10 years even to get the San Marcos Station from idea to reality.

“It’s so simple,” Marsh said. “But it requires so many interim steps.”

So next time you’re nearby, swing by the San Marcos Station. It just might be a glimpse into Austin’s future.

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