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May 15, 2009
Feds say $17.4 million possible for Cap Metro rapid bus routes
Capital Metro would get $17.4 million for two “rapid bus” lines under the Obama administration’s recommended budget for the fiscal year beginning in October, the agency said Thursday.
The Federal Transit Administration, which reviews and decides on grant applications for mass transit projects, made the determination that the rapid bus project meets the standards under the federal agency’s “very small starts” program. Capital Metro officials, who several years ago dropped an effort to get federal funding for the commuter rail line opening soon because of fears it would delay the project, are delighted as what they see as an early go-ahead from the transit administration.
Of course, getting $17.4 million in federal funding (if it comes to fruition) would still leave the agency about $30 million short of the $47 million estimated cost to buy the special buses and build about 35 “stations” for the 37.5 miles in the two bus routes. But the agency expects that this federal grant would be just a start.
The agency will pursue another $20 million in the 2010-11 federal budget and if it gets that as well, in the end would spend about $10 million of its own money. Given falling sales taxes and the agency’s depleted reserves, could Capital Metro afford even that $10 million?
“We’re cautiously optimistic at this point,” said Todd Hemingson, the agency’s vice president for strategic planning and development.
The two routes would run from far North Austin to South Austin, primarily on Lamar Boulevard, Burnet Road and South Congress Avenue. The routes would have fewer stops than typical bus routes (about one per mile), digital signs at stops telling riders when the next bus will arrive and signal preemption technology that allow drivers to shorten red lights or extend green lights. The agency hopes to initiate service by sometime in 2011.
Capital Metro already has two bus routes that follow the approximate path of the Lamar/S. Congress rapid bus route, the 1L/1M (which has stops every two or three blocks) and the 101 (which has about twice as many stops as the rapid route would have). Capital Metro says the rapid bus line would cut travel time on the 1L/1M by up to 20 percent. It has not estimated the time savings versus the 101.
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November 4, 2008
Cap Metro: Kealing students will ride yellow buses in afternoons during strike
Capital Metro officials have been saying in recent days that its buses to and from AISD magnet schools would run as scheduled in the event of a strike.
Turns out that’s not the case. At least in one case.
Kealing Middle School officials today sent out a notice to parents informing them that, if a bus strike starts Wednesday, magnet students who normally ride Capital Metro buses would still ride their regular buses in the morning at the regular time but would be put on yellow school buses (which, unlike the Capital Metro buses, are not air conditioned) to go home in the afternoon. And, most importantly, classes will let out in the afternoon 32 minutes early, at 2:15 p.m.
Capital Metro was unclear on this until this morning. The agency is now changing its Web site to indicate that the Kealing service from Capital Metro would cease during a strike.
Capital Metro spokesman Adam Shaivitz said today that the LBJ High School magnet bus runs will be unchanged. The distinction is that normally drivers from Capital Metro do the Kealing afternoon routes and drivers from an outside contractor, First Transit, do the morning Kealing runs and all of the LBJ runs.
Only Capital Metro drivers, technically a part of a Capital Metro unit called StarTran, would be going on strike. The First Transit drivers, who run University of Texas shuttles and the LBJ buses, are covered by another contract and not a part of the dispute that may lead to a strike.
So, add Kealing Middle School students and parents to the list of those directly affected by a possible strike.
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July 24, 2008
Tell us your bus story
With gas prices having nudged towards $4 a gallons this spring, Capital Metro has seen ridership shoot up. The increase has been highest on express routes from the suburbs, offering relatively quick rides with few stops to people getting hit the hardest with gas prices. The average price for regular in Texas rose from about $3.05 a gallon in late May 2007 to $3.82 a gallon in late May this year. Then, on June 21, the average price reached $3.94 a gallon.
That continued escalation showed up in Capital Metro’s boardings. The system’s eight express routes had 72,232 boardings in June (about 3,400 a day), up 55.4 percent from one year before. The agency’s fixed-route buses overall (which includes the express buses) had about 93,000 boardings each weekday in June, up 11.1 percent from the 83,761 average weekday rides in June 2007.
Have high gas prices led you to take the transit option? Click on comments below to tell why you’ve switched. Or why you haven’t.
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March 19, 2008
Ferrell leaving Cap Metro
Dwight Ferrell, Capital Metro’s second in command as executive vice president and chief operating officer, is leaving the agency for a similar position in Atlanta.
Ferrell, who has been with Capital Metro since 2004, will become deputy general manager and chief operating officer with the much larger Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. That agency has four passenger rail lines and, including bus and rail, has more than three times the daily ridership of Capital Metro.
His last day with Capital Metro will be March 31.
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March 17, 2008
Pro bono? You got me, babe.
Capital Metro e-mailed today and asked us to run a clarification on a story that ran in the print edition of the Statesman Saturday. We’re not going to run one because, frankly, there’s not enough clarity in this situation for a clarification.
Here’s the deal. In the Saturday story about Capital Metro’s paratransit services, I wrote that “(c)onsultants hired by the transit agency this week, at a cost of up to $27,000, are orchestrating and hosting the ‘community dialogue’ and will prepare a report on the findings for the Capital Metro board.”
I later said that “the agency hired Fred Butler and the Texas Citizen Fund this week.”
The problem is that Butler had told disability advocates at a meeting last week that he was working pro bono. For free, in other words. His position is that he is being paid only for travel expenses from his home near Marble Falls.
The other problem is that the only document I had last week when I wrote the story was a contract between the agency and Butler that says he will be paid $2,000 for “providing lead consultant services on the community outreach activities related to the proposed changes in paratransit services.” There is no mention of travel expenses or, for that matter, the contract being for “up to $2,000,” as Capital Metro says it is. You read that document and it says Butler will get $2,000, period.
Today, the agency sent me an “emergency purchase justification” dated March 4 in which the staff was asking senior managers for permission to hire Butler and the Texas Citizen Fund quickly, without going through the normal procurement process. Here’s the relevant paragraph:
“Former CAN (Community Action Network) Executive Director Fred Butler has agreed to provide a portion of his time pro-bono, and he will only be reimbursed for travel related expenses because he must come in from Marble Falls, TX to the Austin area. We are requesting 10 hours (est. $100.00 per/hr, standard consulting rate) of his personal time for meetings, community feedback information, evaluation, and reporting back to Capital Metro management and Board of Directors. The estimated costs for Mr. Butler may not exceed $2,000.”
Now the Internal Revenue Service’s 2007 mileage rate is 48.5 cents a mile. Marble Falls is about 50 miles away. So, that’s about $50 for a round trip, right?
Butler emceed a meeting last week on the subject, and will run five others on Tuesday, Wednesday (two that day), Thursday and Saturday. So, that’s five round trips, which would be about $250 for mileage. But, maybe he’s going to have to come here another five times to work on the report and meet with the Capital Metro board. Another $250, or about $500 total.
But, as the Capital Metro document says, he’s being paid for his time (at $100 an hour), not his expenses, which seems like a contradiction. But, hey, time is money, so that’s an expense, right? Well, when I file an expense report around here, they only pay me for mileage and actual money spent on things like hotels and meals and such. Of course, they pay me a salary as well, which might or might not include time spent driving to Dallas for a meeting. It’s complicated.
So is this thing with Butler. Is he being paid for time, or expenses? Is it $1,000 or $2,000? Or “not to exceed $2,000?”
Look, he will no doubt provide a valuable service, presiding over meetings where there are likely to be some emotional people. He’ll be putting in at least 10 hours of driving back and forth from Marble Falls. And Butler, along with the other consultant, will be preparing a report. Given that, $2,000 doesn’t sound like over-payment.
But it doesn’t sound exactly pro bono, either. Hope this clarifies the situation.
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March 6, 2008
Capital Metro endorses Daugherty! Well, not really
Actually, the endorser was the Capital Metro union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1091. You can find the endorsement, albeit misspelled, in the local’s February newsletter.
Daugherty is running for a third four-year term on the commissioners court, representing southwestern Travis County, and will face Democrat Karen Huber in November.
The union commends “Gerald Doherty” for Travis County Commission Precinct 3, right alongside recommendations to vote for Willie Madison in Travis County Constable Place 1 and Larry Joe Doherty in the District 10 congressional race. No doubt the presence of a Doherty in another race (spelled correctly in that case) muddied the waters.
(Oddly, on that same page of the newsletter, under a “get well soon” list for ill union workers, there is a “Sandra Daugherty.” We were able to confirm with the commissioner’s office that she is no relation to him.)
Actually, the union endorsement makes sense in the overall context of Capital Metro politics. Daugherty over the years has opposed Capital Metro’s rail plans, not its work hauling people around on buses. And the union likewise has opposed rail plans over the past couple of years, arguing that the money spent on rail will be money unavailable for bus operations (and thus better pay for union workers).
But Daugherty, you should remember, came to prominence locally (before running for the commissioner’s court) by calling for the Capital Metro sales tax to be lowered from 1 percent to 0.75 percent, or even to 0.5 percent. He wanted to spend that incremental sales tax money instead on roads.
So, if Daugherty ruled the world and could get his way on that sales tax and on passenger rail, it’s by no means a sure thing that Local 1091 members would see a windfall.
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March 5, 2008
New face in Cap Metro hierarchy
Capital Metro is adding a new executive vice president — Doug Allen, currently in a similar position at Dallas Area Rapid Transit —. Allen’s presence would the number of executives at that second-to-the-top tier at the transit agency from three to four.
Allen, who currently oversees program development at DART, will carry the title of executive vice president and chief development officer. According to Capital Metro, he’ll be in charge of planning, marketing, communications, business and community development and transit-oriented development.
Capital Metro will still have executive vice presidents Dwight Ferrell, who oversees operations, Randy Hume, the agency’s chief financial officer and Elaine Timbes, who is listed as in charge of “performance and quality” on the agency’s organization chart.
Allen’s salary-to-be when he gets here in April will be $188,475 a year.
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February 26, 2008
Student gets free bus rides for voters
One more sign that this presidential election is reaching young voters: A St. Edwards University student, concerned that low-income people might not be able to make it to the polls next week, persuaded Capital Metro to offer free rides to voters March 4.
“If you can’t get to the polls, you can’t be heard,” Elise Flick, 22, a communications major, told the Capital Metro board Monday. Yes, she had heard of Tracy Flick, the famously and furiously civic-minded high school politico in the movie “Election.” It must be said that Elise Flick comes off as having much more perspective on things than her fictional namesake.
But Flick is clearly serious about Tuesday’s election. She’ll be an election judge at the Casis Elementary School polling place. And she approached the office of Austin City Council Member Brewster McCracken, who also serves on the Capital Metro board, to suggest that voters get free rides to the primary’s polling places. McCracken ran the traps and, soon enough, Capital Metro management decided to go with it.
The agency already offers free voter rides for November elections, but had not previously done so for primaries.
This will not be like an Ozone Action Day, however, on which Capital Metro (until about a year ago) made rides free on the whole system all day. In this case, the only free rides will go to people who flash their voter registration card at the bus driver. Since there won’t be any sort of system to check, in theory a rider could ride to destinations other than a polling place without paying. But that would be wrong …
For now, Capital Metro has no plans to make voter rides free for the April runoff election or the municipal election to follow in May.
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Catching up with Capital Metro
For those of you who weren’t at Capital Metro’s monthly board meeting Monday (that would be about 1.5 million of you in the Austin metro area), here’s a quick rundown of what the board and its staff did:
** Capital Metro planning director Todd Hemingson unveiled preliminary plans for “connector” buses that would shuttle deboarding rail passengers to the University of Texas, the Capitol and the Travis Heights area once the Leander-to-downtown line opens late this year.
Under the plan, subject to change before Capital Metro board approval in May, two connector routes would run from the MLK Boulevard station (near Airport Boulevard) to UT and the Capitol complex. Three routes would run from the downtown stop near Fourth and Trinity streets to elsewhere in downtown and along East Riverside Drive west of Interstate 35.
The routes, which would be essentially short express buses with only two or three stops, would use specially marked 35-foot buses and get passengers to stops within 10 minutes, Capital Metro said.
As for the other seven train stations, Capital Metro for now doesn’t have in mind any special circulator routes for them. Instead, Hemingson pointed out the various existing bus routes that connect to the stations. And in three cases — the Leander, Lakeline and MoPac stations — there will be park-and-ride lots, so most train riders would probably drive to get to those stations.
Then take a train ride — 56 minutes from Leander to dowtown, 32 minutes from the MoPac station at Howard Lane — then take a bus ride at the end in many cases to reach their final destination. Three legs, in other words.
** The board approved a $1.6 million contract with Muniz Concrete & Contracting, Inc. to do the flooring work and electrical installation at seven of the nine train stations. Munoz, which beat out one other bidder in this case (Austin Bridge & Road), has gotten several of the contracts on the commuter rail project.
** The board also approved a three-year $880,000 contract, with the option to extend it three more years for another $1.05 million, with SP3 Group, Inc., for “recruiting services.” The board had originally hired SP3 in January 2007 on an emergency basis after the two Capital Metro employees responsible for bringing in employees (both blue- and white-collar) had quit the agency unexpectedly in a short period of time.
Donna Simmons, the agency’s human resources director, told the board that using the outside service (for almost $300,000 a year) had decreased the turnaround time for hiring. So, one board member asked, are other transit agencies outsourcing recruiting for basically all jobs?
“I don’t know that any others that are doing it to the extent that we are,” Simmons said.
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February 15, 2008
Cap Metro schedule books at H-E-B now
Capital Metro, which began charging for its schedule books Jan. 1, wants you to know they’re available for purchase at H-E-B grocery stores. The charge is $1 for the books, which contain maps and exact departure/pickup times throughout the day.
Don’t want to pay? The system map is still free, as are pocket schedules for individual routes. And you can download a pdf of the entire schedule book for free on www.capmetro.org.
The transit agency decided to start charging for the books, which it has to revise a couple of times a year, to save about $114,000 a year.
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January 18, 2008
A little bit of ado about a bus stop
Governor, leave our bus stop alone, the eight legislators who represent Travis County said in a letter this week.
The two-page letter urges Gov. Rick Perry and the State Preservation Board to reconsider forcing Capital Metro to abandon a much-used stop in front of the Capitol on 11th Street. The board, which is rejiggering traffic on the Capital grounds, notified the transit agency in November that the stop presents a security problem and must go by Nov. 6 this year.
A Perry spokeswoman said last month that waiting buses — the stop serves 22 routes and about 2,900 passengers a day — might stack up in those westbound lanes and block the Capital exit at Congress Avenue. Not likely, not likely at all, the lawmakers said in their letter.
All of the Travis County legislators use that 11th Street exit from time to time, the letter said, and “never once to our knowledge has the exit been blocked by bus traffic …” The Jan. 14 letter was signed by state Reps. Elliott Naishtat, Dawnna Dukes, Eddie Rodriguez, Valinda Bolton, Donna Howard and Mark Strama, as well as state Sens. Kirk Watson and Jeff Wentworth. All are Democrats but Wentworth, who lives in San Antonio but whose districts includes a piece of Travis County.
“Many state employees use this bus stop to get to and from work on a daily basis,” the legislators went on to say in the letter. “With the advent of commuter rail to downtown by the end of this year, it is likely that additional employees and individuals who have business with the state will be impacted.”
The state can order the stop gone because its land extends to the middle of 11th Street. The stop in question is on the north side of 11th, abutting the Capitol grounds.
It is also just a couple hundred feet from the Governor’s Mansion. Past governors have complained about the sounds of braking bus and truck traffic disrupting their rest. Perry, at least for now, does not have that problem because the mansion is under renovation and he is living 11 miles away in a rented Barton Creek Estates home.
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January 14, 2008
BAT buses would actually go to and from parking garages
My apologies to the Real Estate Council of Austin.
Last week I wrote a blog item about that group’s proposal for five downtown parking garages and a system of circulator buses called BATs (for “Boogie Around Town,” or “Breeze Around Town” the council suggests both without expressing a preference). I had been given only an executive summary and the language in the summary was vague enough that I thought the buses would make only an endless rectangular loop around town. The loop, I wrote, would be six to eight blocks from the proposed garages (which would be located on the fringes of downtown), a hike that most commuters likely would eschew.
Wrong. The executive summary did include a full map, which I overlooked. It shows that the garages would in fact have direct service from the buses.
What the group has in mind is essentially five separate BAT routes. Each one would start at a particular garage, make its way to the loop (11th Street, San Jacinto Boulevard and Fourth and Lavaca streets) and then return to that garage after making the loop. The real estate group envisions having 16 BAT buses going at once. You could expect one BAT route or another passing by about once every two minutes. It’s essentially the Dillo system, only simplified into one basic route (with five different entry and exit points) and with updated buses.
Tom Terkel, the group’s president, and transportation consultant Mike Weaver laid out the plan today for Austin Mayor Will Wynn’s passenger rail working group. Although Wynn and his vice-chair, Austin City Council Member Brewster McCracken, favor building some sort of streetcar or light rail system downtown, they greeted the proposal politely. McCracken has been pushing for the city to create a “parking enterprise” that would operate all city-owned garages and surface lots, perhaps using excess revenue for rail costs.
“We kind of came at it from opposite directions and reached the same conclusion,” McCracken said.
For now, however, the group’s $101 million proposal for the circulator buses and garages (5,000 spaces total) will remain just one among a blizzard of ideas about what to do about downtown Austin’s worsening traffic congestion and parking crunch.
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December 27, 2007
Cap Metro to charge for schedule books
Starting with the New Year, Capital Metro will be charging a dollar for its schedule booklets. The softcover books, which the agency has been printing and then distributing free of charge for the past decade or so, are generally about 160 pages long.
Capital Metro says doing this will save the agency about $114,000 a year. The agency’s operating budget this year is $171.8 million.
The agency has actually put out two versions of the book each year to keep it accurate after schedule changes. The printing cost for the 110,000 to 135,000 copies, twice a year, is about $190,000.
The problem, according to an ad in the current version of the book, is that most customers really only want to know about the handful of routes they use on a regular basis.
“Often, we see passengers rip out 3 or 4 pages of a schedule book and discard it. That’s your money going into the trash,” says the ad, which carries the headline “Growing Pains.”
By charging the buck, Capital Metro figures it will only have to print about 30,000 of the schedules each time, saving not only on the printing but also on warehouse costs. And the agency, in a Nov. 9 internal memo on the subject, anticipated the cost rising as the agency adds bus and rail routes.
There will be alternatives, however. The entire book will be available on the agency’s Web site. And the agency will be distributing for free pocket schedules and a new version of its system map that shows route frequencies. The schedule book shows actual stop times.
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December 12, 2007
Tis the season for separate parties at Capital Metro
Austin City Council Member Mike Martinez, who also serves on the Capital Metro board as one of the council’s two appointees, had a final, discouraging word as the transit board was finishing up its (mercifully short) monthly meeting today.
Martinez, who was the Austin firefighters’ union chief before running for council, said he was on the way last weekend to Capital Metro’s annual Christmas party when he saw something that brought him up short. He drove by the Airport Boulevard headquarters of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1091 and was startled to see that the local was having its Christmas party on the same night. And, by the look of things, Martinez said, the party was well-attended.
Local 1091, if you don’t know, represents approximately two-thirds of Capital Metro workers: bus drivers, mechanics and maintenance people. So, someone, either the union or management purposely scheduled their Christmas party in conflict with the other. Not good, and a compelling example of the labor-management polarization that has settled on the agency in recent years.
“It was very disheartening to see that,” said Martinez, adding that the official party was a good time. “If we continue down this path and don’t address this, we just won’t be able to provide the service the community needs from us.”
That path includes a labor stalemate in 2005 that included a one-day strike. The 17-month contract that resulted expired June 30 and there seems to be no prospect of an accord anytime soon. This time, at least, no one is talking about a strike. Yet.
Jay Wyatt, Local 1091’s president-for-life (apparently), couldn’t say how many employees came to the union affair, which lasted he said from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. But it was a full house, another union member said. Is it possible that some employees hit both parties?
No, Wyatt said.
Which pretty much sums up the state of Capital Metro labor talks over the past three years.
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October 29, 2007
Buses to serve besotted ghouls
Capital Metro, which normally runs late night routes Thursday through Saturday to serve the weaving Sixth Street crowd, will offer the same service Halloween Night.
Capital Metro calls the extended service, which runs from 8:30 p.m. until 3 a.m., E-Bus, for Entertainment Bus. Actually, the entertainment mostly occurs earlier, unless one considers it a hoot watching inebriated college students sitting or lying on a bus. But the service, which the agency said had 150,000 boardings last year, no doubt makes Austin’s late-weekend-night roads a bit safer.
The E-Bus has three routes connecting to and from downtown: the 410 to West Campus, the 411 to East Riverside, and the 412 to the University of Texas main campus. Service runs every 20 minutes, and the one-way fare is 50 cents.
