Cap Metro chairman unveils big bus plan now that urban rail is dead

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Michael Theis/ABJ Staff

In an interview with the local politics news website editor Michael Kanin, Austin City Councilman, Capital Metro Chairman and Austin mayoral candidate Mike Martinez said that he wants to add up to six new MetroRapid-style routes – referred to throughout the Monitor piece as "Bus Rapid Transit" lines – along the city's main corridors.

Michael Theis

Digital Editor- Austin Business Journal

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Now that Austin's urban rail proposal failed, it's time to embrace the bus, according to Austin City Councilman, Capital Metro Chairman and Austin mayoral candidate Mike Martinez.

He revealed to the Austin Monitor plans to pitch a major expansion of Austin's new MetroRapid service.

In an interview with the local politics news website owner and editor Michael Kanin, Martinez said that he wants to add up to six new MetroRapid-style routes – referred to throughout the Monitor piece as "Bus Rapid Transit" lines – along the city's main corridors, which he said would cost between $150 million and $180 million. It's debatable whether or not MetroRapid is a true BRT system, as it scores fairly low on the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy's BRT Standard.

Martinez told the Monitor that one route could potentially run from downtown to the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport by way of Riverside Drive, roughly replicating the southern portion of the failed urban rail initiative.

Martinez also said that he would be interested in finding a way to provide free bus ridership for at least a year. If that sounds familiar, it's because the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority tried it in 1989, eliminating all fares as an experiment to boost ridership, as noted in a 2013 Cap Metro fare policy review. But, according to a report from the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research, the experiment saw transit operators nearly revolt as the buses "became flooded with truant school children, vagrants, and other 'dubious categories' of passengers" that "drove away other riders." The conclusion was that "the deterioration of the internal bus environment, security, employee satisfaction and public image was definitely not worth any benefits that could be gained by farefree."

Michael Theis is the Austin Business Journal's digital editor.