The story
Predecessors
The predecessors of CapMetro date back to the late 1800s with the establishment of streetcar services in Austin. In 1874, the City of Austin granted the Austin City Railroad Company a franchise for a "horse or mule railroad" on Congress Avenue, Pecan Street (since renamed Sixth Street), and 11th Street. Construction of the line began on Pecan in November 1874 and mule-drawn streetcars began operations in January the next year. The company changed ownership several times until 1889 when it was bought by a group of Boston and Chicago investors who planned to extend services and convert the system to electricity. However, before they could do so a new competitor began operations.
In 1890, real estate developer Monroe M. Shipe received a city charter to operate electric streetcars on city streets. Initially, this covered only roads not already occupied by other track, but he later convinced the city council to also allow him to operate on Congress Avenue and Pecan Street. Shipe had started a streetcar suburb venture two and a half miles north of the city called Hyde Park, the destination for the first line. By February 1891, Shipe had built 5 miles of track, a new powerhouse to provide electricity for the line, and began operations as the Austin Rapid Transit Railway Company in places running just a few feet from the mule car tracks.
Just a few months after the electric streetcars started running, an Austin City Railroad mule stable was destroyed in a fire and a few weeks later the company merged into the Austin Rapid Transit Railway leading to the end of mule-drawn service in October. The streetcar service faced challenges over the next years including a lack of power that forced the service to return to mules at several points. In 1897, the company began buying power from the first Austin Dam, which had been completed in 1893, but in 1899 a drought and breakdown of a company-owned powerhouse left them without power for months. Then, in April 1900, the Austin Dam failed catastrophically. Following the dam break, the electric streetcars were again mule-drawn until the company finished building its own power plant.
The Austin Rapid Transit Railway had operated at a loss from 1892 and was in receivership from 1897 until it shut down in 1902 selling its assets at auction to its president, F. H. Watriss. Watriss established the Austin Electric Railway Company in 1902 and the old company was merged into the new one. The new company lasted until 1911 when it was bought by New England investors and renamed the Austin Street Railway Company. In the early 1910s the company faced stiff competition from jitney drivers who would follow streetcar lines offering cheaper service but those disappeared when they were unable to meet a city bond requirement. From the late 1910s into the 1930s, increasing automobile usage cut into streetcar revenue.
Austin Street Railway began offering bus service on certain routes in the late 1920s. At the time, the company was operating 23 miles of track but by 1939 that was down to 17 miles and it was running 29 miles of bus routes. The last streetcar line to operate was the main line which began on Congress Avenue, ran south of the capitol to Lavaca Street, north on Lavaca to 19th street, then west to Guadalupe ending in a loop at Hyde Park. It was replaced by bus service in February 1940 and the same month Austin Street Railway changed its name to the Austin Transit Company.
For the next several decades, the Austin Transit Company was the city's contractor for transportation services. In 1969 and 1970 contentious contract negotiations between the city and the bus operator led to significant changes. In June 1970 the city had granted a franchise to Transportation Enterprises Inc. (TEI) to run a shuttle bus service at the University of Texas. TEI already had contracts from the university to provide bus services. Austin Transit balked at this claiming the city had breached its contract by allowing TEI authority to operate in areas that Austin Transit was already serving. Austin Transit gave the city an ultimatum saying they would cease operations July 31 unless the city bought the company. Instead, the city expanded TEI's contract to cover the rest of the city using school buses which began August 1 after Austin Transit carried through on their threat. However, by November TEI said it was losing US$20,000 and would have to stop service January 1 forcing the city start subsidizing operations in January 1971.
However, by March 1971 Austin Transit had a new contract with the city and restarted operations now with a city subsidy. The next year, the city created the Austin Transit System, a city agency which began operations in January 1973 with Austin Transit Co. as the operator of the now city-owned system.
Establishment of CapMetro
CapMetro was established by a referendum on January 19, 1985, to provide mass transportation service to the greater Austin metropolitan area. Voters in Austin and the surrounding area approved the creation of the agency, to be funded in part by a 1 percent sales tax. CapMetro commenced operations on July 1, 1985, and took over the existing city of Austin bus services in 1986.
Read the full text
In an effort to boost ridership, CapMetro did away with fares completely and instituted fare-free in an experiment that lasted from October 1989 to December 1990. The program was enormously successful in attracting new passengers, and increased ridership by 75% (though expanded service accounted for some of the growth). The fare-free scheme, however, attracted problem riders who drove away quality ridership. In response, 75% of transit drivers voted to have the program discontinued immediately in 1990.
Safety and quality issues
In 1997, a string of Texas Legislature and FBI investigations uncovered a dysfunctional organization beset by poor management. In an attempt to make the transit authority both more effective and transparent ahead of a performance review by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, the Legislature subsequently overhauled CapMetro and its board of directors. As part of this restructuring, the Legislature ordered CapMetro to hold an up-or-down referendum on passenger rail. In response, CapMetro released an ambitious plan that proposed to spend $1.9 billion for a light rail system with 52 miles of track on existing streets. The referendum was narrowly defeated in November 2000 by 2,000 votes, with voters in central Austin tending to favor it, while those outside the city limits did not.
The Comptroller's review cited an "ongoing criminal investigation" by the FBI, "irresponsible management", "expensive, embarrassing mistakes", "dubious contracting and purchasing practices", and $118,000 spent on "food, parties, and presents for its employees" and culminated with, "We have never, in all of the performance reviews we have conducted, seen an agency with such a lack of accountability."
CapMetro subsequently prepared a greatly scaled-back proposed rail system for voters in November 2004. It sought to build just one starter line that would run north–south at a cost of $90 million. While the project was somewhat marred by construction delays, questions and safety and cost overruns, the Red Line of the CapMetro Rail began service on March 22, 2010.
In June 2020, the agency changed or eliminated more than half of all local routes under 'remap'. Riders became concerned by the lack of routes and overcrowding on existing and/or rearranged bus routes. A 2019 survey conducted by Eastside Memorial's student council showed that 70 percent of that student body needed the prior local bus service restored.
CapMetro had its first passenger/bus fatality in its operating history on January 30, 2012, when route 383 operated by Veolia Transportation struck a pedestrian crossing Braker Lane and Jollyville Road. The next fatality happened on January 29, 2019, when a driver struck Anthony John Diaz while he was cycling near the University of Texas campus.
Capital Metro previously used three contractors to run its vehicles. Several passenger injuries were reported on First Transit although they scored higher than StarTran and Veolia, respectively. Veolia Transportation was given a safety review plan 2011. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2023, CapMetro scaled back weekday operations to their standard Sunday schedule. UT Shuttles, Night Owl, and Saturday CapMetro Rail services were suspended, rail replacement bus service, route 455 Leander-Lakeline Shuttle, was operated in place of Saturday CapMetro Rail services, and Capmetro added mobile scanners to both rear and back doors on most Bus vehicles to encourage all-door boarding and thereby social distancing. Most services returned to normal in mid-August 2023. In 2023, Capmetro also began a 7.537 million contract with Keolis to oversee fixed-route bus operations and maintenance for MetroRapid and MetroBus services. The contractor also manages the transit agency's current 1,212 bargaining employees along with its 36 operations, safety and general management personnel. A new logo and rebranding campaign received mixed public feedback.
The Future
CapMetro began bus service to Round Rock in summer 2017. Instead of paying for the services with the 1% sales tax used by CapMetro participating jurisdictions, Round Rock contracted with CapMetro to provide services for set costs. In June 2018, CapMetro began testing driverless buses. If successful, the buses would run for free as part of a 12-month pilot program.
In summer 2018, CapMetro began testing autonomous electric shuttles on Downtown streets. The pilot program tested two driverless bus models from EasyMile and Navya on a route from the Austin Convention Center to the Austin Central Library.
From Wikipedia’s article on CapMetro, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4