You've Got Rail!

What a difference a year makes. A year ago this week, Capital Metro was about as far down in the dumps as it could go. It was under fire for burning through its savings, the launch of the new MetroRail commuter line was a year behind schedule, and finally, its March 28, 2009, kickoff party was scrapped, and the March 30 start of service was postponed indefinitely due to concerns by the Federal Railroad Administration.

This time around, things went a bit better. Raise our MetroRail Watch arm all the way up – Central Texas, you now have a train. At 5:25am Monday morning, Capital Metro's MetroRail Red Line rolled out of Leander – and for the first time, it had actual customers on it. Not a lot, and about half were news media, but then again, not that many people needed to be Downtown that early. The crowds were somewhat bigger, if not overflowing, when the rush-hour trains made the trek from Williamson County through North and East Austin and pulled into the Austin Con­ven­tion Center – finally totaling 716 passengers between 5:25am and 9:25am, including 39 who brought their bikes on board. The afternoon was more impressive: 2,226 boardings, bringing the day's final tally to 2,942.

It's worth noting that not all were heading to jobs – some were simply curious or were rail enthusiasts wanting to check out the new toy during this week of free service. (Beginning Mon­day, a purchased ticket will be required.) Still, it was higher than the 2,000 a day Cap Met­ro is predicting once the novelty wears off.

After having the bar lowered so much over the past year, just getting the thing rolling with customers aboard was enough to have Cap Metro interim president and CEO Doug Allen, board President Mike Martinez, and Cap Metro staff beaming broadly as they greeted those disembarking Downtown. Not among the happy crew was Chief Operating Officer Elaine Timbes, who has worked for Cap Metro since 1985 and has overseen the MetroRail project since October. Martinez announced at that afternoon board meeting that she had injured herself on what should have been her big day – "Elaine was apparently jumping for joy and broke her leg," joked her deputy, Ken Cartwright.

Passengers seemed generally pleased with the opportunity to ride. "I usually bike-commute to the federal office building," said Rich Summer, a geographic information system specialist for the Department of Agriculture, waiting at Crest­view Station. "But I want to try out the train, because in the summer when it's really hot, I like to take the bus home – [when] it's really miserable, when it's 100. I thought I'd try it and see what it's like." Asked if he'd been looking forward to the train start-up, Summer said: "Oh yeah. We bought our house in this area because we knew the train was going to be close. It will be a good deal for us.

"Austin is a town with green sensibilities, they really want to do the right thing, but the culture of the city is centered around cars, and we need to change that attitude," Sum­mer said. "This isn't going to solve all the transit problems of Austin, but it will certainly give us a different perspective on how people move in the city and what can be done to solve the problems of the environment that we have created through our focus on cars. It's time to change; it has to change."

I rode Downtown with Summer, as well as Ray Stawowy, an accountant for a development company. He was walking from the station to his office on San Jacinto, and said he'd ridden in from Cedar Park – and this was his first time using mass transit for his commute. "It was good," he said after getting off the wi-fi-equipped train car. "I pulled out the laptop, got some work done on the way in, and had a relaxing ride." Would he use it again? "More than likely," he said. "Not every day of the week, but a couple, three days a week maybe. Hopefully this pulls a little traffic off the road, but not much, as I understand. I think if they expanded the route and the number of trains, it could ease up a bit."

Of course, rail opponents – including former Tracor CEO Jim Skaggs, who helped kill the original light rail plan in 2000, and former Travis County Commissioner Gerald Daugh­erty – argue that exactly the opposite will happen. They were on the train and waiting at the stations to gather ammunition for that argument and were a stark contrast to the smiles of Allen and company. "Ridership on the first day doesn't mean a lot, because I talked to many people riding it for interest," Skaggs said in front of the Convention Center. "They're not normal commuters. I talked to many people, too, that said they were staying with the express buses because the buses were faster and more convenient."

In addition to his contention that the trains block car traffic while moving too few people, he made financial points: "From taxpayers' standpoint, we subsidize that person on that express bus about $3,000 a year. We subsidize a person on this train $15,000 a year. That's the capital costs, amortized over the life of the train, as well as the operating costs. What we've done here is split the previous bus ridership and put part of it on a train that's five times as expensive. I just don't think that makes any sense for the taxpayers – and for the commuters, as far as that goes, because by that exorbitant subsidy, we reduce the opportunity to improve transit for everybody else."

And thus – with the city of Austin considering a light rail line (oops, sorry, urban rail) in some uncertain future – the MetroRail launch not only marks the beginning of a new service, but also begins afresh a new round of pro- and anti-rail arguments.