Max vs. Metro

Max Nofziger with his electric bike (Photo By John Anderson)

The Save South Congress Association, an organization of SoCo merchants formed last fall in opposition to light rail, has added a weapon to its anti-CapMetro arsenal: Max Nofziger. A former Austin City Council member, Nofziger was prominent in the last campaign against light rail and brought his own mass transit proposals to the March 6 SSCA meeting. When he finished, the association enthusiastically endorsed his proposals and hired him as a consultant to promote the plan publicly and before city and county government. "Max is formulating a plan that will start moving people with a minimum of cost," said Rob Lippincott, owner of Güero's restaurant and one of SSCA's organizers. "We passed it by acclamation and endorsed him to go out and start promoting it."

Nofziger calls his proposal "Affordable Clean Air Transit" (A-CAT) and describes it as a mix of more and cleaner buses, free ridership, and subsidized clean vehicles. "The only reason CapMetro exists is to help clean the air," said Nofziger, "and we can do that better and much more cheaply than light rail." Nofziger advocates buying more buses that run on alternative energy forms such as natural gas, batteries, or hybrid fuel, and quickly boosting ridership by eliminating bus fares. "We did that for a 14-month 'experiment' in the late Eighties, and it boosted ridership by 80%," he said. "And it was still rising when they stopped it." Nofziger says the official reasons for stopping the experiment included cost and too many "homeless people" riding the buses. "But the real reason is that it made the 'road warriors' nervous, because it was working."

Cleaner buses, eliminating fares, and reducing "headway" (the intervals between buses) to 10 minutes would combine to "eliminate the barriers to mass transit," Nofziger asserts. He also recommends offering rebates to purchasers of less-polluting cars and electric bicycles, and says his proposal "would address all forms of transit, and would take more cars off the roads in less time than rail, at a cost [which he estimates at $340 million] one-tenth of what light rail is going to cost." The South Congress neighborhood would volunteer to be "guinea pigs" for the first A-CAT route, he adds. "Let's buy 10 of those clean buses, at a cost of $5 million, and try it out from the Capitol to South Austin -- instead of the $150 to $200 million the same route would cost for light rail." Nofziger plans to be generating discussion and support for his plan over the next few months.

Although she couldn't comment in detail on plans or cost projections that haven't been proposed or reviewed, CapMetro spokeswoman Emlea Chanslor said the agency's staff is ready and willing to discuss the Nofziger/SSCA plan with the neighborhood. CapMetro is already doing some of the things suggested in the A-CAT plan, she said, including the imminent purchase of four hybrid (diesel/electric) buses as part of a five-year plan to improve the bus system. "The agency's basic goals," Chanslor said, "are to expand the areas served, to expand the number of express buses from outlying areas, to increase frequency on core routes (especially during peak times), and to build up the crosstown service (allowing bus riders to cross town, east to west, without transferring downtown)." For the South Congress area, she added, the agency's technical studies are currently focusing on the commuter rail option, using existing Union Pacific tracks (which the SSCA has said it supports) rather than light rail.

Lippincott insists the SSCA is enthusiastic about improving mass transit, but they don't trust Cap Metro's assurances that South Congress has already been eliminated from current plans for light rail, and that in any case no new rail referendum is looming this year. "Once they get approval to spend the money, they can put it where they want to," Lippincott said. "We need to do something instead of light rail, and Max's plan is a way more economical way to get people moving."