Since you’re all thinking it but won’t admit it: Yes, the AIM bus was on time. In fact, it was early to at least three of its six stops at the dog-and-pony … oops, we mean “community-outreach kickoff” on April 5 for Capital Metro’s campaign to harmonize its plans with the citizens’ wishes.
We jest, but after the vacuum-sealed isolation of Cap Met past, even a dog-and-pony show is a welcome change. AIM, standing for “Austin Area in Motion” (no, we don’t know why it’s not “AAIM”), is an eight-month-or-so, three-phase effort to collect input from between 300,000 and 500,000 people on our transportation future.
The first phase is brainstorming, or “defining transportation issues,” which will involve a public survey — you can pick up your postcard at local grocery stores — as well as focus groups and forums on specific transit issues. Phase I also includes a market survey to identify travel behavior — “what would make people,” says Cap Met GM Karen Rae, “get out of their cars and onto a bus.” Or train, or vanpool, or whatever. Phase II is “prioritizing transportation alternatives,” and Phase III is “selecting a transportation option” — which, to the degree that it includes light rail, will be brought to the ballot box by November of 2000.
At the kickoff events — in which Rae and the special AIM bus traveled from Leander, to Cap Met headquarters on East Fifth Street, to Hancock Center, to Eighth and Congress, to South Austin, and then to Pflugerville — the citizens appeared to be behaving as responsibly as Cap Met could hope. From one busload of (mostly) jes’ folks came questions like: Does this involve light rail? Didn’t we already approve light rail? How are we going to keep up with Austin growth? Are you going to put in crosstown routes? What about the cities outside Austin?
All sensible stuff — even, Cap Met reports, from the folks in Leander. “The traffic is terrible; I don’t know what Austin is going to do,” said one Williamson County-ite who found his way onto the AIM bus downtown. “I think it’s high time Capital Metro got the citizens’ input.”
Not everyone was so compliant, of course. “There are cynics, but you’re always going to have cynics,” Rae noted in between stops. “We just haveto slowly chip away at it.” She laughed at the word”slowly,” perhaps in light of her previous assertion that we need to “come to a decision quickly and get on with our lives,” but the Cap Met leadership seems to agree that eight months is not too long to devote to the task of consensus-building. “I like taking our time and going through a real process,” says board chair Lee Walker. “We have a huge investment decision to make here, and it needs to be as grounded in the reality of the community and the marketplace as is possible.” —M.C.M.
This article appears in April 9 • 1999 and April 9 • 1999 (Cover).