Naked City

And now, it's Capital Metro's turn to spin the regional roulette wheel; hot on the heels of the Envision Central Texas vision document and the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority's toll-road plan, the transit authority this week kicked off "All Systems Go!" – Cap Metro's latest outreach effort to refine and to sell (not necessarily in that order) its latest incarnation of a regional transit system.

Just as it did four years ago with the Austin Area in Motion effort – leading up to the narrowly defeated 2000 light-rail referendum – Capital Metro intends to spend months presenting its plans and garnering community feedback before going to the ballot box for a Lege-mandated November vote. However, the plan now on the table already supposedly has support from all the relevant political heavy hitters, and it's not clear exactly which details of the rail-and-express-bus proposal are still up for negotiation.

In its call for citizen input, Cap Metro says feedback "can help us determine priorities for investment, new technology choices, frequency of service, [and] locations for station stops and transfers." The transit authority will hold "open houses" in late May and early June and "workshops" in mid-June – see www.capmetro.org for a complete schedule. As well, it's likely that the city of Austin, and perhaps surrounding cities, will move forward quickly on planning decisions to guide land use along the transit corridors – an effort that Austin has theoretically been pursuing for most of the last decade, on which the new rail plan depends heavily if it's to succeed.

Capital Metro is proposing two flavors of rail in its new package – neither of which, by the way, is "light." "Commuter rail regional service" (i.e., between town centers) would run along both the MoPac/Union Pacific right-of-way and the abandoned MoKan rail corridor (midway between I-35 and SH 130), while "commuter rail urban service" (with more frequent stops) would serve Cap Metro's existing freight-rail line (aka the Red Line) from Leander through Central and East Austin and then across Downtown. The two systems would interconnect at Seaholm, at Plaza Saltillo, and north of UT's Pickle campus. These would be supplemented by new "rapid bus" routes – relying on advanced technology to pre-empt traffic signals and thus speed commutes – along the Lamar/Guadalupe Corridor, through the Mueller site, and along Ben White, and expanded local and express bus service elsewhere.

On its face, this plan offers less than the metro area has supposedly already decided it needs – falling short, for example, of the 54 miles of light and commuter rail that's been part of the long-term regional transportation plan for well over a decade. But it does offer what the agency and its political patrons feel is a surefire advantage: "Using existing rail tracks and corridors, the proposed vision would require no new taxes or major street construction."