590 KLBJ reports today that Capital Metro board member Mike Manor has proposed a massive cut to the Red Line's 2010 operating budget, affecting jobs and rail schedules. (KLBJ reports that the proposed cut is 48%, but the numbers on its site don't add up at present.) This proposal is due to the massive shortfall that Capital Metro appears to be facing in the coming year.
Given the Red Line's interminable delays, low ridership projections, and now this opposition from its own board members, the Red Line is seriously looking like one of the biggest failures in mass transit, well, ever. It does not appear at present that the huge amounts of money thrown at this commuter rail project (as local blogger M1EK will tell you, it is NOT a light rail project, or anything resembling one) will ever be recovered. Meanwhile, traffic continues to get worse.
Final thought: given Austin's reluctance to build a decent road/highway system and Cap Metro's seeming inability to run a working transit system, can our transportation policy be summarized as "Keep Austin Congested"? I say yes.
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The lawyers and old hippies who run CapMetro simply are not capable of anything resembling decent management. I'm not ready to pronounce the red line a failure, but its certainly a poorly managed project, even by the low standards of government projects in general.
The light rail proposal would have been just as mismanaged, and would have more harmful to the city due to the additional congestion and business destruction caused by the impediments to auto traffic it would have caused.
Jim, again with the assertion of business destruction. Which businesses, precisely, given that rush hour traffic on Guadalupe is practically non-navigable today?
The difference is that light rail construction would have been as disruptive as commuter rail has been, yes, probably even some more disruptive, but at the end we'd have something worth riding (35,000+ projected riders instead of 1500). For a local investment of 3-5x what we ended up spending on this POS, we'd have had double-track the whole way from Braker; and would have actually served the people in Austin who pay essentially all of Capital Metro's bills.
And some, by no means all but some, of the hilarity in the commuter rail start is precisely because they tried to go with "cheap and quick - it's just using existing rails" thinking when it really merited the kind of engineering of a new rail project. (Signalling issues here).
M1KE, unlike you I own a retail business, therefore I understand that if you tear up the street in front of my business for weeks, months, or years that would put me under for sure.
Sorry Jim, and M1EK, this sad excuse for a commuter rail is a failure. The rail cannot get started because the cars can't run on exisiting rail.They have tried and tried, but can't managed to keep the electrical current going because it's on a wrong type of track. ( heavy freight vs. commuter type of tracks). Sadly these morons at Metro have wasted HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of taxpayers money. This city, county, and Metro have a huge problem to solved. Let's hope the new people to be in charge know what to do.
One more important item. All rail should be stopped and a better emphasis on our bus system before Gilliam destroys this too. There is NO more tax dollars left.It is a shame.
Anonymous....I don't know what part of the Red Line you think is electified? None of it is. The DMU's CapMetro are using are diesel powered.
Brian
Jim, what happens when they tear up Guadalupe for the full street reconstruction that it's overdue for anyways? Are the customers willing to forgive the inconvenience for that, but not if rails are put in at the same time?
Anonymous, the electrical current issue the other anonymous guy was talking about is the effort to control the raising/lowering of the signalling gates based on running electricity through the rails - not that the vehicles themselves are powered that way.
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