Today’s Statesman article continues their tradition of blindly accepting whatever Capital Metro says about the transit plan (which was, not coincidentally, innocuous enough not to piss off the real estate interests who largely shape the Statesman’s editorial content).
For background on what Rapid Bus really is, and why it’s a rip-off for central Austin taxpayers (who get nearly nothing out of the commuter rail plan but pay most of the bills) check the links at the bottom.
Short summary: The people in the densest neighborhoods (including the about-to-open Triangle) who actually WANT to use transit are getting nothing more than a lousy stuck-in-traffic slightly-fancier version of the #101, i.e., a BUS which is MUCH SLOWER THAN THEIR CARS. NO, holding a green light for a couple of seconds ISN’T GOING TO MAKE MUCH DIFFERENCE. It’ll be the cars IN FRONT OF THE BUS, sometimes stacked up through several intersections up ahead, that most affect its speed, not the traffic lights.
The people out in the suburbs who don’t really want transit and don’t pay most of the bills anyways are getting a commuter rail line which, as long as they don’t mind changing to a SHUTTLE BUS at the end of the trip, will take them downtown. Oh, and if they’re lucky enough to work directly at the Convention Center, it’ll be competitive with their cars.
All this instead of a scaled back version of the 2000 light rail plan, which would have served BOTH suburban AND urban residents with transit which was competitive with their cars AND dropped them off directly at UT, the Capitol, and downtown.
