What Austin needs is public transit that actually works | Opinion

At an urban planning conference here in the early 1990s, a speaker summed up his talk about what gets people to use public transit by saying: “A bus has to run every 10 minutes or less for people to use it, and they don’t want to have to look at a schedule.” No one wants to walk more than two blocks, he added. The speaker told us about how Chattanooga, Tennessee had developed an efficient bus transit system, even starting its own electric bus factory. 

CapMetro and city planners seem far more focused now on creating straight line corridors than figuring out riders’ actual destinations and getting them there more quickly than by driving a car.  

We used to have circulators that got people to destinations efficiently, the fondly remembered ‘Dillos. In Central Austin, everyone from students to state workers to tourists used them, but in the early 2000s, CapMetro abruptly eliminated them. A couple of years ago, after funding a study, the Downtown Austin Business Alliance concluded that CapMetro should bring back the downtown ‘Dillo because businesses and residents wanted it. CapMetro’s response was that it had no allocated funds for it. 

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In the late 1990s, a former CapMetro board chair (and other CapMetro employees) went to see the rapid bus system in Curitiba, Brazil. Unable to afford rail, Curitiba had mimicked it with rapid buses at a fraction of the cost, and Austin considered following its example.  

Curitiba, with a current population of 3.5 million, is now an international model of public transit. Seventy-five percent of Curitiba’s residents ride the bus, and some routes run every 90 seconds. In contrast, in 2022, Austin’s population was 974,447 and 66% of Austinites drove to work alone.   

I live just north of UT where you’d think I could quickly get to essential destinations up to a mile away. By car, a trip to the grocery store or doctor is a 5-minute drive, 30 minutes on foot, (weather and aggressive drivers permitting).  By bus, you have to take two separate buses (on two separate routes) and it takes 45 minutes or longer. Not a single thing in CapMetro’s current plan will change transit for me – except for the increase in my yearly transit tax. 

The real question should be whether our current plan of straight fixed rail lines along redeveloped corridors will result in transit that is faster than driving and get us to our destinations, or whether we are willing to be taxed for an expensive plan but will continue to drive cars anyway. Efficient, cost-effective transit, not real estate corridor development, should be the focus of what we’re planning. 

Epstein is a longtime Austin resident and bus rider and the president of her neighborhood association.