Capitol Metro or Cap Met, man o man where to start...it runs buses, paratransits, and the Metrorail for most of Austin and suburbs in Travis and Williamson. This was voted in back in 1985 so they have had many years to improve or get worse.
I won't say they have not improved in some ways, more routes, wider area, the rail is fast but they had their first passenger/bus fatality in 2012, a long time without one but it happened at a time when they are expanding and have been called under the microscope for using buses well past their prime and ones that are unsafe.
They were/are paid out of sales tax but that has been a up and down thing overall and I won't get into all the details. Thats not really my point here, they get money for sales plus they charge people who ride. From October 1989 to December 1990 they tried to increase ridership by allowing all rides to be free. This plus increased route areas worked but drivers and some passengers complained about the type of riders this was attracting and the drivers voted this away quickly in 1991.
In 1997 Cap Metro came under fire from a string of Texas Legislature and FBI investigations that uncovered a dysfunctional organization beset by poor
management. As a result, the Legislature subsequently overhauled
Capital Metro and its the board of directors in an attempt to make the
transit authority both more effective and transparent ahead of a performance review by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. The FBI found glaring errors and that over $118,000 spent on "food, parties, and presents for employees. This is out of the taxes the people of Austin were paying. The FBI was quoted at the time as saying "We have never, in all of the performance reviews we have conducted, seen an agency with such a lack of accountability.
This of course all speaks pretty poorly of Cap Metro in general. The problem today is with all the money they have made but pissed away or lost in mismangement they keep expanding and using crappy busses and CANNOT get things meshed up. I have the Rail drop me off at the Lake line stop 10 mins. after the bus I needed left and another was not due for an HOUR! A bus did stop in, drop someone off and put up an out of service sign like a jerk. They had a bus there but you were NOT allowed to ride it and ha ha you had to wait now. We don't care, we are Cap Metro, what else are you going to do...
This is not my first issue with them, and given that there is not much else for public use no doubt it won't be my last but maybe this one, unlike some places will work on its flaws, try and fix them for its own good and to get more ridership and therefore money.
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