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Cap Metro board votes to raise fares sooner, and by more
The Capital Metro board today voted to move to January a fare hike that had been scheduled for August next year, and to increase most of those fares by more than had been previously approved.
The fare increase should generate an estimated $2.3 million during the transit agency’s 2009-10 fiscal year. That will allow the agency to spend federal stimulus money on one-time capital costs, officials said, specifically on additional siding tracks for Capital Metro’s commuter rail line and on easing a troublesome curve in the track near downtown. The agency had been intending to spend $2.6 million in stimulus funds on operating costs this year.
The vote on the fare increase was 4-1, with board member Mike Manor dissenting. Board member John Trevino, who has health problems, missed the meeting and a seventh slot is open currently.
The board rejected a staff proposal to begin charging a 25-cent fare for each bus ride to people with disabilities and seniors, defined by the agency as anyone 65 or older. Both classes of riders currently pay nothing to board a Capital Metro bus. The 25-cent fare would have generated an estimated $600,000 this fiscal year.
But board chairwoman Margaret Gomez, a Travis County commissioner facing a challenge in the March Democratic primary, had said last week she did not support that change. Leander Mayor John Cowman spoke for charging seniors and people with disabilities, saying “everyone should pitch in” to help Capital Metro pay for its operations. But Cowman, aware of the prevailing view on the board, did not bring the idea up for a vote.
Today’s action means that what most Capital Metro riders pay will be much higher in January than it would have been in the fare hike approved for August of next year. The monthly 31-day bus pass, for instance, will go from $18 to $28, rather than the previously scheduled $25. The express bus 31-day pass, now $36, will go to $63 rather than $48. And the agency’s MetroRail line from Leander to downtown Austin will see a fare increase before it even opens, going from $36 for a monthly pass to $70.
It had been scheduled to go to $48 in August.
Under a state law passed this year, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board has the authority to overturn within two months any increase in the agency’s base fare, currently 75 cents. The CAMPO board, officials have said, has no jurisdiction over any other Capital Metro fares.
That base fare, under a 2008 vote, had been scheduled to go up to $1 in August 2010. Today’s vote maintains the $1 new base fare, but moves it forward in time by seven months, a minimal change that might or might not move CAMPO to consider the matter before the increase occurs January 18.
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Cap Metro driver charged with indecent exposure
A Capital Metro driver has been charged with three misdemeanor counts of indecent exposure in connection with incidents in May, July and August when the driver was providing rides for people with disabilities.
Alonzo Livingston Hall, 45, exposed his genitals to a passenger on a special transit van that he drove, and requested sexual contact from her, according to arrest affidavits. He had also repeatedly touched her inappropriately while helping her move from her motorized scooter to a seat on the bus, the woman told police.
The woman, while she spurned the advances earlier, did not complain to Austin police and to Capital Metro until just after the Aug. 19 episode, according to the affidavit. Hall was suspended for a week beginning Aug. 20, Capital Metro said, then reinstated because Capital Metro at the time did not have sufficient information.
He was suspended without pay this week after police issued a warrant for his arrest, Capital Metro said. Hall was arrested at his home in Manor Tuesday evening, Austin police Det. Michael Crumrine said, and booked into Travis County jail. He posted bond and was released early today, Crumrine said.
Crumrine said Capital Metro had assured him after the August incident that while the investigation continued Hall would drive only vehicles that had video equipment that constantly recorded what was happening on the bus. When the earlier alleged incidents occurred, Crumrine said, the vans Hall was driving had equipment designed to record and retain images only after the vehicle comes to a sudden stop.
Hall could not be reached for comment.
Hall began working for Capital Metro affiliate StarTran in 1991 as a driver of regular buses, then in 1992 transferred to the agency’s special transit services. That section, now called MetroAccess, provides door-to-door rides for people whose disabilities make it difficult for them to use regular buses.
Crumrine said the door-to-door service Capital Metro was providing for the woman is one of a number of ways society seeks to help its most vulnerable citizens.
“That to me is the tragedy of this case, that this is someone she depended on to help her, and instead he took advantage of her,” Crumrine said.
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Hearing on Cap Metro fare increase today
The Capital Metro board will hold a public hearing this afternoon on its proposal to move up a scheduled fare increase from next August to early February and to begin charging fares for seniors and people with disabilities.
The hearing will be at 5 p.m. in the board room at Capital Metro headquarters, 2910 E. Fifth St. in East Austin.
The board could act to approve the fare increase changes at a special meeting planned for Nov. 9. If approved, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board would have 60 days to vote to overturn the fare increase, under state law. If CAMPO does not take such a vote within those 60 days, the fare increases would go into effect.
If that happens, Capital Metro likely would put the new fares into effect around Feb. 1, spokesman Adam Shaivitz said in an e-mail.
The base fare would increase from 75 cents to $1, and the much-used 31-day MetroBus pass would increase from $18 to $28. A MetroAccess booklet of 10 fares, which until a year ago was $3, would increase from $7 to $12. And people with disabilities and those 65 years and older, who ride Capital Metro buses for free currently, would pay 25 cents for a ride.
To see a Capital Metro chart showing all the proposed increases, go here.
The Capital Metro board, backed by a panel of local officials required at the time under state law for fare increases, in the summer of 2008 had approved a two-step fare increase that would double or more fares that had been locked in place for more than 20 years. The first increase took effect in October last year, and the second was to take place next August.
The board this summer had talked of moving the August increase up to January to address its tight budget, but backed away after complaints about raising fares during a recession. Then, in September, when the board approved the budget, it once again started the process of moving up the fare increase and raising some fares beyond what had earlier been approved. In all, the change would increase revenue by about $3 million in the current fiscal year, Shaivitz said.
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CAMPO announces four finalists for Cap Metro board slots
And then there were four.
Members of a CAMPO committee charged with sifting through candidates for the Capital Metro board have cut the field of competitors in half, leaving:
Rick Burciaga, a principal with Capitol Consulting in Austin and from 2000 to 2005 the Greater Austin regional manager for Wells Fargo Bank. He has a bachelor’s in public service from UCLA;
Frank Fernandez, executive director of Green Doors, an Austin organization that works on “ending homelessness by providing affordable housing and supportive services.” He formerly worked as deputy director at PeopleFund, a community development group in Austin. He has a bachelor’s in philosophy from Harvard University and a master’s in public affairs from UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs;
John Langmore, a transportation and land use consultant since 2003. Before that, he was a policy aide to former state Rep. Mike Krusee when Krusee headed the House Transportation Committee, and for 12 years he was a lawyer with Caterpillar Inc. and with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and
Richard Maier, vice president/land manager with DR Horton, a homebuilding company. Maier has been in real estate since 1973, and is a board member of the Real Estate Council of Austin and Envision Central Texas. He was previously a director of the Hill Country Conservancy. He has a bachelor’s of science from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s in business administration from the University of Chicago.
A nominations subcommittee of the CAMPO board (both of them chaired by state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin) will interview the finalists Friday and make a recommendation to the full CAMPO board to name two of them to the Capital Metro board.
The new members (current CAMPO appointees Mike Manor, one of the rejected applicants today, and John Trevino will leave the board at year’s end) will be a part of a revamping of the transit board. By January, what was a seven-member board will have eight members and is likely to have five new members.
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Langmore also in the running for Cap Metro board
Turns out that the pool of applicants for two Capital Metro board spots, which was 10, then was seven, actually is eight.
Enough numbers to confuse you?
John Langmore, an Austin transportation and land use consultant and lawyer who years ago worked as an aide to state Rep. Mike Krusee, e-mailed in his application and other materials before the Oct. 14 deadline, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization says now. But somehow, due to a technical glitch, that e-mail fell through the cracks.
Langmore called CAMPO after published reports of the candidates did not include his name. CAMPO officials determined that he indeed had applied in time.
Langmore joins seven other men (yes, there are no female applicants) vying for two appointments that the CAMPO board will make to a newly constituted Capital Metro board of directors.
The other applicants: insurance executive Ernest Auerbach, Rick Burciaga (a former chairman of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce), Norm Chafetz (Capital Metro’s government relations director back in the 1980s), Frank Fernandez (who serves on the Transit Working Group for CAMPO), Glenn Gaven (a UT shuttle bus driver), Richard Maier (a homebuilder), and current Capital Metro board member MIke Manor.
Three other applicants — former high tech executive Jim Skaggs, downtown developer Tom Stacy and Tom Griebel, who had headed the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority — were disqualified because they don’t live in Capital Metro’s service area.
A subcommittee of the CAMPO board, headed by state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, will pare the list down to three or four and interview them next Friday, Oct. 30. The full CAMPO board is expected to make the appointments in early November and the new members would take their seats Jan. 1.
What will now be an eight-member board will also have three new members appointed by the Austin City Council, Travis County commissioners and Williamson County commissioners. Current Capital Metro board members Mike Martinez and Chris Riley (both are Austin City Council members) are expected to continue serving, and Leander Mayor John Cowman last week was named to the board representing seven suburban towns that are part of Capital Metro.
Cowman was already on the board under a different appointment.
Bottom line: three of the seven members of the current board likely will be on the new eight-member board, meaning an infusion of five new people to help get a troubled agency back on track. Pun intended.
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TxDOT, city set to raise Bull Creek bridges
A long-discussed $5.7 million project to rebuild the RM 2222 bridge over Bull Creek is about to begin, the Texas Department of Transportation says.
The new bridge over the creek will be 19 feet higher than the current bridge, just above the 100-year flood plain, TxDOT area engineeer Terry McCoy said. McCoy says the current bridge floods about twice a year, causing what are sometimes brief shutdowns of RM 2222, a key commuting artery to the west and northwest suburbs.
The current RM 2222 creek bridge, which has no shoulders and substandard railings, is considered “functionally obsolete,” McCoy said.
More or less simultaneously, the city will build a new bridge upstream on Bull Creek where Lakewood Drive crosses the creek. That project is estimated to cost $716,000. The two projects have been timed to ease what will be something of a traffic nightmare over the next two years for people who live on and near Lakewood Drive.
Commuters on RM 2222 will have their own challenges as well.
The TxDOT project, expected to take about two years, centers on the bridge-raising but also includes lane additions at the RM 2222/Loop 360 interchange, construction of a 500-foot-long ramp on Lakewood Drive as it approaches RM 2222, and water and wastewater utility work. The city is contributing about $830,000 to the overall $5.7 million project cost.
The Lakewood ramp will be necessary because RM 2222 will be several feet higher at the two roads’ intersection once construction of the RM 2222 bridge is complete. People who live in the neighborhoods near Lakewood Drive had complained when word of this project first surfaced in 2005, concerned about the loss of trees and perhaps greater cut-through traffic.
The additional bridge project on Lakewood, which the City of Austin will commence later this fall and complete in about five months, will further complicate traffic patterns.
The RM 2222 project will begin with the lane improvements at Loop 360, allowing concurrent construction by the city of its Lakewood Drive bridge further north. That way, once the work on the RM 2222 bridge begins, Lakewood Drive can be closed there and people in the Lakewood neighborhood will have a clear alternative path north to Loop 360.
People can also exit the Lakewood neighborhood to the east using Far West Boulevard.
The Lakewood Drive bridge will raise what has been a low-water crossing, where cars actually drive through water even in periods of no rain, to a five-foot-high bridge.
Lynne Lightsey, a spokeswoman for the city’s Watershed Protection Department, said that low-water crossing is typically one of the first places to flood in Austin when there is heavy rain. With a five-foot bridge, the road will be out of the two-year flood plain but still might flood periodically.
Lightsey said Bull Creek Park just east of the low-water crossing — currently an off-leash dog park — will be closed for a renovation project at the same time as the bridge project, and for time after that will be an on-leash park.
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
A project to rebuild the RM 2222 bridge over Bull Creek is about to begin.
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Contenders surface for new Capital Metro board slots
Ten people have put their names in the hat for two appointments to the Capital Metro board, choices that will be made before the end of the year by the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board.
That includes one current board member: Mike Manor.
The others who applied before the deadline last Wednesday, Oct. 14:
Ernest Auerbach, Rick Burciaga (a former chairman of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce), Norm Chafetz (Capital Metro’s government relations director back in the 1980s), Frank Fernandez (who serves on the Transit Working Group for CAMPO), Glenn Gaven (a UT shuttle bus driver), Thomas Griebel, Richard Maier, Jim Skaggs (a longtime Capital Metro critic who does not live in the agency service area, and thus might not be eligible) and Tom Stacy (a downtown Austin developer).
A subcommittee of the CAMPO board that will consider the nominees and make a recommendation will have its first meeting at 2 p.m. today at Austin City Hall.
The CAMPO board will also name an elected official to yet another board slot. And Travis County commissioners and the Williamson County commissioners will each add another new member to what will be an eight-member board.
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Leander mayor will stay on Capital Metro board
Leander Mayor John Cowman won a 4-3 vote of local small city mayors today and will continue to serve on the Capital Metro board. He will be switching chairs, however, filling the “small cities” seat on the transit board rather than his current appointment by Williamson County commissioners. The Commissioners Court will now have to name a replacement for him.
Jonestown Alderman Lance Wedell came in second in the three-way vote. Leander City Council Member David Siebold, who had been endorsed over Cowman by his own council for the position, got no votes from the panel of mayors.
Cowman will replace a departed board member immediately and then begin a new term in January.
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Cowman can vote for self, city attorney says
Leander Mayor John Cowman can legally vote for himself, the town’s outside attorney wrote in an opinion released today, as a group of local mayors gather this afternoon to pick a member of the Capital Metro board.
This in spite of a 4-2 vote Tuesday by the Leander City Council instructing Cowman instead to support Council Member David Siebold for the slot. Cowman Wednesday had requested that city attorney Barney Knight research state law and see if the council has the right to tell him what to do in this instance.
It doesn’t, Knight wrote in a memo to the council dated Oct. 14.
“It is not improper for a governing body to attempt to cause its mayor to vote for or support any candidate for appointment to the Capital Metro board,” Knight wrote. “However, the City Council does not have the legal authority to require the mayor to vote no or to vote for and support a specific candidate.”
The mayors of Leander, San Leanna, Volente, Point Venture, Manor, Lago Vista and Jonestown — all of them small cities that are part of Capital Metro’s service area — will meet at 3 p.m. at the Leander City Council chambers to pick a replacement for Jamie Jatzlau. Jatzlau is a former Manor City Council who is no longer eligible to continue serving on the Capital Metro board after resigning her council seat in August.
Cowman, who is actually already on the Capital Metro board under an appointment by Williamson County commissioners, wants the small cities slot on the board (mandated by state law that governs the transit agency) and the three-year term that comes with it. But Siebold, who serves on the board of the Alliance for Public Transportation, said Wednesday that the troubles of the transit agency over the past few years argue for new leadership.
The seven-member Capital Metro board, under a new state law, is about to undergo a major makeover regardless of what happens with today’s appointment. Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gomez is leaving the board, an eighth slot is being added and the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board by the end of the year likely will appoint new people to the two slots it already had on the board.
Overall, the transit board, which must replace the agency’s retiring president and chief executive officer Fred Gilliam in the coming months, could have five new members by January.
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Gomez to leave Cap Metro board
Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gomez, who also serves as the Capital Metro board chairwoman, says she will not seek the Travis County appointment to the newly constituted transit board.
Gomez, who has led the transit board since spring 2008 as it struggled to open its commuter line and dealt with fallout from depleted reserves and falling tax revenue, said, “I thought I had served my time and I needed to let someone else do it.”
Gomez will likely face a strong challenge in the March Democratic primary for her county commissioners court seat from former Austin City Council member Raul Alvarez. Leaving the board would clear one distraction as she potentially defuses the transit agency’s troubles as an election issue.
Gomez said no other court members had indicated an interest in serving on the Capital Metro board and that the court likely will pick a member of the public to represent it.
Meanwhile, an intramural fight has broken out on the Leander City Council over Mayor John Cowman’s continued service on the Cap Metro board. The council, in a specially called meeting Tuesday, voted 4-2 to have council member David Siebold be the council’s preferred choice for the “small cities” place on the new eight-member transit board. Cowman and Council Member Kirsten Lynch voted no on the measure.
Cowman, who is currently the Wiliamson County representative on the Cap Metro board and could legally hold that position until August, wanted the small cities spot and its three-year term instead. This place on the Capital Metro board, under state law, is picked by mayors of the seven small cities in the Capital Metro service area.
That tiny electorate thus includes Cowman as Leander mayor.
“Now, basically, I can’t vote for myself,” said Cowman, adding that he has sought an opinion from the city attorney to see if he is bound by the council vote. “This is kind of unprecedented. They’ve never told me how to vote at Capital Metro.”
Siebold, who owns a Cedar Park coffee shop and has been on the Leander City Council for a decade, serves on the Alliance for Public Transportation board. He said the alliance, given Capital Metro’s very public troubles, has been seeking strong candidates for the new Capital Metro board. It is being reconfigured and expanded from seven members to eight under a law passed by state Sen., Kirk Watson in this year’s legislative session and signed by Gov. Rick Perry.
“Overall it’s a feeling that we need a new board in place and we need to gain public support,” Siebold said. “I think we’d all agree that things need to be done differently, because things are not working at Capital Metro.”
The small cities spot became available when former Manor City Council member Jamie Jatzlau moved out of Manor and had to resign her council seat. She is still technically a member of the Capital Metro board, but was not at a Monday meeting of the board.
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Allen named interim Cap Metro president/CEO
Doug Allen, Capital Metro’s executive vice president and chief development officer, will be the transit agency’s interim president and chief executive officer, the agency board decided today.
Allen, 55, will take the job at 5 p.m. Friday, coincident with current agency chief Fred Gilliam’s retirement. Allen, who was making $188,475 a year in his current position, will get what the agency called its minimum for the position: $227,667. Gilliam, taking into account deferred compensation and various allowances, was making just over $300,000 a year.
“Congratulations, Doug,” board chairwoman Margaret Gomez said after the 4-0 vote. “Get to work.”
Allen, sitting in the audience, jokingly suggested that he would hold a staff meeting at 5:05 p.m. that day.
Afterward, Allen, who came to Capital Metro in April 2008 from Dallas Area Rapid Transit, said “my job is to keep the ball rolling” while the agency board looks for a permanent leader. He declined to say if he would be a candidate.
The Capital Metro board itself is about to change, going from seven members to eight at the end of the year, with several changes likely among the current members. Board member Mike Martinez, an Austin City Council member, said the current board will put together a job description and then leave it up to the new board to conduct a search.
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Unintended consequences in Dallas
The Dallas Observer has a fascinating article about unintended consequences of putting four rails lines through downtown Dallas on the same street. Already with just three of those lines operational, the article says, 46 to 47 light rail trains an hour pass through downtown on Pacific Avenue, and every one of them has a signal preemption device that stops cross traffic.
To be fair, Austin at this point has no comparable rail plan. We would have a single streetcar system running downtown, although there would be trains running in each direction. But it’s still interesting to explore what a train line can mean for existing modes of transportation.
Here’s the article.
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Sinkhole alert: avoid Manor Road near Morris Williams Golf Course
City of Austin crews working on running new wastewater lines to the Mueller development ran into a sink hole beneath the pavement on Manor Road this afternoon, and the result is that Manor has been reduced to one lane until 7 p.m. today.
The city is asking drivers to avoid the area — the 4300 block of Manor, just east of Pershing Drive and next to Morris Williams Golf Course — until later this evening. If you go through the area, you’ll have to wait for flaggers to guide you past the construction crews that are working to fix and repave the roadway.
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TxDOT on hook for $1.2 billion? Not so much
Gov. Rick Perry has always had political luck in terms of his opponents. For instance, Hank Gilbert, who would like to be the Democratic candidate for governor next year.
Gilbert, a long-time opponent of Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor road-and-rail plan, put out a press release today noting that the state has already been paid $1.2 billion by Cintra-Zachry and is now on the hook for that money because the corridor plan has been ditched. Which would be shocking and disturbing were it true. Only it’s not.
Cintra-Zachry has paid TxDOT $25 million, with an “m,” not $1.2 billion, and that was for the right to build and operate (and profit from) a road it is in fact busy building right now: the southern 40 miles of Texas 130.
Gilbert’s $1.2 billion figure comes from 2004, when the Interstate 35 leg of Perry’s corridor plan made a big splash. TxDOT had decided to award a development contract for a tollway twin of I-35 to Cintra-Zachry, a consortium led by Spanish toll road builder Cintra and San Antonio road contractor Zachry Construction Co. That contract involved Cintra-Zachry creating a development plan for the 300-plus mile road, and gave it first refusal rights on segments of the road up to $400 million.
The prediction then was, were Cintra-Zachry to build the whole thing, its concession payments to TxDOT (essentially paying TxDOT for the right to build sections of the road and then collect tolls on them) would amount to $1.2 billion.
That’s fine, except that only one of those sections, just those 40 miles, is going to be built. And the state and Cintra-Zachry signed a separate facilities agreement for that portion of the road, which is now actually just a part of Texas 130 tollway (49 miles built by TxDOT are already open) rather than a Trans-Texas Corridor road. TxDOT announced Tuesday that it would recommend to the Federal Highway Administration that no action be taken on the rest of the I-35 twin, effectively killing it.
In that facilities contract, Cintra-Zachry agreed to pay TxDOT $25 million (much less than in the earlier estimate that was part of that $1.2 billion figure) and then to give TxDOT between 4.7 percent and 9 percent of the revenue initially. It could even go to 50 percent later if the road has enough traffic.
Gilbert says the Cintra-Zachry contract with the state has all sorts of termination clauses and that it will take lawyers months to determinate what TxDOT might owe. That might be true, although Gilbert offered no specifics.
But the $1.2 billion paid by Cintra-Zachry earlier and now due to be paid back by TxDOT? No, that’s just not true.
One rule of politics: If you’re going to blast someone using figures, it’s best not to be off by that many zeros.
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TxDOT: I-35 toll twin officially dead
The tollroad twin to Interstate 35, once the centerpiece of Gov. Rick Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor plan, is officially dead, the Texas Department of Transportation announced today.
The department, which has spent years on a huge environmental study of the corridor from Dallas to San Antonio, will officially recommend to the Federal Highway Administration that no action be taken on the road.
“I don’t think I have ever seen a no-build recommendation in a TxDOT environmental impact study,” state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said in a statement. “It says a lot about today’s Transportation Commission and their responsiveness to the public.”
The environmental study had been in limbo for more than three years after TxDOT had unveiled a 4,000-page draft version with great fanfare at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
A final version of that environmental plan, which narrowed the possible path of the road down to a 10-mile-wide corridor, was expected to come out a year or so later. Smaller studies on individual road segments were to follow. But that final environmental statement remained an unfinished product until now, albeit with a different and unexpected conclusion: do nothing.
“… (P)eople don’t want it,” Texas Transportation Commission member Bill Meadows told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which first reported the no-build decision. “They said, ‘Hell no.’ “
Perry’s corridor plan, already under fire when the draft plan came out in April 2006, soon thereafter became an issue in the 2006 governor’s race as his political opponents and many rural Texans showed up to speak against the proposed road at 54 hearings up and down the corridor. Then, in early 2007, a majority of the Texas Legislature rebelled against the centerpiece of Perry’s corridor plan: the state issuing long-term leases to private companies to build and operate tollroads.
In January, TxDOT killed the Trans-Texas Corridor name and concept, but the only two projects from it lived on: the I-35 twin and Interstate 69, which would be a tollway from the Rio Grande Valley to Texarkana.
Officials said that project, which unlike the I-35 plan would mainly involve expanding existing highways, remains alive.
But the I-35 plan, given the lack of support legislatively and in rural Texas, was no longer politically viable, a TxDOT official said. That was underscored by an announcement this week that the Texas Farm Bureau, which for several years has opposed the Trans-Texas Corridor plan because it would require acquiring considerable farmland, is endorsing U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s opponent in the March gubernatorial primary. The group, despite opposing the corridor plan, had endorsed Perry in the 2006 campaign.
Today’s action, which officials say was in process well before the farm bureau announcement, will have no effect on that group’s decision, a spokesman said.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but those statutes are still on the books,” said Gene Hall of the Farm Bureau, referring to law authorizing the Trans-Texas Corridor. The group will stick with Hutchison, he said.
“It was a unanmous vote of the board of directors,” Hall said. “It wasn’t really a hard decision to make. (Perry’s) overalll private property rights record is mostly rhetoric, and we don’t think it’s a good one at all.”
Joe Pounder, a Hutchison spokesman, said “The Trans-Texas Corridor will not be officially dead until Rick Perry is no longer governor and his political appointees are no longer running TxDOT.”
Perry’s office, asked for comment, has not yet responded today.
In January, TxDOT said it had spent $131 million on planning and environmental work for the Trans-Texas Corridor.
The I-35 project seemed to be on the road to reality in December 2004 when Gov. Perry appeared at a Texas Transportation Commission meeting for the announcement that Cintra-Zachry, a consortium led by a Spanish toll road company, would be paid $3.5 million to create a plan for tollroads, rail lines and other facilities for the entire corridor.
If things went as planned, officials said that day, Cintra-Zachry would eventually pay the state $1.2 billion for the right to build more than 300 miles of toll roads, spending another $6 billion of its own money in the process.
Cintra-Zachry produced the plan, and is now building the southern 40 miles of Texas 130, which along with the existing piece of Texas 130 built and operated by TxDOT, likely would have been the southern section of the I-35 corridor road. Now, both roads likely will remain simply Texas 130.
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Gilliam, despite retirement, joins other Cap Metro execs at Florida conference
Capital Metro CEO Fred Gilliam, who announced last week that he will retire Oct. 16, is in Orlando, Fla., attending an American Public Transportation Association convention this week, along with four other Capital Metro officials. The conference, which began Sunday, runs through Wednesday.
“Fred Gilliam’s last day at Capital Metro is October 16,” agency spokesman Adam Shaivtiz said today in a statement. “He will honor all his commitments on behalf of Capital Metro through his last day and will be reimbursed for any business travel on behalf of the agency.
“He is representing Capital Metro on several panels and committee meetings during the APTA conference. He also serves on the Leadership APTA board of directors on behalf of Capital Metro and is participating in Leadership APTA’s meetings and planning sessions during the conference.”
Joining Gilliam in Orlando at the transit trade group’s annual meeting are board member John Cowman (also Leander’s mayor), executive vice president and chief development officer Doug Allen, Dianne Mendoza, the agency’s vice president for business and community development, and Gina Estrada, the agency board’s executive assistant and board liaison.
Shaivitz said that Mendoza is graduating from the trade association’s leadership program this week, and that Estrada serves on a board-related committee for the association. Allen, who likely will be Gilliam’s interim replacement during a search for a permanent replacement, also serves on committees that are meeting during the conference, Shaivitz said.
The agency, which like many transit agencies is battling budget problems because of falling sales tax receipts, in the past has sent a greater number of people to some national meetings of the trade group.
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Cap Metro worker under police investigation
Austin police are investigating a Capital Metro employee, the department confirmed Friday, and were spotted by workers at the agency Wednesday, the same day Capital Metro President and Chief Executive Officer Fred Gilliam announced his retirement.
That set off widepread speculation that the two events were related. However, police spokesman Sgt. Richard Stresing said that while he could not say who is under investigation, he could confirm that Gilliam is uninvolved. The detective investigating the case, Stresing said, “was kind of taken aback by all the hoopla. It stirred up a lot of talk and false information, like the idea that the FBI was over there.”
Had the detective known about the Gilliam announcement, Stresing said, “he probably would have gone over there another day.”
Stresing could not say who among Capital Metro’s almost 1,200 employees might be under investigation, or for what.
“I know it’s not Mr. Gilliam,” Stresing said.
Stresing said the file on the case is not open to inspection within the department and did not know what if anything was removed from Capital Metro headquarters on E. Fifth Street.
Capital Metro spokesman Adam Shaivitz, while confirmed that police were on site Wednesday for a “pending law enforcement investigation,” referred all questions to Austin police.
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Dillos taking their last rides today
Capital Metro’s downtown Dillo service, a victim of poor ridership and the agency’s need to save money, will end as of 7 p.m. today.
The Dillo service had already been cut from five routes to two last year, with increased frequency and for the time a charge to ride. Ridership fell 70 percent at that point, to about eight riders per hour per route, and the agency board this summer decided to put the Dillos down.
The faux trolleys have been running in Austin since the early 1970s, according to Capital Metro. If you want to take a last ride, it will cost 50 cents for a two-hour pass.
Larry Kolvoord/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
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U.S. 290 to be down to one lane for evening commute
Westbound U.S. 290 will be reduced to one lane just west on the Lamar Boulevard interchange in South Austin for this evening’s rush hour, officials said.
The closure is necessary because of the forecast for rain this weekend, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Transportation.
TxDOT engineers began a repair project Monday to stabilize the pavement and retaining wall along the main lanes of the highway west of the Lamar Boulevard interchange. The repairs include stabilizing the material in the retaining wall, repairing storm sewer pipes and replacing the road surface. The lane closure will cover about 1,200 feet of westbound 290.
Message boards are in place at points approaching the interchange, advising drivers of the lane reduction and to take alternative routes. Police will also adjust the timing of the signals along south Lamar to ease backups at the lights. It is anticipated that westbound U.S. 290 will be restored to two lanes Friday afternoon.
The repair project will cost approximately $700,000.00. Weather permitting, the project should be completed by early November, TxDOT said.
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FBI at Capital Metro Wednesday? Nope.
Even as news was breaking Wednesday afternoon that Capital Metro president and CEO Fred Gilliam had decided to retire, a rumor spread that an FBI van had shown up at the agency and that agents were in a conference room poring over boxes.
T’ain’t true.
First of all, one has to wonder if the FBI, being fairly secretive in general and potentially a target for those with bad intent, would slap a big old logo on its vehicles, like Bob’s Plumbing Repair or some such. And the FBI, when it does raid a place, tends to take things away and review them at its leisure, not do so on premises in a conference room.
Then there’s the bewildered and bemused denial, highly credible in this case, by Capital Metro officials that any such thing took place.
Finally, there’s the FBI, which told me this morning they were nowhere near Capital Metro and its East Fifth Street headquarters Wednesday.
Perhaps there was someone at Capital Metro Wednesday going through records in a conference room. I’ve done so myself after making open records requests, the most recent time being about a month ago. And perhaps these individuals looked like G-men. You know, dark suits and ties, sunglasses, Eliot Ness-style fedoras.
But they, assuming there was a “they,” weren’t from the FBI.
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Cap Metro’s Gilliam to retire
Fred Gilliam, who as Capital Metro’s chief executive officer and president since April 2002 has led the transit agency through a time of union turmoil, rail construction and declining reserves, is taking early retirement.
Gilliam, whose possible departure has been a subject of public speculation and private pressure for months, decided to take the agency’s early retirement package on the last day possible for that option. He will leave the agency Oct. 16.
Doug Allen, the agency’s executive vice president and chief development officer, likely will replace Gilliam on an interim basis while a national search goes on for a replacement, board member John Cowman said.
Taking the early retirement package offered to employees at Capital Metro likely will mean lump sum payments for Gilliam, 67, totaling more than $50,000, based on data from Capital Metro. And it could increase his annual pension above the $92,750 figure released by the agency earlier this year because early retirees get five years of service or age added for pension calculations.
Gilliam in 2008 was paid $238,000 in salary and bonuses, and accrued $65,000 in deferred compensation, agency figures show.
Gilliam, despite the controversy swirling around the agency for the past several years, said no one on the agency board of directors had asked him to leave. Had the early retirement deal not been available, Gilliam said he would not be leaving.
“It’s been a remarkable ride,” Gilliam said.
His greatest disappointment: Not being able to gain the trust of the union representing agency drivers and mechanics. The union in 2007 resisted giving up its right to strike and going to “meet-and-confer” type negotiations such as Austin police and the City of Austin use.
Although Cowman said he did not pressure Gilliam to retire — “I’m proud to be associated with him,” said Cowman, who is also Leander’s mayor — other prominent local officials have done so as the agency’s finances sagged and progress on opening commuter rail lagged.
Under Gilliam, the agency has seen ridership decline slightly, although in the middle of his tenure it was higher than the 32.5 million boardings this past year. And the agency’s once robust savings account — it was more than $200 million when Gilliam succeeded former agency head Karen Rae — has fallen to $3.8 million. That is far below the $27 million cushion of two months of operating costs that agency officials say would be a prudent minimum.
The agency has had near-constant labor troubles under Gilliam, including two strikes, as the union representing about two-thirds of Capital Metro workers objected when bus routes were assigned to outside contractors. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1091 printed bumper stickers saying “Kill Rail. Fire Fred” in 2005, and has filed numerous unfair labor practices charges against the agency during Gilliam’s tenure.
And Capital Metro has taken a public relations hit this year as it fought recurring problems in its commuter rail startup that have delayed opening of service by about two years. The agency announced Monday that the soonest the Leander-to-downtown-Austin MetroRail will open is in the first quarter of 2010.
But Cowman said Gilliam deserves credit for creating a more efficient bus system, one that has improved one-time performance and fewer accidents than when he took over.
Assigning routes to contractors saves money for Capital Metro, the agency argues, and that’s “beginning to run Capital Metro like a business,” Cowman said. “Mr. Gilliam has operated in an effective and efficient way, not trying to hurt anyone but to make Capital Metro more efficient. Because that’s what Capital Metro needs.”
The agency’s operating budget has increased from about $97 million the year before Gilliam took over to $164.7 million in the fiscal year that begins Thursday. Even accounting for inflation, that means that the cost per rider has increased from about $3.50 to nearly $5.20, a 49 percent increase.
Riders are now beginning to bear a greater share of that cost. Under Gilliam, the agency after more than 20 years passed its first fare increase last year, a two-step doubling of the base fare (with some discounted fares increasing by higher percentages) that would have riders paying close to 10 percent of the actual cost of riding Capital Metro buses.
The bulk of the agency’s operations and capital investments are supported by its 1 percent sales tax. Many transit agencies around the U.S. are similarly dependent on sales tax revenue and, like Capital Metro, have experienced budget problems in the past year as the economy struggled.
Gilliam, before coming to Capital Metro in 2001 as the chief operating officer, had been second-in-command at Houston Metro but left after failing to get that agency’s top job. He came to Austin from a bus and trolley manufacturer in Wichita, Kan.
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Is social media going to kill SEO?
... read the full comment by SedAppecy | Comment on All Aboard Read All Aboard
when comparing other cities it is important to consider the tax we’ve already paid. too bad the board can’t comprehend this.
... read the full comment by unfare comparisons | Comment on Cap Metro board votes to raise fares sooner, and by more Read Cap Metro board votes to raise fares sooner, and by more
Yeah I think that new express buss pass is way too expensive. I used to commute from the Northwest Park & Ride as a student all the way down to 12th street.
The P&R was a 13mile round trip from my house. Just driving straight to my destination
... read the full comment by Jman | Comment on Cap Metro board votes to raise fares sooner, and by more Read Cap Metro board votes to raise fares sooner, and by more
How can something cost more if it doesn’t exist?
... read the full comment by Kevin | Comment on Cap Metro board votes to raise fares sooner, and by more Read Cap Metro board votes to raise fares sooner, and by more
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