[had8ley]

Have it on excellent authority (my son) that the first non-revenue run of Austin's light rail will depart at 4:30 a.m. this Monday morning for Austin. Hopefully, revenue service will begin in two weeks with free rides; it ought to look like the NYC subway as the trains are only two cars in length. There will be buses on stand by for the overflow crowds wanting a free ride.

[stntylr]

How many people looking for a ride on CapMetro will be happy riding the bus instead?
I'm going to wait a few weeks then pay for a ride to check it out.

[jimhudson]

had8ley, on Sun, Feb 28, 2010, 06:34 PM, said:

Have it on excellent authority (my son) that the first non-revenue run of Austin's light rail will depart at 4:30 a.m. this Monday morning for Austin. Hopefully, revenue service will begin in two weeks with free rides; it ought to look like the NYC subway as the trains are only two cars in length. There will be buses on stand by for the overflow crowds wanting a free ride.

Hate to be skeptical but it's raining here, a norther on the way, a good excuse to "postpone" the trial run! I agree with Stan, I'll wait till the novelty wears off, wouldnt want to be bustituted in my hometown!(as a Senior I can ride the bus and Red Line free if I get a Cap Metro ID!)

[had8ley]

From what I'm told the first company that had the CapMetro contract really screwed things up. It's only taken Herzog, the new contractor, about four months to get this thing up and running. I've watched the news reels of gates crashing down on cars for no apparent reason before Herzog showed up. The first contractor was the same outfit that was involved in the California text messaging engineer that caused all the fatalities. Give Herzog a chance; they have a pretty good track (no pun intended). record. BTW, it was Austin that only wanted two car trains; hopefully the system will grow but I did notice only two car trains on the TRE in off hours and their ridership is probably a lot more than Austin can be with only 32 miles of trackage to Leander.
All I can say about the bus is it's better than getting left at the station if somebody dropped you off.

This post has been edited by had8ley: 01 March 2010 - 12:28 PM

[jimhudson]

had8ley, on Mon, Mar 1, 2010, 08:41 AM, said:

From what I'm told the first company that had the CapMetro contract really screwed things up. It's only taken Herzog, the new contractor, about four months to get this thing up and running. I've watched the news reels of gates crashing down on cars for no apparent reason before Herzog showed up. The first contractor was the same outfit that was involved in the California text messaging engineer that caused all the fatalities. Give Herzog a chance; they have a pretty good track (no pun intended). record. BTW, it was Austin that only wanted two car trains; hopefully the system will grow but I did notice only two car trains on the TRE in off hours and their ridership is probably a lot more than Austin can be with only 32 miles of trackage to Leander.

Thanks for the info Had8ley, CapMetro itself has been the real problem here, they "Managed" to turn a $30million surplus into a huge deficet while building the Red Line by such methods as Cadillac Stations, "studies",consultants, lawyers etc. etc. Now they have shut down the Armadillo Tourist psuedo trolleys that used to run downtown, they are for sale and Im sure some smart city will snap them up! The new Cap Metro board still has some politicians on it but actually has a couple of real folks that will actually ride public transportation as opposed to showing up in limos for photro ops! Glad to hear that Herzog has a good track record, might be interested to know that the next phase of light rail that Austin builds to the airport will NOT be done/operated by Capital Metro, can't imagine why? The fiasco with the gates came about because the various kinds of software CapMetro purchased wasnt compatible with other aspects of the system and Veola took the fall for this as they should have IMO! Fingers crossed, well be riding the Red Line soon! (BTW-the two car trains are a CapMetro decision,they purchased plenty of cars,too many some said, so will have plenty of spares parked in the yard if needed)

This post has been edited by jimhudson: 01 March 2010 - 12:54 PM

[George Harris]

A quick look at Wikipedia says that Veolia Transport was formerly known as Connex and is a subsidiary of a water supply and waste management (read that garbage collection) company. There were other corporate name changes in the past.

This post has been edited by George Harris: 02 March 2010 - 02:42 PM