Free Republic

Williamson County Republican reshaped Austin area's transportation system State Rep. Mike Krusee, a Williamson County Republican who reshaped the Austin area's transportation system and, with Gov. Rick Perry, turned Texas toward a toll-centric approach to highway building, will not seek re-election next year. Krusee, 48, is not leaving the public stage right away. He will serve out his term, which runs through January 2009; will continue serving on national panels on transportation and urban planning; and could return to a statewide post after he retires from the Legislature. Talk around the Capitol is that Krusee, who has served in the...

Agency cites weather, clamp down on disability rides for some of the loss but acknowledges that its 2007 estimates were a 'bit aggressive.' By Ben Wear AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Thursday, September 06, 2007 Capital Metro, even with persistently high gas prices providing an incentive for transit use and a steadily increasing metro population, is losing riders. Ridership, according to figures released by the agency in its 2008 budget, will be 6.2 percent lower in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 than in the previous fiscal year. Capital Metro expects to have just less than 33 million boardings in the current year...

Maybe you've seen the ads, the ones with cute 'toon cars talking about how toll roads would solve their congestion problems. Or a variant where a perky car weaves through traffic and past Austin landmarks to the sound of a guy singing how he's "got to get up to speed." At the end, the car happens on a toll road blessedly free of other cars. Commuter nirvana. It didn't take long after those ads began running on television and in theaters a couple of weeks ago for the e-mails to come in. They can't do that, right? No way they...

I've come up with a way to help Capital Metro pay for the proposed downtown streetcar line. Let the street people help out by taking up a collection at the intersections around town. Sure, this is going to be a little tough and would require some diligent work from Austin's appraisal-deprived community. The proposed line would cost $233 million, and Cap Metro says it can afford to fork over only about 20 percent of that figure. That leaves a shortfall of nearly $187 million. What this means is that if you had 100 winos hanging out at 25 intersections raising...

Personally, I think we should get rid of all the Capital Metro buses, because they're always in the way. If you gave everybody in Austin who rides the bus a battery-powered Vespa, you'd save tax money, you'd help the environment, and traffic would move more smoothly. The only trouble with this plan is that the crazy people wouldn't have any place to go tee-tee. I've found yet another reason why Cap Metro should be mothballed. Having trouble telling if that Cap Metro bus you're stuck behind in downtown traffic is dead or actually moving? Well, no wonder. It seems that...

Two transit agency buses were ruined by fire traced to defects, lawsuit contends By Claire Osborn AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Friday, January 23, 2004 Capital Metro has sued a California company that it says sold the agency 162 buses that have a design defect that causes the engines to catch fire. In 2002, fires destroyed two of the buses during their Austin bus routes, according to the lawsuit. The buses, purchased from Gillig Corp. will cost $500,000 to replace, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday. Repairs to the other buses purchased from Gillig in 1998 have exceeded $165,000, the lawsuit states. Investigators...