So yesterday we were going to swim lessons and I noticed 5 kids walking along the 71 access road. I pointed them out to Julie as "Schools back in session". Then I realized. Those kids were walking from the Govalle bus back to our neighborhood. Which meant that they had to walk 1/4 mile from Travis High to the 7-11 at Oltorf and Parker. Take the bus down Parker to Parker and 71, then walk 1/2 mile back into our neighborhood.
Then this morning I noticed a woman and her child waiting at the bus stop by Ware Rd. And a guy walking home from work along Burleson from Oltorf.
So while the bus might not have had high ridership, it definitely reached places that other buses don't and the loss of service is affecting people in very obvious ways.

So according to this story, Round Rock has developed an express bus service. But not any express bus service, this one takes riders from downtown Round Rock to the CapMetro park and ride facility at Tech Ridge.

For those not in the know. Round Rock has declined to be part of Capital Metro. This is why they don't have bus service in Round Rock.

So rather than have an express ride into downtown Austin you get an express ride to pickup another express bus almost completely subsidized by Austin citizens!

They're also talking about building rail to take their residents from downtown Round Rock to one of the Red Line stops. In other words, they get public transportation for their citizens almost completely subsidized by the citizens of neighboring cities!

This would be less obnoxious if Round Rock wasn't ridiculously rich thanks to the tax receipts it collects for every Dell Computer sold in the state of Texas.

We don't need a border wall in the valley. We need one along Howard and McNiel.

So, we found out yesterday that the most convenient bus to me is planned to go away. I can't say I'm surprised. It goes to a couple industrial parks South of me, tools through my neighborhood, heads downtown and ends up in Enfield. It's a nice route to have if you need it, but it's hardly transporting a lot of people. I am sad though, because it's part of why I was excited about our house. It's a <20 minute trip downtown on the #9. We're also losing the #328 which went from our area to Barton Creek mall.

It doesn't look like anyone in my neighborhood is interested in fighting it though.

But there are some interesting positives. The number 30 is going to terminate at the South Congress transit center near my house, and go by Central Market, Barton Creek Mall, and Zilker Park. Which is a pretty nice route. The transit center is probably a 20 minute walk or 10 minute bike ride from my house.

We are getting the number 300 Govalle route going by the West side of Mabel Davis park. While it's a bit of a walk to get over there, that route goes by the HEB on Riverside, the MetroRail station (which might be useful if my company moves where they're hinting at), GACA offices and the Blue Theater. So a pretty cool route. I'd thought about taking the 300 before, but it was always a transfer or 1 mile walk. Now it should be a quarter mile walk.

Still a bit sad about the #9. Maybe we'll get a new route down Burleson when the Pleasant Valley extension to Todd Lane gets built.

I've got to be honest. I like the idea of light rail. It's cool. It's different. But the more I look at non-light rail projects like Capital Metro's Red Line and light rail projects like Dallas and Houston's. I don't know if they justify the cost. When I look at transportation there is one massive problem, and it exists whether we're talking about rail or buses. Transferring sucks. In Austin the best case transfer takes 25 minutes. For the bus that goes closest to my house that could go up to over an hour. So no matter how awesome some potential rail line is, I still have to plan to get my transfers as close as possible. And if I miss my transfer coming home, I've got an hour to wait. I think at the end of the day, the best thing that CapMetro can do is run more buses. They get a lot of flack for empty buses, but I think they could counter this with a convenience message. If their goal is to make sure that you can take a bus and never wait more than 5 minutes for a transfer, then the bus becomes much more convenient for getting places. And if a commute takes 45 minutes rather than 65 minutes, that's a huge difference in deciding to ditch a car. And if a trip to the grocery store takes 15 minutes by bus rather than 35 minutes, I'd be much more likely to consider the bus. We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to build the new Red Line, what kind of additional bus service could we get for that? And what about a line going up and down 360 with WiFi? It seems like no one would take it, but I'd contend that with good advertising it could be a packed route. There are a lot of workaholics on 360 and if you could let them work on their commute they'd jump at it. I think this is a big difference between the potential audience on 360 and the audience currently being shuttled into downtown.

I've seen this argument a lot in cases where we're talking about transit. Paul Burka over at Texas Monthly has written the latest:

I get it now. This is a real estate play. Freeways have changed cities in ways that are less than desirable. They cut off neighborhoods from the rest of the city. They are business-unfriendly, because they move traffic past commercial areas. And, of course, they contribute to sprawl and pollution. Rail changes cities in ways that are desirable. They combat sprawl by concentrating development around rail stations. The provide an opportunity for redeveloping deteriorating residential and commercial areas and adding value to the tax rolls. Freeways are better at moving people. Rail is better at moving civic values. This is why the business community in North Texas has thrown all of its weight behind this bill, and this is why it is going to pass, and Governor Perry is going to let it become law. It’s the oldest of power principles: Let the big dog eat.

But if Austin ever gets to vote on such a plan, I’ll never vote to let my gas tax money be used for rail.

What an abrupt change. He rattles of a list of benefits and then says he'll never let his money go towards it. I see these sort of "arguments" all the time. My mother is a big proponent of them. It's the "even though you and your friends want to take transit and this will make my experience driving better because you're off the road, I'm going to vote against it on the off chance that this will eventually lead to me having to take transit" argument.

It's amazing the phsycology of the human brain. And so hard to fight against these really base arguments. They seem to be ingrained at a really deep level that logic can't touch.