Original editorial or commentary #2

The public has majorly distrusted Austin’s transit agency, Capital Metro, for sometime now. Austin and its surrounding areas for a metropolitan are of 1.6 million people, they definitely need a good public transit service. Austin doesn’t trust it yet it needs it. Something needs to be corrected in this equation or the two are going to have problems with each other.

Austin’ major problem is that they view the Capital Metro as incompetent. They are not handling money very well; in fact they are handling the money carelessly. The agency used to have plenty of money in their budget account. Somehow they went from $200 million to $4 million in fall 2009. The drastic drop is too much to explain just by declines in sales tax revenue. The audit on Capital Metro exposed the reason for this drop and the reason for other things that didn’t add up from the knowledge the public has received from the agency.

The agency has kept the public in the dark on a lot of things that they are doing, which is why many things don’t add up. One such thing the audit showed the public is that they have been paying some retired working more than triple the cost they should be receiving as pension each month. Another thing the audit has proved is that Capital Metro spent more money than was need, and planned, on the MetroRail project. Not only were they not cost efficient in creating this rail transit; they aren’t producing the money for it as they should. They aren’t charging seniors or people with disabilities fares to ride and they make up about 30% of the people commuting on the rail and they don’t want to.

All that being said, Capital Metro has a new governing board that is taking ownership for their mistakes. The agency is working on correcting this problem. They spending money on the things they should be and earning back the public’s trust. According to an article by the Statesman, money has “increased to $16 million since he took over — and restoring fiscal management and public trust, he said.” Things with Capital Metro have taken a turn for the better and they need to continue to do so because Austin need to able to trust them because they need w well working public transit system.