In 1985, voters in Austin established the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority, known locally as CapMetro, to provide public transportation service to the greater Austin area. The services provided today by CapMetro include bus services, paratransit services for persons with disabilities, and a commuter rail.
Austin residents know the big blue buses well.
Along with the creation of CapMetro, voters approved a 1% sales tax that would generate revenues to be solely dedicated to the new public transportation system. In 2024, the 1% sales tax for CapMetro is expected to generate almost $400 million in revenue for the transit agency.
In a press release from CapMetro in 2020 celebrating its 35 years of service, the agency says it has “provided more than 1 billion rides to Central Texans,” provides “free fares for K-12 students” and “brought the first electric buses to Central Texas.”
Critics of CapMetro argue that the transit system is only used by “about 3% to 4%” of Austin commuters and ridership has “stayed relatively flat” between 1990 and 2019.
So, we took a look at the numbers.
The earliest data we could find on total ridership for CapMetro was a report by the Texas Department of Transportation Research Library. It shows that total ridership in 1990 was 23,740,000. Over the next 18 years, ridership grew to 33,500,000. A 41% increase.
Then from 2008 to 2022, according to CapMetro total ridership declined to 20,482,594, a 38.9% decrease.
Over the same time periods, CapMetro’s sales tax revenue and budget grew significantly. The budget grew from $38 million to $237 million from 1990 to 2008, a 523% increase. Then from 2008 to 2022, it grew an additional 178% to $658 million. In 2024, the approved budget is $871 million.
And the population of Travis County (although the CapMetro service area is more than just Travis County), has increased by 130% from 1990 to 2022.
While the COVID pandemic is part of the explanation and impacted CapMetro, the data shows that is not the whole story. The 2019 pre-pandemic ridership for CapMetro was 31.2 million, still below the 2008 ridership figures.
A study by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies concluded, “the pandemic has dramatically accelerated a broader decline in public transit use across the nation. While the causes and scale are different, the current drop in transit ridership induced by the coronavirus comes after five years of falling transit patronage nationwide.”