New bus service announced

In a city council meeting held on Oct. 6, the city of Round Rock's Department of Transportation revealed that a new demand response bus service will replace the city's current bus service Capital Area Rural Transportation System (CARTS) whose contract is up with the city. The new bus service may not be running until mid-year 2012.

Transportation Director Gary Hudder said that the new service in the works may not be activated until June as a result of a lengthy process to obtain federal funding for the new program.

"It'll take a board directive but we believe that they'll be okay to continue into 2012 as we need them to." Hudder said.

The service could be activated as early as March but this would require the city to move forward without federal funding to aid the new transportation service and the new program would be a self- funded program, according to Hudder.

The city's budget for the demand response bus service is currently set at $510,000. The new demand response service would potentially cost the city $489,000 for operations and the federal funding would contribute $195,600 for the service. Without this federal funding, the city would incur the entire $489K in operation costs.

Austin Community College student Michael Koch, who attends Round Rock campus, says he understands how the federal funding could affect the new demand response program, but he still is unhappy with the situation.

"To me, it seems like the city is basically forcing the public to wait three months just to save money in the long run," Koch said. "It makes sense in a business sense but the public shouldn't be forced to wait that long."

In addition to the lengthy process waiting for federal funding, Hudder said the new bus service will not be available to transport riders into Austin, Georgetown, Temple, or Cedar Park.

"What CARTS has done, because they've got relationships and similar service contracts with other communities, they have at their own choosing been providing service [to these areas]," Hudder said.

When the new demand response bus service is first activated they will be unable to provide service to those areas unless funding and efficiency issues are taken care of, according to Hudder.

The city of Round Rock is currently moving forward through the selection process between 4 unnamed vendors to provide the new service. One of the potential downsides of the extension into the 2012 year could possibly be a limitation in the operation of the CARTS service for the citizens of Round Rock. The manager at CARTS warned this could include limited routes into and out of Austin and other surrounding areas.

Jeanette Spencer, an art major at ACC's Round Rock Campus, believes that it may do more harm than good having the limited service if CARTS does extend service through next year.

"I guess it's one of those things that are unavoidable when you're dealing with a service that basically isn't under contract anymore," Spencer said. "It's really up to them to decide how they run the service. I'm not sure that it's fair to the public, though, especially for some ACC Students."