Transportation service to end in Round Rock

The Capital Area Rural Transportation System (CARTS) provides demand-response bus transportation to citizens in most counties in Central Texas and the Texas Hill Country.

According to the CARTS website, the service is formed by an "interlocal agreement by nine county governments in the seventy-five hundred square mile region surrounding the Texas capital city" and it is governed by a member of the Commissioners Courts for each of the nine county governments.

Recently, the City of Round Rock announced that the contract between the city and the CARTS service will expire and

it will not be renewed. The City of Round Rock's Planning and Programs Administrator David Bartels said the city is currently trying to find a replacement

for the service with a private contractor.

Bartels said the reason for the contract not being renewed is because "CARTS is required by law to provide public transportation in a rural community. Back in 2000, the City of Round Rock surpassed 50,000 in population, so we went from a ‘rural community' to a ‘small urban community.'" Round Rock has seen an increase in population from 60,000 in the year 2000 to 100,000 in last year's census.

Although a replacement for the CARTS demand-response service is currently in the works, Bartels says the schedule for procurement of the new service has not been set. Once the new service contract is made with the city of Round Rock, it will take up to 90 days before the new service is actually activated. The contract between CARTS and Round Rock expires on Sept. 30 but CARTS has agreed to continue to provide service until the end of the calendar year for citizens in Round Rock. At that point, the city hopes to have a replacement transit service in place.

In terms of the cost of the new transit service versus the cost of CARTS, Bartels said the difference is mainly in the fact that CARTS was a subsidized service, whereas the new service will be unsubsidized. The CARTS service cost the city $300,000 per year to continue to run whereas the new, unsubsidized service will cost $500,000 per year. One of the potential ways that will be proposed to reduce costs will be to limit ridership to the elderly and the disabled. The city will be getting guidance from the city council for things such as hours of operation to keep costs low.

The City of Round Rock will hold make a 20-minute presentation to the city council to propose service changes to replace the CARTS demand- response service. The meeting will be open to the general public and it will take place on Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. in downtown Round Rock at the Round Rock Public Library. The agenda for the city council meeting will be posted on the City of Round Rock's website one week before the scheduled meeting. For more information interested persons can visit the city's website at www.roundrocktexas. gov and click on "Round Rock City Council" in the top left next to the picture of Mayor Alan McGraw.