The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority, officially stylized as CapMetro, is a public transportation provider located in Austin, Texas. It operates bus, paratransit services and a commuter rail system known as the Capital MetroRail in Austin and several suburbs in Travis and Williamson counties. In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday as of .
Voters approved the creation of Capital Metro in January 1985, agreeing to fund the organization with a one percent sales tax. Operations began in July 1985 and Capital Metro took over City of Austin bus services in 1986. In 2010, the Capital MetroRail Red line, the agency's first rail service, began operations.
History
Predecessors
The predecessors of Capital Metro date back to the late 1800's with the establishment of streetcar services in Austin. In 1874, the City of Austin granted the Austin City Railroad Company a franchise for a "horse or mule railroad" on Congress Avenue, Pecan Street (since renamed Sixth Street), and 11th Street. Construction of the line began on Pecan in November 1874 and mule-drawn streetcars began operations in January the next year. The company changed ownership several times until 1889 when it was bought by a group of Boston and Chicago investors who planned to extend services and convert the system to electricity. However, before they could do so a new competitor began operations.
In 1890, real estate developer Monroe M. Shipe received a city charter to operate electric streetcars on city streets. Initially, this covered only roads not already occupied by other track but he later convinced the city council to also allow him to operate on Congress Avenue and Pecan Street. Shipe had started a streetcar suburb venture two and a half miles north of the city called Hyde Park, the destination for the first line. By February 1891, Shipe had built 5 miles of track, a new powerhouse to provide electricity for the line, and began operations as the Austin Rapid Transit Railway Company in places running just a few feet from the mule car tracks.
Just a few months after the electric streetcars started running, an Austin City Railroad mule stable was destroyed in a fire and a few weeks later the company merged into the Austin Rapid Transit Railway leading to the end of mule-drawn service in October. The streetcar service faced challenges over the next years including a lack of power that forced the service to return to mules at several points. In 1897, the company began buying power from the first Austin Dam, which had been completed in 1893, but in 1899 a drought and breakdown of a company-owned powerhouse left them without power for months. Then, in April 1900, the Austin Dam failed catastrophically. Following the dam break, the electric streetcars were again mule-drawn until the company finished building its own power plant.
The Austin Rapid Transit Railway had operated at a loss from 1892 and was in receivership from 1897 until it shut down in 1902 selling its assets at auction to its president, F. H. Watriss. Watriss established the Austin Electric Railway Company in 1902 and the old company was merged into the new one. The new company lasted until 1911 when it was bought by New England investors and renamed the Austin Street Railway Company. In the early 1910s the company faced stiff competition from jitney drivers who would follow streetcar lines offering cheaper service but those disappeared when they were unable to meet a city bond requirement. From the late 1910s into the 1930s, increasing automobile usage cut into streetcar revenue.
Austin Street Railway began offering bus service on certain routes in the late 1920s. At the time, the company was operating 23 miles of track but by 1939 that was down to 17 miles and it was running 29 miles of bus routes. The last streetcar line to operate was the main line which began on Congress Avenue, ran south of the capitol to Lavaca Street, north on Lavaca to 19th street, then west to Guadalupe ending in a loop at Hyde Park. It was replaced by bus service in February 1940 and the same month Austin Street Railway changed its name to the Austin Transit Company.