No new Capital Metro bus service will start in Cedar Park next month after the Austin suburb's city council voted 3-3 last night on the proposal. The stalemate meant council would not take action to approve the approximately $80,000 that Cedar Park would have to pay Cap Metro for the one year pilot.
"One of my main concerns was that CapMetro receives funding from the federal government because of the population of City of Cedar Park," Council Member Tony Dale told KUT News in explaining why he opposed the deal.
"They've been collecting this money since at least 2000, and it's somewhere in the range of $600,000 since then that's been collected," he said. "We have on more than one occasion requested these funds be passed through to the City of Cedar Park and they have not done that."
"I want that issue resolved first," Dale said.
The Cedar Park Citizen reports that several residents spoke out against the agreement with CapMetro at yesterday's meeting, citing a distrust in Austin's public transit agency.
Mayor Pro Tem[Mitch Fuller] said the best decision the city ever made was to leave Cap Metro, which was greeted by applause from many of those in attendance at the meeting. But he said the city would have to figure out public transportation if it is to achieve the goal of being a destination city.
Austin Community College had been hoping Cedar Park would approve the deal to improve access to its campuses in the area. ACC would have pitched in about $25,000 for the service.
CapMetro produced this Google Map that shows exactly where the service bus route would have gone.
