AUSTIN – Capital Metro launched the Cap Remap on Sunday, the largest service change in the agency's history.
Cap Metro changed more than 50 bus routes across the Austin area. On Sunday, there were about a dozen volunteers located at several bus stops, including Northgate and Rundberg, to ease concerns and answer questions.
Cap Metro also placed employees in a command center, located on North Pleasant Valley Road, where they could answer customer questions by phone and communicate with those out in the field.
“We’re communicating with our teams,” said Robert Gonzalez with Cap Metro. “Teams that are right now involved with providing service on the street. We’ve also been communicating via social media, customers have been contacting our customer service representative who’s here and we’ve been able to filter back directly to the customers.”
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With the added resources and new routes, some see the changes as positive ones.
"I ride the bus every day, pretty much every day,” said Daniel Phagans, bus rider. "I stay central off of Cameron Road, and my neighborhood never had the bus go up and down, and now I can literally leave out the house, go around the corner and the bus is right there, which is great."
Cap Metro got rid of 15 routes across the city. Thirteen were replaced with alternatives. Two of them weren’t replaced. In all, Cap Metro is adding eight high-frequency routes that run every 15 minutes.
“There are other routes that are operating in new corridors, new areas that we haven’t been to before, for instance 38th Street, East Slaughter Lane, those are routes that are now coming into play," said Gonzalez.
For details on the route changes, click here.
Volunteers will be at bus stops throughout the city until June 6 to answer any questions people may have about the changes.