At an Austin City Council meeting on Thursday, a substantial topic leaves one citizen losing hope in having his voice heard.
“Urban rail is a joke,” Will McLeod said at an Austin City Council meeting Thursday.
McLeod is an Austin resident who left the meeting feeling hopeless after being turned down by the council members and Mayor Lee Leffingwell.
“I am an Austin taxpayer, and one thing that really irks me in particular is rail,” McLeod said.
But the city council thinks otherwise.
Research into Austin’s proposed Urban Rail system was endorsed with another five million dollars Thursday at the Austin City Council meeting.
The council is allotting $1 million to match a $4 million federal grant.
The money will go towards revising original plans for the extension of track between the Mueller Development in East Austin and downtown.
But McLeod said the rail “costs too much and does too little.” He is opinionated based on experience. When McLeod lived in Houston, he said he got off work at the Galleria Mall and would frequently take a 24-hour bus to Sharpstown. But when a metro rail was built at the bus stop, he said, “we kissed that bus goodbye.”
Instead of experiencing a repeat in Austin, he said he would like to see Capital Metropolitan Transit Authority abolished, let the city voters take care of it and have it run by the elected officials. “In other words, we elect the CEO of this, and they can not make these same mistakes.”
However, The Transit Working Group is finding ways to ensure urban rail could be funded in the long term.
If this is approved, the Urban Rail system is expected to cost approximately $550 million and begin operation in 2021.