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~ 228 CAPITAL AREA RURAL TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM 2010 East Sixth Street. Austin, Texas 78702/ P.O. Box 6050, 78762 512389101 \ Fax 512 478 I I 10 I cartshq@ao\.com September 11, 2000 Honorable David Chiu, Mayor Council members Doiron, Moseley, Hughson, Cox, Mayhew and Tatum City of San Marcos 630 East Hopkins San Marcos, Texas 78666 Dear Mayor and Council members: I am pleased to be here tonight to report on the activities of CARTS in your city and to provide any answers I can to questions you may have. We have made significant progress this year towards our goal of meeting future and current transportation needs in San Marcos with an investment in infrastructure that will serve the city for many years to come and I want to update the council on that. But, I am here tonight in response to concerns expressed about the relative inconvenience of using the San Marcos Transit fixed route services and want to address that matter first. The SMT is a four bus fixed route that operates eight "paired" routes on 30-minute headways. What this means is that the routes were designed to complement one another with origin routes beginning at the top of the hour that meet destination routes on the half hour at a central transfer point. Under this type of "pulse" system a passenger could take as long as an hour to get to his or her destination and as long as an hour to get back. Add to this waiting time for the bus at each end and the business conducted at the destination, and the trip could take the better part of half a day. This is not as convenient as it should be. We agree. And if anything goes wrong, a bus breaks down or is late then whatever trip planning the patron has made can go out the window. Can we improve this situation? Yes, but without an increase in the frequency of buses the improvements necessarily will be in more direct route alignments and perhaps some service routes targeted to specific activity centers, but there are real limitations to a four-bus system. Can we stop running on fixed routes and just go where people call to say they want to go? Yes, we could do that too, but fewer people would be able to use the system. The high side of this type of service in terms of productivity is 3.5-4.0 trips per hour while fixed routes will produce double that if everything is working right. It would be more convenient if you get the ride, but the capacity would be limited so many current users would not get service. It is also a more expensive service, as it requires someone to take the request and dispatch it to the driver. ft lT~1 ~J\\ )0 o ~ )\~ GQ Q;Q vtlJ ~\ ~ . rn ) fJ /1\/1~.5.