Austin is planning to build its first modern light-rail system, if the plans — dubbed Project Connect — can survive legal and political challenges.
But what exactly is light-rail? How would riding Austin’s system be any different than taking the bus or the existing Red Line commuter rail? And why does it cost so much?
Let's answer those questions.
Light-rail runs on steel tracks down city streets, often with priority at traffic signals and dedicated lanes to keep trains moving faster than traffic. It's designed for high-capacity routes where large numbers of people want to travel quickly.
The smooth steel tracks mean riders experience fewer bumps, less vibration and a quieter ride than on the diesel-powered buses that make up three-quarters of Capital Metro's bus fleet.
"Buses are bone-shaking contraptions," said Lyndon Henry, a transportation consultant who has been pushing for light-rail in Austin for more than 50 years. "You don't have the kind of pleasant riding experience you have on a light-rail train."
"Now, I ride the bus a lot. You need buses," Henry said. "But by comparison, there's much more vibration, much more noise."
Unlike Austin's existing rail service — CapMetro's Red Line, which runs on freight tracks completely separate from city streets — light-rail would operate on the street in its own lane.
Stations would be closer together than the Red Line. Trains would arrive far more frequently with the goal of accommodating shorter trips within the city.
Ron Tober, a longtime transit official who's worked in Seattle, Cleveland and Charlotte, N.C., says light-rail fills a gap between commuter rail and heavy-rail transit by using tracks embedded in streets instead of constructed on their own separate strip of land.
"With heavy-rail transit, you have to build totally exclusive rights-of-way. So you have the extra cost," he said. "It's like subways in New York and Boston and Philadelphia and Chicago and Los Angeles and now in Seattle."
Austin's 9.8-mile starter system would travel in three directions from the south shore of Lady Bird Lake — north, east and south — with trains arriving every five minutes during peak hours north of Lady Bird Lake and every 10 minutes south. Trains coming from the southern and eastern sections would converge at Waterfront Station, doubling the frequency of trains in North Austin.
During less busy times of day, trains would show up every 7.5 minutes north of the river and every 15 minutes south, according to Austin Transit Partnership (ATP), an agency created by the city and CapMetro to build and finance light-rail.
Traveling from the northern tip of the line at 38th Street and Guadalupe to the southern end at Oltorf Street and South Congress would take 20 minutes, 13 minutes less than current bus service, ATP says.
Going from 38th Street to the eastern light-rail terminus at Yellow Jacket Lane would take about 26 minutes, saving 19 minutes over the bus, which requires a transfer.
The dedicated lanes and traffic signal priority allows light-rail to travel in streets while still offering a faster, higher-capacity alternative to buses and more consistent timing.
Peter Eccles, a frequent user of public transit in Houston, said the city's 22.7-mile light-rail system improved his daily commute.
"I used to take the 82 [bus] in Houston every day, the busiest bus route in Texas," Eccles said of the route with more than 12,000 weekday boardings. "Sometimes it would show up and then I wouldn't have to wait very long, and sometimes I'd have to be waiting 20 minutes, and multiple buses would show up at once. That's a very difficult experience."
"Now, I live closer to the light-rail in Houston. I'm a short walk, and it also runs every six minutes," Eccles said. "The light-rail has its own lane. It has priority at the traffic signals, and it is able to run in that sort of controlled environment that they can provide a consistent experience every time."
But even Eccles — who works on policy for a transit advocacy group called LINK Houston — admits light-rail isn't the best mode of transit for all situations.
"I try to be what I'd call mode agnostic," he said. "The most important things for me as a transit rider are the things that are really fundamental factors of the experience. Like, how frequent does it run? How fast does it get me where I'm going? Does it easily move through traffic?"
Light-rail should be reserved for high-demand corridors, he said.
Houston's METRORail system carries more than 40,000 riders on an average weekday. By comparison, Austin's planned system is projected to carry 29,000 a day by 2045, but with less than half the mileage.
The two-car trains on Houston's Red Line can fill up during peak hours, Eccles said. Each of the cars can carry up to 200 passengers. Austin's light-rail vehicles will each carry 200 to 270 passengers with the possibility of linking together two or more cars.
"It would take a lot more buses, a lot more [drivers] and just generally larger maintenance costs to be running a similar level of service for buses," Eccles said.
Moving a single passenger 1 mile costs less by light-rail than by bus, according to data from the Federal Transit Administration. But the calculation doesn't factor in the higher costs of building light-rail.
Austin's light-rail system comes with a hefty price tag: $7.1 billion. That includes at least $1 billion for the train vehicles and a 62-acre maintenance yard near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The project would displace up to 64 businesses and four single-family homes. More than 600 on-street parking spaces would be removed to create space for the trains.
"Because rail has the potential to be significantly more expensive, you need higher volumes of ridership to get that cost per rider down," said Jeff Brown, a transportation planning professor at Florida State University. "You're just spreading the cost. The more people you can spread that cost over, the lower the cost per individual served."
Opponents of the light-rail plan argue bus-rapid transit (BRT) — a high-frequency bus service that often uses dedicated lanes — could achieve similar benefits at a lower cost.
"There's no reason I can think of why bus-rapid transit could not also serve that corridor," said Larry Akers with Mobility Austin, a group calling for a citywide on-demand transit service like CapMetro's Pickup.
CapMetro's newest pair of BRT routes began running in February and will ramp up to 10-minute frequencies in 2026. Combined, the new routes cost $101 million for 27 miles: $3.75 million per mile. But only about 5% of those miles are dedicated lanes, meaning buses will still compete with traffic for most of the route.
Still, some transportation experts say expanding bus service citywide would do more to improve mobility than a 10-mile light-rail line in Central Austin.
"I love bus because you can change the route," says Kara Kockelman, a transportation engineering professor at UT Austin. "What I don't like about light-rail is how inflexible it is."
Proponents say the system isn't just about improving commute times, but also about making transit a more reliable, everyday option in a city where only 4% of people take the bus to work. By offering a smoother, faster alternative to buses, they hope light-rail will attract more riders and reshape at least parts of the city into more densely populated, walkable areas.
"We're building light-rail, but also improvements to moving people by all modes of travel," said Lindsay Wood, ATP's executive vice president of engineering and construction. "We're building miles of sidewalks and bikeways and improving the safety and comfort of how people move around by adding shade."
If all goes according to plan, construction on the system would start in 2027 with service beginning in 2033.
But with the $7.1 billion price tag and uncertainty around lawsuits, potential state legislation and the federal funding intended to pay for half the project, the future of light-rail in Austin remains up in the air.
