Mike Levy has been circulating an interesting article about Capital Metro's fetishized transit system in Portland. Apparently, Atlanta's system which better approximates ours in funding and demographic blows Portland away:
from newgeography.com

As we all know, a lot of our own tax dollars are spent to fight against us. One of these expenditures is on lobbying. Capital Metro, the City of Austin and various real estate and contractor interests "invest" tons of money to influence the federal government to bankroll their projects which consume precious dollars that would be more wisely spent on bus transit. The Center for Public Integrity tracks the multitude of lobbyists who are working against the public good. Here is a national map they have produced that shows the magnitude of the lobbying effort.

in 1906 the Austin city council passed an ordinance to segregate Austin's streetcars. Check out this short video about the boycott: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/library/ahc/blackinthepast.htm
As Capital Metro tries to raise fares on the people of color who make up the majority of bus riders to pay for the Leander train whose riders will be 99% white, how far have we come in 103 years?

Our great friends at http://freepublictransit.org/ turned us on to this fantastic video about the decay of U.S. public transportation:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2486235784907931000&hl=en#

When we were sold "All Systems Go," it was with a promise of BRT. (aka Rapid Bus) This system has yet to materialize, and there will likely be another round of train voting next year before we ever see the mythical RapidBus. Countless millions have been poured into this according to the budgets since the 2004 vote. These millions are gone forever.
We were also promised hike and bike trails. As a bicyclist, I was looking forward to using these trails. I had hopes to use the train too as it lives where I work, but I soon found out it doesn't actually stop there.

The City of Austin has a policy forbidding purchase of products made in sweatshops. Metro has no such policy. It is hard to pinpoint how much of the seat fabric and worker uniform items are made in sweatshops. It is a safe bet given Metro's historical insensitivity that it is a lot.

Capital Metro's dismal rail failure has inspired a regular column in the Austin Chronicle called "MetroRail Watch:"
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A823766

Join our Face book group!
http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=bus+riders+union+of+austin&n=-1&k=400000...
that is all........

Due in part to public pressure for greater transparency, the transit authority has begun publishing the President's monthly report to the board online:
http://www.capmetro.org/news/news_detail.asp?id=6516
In the past this was merely a point at the end of board meetings (the part after the part when McCracken leaves) that Gilliam does his blithering best to "hypmotize" the board.
The most noteworthy element of the reports for '09 is that ridership is DOWN every month so far. Not just down, but way down-about 10%. (prorating for leap year of course)