FTA provides $38 million grant for Austin, Texas bus project

Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff delivered a $38 million grant to the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority of Austin, Texas, on Tuesday, which will go toward CMTA’s new MetroRapid bus project. The Austin Business Journal reports the federal funding will cover 80 percent of the project’s total cost.

The MetroRapid project will add another 40 buses and 77 bus stations throughout the state capital. Most of the new vehicles will be concentrated along a pair of new high-capacity north and south routes that run through the downtown area; each of those routes will have a dedicated bus lane.

The buses themselves will be outfitted with signal priority technology, allowing them to prolong green lights as they approach an intersection. Twenty-two new vehicles will be 60 ft long with a capacity of 111 passengers; the remaining 18 will be 40 ft long and carry up to 78 people.

Capital Metro officials expect the new service to be fully operational sometime in 2014, with an anticipated 20,000 boardings per day.