Capital Metro Fare-Free Imperative
(photo from Austin History Center) by G. Gaven In 1991, bus driver Bob Bovay did a short speech during a Capital Metro Board meeting entitled Punks, Skunks and Drunks. He complained that because bus fares had been suspended, his bus had become overrun with bad riders who made his job harder. With that, bus fares were reimposed and the fare-free era at Metro was over with the exception of a small handful of "ozone action" days and election days. Austin bus driver lore marks this as the one day in human history that the transit authority acquiesced to the union, but according to then Metro Board chair, Stephen Bayer, he lost the vote because of pressure from both anti-tax and pro-train factions on the board and in the community. After leaving the board, Bayer and Tracor CEO Jim Skaggs crafted the High Performance Bus Plan but by then the board was focused on trains and the plan was dismissed as anti-train. Enlightened communities started adopting fare-free transit, and in 200...
