Nearly 100 Capital Metro employees and their family arrived at the downtown Austin rail station Thursday afternoon to act as passengers by buying tickets and riding the trains.
“It was a smooth ride,” said Steven Tapia. ”Good service. The train was off a little bit here and there time-wise by a couple minutes, but this is just a test.”
As part of this test, the trains are running their planned schedule, stopping at all nine stations.
The first train left downtown Austin at 3:45 p.m. -- its destination Leander, the northern-most point. Hours earlier, the employees tested the ticket vending machines.
“The nine stations had about 15 people at each station trying to buy every kind of ticket that it could spit out,” said Dianne Mendoza. “It worked great. There were no glitches.”
“You have to learn the machine,” said Lee Warren. “Then you have a great opportunity to go through it real smoothly after that.”
In less than a month, Capital Metro hopes to open the rail to the public. Capital Metro is in the final two weeks of testing its 32-mile red line. The agency wants to see how the rail works and where it can improve.
During a test run on Monday, the system experienced a server overload on the dispatch communication system, which allows dispatch to communicate with the trains. Testing was stopped for about an hour. Since then, the system has run smoothly.
“Glad we had that issue because we were able to see what the problem was fix it and move on,” said Capital Metro spokesperson Misty Whited.
Federal railroad inspectors are also in Austin testing the system making sure it operates properly.
“So far, we hear we’re doing pretty well. We haven’t had any issues come up and hoping to hear from them soon,” said Whited.
After two years of delays and countless safety violations, there's still no official launch date. Nevertheless, commuters say they can’t wait to hop on.
“As long as it's safe, and as long as they've tested it, and it passes all the tests, I would have no problem riding it,” said Austin resident Ryan Pontius.
The Federal Railroad Administration must sign off on all of the safety issues before the Red Line can open. Capital Metro is not giving any specific date. It says it hopes to have the rail running by the end of the month.
