AUSTIN, Texas — Austin public transportation provider Capital Metro (CapMetro) apologized after customers experienced delays at the new McKalla Station after Austin FC's home opener on Saturday night.
CapMetro opened the new station on Saturday to coincide with Austin FC's opening match of the season, as the station's drop-off point is less than 100 feet away from the Q2 Stadium entrance.
CapMetro President and CEO Dottie Watkins said there was a record number of passengers using the rail on Saturday night. CapMetro officials expected about 2,300, which the transit provider saw on the first Austin FC match last season, but ended up with over 4,500 customers.
Watkins said prior to the match, they experienced a mechanical issue on one of the trains and a crossing malfunction at MLK Station that needed to be repaired, along with a mechanical failure of one of the switches.
CapMetro apologized for not hitting the mark and said moving forward, it plans to use the entire Mckalla Station platform on gamedays instead of just part of it. CapMetro officials want to improve communication with their passengers by having more staff at the stations and updating social media when things are going differently than planned.
The transit agency said for every home game moving forward, it will run all trains for the entire day instead of just at match time. You can also expect to see more buses running between McKalla Station and the Downtown and the Leander stations.
To make up for the delays on Saturday, passengers can ride for free on March 9 for the Austin FC game and South by Southwest.
Capmetro said this $60 million investment for this new station will not be a letdown.
"I want to go on record and apologize to anybody who, just, the level of service wasn't at what it needed to be," said Andrew Skabowski, CapMetro's executive VP. "Our commitment moving forward is to offer free fares on Saturday because we want to try to see if we can do this again. We're hoping everybody will come back and try this again."
On Sunday, Watkins posted a statement on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, saying CapMetro is committed to correcting the service.
Read Watkins' full statement below:
"We’re going to try this again, but first — on behalf of all CapMetro, I want to apologize to our rail customers whose experience was impacted by last night's service. We are committed to getting this right and we will do better. Yesterday we debuted our new McKalla Rail Station just steps away from Q2 Stadium. Customers, fans and all our staff were excited to experience the new station. We encouraged customers to use our rail service, and that they did. We moved record numbers of people, over 4000 customers, on the CapMetro Red Line last night. That’s nearly double the passenger count of previous Austin FC matches.
"We know that some of y’all were disappointed with your experience getting to the match last night, and we were too. Our teams are already preparing and learning from yesterday’s lessons to align our service appropriately for the next home match, which will coincide during the first weekend of SXSW. The $60 million investment we celebrated yesterday morning is not something that will let our community down. It will enhance how we move people, improve placemaking, and support our region’s vitality for years to come, in addition to Austin FC related service."