Mike Kaply had one of those million-dollar ideas while joking around with friends, bemoaning the fact the promised rail service from Leander to Austin has yet to arrive.
“We’ve been waiting on MetroRail forever,” he said.
And, as it often goes with complaining, creativity and cynicism got thrown in the mix.
Cap Metro’s MetroRail, he said, should instead be called MetroFail.
Then instead of sitting around and just laughing about it, Kaply and his friends went to work.
“Less than a day later,” Kaply said, “it went from idea to implementation.”
Within 24 hours, the font used by Cap Metro for MetrolRail had been located and used with the new slogan that began appearing on bumper stickers, water bottles, T-shirts and even baby bibs. The items were then posted on the Internet for sale at www.facebook.com/metrofail.
Frustration with the many delays of the rail service has been brewing in the Kaply household. Kaply said he and his wife moved to Leander in part because of the expected rail service into Austin.
The initial opening date of the light rail service was to have been early 2008. The next big grand opening of the train service was scheduled for March 28, with service beginning March 30.
Citing safety issues with its train operators and then problems with its safety gates signal system, Cap Metro pulled the plug on the opening.
Since then, Cap Metro has continued to work on the safety of its crossing signal systems and fired its train and bus operator company, Veolia Transportation. Herzog Transit Services was hired in place of Veolia to operate the coming rail service.
The most recent date given by the transportation company for the opening of the rail service from Leander to Austin is sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
“It’s a fiasco of epically bad decisions,” Kaply said of the organization’s string of decisions that have led to what will be at least a two-year delay in rail service, including using light-weight rail cars that don’t trigger the rail crossings signals created for heavier freight cars.
“Hindsight is always 20/20,” he said, referencing both Cap Metro’s management decisions as well as his family’s decision to move to Leander.
But as delays happened and number of scheduled stops to Leander was reduced, the expected MetroRail seemed to be less than what they initially hoped for.
“The more we looked, the more we realized (MetroRail) wouldn’t provide anything we wanted, weekend service, late night service,” he said, while taxes paid to Leander are going, in part, to pay for Capital Metro transportation service, which will eventually include rail service.
Even the fact that the Leander station has the names of the additional stops into Austin scrolling on the MetroRail sign when the service is nonexistent is a waste, he said.
“They should just turn off the sign and save electricity,” he said. “People who don’t know look at the sign and think the train is coming.”
Kaply, who works as an independent software consultant, no longer has the need to commute into Austin.
As far as making money off his recent idea, Kaply said he hasn’t sold many items yet, although it’s still early.
He realizes the idea is probably better as an impulse buy than someone having to go online for the purchase.
“If they can see them and touch them,” he said, “they’ll probably buy them.
It’s a business principle Kaply understands and Cap Metro is still working toward: a handful of product, be it a MetroFail t-shirt or a train ticket, is worth more than an empty promise.