Lida Lewis
PASSIONATE DESIGNER
EDUCATOR | THOUGHT LEADER
CMTA (Capital Metro Transit Authority)
Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (CMTA, or CapMetro) is the regional public transportation leader for Central Texas. CapMetro was created in 1985 in accordance with Chapter 451 of the Texas Transportation Code and was established by a voter referendum on January 19, 1985 to provide mass transportation service to the greater Austin metropolitan area.
Deeply connected to the greater community, CMTA is a part of keeping the city connected not only in their movement about the city, but also in times of need. Since 2012, Capital Metro has partnered with the Central Texas Food Bank and Whole Foods Market on the Stuff the Bus program, which collects funds and meals for our community in need. In 2020, the program collected enough to provide more than 20,000 meals to Central Texans. Capital Metro supports emergency response operations, both within and outside of the service area, by sending buses to be used as temporary shelters during floods, fires, and other emergencies. In addition, when temperatures fall below 32 degrees, Capital Metro sends “cold weather buses” for Austin-area residents experiencing homelessness, transporting them to local emergency shelters in cooperation with the city of Austin’s Office of Emergency Management. Additionally, Capital Metro transported water to neighbors in need during the Winter Storm of 2021. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Capital Metro's Demand Response team quickly pivoted to help
deliver more than 900,000 meals to more than 30,000 households
Austin, Texas is growing rapidly--and so is the transit system that supports it. The Central Texas region is one of the fastest growing areas in the country, and mobility and traffic congestion remain top concerns. According to the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) 2040 Regional Transportation Plan, the total population in the six-county Central Texas region is projected to continue to increase, growing from 1.7 million in 2010 to more than 4.1 million in 2040. The number of area jobs is also projected to increase from 775 thousand to 2.3 million.
It is projected Central Texas population of 2 million will double by 2040. In that same time, road capacity is expected to increase by only 15 percent. This growth will cause additional strain on the roadway network, result in increased travel times and travel costs, decrease mobility, hinder the region’s economic health, and threaten air quality. In 2019, the Austin City Council approved the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan (ASMP), which establishes a policy goal to quadruple the share of commuters who use transit by 2039. The Project Connect Vision Plan is included as an integral part of the ASMP and both initiatives provide a way forward for solving future mobility challenges the region faces.
All of this growth means that the facilities for CMTA are now, and continue to, develop at an exponential rate. If that weren't enough, all of this also started to take shape during the onslaught of the pandemic, and the seismic shift that was creating in the fundamental concepts of how work works. A bled of desk-based administrative and deskless operations positions, the changes at CMTA and throughout Austin were revolutionary.
The internal facilities management team at CMTA retained our firm to create the workplace standards that would help provide some structure and critical analysis to the process of developing its facilities, and its workplace strategies. It was a moment in time made for this work, and we engaged in many robust conversations, surveys, and analyses to develop 3 major workplace types. Discussions also ranged toward developing processes, such as an integrative design approach to site development, and (an existential question) why the workplace should still exist in the modern age.
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This work is ongoing, and is expanding into a larger suite of standards, tools, and guidelines. Below are a few images from the developing package of which I am the prime designer and author, and the narrative that accompanying them.
