Cap Metro tests the waters of ride-hailing

Have you heard Capital Metro’s new Pickup line?

“Capital Metro is bringing ride hailing to public transportation,” the agency says in a brochure that showed up at my Mueller neighborhood home last week. Well, yes and no. The agency on Tuesday will debut a new service, called Pickup, where you can download an app and use it to arrange a ride. Sounds like ride-hailing, yes. Best of all, it’s free! At least for the next 12 months.

But there are a few details that shave some notable edges off that description. Suffice to say that RideAustin, Fare, Fasten, Lyft and Uber aren’t trembling over the entrance into the market of this new, tax-subsidized competitor.

First of all, the service will be available only three days a week — Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday — and even then only from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. And the rides, both the pickup and the destination, must fall within a 12-square-mile piece of Northeast Austin roughly bounded by Interstate 35 on the west, Airport Boulevard and Manor Road to the south and Little Walnut Creek on the east and north.

So if you want to go from the Mueller area to Reagan High School on Thursday about noon, for instance, or from St. John’s to Capital Plaza or Bartholomew Pool on Saturday afternoon, you’re golden.

As long as you don’t mind waiting up to 15 minutes for the ride and sharing it potentially with eight other people on a small bus. And, by the way, at least initially Cap Metro will devote only two vehicles and five drivers to the service, which will be using drivers who the rest of the time work for the agency’s special door-to-door MetroAccess service for people with disabilities. For those without smartphones, you can also call 512369-6200 to arrange a Pickup. Old school. So, ride-hailing lite. Very lite. “This is really a technology pilot,” said Jane Schroter, Cap Metro’s director of transit systems and project management.