Among the roughly 100,000 transit trips taken in Austin on Wednesday, perhaps one of the most notable was the 3-mile jaunt that began when Randy Clarke, the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s new CEO, started his first day on the job by boarding the No. 17 at Republic Square Park. Clarke, who lives downtown, had previously pledged to regularly ride his agency’s buses, a commitment he stuck to by taking the 17, which is one of two routes that stop in front of Capital Metro’s East Austin headquarters. The agency had alerted the media that Clarke would be available at the park for roughly an hour before his departure, but an overnight police shooting hijacked the attention of local news outlets, prompting Clarke and team to head out early, just minutes before the Austin Monitor arrived on the scene. No problemo, say we, since one of Clarke’s other actions on his first morning was to create a Twitter account through which we trust he will be virtually available to answer all of our important and engaging questions around the clock.
