So, if you're reading this after 5:25 a.m. today, MetroRail is a rolling reality. Really. Finally.

But now, as the saying goes, comes the hard part.

For Capital Metro, its image battered by the serial delays getting the Red Line open, the agency faces the week-to-week, month-after-month challenge of making 19 daily one-way runs between Leander and downtown Austin safely and efficiently. And the transit authority, its savings depleted by the $105 million MetroRail project and other new facilities built in recent years, must find the money somehow to expand the line's meager capacity.

Money is likewise the challenge for the City of Austin, which wants to build an electric-powered light rail or streetcar system to connect to the diesel-powered Red Line downtown, and for the Lone Star Rail District , charged by the Legislature with developing commuter rail in the Austin-to-San Antonio corridor.

With the Red Line, rail now has its foot in the door in Central Texas. But given the limited number of people who will actually use it each day — about 1,000 — rail will remain mostly a curio unless and until these other projects are in place.

It's worth every penny if we can take the next step, said Austin City Council Member Mike Martinez , who is also Capital Metro's board chairman. It won't be worth it if this is all we do.

Elaine Timbes , Capital Metro's chief operating officer, said the agency and rail operations contractor Herzog Transit Services are ready.

Now we go into maintenance mode, Timbes said. It's just keeping the system in good repair... That's just part of doing business.

As for safety, she said the agency will continue emphasizing to the public the dangers inherent in the system, in having fast-moving trains running near homes and city streets. That's going to be huge, she said. You can't allow the community to become complacent. Or the agency.

Growing pains

Expanding the capacity of MetroRail, however, will be more problematic.

In theory, those 19 runs could have 3,800 boardings a day, or even more as people hop on and off along the way. The agency's self-propelled trains each have 108 seats and room to stand for another 90 passengers. But seven of those runs go in the opposite direction from where most commuters want to go — north to Leander in the morning, south to downtown Austin in the evening — and are unlikely to be heavily loaded with passengers. And some of the other runs are on the edges of rush hour, such as the first train running long before the sun comes up, and might have many empty seats after the hullabaloo over the opening dies down.

To significantly increase MetroRail ridership, the agency will need more train cars and 32 miles of two tracks the whole way. If it wants to hook two cars together, doubling the capacity of the most popular runs during the heart of rush hour, the length of the station platforms will likewise have to be doubled. Expanding the system's capacity would increase annual operating costs as well, requiring more diesel; more engineers, dispatchers and maintenance workers; and more spare parts.

All of this will take money that the agency doesn't have now.

'Double-track'

Right now, the Red Line has four siding tracks — where trains can pass in opposite directions — totaling about 3.6 miles , or about 11 percent of the line.

Capital Metro last week didn't have an estimate available of what it would cost to "double-track" the rest of the Leander-to-downtown line. But the agency in 2008 said laying those four siding tracks had cost $6 million ; based on that, putting down a second track on the other 28.4 miles would cost at least $47 million in 2008 dollars. And Capital Metro won't be spending 2008 dollars when it does it.

Buying the first six Swiss-built train cars and some spare parts cost the agency about $35 million, but the contract with Stadler Bussnang AG allows Capital Metro to buy 12 more at a discount for a little over $50 million. The agency could not furnish an estimate of the cost to lengthen the stations.

In September, the end of the 2009 fiscal year, the agency had less than $11 million in reserve, well under what is recommended: $27 million, or about two months of operating costs. As it tries to regain its financial footing in the next few years, Capital Metro will be hard-pressed to find more money to expand the Red Line.

Given the high costs, federal funds are probably going to be a necessity, possibly combined with a new local source of funding, Capital Metro planning director Todd Hemingson wrote in an e-mail last week.

Hopeful presumption

The City of Austin, meanwhile, is mulling over rail's next steps. The city in the past three years has taken over from Capital Metro the planning and responsibility to pay for an electric-powered light rail or streetcar line. The route in theory would run from the Mueller development in East Austin, through the University of Texas campus, the Capitol complex and downtown, and then go east on Riverside Drive to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Two years ago, the estimate for this was $625 million . City officials now say they want an estimate based on costs in the actual years of construction. Martinez has said that figure probably will exceed $1 billion.

That goes well beyond the city's bonding capacity, and officials have been operating on the assumption that federal funds will make up a big portion of the cost. That's the same hopeful presumption that has underlain many an unfulfilled rail plan in Central Texas over the past 30 years. All of them stalled under the weight of that uncertainty. Only the Red Line, paid for totally with local tax dollars, has managed to proceed.

For now, the urban rail project is in limbo. The Austin City Council this month backed away from a November bond election, saying too many questions about funding and the route remain unanswered.

The Red Line is not going to achieve its final potential until you can transfer to urban rail and get around Central Austin, said John Langmore , a transportation consultant who serves on the Capital Metro board.

The future of the area's other main proposed rail link is likewise unpredictable.

The Lone Star Rail District has maps and plans and political support among the cities and counties along its 115-mile proposed route from Georgetown to San Antonio. What it doesn't have is a reliable tax source like Capital Metro's 1 percent sales tax or a railroad track with room for several passenger trains a day. The route would run along existing Union Pacific track, which the freight carrier uses for more than two dozen long freight trains a day at times.

Talks among Union Pacific and Lone Star officials and even the governor's office have been going on for years about how to create an alternate rail line east of Austin for most of those Union Pacific freight trains, creating reliable windows in the morning and afternoon for commuter trains.

But Union Pacific has made clear it won't bear the bulk of what could be a more than $2 billion cost for that alternate line.

The cost to buy rolling stock for the commuter train service, build stations and pay other expenses of starting up the line is currently estimated at more than $600 million . And annual operating costs would probably far exceed what comes in from ticket revenue.

The challenges are immense, said Hays County Commissioner Jeff Barton , who serves on the Lone Star board. But I am an optimist about Lone Star rail, and I think over the next few years, we are likely to see Lone Star up and operating. It's going to take state and local money.