In her excellent “Trust Us” post earlier, Anne Linehan linked to this story by Nancy Sarnoff.
For those METRO patrons wondering why METRO has cut their bus services and is now giving them buses that resemble trains instead of actual promised rail lines while the Galleria gets a new rail line in the revised $2 billion plan Mayor White won’t let them vote on, it’s probably worth highlighting these tidbits:
“Traffic is so bad that some people just shy away,” said David Wolff, Metro’s chairman, who also runs a land development company based in the Galleria area.
Indeed, occupancies in office buildings there have suffered because large businesses are moving to places they say are more accessible, like downtown, or to the suburban areas where their employees and customers live.
The Galleria office market had a 21.9 percent vacancy rate in the first quarter of this year, according to real estate firm Studley.
People who want to blame Rep. Culberson (R) or Rep. DeLay (R) for a “transit” plan that seems more like a Galleria zoning/development plan may want to take a closer look at the mayor who gladly took their votes, cut their bus services, and says they don’t need to vote on his and Chairman Wolff’s new plan to boost the Galleria.
