The Chronicle‘s Rad Sallee reports that two area Democratic members of Congress are pushing for federal money to fund light-rail lines that METRO promised voters in the 2003 referendum:
As Metro began negotiations with a contractor to oversee construction of four planned bus rapid transit lines, two local members of Congress said Thursday they will push for federal money to fund light rail lines instead.
Metro said last year it would build the lines with rail in the ground and operate buses in their own right-of-way — separated from other traffic — along the track until ridership grows enough to justify switching to trains.
Some residents who voted for light rail in a 2003 referendum have objected to that, and Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, both D-Houston, said they would work with the Democratic majority in Congress to get the rail funding.
We do not often print the following words, but Reps. Jackson Lee and Green are correct.
The 2003 referendum specified light rail (not bus rapid transit) routes, and it promised a 50% increase in bus service. Minority communities such as those represented by Reps. Jackson Lee and Green were targeted by pro-rail advocates, and likely provided the winning margin in the referendum vote.
Since then, those communities have seen cuts in bus service (called service improvements!), and bus rapid transit lines substituted for the promised light rail lines. There has also been an effort to route the Westpark light rail line away from Westpark (which would best service riders in the impoverished Gulfton area) to areas that are favored by Galleria-area real-estate developers, architects whose firms hope to capitalize on certain types of projects, bloggers who live in the Heights, and other special interests.
At some point, we would expect some communities that are more dependent on mass transit than others to ask what METRO is doing for them.
UPDATE: In a semi-related story, Bennett Roth of the Chronicle‘s vestigial D.C. bureau speculates that new Congressional rules on earmarks may or may not affect funding of Houston projects, including transit projects.
