The Examiner‘s Mike Reed reports from one of METRO’s recent roadshows:
“This keeps getting presented as rail or more (highway) paving,” Houston City Councilman Oliver Pennington said at one point, taking exception to remarks from trustee Burt Ballanfant. “A lot of people disagree with that.”
It was a far more moderate version of the type of comment an observer could have expected to hear more frequently at this venue in recent years, a time when tempers frequently flared during discussions of the proposed University light-rail line to run down the center of Richmond Avenue.
However, with construction of that line on hold — according to some Metro documents until at least 2017 — most of the talk turned toward transportation and more immediate problems.
“At the end of the day, what you are striving for is to marry the disparate ways of moving around,” board member Ballanfant said.
Metro cited the options, too: better bus service, commuter and light rail, bus rapid transit, HOV and HOT lanes — even street cars.
What is notable from this reporting is not all METRO’s blather about being everything to everyone (never mind that it can’t afford to do ALL those things, because of the expense of light rail), but rather the apparent concession that construction of the Westpark rail alignment (that was duplicitously moved to Richmond and renamed by the last pathetic bunch) has been postponed until at least 2017.
Whatever Houston’s needs in 2003 when voters narrowly approved the rail referendum (which, incidentally, named a Westpark alignment and promised a 50% increase in bus service), how in the world can anyone at METRO tell Houstonians that the 2003 plan (as modified Frank Wilson and crew), which looks more and more unaffordable given the federal government’s fiscal state, is what will serve a changing, growing Houston in the year 2020 and beyond? It’s ludicrous. We’d be much better off rethinking it all.
Oh, and back to the promises of a 50% increase in bus service that never materialized (quite the contrary, actually)…
Tomorrow, METRO’s amusingly named “Customer Service Committee” will be meeting to discuss, among other items, that very topic. From the agenda:
9:10 – 9:20 a.m. 2. Reduction of Branches and Routes
Purpose: Briefing Person(s) Responsible: J. Archer
Details: Improved service through route branch reductions.
That doesn’t sound like progress in terms of that promised 50% increase in bus service. Instead, it sounds a lot like OLD METRO.
