“Committed” to rail

Well, it’s better than not being commited.

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said today that his agency is continuing a review of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s light rail funding application, but he declined to say when the $900 million grant might be finalized.

“We are committed to this project,” LaHood said after delivering the keynote speech at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America’s annual meeting at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center.

Asked specifically if he expects the grant to be executed this summer, as Metro officials have indicated, LaHood demurred, saying only that the Federal Transit Administration is performing necessary due diligence on the project.

“We’re looking at a lot of documents,” said LaHood, who discussed recent events at Metro in a meeting Tuesday night with Mayor Annise Parker.

That’s not really telling us anything we didn’t already know – they’re looking at it, they’ll get back to us when they’re ready. It’s good news in the sense that the original assumption was that we’re getting the funds, and there’s nothing to indicate anything has changed. Of course, if anything had changed, I doubt Secretary LaHood would have said anything anyway. It’s still possible that the answer could be “yeah, you’ll get the money, just not this year”. Who knows? We’ll find out soon enough.

UPDATE: And now Lisa Falkenberg’s column has me all pessimistic.

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