I have a lot of emotion about this, but I’m still working through how to express it.
Metropolitan Transit Authority officials say the agency is on firmer financial footing than it has been in years. They plan to add shelters at 100 bus stops in the next year, replace aging buses with larger and smaller vehicles in some cases and rethink how the Houston area is served by bus.
The refocus is a shift for the agency, as rail has dominated the political discussion since a 2003 vote for transit improvements that included five light rail lines, three of which are under construction now.
“What got focused on and what got done was the rail component,” said George Greanias, Metro’s president and CEO. “That has not always worked to the benefit of the system. … We’ve not focused as much as we should on buses.”
Metro board members and local officials, notably Houston Mayor Annise Parker, lauded the chance to correct years of underinvestment in the bus system.
“They began paring back on the bus system, dropping off the lower ridership routes, rerouting the buses, saving money, saving money so they could do rail,” Parker said Wednesday.
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Around the same time Metro placed the referendum in front of voters, officials also created a strategic planning committee. One of the committee’s main tasks will be to determine how Metro’s 1,300-square-mile area can best be served by buses, including how to tie them to the rail lines, said Metro board member Christof Spieler.
“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if it is steel wheels or rubber wheels, it is all transit and it needs to work for the rider,” Spieler said. “What I would like to see is a better job of putting the whole network together.”
Some of that paring back of the bus system was necessary and correct. The main advantage to buses as transit is their lack of infrastructure, which thus enables routes to be redrawn at will and as needed to cope with shifting populations. Metro did a good job of identifying low-performing bus routes, but it hasn’t done nearly enough to improve the bus system and attract new riders to it. Part of their thinking behind this referendum and the “no incremental sales tax revenue on rail” deal, as expressed by Metro Chair Gilbert Garcia in the interview he and Spieler did with me, is that by working to get Metro’s overall numbers up they can build more public approval of the system as a whole, which will benefit future rail expansion. It feels a bit like a bank shot, but the bus system does have unaddressed needs, and as I said before taking care of those needs will remove a key pillar of the anti-rail contingent’s argument against more rail. I still think a big part of the problem here is that those who are the most vociferously anti-rail are not equivalently pro-bus, or pro-transit in general. The focus in this region has always been on roads uber alles, and getting any change in that focus has been hard fought and very incremental. Still, I continue to believe that there is a lot of potential for moving the region’s transportation and mobility forward if the stakeholders can agree to work together for once. Metro needs to maintain its commitment to fulfilling the 2003 referendum and building the University Line, and we all need to tell our elected officials, loudly and often, that we expect them to work with Metro to make that happen. Nothing about this referendum should change that.
Your title, “Buses and trains, not buses or trains,” accurately describes our situation. You also accurately allude to the fact that the opposition is not interested in providing rail service under most circumstances. Bearing this in mind, you could very accurately say that the leadership of Metro and of the City of Houston gave up too much in this “compromise.” Opponents to effective mass transportation in Houston will not be satisfied with their victory. They successfully scared Metro and the City with threats of legislative intervention in order to get their way. So what makes you think they won’t go to the legislature to get “adjustments” to the current structure of Metro? Is there anything in their past actions that would make you think they wouldn’t try to change the rules for Metro? Do you really think they will not go after the City of Houston’s control over Metro? At a minimum, the City should be planning on sizable annexations in Harris County to protect that control. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the ability of Metro’s leadership and the City’s leadership to defend against this kind of attack. They gave up too much without a fight and that only encourages their opponents to keep up the attack.
The City won’t annex any non-commercial property in the County. The residents don’t want to be in the City, and the City doesn’t want to provide services.
You say “there is a lot of potential for moving the region’s transportation and mobility forward if the stakeholders can agree to work together for once.” What would possibly move the County to work with the City on transit? Not going to happen, especially not that they’ve proved to themselves they can whip the City into any shape they want. And how could we build the University line if there’s no money, voters voted against any more rail, and the County will take over Metro in 2018?