The headline wasn’t subtle: “Stop Metro from coming to Spring.”
The article,published July 15 on the website Spring Happenings, warned that bus service would “give criminals an easy way in and out” of the north Harris County suburb.
A range of experts I interviewed this week agreed that little evidence supports the “buses lead to crime” idea. (This is also true of its cousin, “Low-income housing leads to crime,” the subject of a column I wrote last year.)
Yet the perception persists that mass transit is the first step in the ruination of a community. It’s an attitude that could complicate the challenge of meeting the mobility needs of the vast, rapidly growing Houston region.The Metropolitan Transit Authority is holding public meetings to gather input on a new regional transit plan. Metro officials say the plan is needed to prioritize options for adding bus and rail service, along with van pools and potentially bus-only lanes or high-occupancy toll lanes.
More than 300 people showed up Tuesday night at a Metro meeting in Spring. My colleague Dug Begley, who attended, said many residents expressed the same concerns as those reflected in the Spring Happenings article.
[…]
Notwithstanding the concern on the near north side, suburbs are where opposition to mass transit seems to find its fullest expression. Transit researcher Todd Litman has an idea about why this is the case.
“Automobile dependency has been used for generations as a moat to keep poor people away from certain areas,” said Litman, the founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, an independent research organization.
Crimes involving vehicles – car thefts, vandalism, road-rage violence – are far more common than those associated with public transportation, Litman said. Imagine the reception a campaign to keep cars out of a neighborhood would receive in Houston.
Nonsequieteuse says what needs to be said about this. I’ll just add one thing, which is that if the people of Spring are that concerned about evildoers coming in from the outside world and defiling their pristine community, then they’re not thinking big enough. If they really want to defend their borders, they’ll need to petition TxDOT and HCTRA to tear up the exits to Spring from I-45, the Hardy Toll Road, and the Grand Parkway. I mean, that’s how everyone gets around in these parts, and that includes the bad guys as well as they good guys. If Spring wants to isolate itself, then let it isolate itself. Just as long as there are no half measures employed, that’s all I’m saying.
It is a subterfuge for what they really mean. Keep the dark-skinned people out of Spring, no different than what Trump does to rile up his base of haters (A word used by some people, that I find appropriate at this time).
Metro allows those low-income people to move out there for jobs in the city to find jobs as nannies or cleaning houses. Even “low white trash” could find it ways there, the horror of it.
@Neither, Spring has had a high population of “white trash” for decades.
If my neighborhood inside the Loop is any indication, most of the thieves already have cars. The crimes here are invariably committed by miscreants in vehicles with paper license plates, who do their crime then leave. I doubt any thief is going to take the bus, since it’s pretty difficult to make sure you get out of the area quickly, and it’s hard to hide all your ill gotten loot while standing at a bus stop.
As a person who took Metro for years, I know what type of people use Metro. Thieves and crooks prefer the quick get a way, imagine breaking into a house and carrying the TV to the bus stop and waiting there? Now low level drug dealers do you buses to get to areas that they want to sell away from where they reside. But I think Spring already has a big drug problem.
But mostly I would see people going to work or going home and most of them had one thing in common they were all dark skinned folks. The Park and Ride are different.
Correction
use instead of you
and people like me, dark skinned folks
Hmmm, maybe the good people of Spring just don’t want the 1% sales tax increase that comes with “membership in the club.” Perhaps many Spring streets are not suitable for big Metro buses to navigate?
A good analogy here is well water. People move to an area where they must drill a well for water, then a government comes in and says, “hey, wouldn’t you like municipal water?” Most people are probably happy the way they are. Those people are probably racist, though.
IF frogs had wings it would not bump its ass every time it jumped, if people read and comprehended that is either or
From above, “The article,published July 15 on the website Spring Happenings, warned that bus service would “give criminals an easy way in and out” of the north Harris County suburb…”
Did you miss the first part Bill?
Spring already pays the Metro sales tax.
@Ross,
Thanks for that info. Says a lot, then, that people who are already paying the tax don’t want the service from Metro, doesn’t it? Maybe Metro should just say, “thanks for the tax money” and just leave Spring alone.
OR we could take Neither approach, and punish Spring with bus service they don’t want.
Now the trees are all kept equal, by hatchet, ax, and saw. We can call it the Rush doctrine, punishing uppity suburbs.
Bill I don’t know why you keep putting words in my mouth that were never said, I stated that keeping thieves out was not true and that I saw it as racism or bigotry. You know your god says it is okay not to be politically correct, and also do as you do make up stuff.
Read something today, guy states “I was told not to call them ignorant as that would not convince them of my argument. I said I tried science and facts and did not work either.”
Answer, ignore them. One on one, good advice otherwise expose them.
Bill have a great night hope you don’t have nightmares about the undocumented coming back “the living undocumented”;-)