As Metro’s board prepares to consider modifications to its 2025 mass-transit plan this week, dozens of interest groups across the city are lobbying to be included. Everyone seems to want to jump on board: business, airlines, minority groups and neighborhoods. Read the news article.
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State Senator Jeff Wentworth saw his Senate Bill 1705 vetoed by Gov. Perry, a bill that would have put San Antonio’s VIA Metropolitan Transit system on equal footing with other metro transit agencies in collecting sales taxes on telecommunications services. The bill would have allowed VIA to obtain an additional $1.5 million a year in needed funds. VIA is running an operaing deficit due to a substantial drop in sales tax collections because of an ailing economy.
Planners are looking at regional passenger rail in the greater Dallas and Fort Worth area at a level ten times that of the successful commuter rail service of The T in Fort Worth and DART in Dallas, the Trinity Express. Michael Morris, Transportation Director at the lead planning agency, the North Central Texas Council of Goverments, said, “Wouldn’t it be a shame if we waited until 3 million people had moved into the region, and then we built the rails?” And he is right! It would not just be a shame, but short-sightedness that commuters, both in cars and out, would have to live with for the next score of years. Read the news article.
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VIA is undergoing its second major overhaul in its bus routes and service in the last two years in an attempt to address constricted local revenues due to a low transit sales tax base as well as significantly diminished revenues from that base because of the economic recession. Reorganization of transit management was addressed at the earlier effort.
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Recognition of transit oriented development in the North Texas region continues with focus on the city of Plano.
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Regional public transit concepts are being explored in the greater Fort Worth and Dallas areas of North Texas with funding as the primary barrier. The State does not allow for increased local sales taxes, and without such limits being eliminated — specifically for public transportation — can greater mobility be acheived?
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