Houston sees Rail Plan Reduced
Houston’s ever-changing rail plan got smaller again today when Metro’s board, in another compromise designed to limit opposition, approved a financing package that is nearly half of what it originally planned to send to voters in November’s election. The compromise now has the support of former Mayor Bob Lanier who had opposed the passenger rail.
Metro’s board scales back on transit plan
By LUCAS WALL and RAD SALLEE, Houston Chronicle Aug. 18, 2003
The package, approved by a 5-4 vote, now calls for building 22 miles of rail during the next nine years and obtaining $640 million in bonds, instead of the more ambitious plan that would have funded 40 miles of rail with $980 million in bonds.
The larger plan failed the first vote Monday 5-4, forcing Metro Chairman Arthur Schechter to switch his vote for the more modest proposal.
Schechter said he changed his vote “very, very reluctantly” to ensure something got put on the ballot.
“I hope future developments in our city make us not ashamed of the way we voted today. We need to look back with pride on what we have done,” he added. “And I hope by casting our vote in this manner we can bring forward enough public consensus to move forward with his plan, which is going to determine the future of our city.”
Schechter stressed Monday’s vote didn’t kill the larger plan, just delayed it. In fact, he said, the two plans look alike for the first nine years. But the $640 million plan requires Metro to ask voters after 2009 for more money. It would also give voters a chance to again extend the “general mobility” road funding the Metropolitan Transit Authority makes to its 16 member governments.
Metro came out with a 41-mile rail plan in April. The second draft bumped that up to 55 miles and the final draft went further, to 73 miles. Last week, the board voted to seek financing for only 40 miles, and Monday put just 22 miles of that on the ballot.
The vote sent the region’s first mass-transit plan in 15 years to the ballot box, asking voters for authorization to build five rail segments by 2012. The referendum also seeks endorsement of Metro’s overall system plan and a five-year extension of road funds to 2014.
Mayor Lee Brown endorsed the scaled-down plan Monday after some rail skeptics, including former Mayor Bob Lanier, agreed to support the referendum.
“There is widespread support for what Metro approved today as part of the solution to our transportation challenge,” Brown said in a statement issued after the vote. “I encourage voters to add their stamp of approval.”
Lanier, who killed the last major rail plan after his election in 1991, also issued a brief statement Monday.
“I believe the consensus reached today, including rail, buses and roads, is in the best interests of the city. And I support it,” he said.
In a phone interview, Lanier said the compromise means future voters can decide whether to extend the road payments beyond the 2014 date that Metro has agreed to honor.
Lanier said he helped work out the $640 million compromise in meetings with Brown, Metro officials, developer Ed Wulfe — spearheading private efforts to pass Metro’s referendum — and others, including officials of the Greater Houston Partnership, the region’s chamber of commerce.
Metro board member Art Morales, a Harris County appointee, voted Monday against both proposals, as he did the overall plan the week before, “because of cash shortfall projections.” Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt put out a report last week showing Metro’s revenue projections during the next 22 years are $3 billion too high based on the historic average over the past two decades.
Morales also expressed concern the ballot language does not specify to voters how many miles of rail will be built. The paragraph that will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot only states the bond proceeds will be used “for Metro’s transit authority system … which includes construction of extensions and new segments of Metro’s rail system.”
“We don’t tell the public what they are getting for their money,” Morales said.
Metro’s attorneys, in a luncheon before Monday’s meeting to review the language, told the board it was too much detail to include the number of rail miles on the ballot.
The accompanying eight-page resolution and attachments spells out the five segments to be built, two-thirds of which will be funded through bonds: extending the Main Street line north to Northline, adding a spur from Midtown past the Galleria, and building lines to the East End and toward Hobby Airport.
Killed from this financing package: A line from downtown west along Interstate 10 and then south along the West Loop to the Galleria, a branch of the Hobby Airport line to Sunnyside, and an extension of the East End line to Gulfgate Mall.
Metro’s board has struggled in the past month to wrap up its 2025 plan, developed during the past two years. The transit authority had numerous political considerations to weigh as it tries to gain voter approval for expanding Houston’s first light rail line, the 7 1/2-mile Main Street corridor route scheduled to open Jan. 1.
The board voted 6-3 on July 31 to approve the 2025 plan. Last week, it voted 8-1 to extend road money until 2014, thus reducing the rail lines financed from 73 miles to 40 miles. Monday, it cut back the financing package one final time.
Metro’s hands have been tied on how much rail it can build because of the contract requiring it to distribute a quarter of its tax revenue for road work, believed to be unique among transit authorities in the United States. Every dollar Metro gives out for road work means two dollars it can’t use to build rail because it also loses a potential match from the Federal Transit Administration.
Monday’s meeting attracted great attention, including presentations from two local members of Congress.
Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, who sits on the House transportation appropriations subcommittee, urged the board to postpone the Nov. 4 referendum. Culberson said the public and elected officials need more time to study the plan.
A November vote, he said, would “leave me with no other option but to oppose what you would force upon us.”
To Culberson’s comments, Schechter later responded “some of you have been hard at work in Washington” and probably were unaware that Metro had held extensive public meetings and discussions with elected officials in drafting the plan during the last two years.
Despite the fractured consensus achieved Monday, a significant campaign is still expected against Metro’s ballot item by a coalition of suburban interests, land developers, and others opposed to any rail transit in Harris County.
Barry Klein, a member of the Business Committee Against Rail, said his committee will remind folks along the proposed rail corridors of the ordeals that Metro’s light rail construction has caused their fellow merchants along Main Street. Construction there has put several out of business.
Rail supporters, meanwhile, were left stunned by the board’s decision to slash the plan for a second time in a week.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said “a small core group of individuals” had derailed the more ambitious transit plan wanted by thousands of “early risers” who depend on transit to get to work.
“I’m disappointed that we have come to this but I understand it, and I respect the process,” she said. “I will support it.”