Texas Transit Association

Despite the growing economic worries, mobility issues continued to top the list of local concerns. This year, 33 percent of respondents named traffic congestion as the most serious problem facing area residents. Increasingly, the survey showed, Harris County residents believe mass transit systems should play an important role in relieving the area’s mobility problems.

Excerpted from
Economic worries rise here
Job optimism lowest in decade, study finds
By MIKE SNYDER April 28, 2003, Houston Chronicle

Economic confidence among Harris County residents is plummeting, with optimism about job opportunities at its lowest level in 10 years, the 2003 Houston Area Survey shows.

A quarter of those interviewed named the economy and poverty as the greatest problems facing Houston-area residents, compared to 8 percent who chose these issues three years ago. And just 39 percent this year rated local job prospects as excellent or good — a sharp decline from last year’s 52 percent and the lowest figure since 27 percent provided this assessment in 1993.

“This year, it seems clear that the generalized optimism about the future — so typical of Houstonians — is now also being affected by the deepening insecurities” about the economy, said Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociology professor who has directed the annual survey since 1982.

He said this year’s findings suggest that growing economic worries may no longer be merely short-term concerns.

The survey of 650 randomly selected adults was conducted from March 6 through March 26 by Telesurveys Research Associates of Houston. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Despite the growing economic worries, mobility issues continued to top the list of local concerns. This year, 33 percent of respondents named traffic congestion as the most serious problem facing area residents, a figure that has remained steady for the past three years.

An overwhelming majority, 71 percent, said traffic in the Houston area had worsened in the past three years.

Increasingly, the survey showed, Harris County residents believe mass transit systems should play an important role in relieving the area’s mobility problems.

For the first time since 1993, this year’s survey asked paired questions about mass transit and rail — questions that are particularly timely as the Metropolitan Transit Authority prepares to ask voters to support new transit projects in November’s elections.

This year, 52 percent said development of a mass transit system was very important to the Houston area’s future, up from 45 percent who gave this answer in 1993. And among those who said that improved transit was at least somewhat important, 45 percent said including a rail component in a local transit system was very important — up from 32 percent in 1993.

Asked which of three mobility strategies was most likely to succeed, 46 percent supported public transportation improvements such as rail or buses. Just 27 percent called for more highway construction, while 24 percent supported “smart growth” development practices aimed at placing jobs, homes and shopping close together.

In an unrelated survey Klineberg conducted two years ago to measure environmental attitudes, 19 percent of Harris County residents suggested “bigger and better highways” as the best long-term solution to traffic problems, while 56 percent chose public transportation improvements and 24 percent chose smart growth.

Klineberg said these findings, coupled with results showing strong support for better land-use planning and for downtown improvements, reveal a “strong and broad-based consensus” in support of mass transit systems that include rail and promote downtown revitalization.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority board last week began considering a plan to add 41 miles of light rail across the area and perhaps a commuter train into Fort Bend County.

He noted that support for downtown improvements differed little between urban residents (52 percent said this was very important) and suburban residents (49 percent). In a metropolitan region as large as New Jersey, Klineberg said, “downtown is the one part of the city that belongs to all of us.”

The growing support for rail, he said, may indicate an ideological change in a population long thought to be wedded to the automobile and resistant to public transportation.

“These surveys show that we may need to moderate that assumption,” Klineberg said.