Texas Transit Association

With various groups wanting in on Houston Metro’s proposed light rail system, up for a vote in November, its chances of passage are increasing. Citizens in various parts of the greater Houston area are voicing their desire to be included. Metro’s proposed rail service expansion has grown to 64 miles, including an 8-mile commuter line to Missouri City at the edge of Metro’s service area.

Metro adds 9 miles of rail to minority areas in plan
By LUCAS WALL, Houston Chronicle , July 23, 2003

Metro is adding nine miles of light rail to its system plan to serve heavily minority communities on the south side, but the key question of what to do about the road project funds it gives away to member municipalities remains under heated discussion and might not be resolved until August.

Board members, who are scheduled to meet Friday to receive the final 2025 mass-transit plan from the staff and a consultant, are considering a compromise that would preserve half of the road-project fund beyond its 2009 expiration date. That would mean voters in November would decide whether to issue bonds for only the first half of the transit-expansion plan, said Metropolitan Transit Authority Chairman Arthur Schechter.

“I would anticipate the entire plan will be submitted,” Schechter said Tuesday night. “We will then also take to the voters a bonding election that will be focused on the next phase of development.”

Schechter said he is leaning toward the compromise that would cut in half the “general mobility” road-project fund, which is 25 percent of Metro’s 1-cent sales-tax revenue, and extend the contracts for roughly 10 years. If that occurs, Metro could only afford to issue bonds for about half of its system-expansion plan. The entire plan relies on the assumption that the road money would be eliminated after 2009, a controversial political proposition that has drawn heavy criticism from small-city mayors who depend on that money to repave their streets.

No final decision has been made, Schechter said. He said Mayor Lee Brown is reviewing the options and is expected to inform Houston’s five Metro board members — the majority of the nine-member board — which one he favors.

Jim Young, the mayor’s communications director, did not return a phone call Tuesday afternoon seeking comment.

Shirley DeLibero, Metro president and CEO, recently told a gathering of East End groups the final plan will include a four-mile extension of the proposed East End rail line from the Magnolia Transit Center through Gulfgate Mall to the proposed Hobby Airport line. Hispanic groups have heavily lobbied for that extension, including an appearance at last month’s board workshop.

With the added nine miles of light rail, the price tag for the plan increases to $5 billion.

DeLibero also told the group a five-mile branch of the Hobby Airport line would extend from the Southeast Transit Center due south into the heavily black Sunnyside neighborhood.

“This additional line will branch off the southeast line down Cullen Boulevard to Airport Boulevard to serve the Sunnyside community,” she said. “This will have a positive effect for people in all these communities.”

After the Hispanic groups made their presentation last month, board member Carol Lewis asked why the Sunnyside community had been excluded from the plan. Lewis, who is black, said she wanted staff to review a line there in addition to the two lines heading to the southeast.

Lewis, in a phone interview Tuesday, said she came up with the idea just by looking at the map and realizing there’s a lot of transit-dependent residents in the Sunnyside area who would likely use a rail line. There’s been no organized groups pushing for a south line, and it hasn’t gone through a Metro feasibility study, but Lewis said she wanted to ensure Metro was looking broadly at all communities as it weighed its options.

Metro got good news from its accountants last month: The second draft plan, with 55 miles of light rail, had several hundred million dollars left over for final additions. The nine miles Metro is adding brings the plan to 64 miles of light rail, DeLibero said, plus an eight-mile commuter rail to Missouri City and dozens of new buses and Park & Ride lots.

Schechter said Metro also will include a commuter rail line along the U.S. 290 corridor that Harris County is studying but will not commit any funding to it.

Lewis said she hasn’t reached a decision on what to do about the road money and didn’t want to speak for where other board members stand.

“We’ll settle it coming up,” she said. “That’s the big item on the table.”

Schechter said the board will approve the final transit plan July 31, but he wasn’t sure if a decision will be made at that meeting on how much of the plan to finance this year. That decision, he said, might be pushed back to August, when the board is scheduled to approve ballot language and officially set the November referendum.

The upcoming votes will close out a two-year, multimillion-dollar planning effort Metro has gone through to draw up the transit portion of the region’s 2025 transportation plan.

Lewis said the board “will make the best possible decision for the community.”

DeLibero said she hopes the board will decide not to extend the road-money agreements past 2009 so Metro can pay for all new rail lines.

“As the board considers the whole system plan, an essential factor in what rail lines are built when is going to depend on the future of Metro’s general mobility fund,” DeLibero said. “The determination on how much rail we can do, how fast we can do it depends on whether this 25 percent goes away.”