BIG LEAD FOR TURNER
Early returns show $3.5B bond for Metro likely to win approval
Voters on Tuesday appeared to bet big on buses, with strong support for approving $3.5 billion for new transit projects that supporters promised is the start of historic investment in the Houston region’s transportation future.
“The public has spoken with a resounding voice for public transportation,” said Andrea French, executive director of Transportation Advocacy GroupHouston Region.
Early returns indicated passage was likely for the proposal, meaning a slew of bus and rail projects across the Metropolitan Transit Authority service area.
“This is going to be transformative,” said Carrin Patman, chairwoman of Metro.
If passed, the referendum would allow Metro to borrow up to $3.5 billion, repaid with future revenues from the agency’s 1 percent sales tax within the transit service area. The approval would not affect the sale tax rate, though any borrowing commits Metro to paying off bonds, which would reduce future funds available for projects.
If the support holds, voters in Houston, Harris County and 14 smaller municipalities that make up Metro also agreed to extend the general mobility program, sending about one-quarter of Metro’s sales tax back to the member governments for street maintenance and expansion until 2040.
Elected officials called the unofficial results encouraging, and proof that area voters were ready for changes in their commute.
“It shows people want options,” Harris County Judge Lina
Hidalgo said.
French said many people just simply want less traffic.
“This is a call saying we want to invest, and invest beyond the support shown to highway spending,” French said.
The bulk of the plan lays out dozens of transit improvements, including heavy reliance on bus rapid transit, where large buses will operate in their own lanes for a rail-like trip with segments along major area streets and freeways. Specific projects include:
• Twenty-five miles of bus rapid transit along a lengthy route running from the Tidwell area in Northeast Houston to downtown and then westward to Westchase, with key stops in Greenway Plaza and southern portions of Uptown, expected to cost $1.2 billion.
• Extension of the Green and Purple light rail lines, with both of the routes meeting and both sharing track to Hobby Airport, estimated to cost more than $1 billion.
• Adding tracks north along the Red Line light rail to the North Shepherd Park and Ride, at an estimated cost of $642 million.
• $200 million in various street improvements aimed at making bus trips more predictably timed or accessing transit easier, ranging from bus-only lanes to expedite trips to sidewalk repairs and enhancements, estimated to cost $593 million.
• Bus rapid transit from a proposed high-speed rail station along Hempstead Road to downtown Houston, mostly along Interstate 10, expected to cost $327 million.
Despite specifics on the projects Metro wants to build in what they’ve called a first wave of new transit over the next two decades, the referendum, if approved by voters, comes with some uncertainties. Exact routes and the prioritizing of which projects are built first is not fully fleshed out, a decision officials said was necessary so they can aggressively seek federal funding when it is available.
Precise routes for trains and major busways, meanwhile, will wait for federal approvals, which require environmental analyses, including the effect on homes, historic properties, businesses and parks.
The plan, developed over 18 months of community meetings, helped Metro make its case, Patman said..
“We started with a plan that had widespread buy-in,” Patman said.
Supporters amassed endorsements from a variety of local groups, including the Greater Houston Partnership made up of business leaders and Environment Texas, the statewide group arguing for emission reductions from solo automobile driving.
As a result, critics failed to generate a groundswell of opposition to the transit plan. Longtime critics of Metro waged a grassroots campaign arguing the transit agency’s record of over-promising and under-delivering should give voters pause. The two newest rail lines never have achieved the ridership Metro officials promised, critics noted, along with questioning the need for so much investment in bus rapid transit while it remains an unknown in the area.
Voters, however, appeared likely to give Metro unprecedented authority to build out the system. In 2003, when voters last allowed Metro to borrow based on sales tax revenues, the ask was for $640 million. Adjusted for inflation, Tuesday’s likely approval is roughly four times larger.
For some, it was an overdue investment. Jack Young, 35, biked to his polling place in the Heights on Tuesday.
“So many things in this city, they make it so you have to drive,” Young said, explaining “they” as a combination of developers, drivers reluctant to try transit and elected officials unwilling to challenge past decisions.
Tuesday’s vote, however, will not give residents new options for many months, possibly years as projects are studied, local funding is matched with federal dollars and rounds of additional public meetings.
“We have to sit down and figure out what makes sense where,” Patman said.