05:04 PM CST on Thursday, February 9, 2006

By Jeremy Desel / 11 News

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In a tough break for Metro, 11 News has learned that its budget as it stands today includes no federal funds for this year.

Metro is asking for more than $300 million for the north and southeast light rail corridor extensions.

"It's very early in the process," cautioned Metro's director of media relations Raequel Roberts.

But what could this mean for the program?

KHOU-TV

Metro will have to wait another year for federal funds.

The future of the Metro Solution's Plan has always depended on federal money.

It's a planned 50/50 match to move the bells and whistles beyond downtown and the Med Center to the north and southeast sides.

But Houston's two planned lines approved, for preliminary engineering, didn't make the cut this year.

In all, the Federal Transit Administration recommended $1.5 billion worth of projects in 2007.

There were five new ones added to the list: Denver, Salt Lake City, two in Portland, OR and in Dallas.

There are 15 projects at the same point of the process that are Houston's two requests, five of them received funding this year.

This does not mean Houston's plan is out of the running forever.

The FTA says ratings for the projects not yet recommended should not be construed as a statement about the ultimate merits of the project, but rather as an assessment of the project's current strengths and weaknesses."

Metro officials say now they did not necessarily think they would receive funding this year. But last year at this same time when the Houston projects did not receive funding, officials said they hoped it would come this year.

Now they can only hope to continue to improve the plan in the eyes of federal evaluators for the 2008 budget cycle.