Up Close: Is Metro plan back tracking or minor detour

09:55 AM CDT on Thursday, June 30, 2005

By Jeremy Desel / 11 News

Click to watch video

It was sold as the right track for Houston, but plans to expand light rail have taken a major detour.

KHOU-TV

Metro's mobility plan calls for about 54 miles of BRT.

In parts of the East End and the north side of Houston, folks are very used to trains.

The big ones have rumbled through for years. It was the nearly silent ones that were being anxiously anticipated.

"We were told that light rail was the way to get more transit into our community. And we accepted that," says City Council member Ada Edwards.

"We didn't go to them. They came to us," says LULAC's Rick Dovalina. "They came and promised."

So community activists fought hard to get the original Metro Solutions plan passed by voters and won.

They watched the Main Street line grow and prosper and waited, convinced that Metro was right when they said federal funding would come.

But it didn't.

Back in February, Metro executive John Sedlak said when the proposals did not appear in federal budget projections that "we are not discouraged. We work very hard to get our projects recommended."

Reality struck in a letter from the Federal Transit Administration. Both of the initial lines were not going to get funded, not now, not ever without significant changes.

Here is what Sedlak says now: "We gained approval to move to the next stage, but not funding approval. The threshold line has actually been raised."

The solution was changing the plan and using bus rapid transit (BRT) where rail was planned. BRT consists of special vehicles that would make the project nearly $200 million cheaper to start.

"The same station stops, the same route, all of the facilities, in fact even put the tracks in the ground and allow us to get this project qualified," says Sedlak.

"But that's not what they sold," says Dovalina. "So ... if that is the case, come and sell it that way."

"The problem that we are having in out community is communication," says Edwards. "People do not feel that they are being told what is actually happening."

"Tell the truth to the community ... and of all the places ... now you are going to the Galleria. I mean, come on."

The only actual light rail line included in the new plan is one from the University of Houston in southeast Houston to the Main Street line near Wheeler and on to Greenway Plaza and the Galleria area.

It's a line never envisioned in this fashion.

"It is within this plan," says Sedlak. "It is ... the Westpark line was always within the plan to be developed as a part of this overall approach."

But it was only as a fifth option after all four other proposed lines were built. It was lower on the totem pole for a reason.

"You have council member Garcia whose constituency is very concerned, because they aren't getting light rail," says City Council Member Pam Holm. "Mine is very concerned because they are and they are not sure they want it."

The idea is to get ridership up to levels to justify spending for an upgrade to light rail eventually.

Ideally getting more than originally anticipated by Metro.

"There was an announcement that said that most elected officials are on board with this change," says Rep. Gene Green. "And most officials I talked to weren't on board. I wasn't on board."

When asked why should anyone have faith that this plan is going to get funded, Sedlak answers, "Well, there has been a lot of work in terms of trying to pull this together and put forward a solution at this point that looks in terms of meeting the commitments that were made to the voters."

Commitment. When it comes to rail, it seems to have different definitions depending on your side of the track.

Metro says that under the latest plan, construction on all of the bus rapid transit and the new light rail line would be finished by 2012. The federal government would spend nearly $1 billion, matched by local funds, but that money still has to be applied for.