Houston and the topic of mass transit have just never really gone hand-in-hand. The city never has, and never will have, mass transportation like cities such as Chicago or New York. Simply put, we just do not have the population density to support mass transit in the city. But that has not stopped METRO from trying time and again to install new costly ideas that end up failing.
Even as their ridership hits poorer levels by the year, they just keep tossing money at the wall, hoping something will stick eventually. They have already had to discuss closing their Silver Line route in the Galleria area due to a lack of riders. Yet, they are also proposing an idea to add two more 'Bus Rapid Transit' (BRT) lines to the system.
One would cover the area from Westchase to the Tidwell Transit Center, and the other would cover from the I-10/610 center and run through the east side of town. All of this at the low, low price of $3 billion of taxpayer money.
Former mayoral candidate Bill King says indeed, some people need the service. But that is not what it is all about for METRO.
"We have been spending obscene amounts of money providing people very poor service...and it is not about helping people, it is about finding ways to transfer more money to consultants, engineers, and companies that work on these projects," he says.
As mentioned above, the Silver Line is the best and most recent example of METRO's lack of success. Over $200 million was spent on that project and is attracting just about 800 riders per day. That is well below projections from the company that there would be 14,000 riders per day.
This new idea costs 20 times more than that failed project. To put it into perspective, this proposed idea would cost more than was spent on the Katy Freeway expansion a decade ago.
"That road carries 500 million people a day...they are talking about these new lines carrying a few thousand a day," he says.
All of this grand idea comes at a time where recently Mayor John Whitmire said the city is essentially broke, left in a bad way by departed mayor Sylvester Turner. But, according to King at least, Whitmire is making strides toward rectifying this METRO insanity with some handpicked board members.
"He has appointed a few new members...ones who are laser focused on providing better services to riders...under the new leadership, I think METRO is running in the right direction," he says. "I would rather see them kill these projects immediately, so no more money is wasted...but the board he has put together is really focused on getting this under control."
In the end, the riders are who it is all about, and not how much money can be pilfered about to various contractors, engineers and consulting firms.
But somewhere along the line, no pun intended, METRO lost that sense. Beyond just losing sight of customer service though, METRO is losing their riders to their newest rival: ridesharing.
"Last year in the United States...the same number of people took ridesharing trips as they did trips on mass transit," he says. "Ridesharing trips are going up...the future of individual mobility is going to be point-to-point, ridesharing."
King says this could be the biggest boondoggle in the history of Houston if it manages to be built.