Near Northsider – Houston

I stayed up all night reading the trasncript of the minutes from the last North Corridor Metro Meeting on August 5. Does that make me a nerd? Shut up.

I can see how some people might be unsure about the prospect of a long construction in the hood and possibly scared by some of the stories of the first light rail installation from downtown ot the Astrodome. Nonethless, I also see that the Near Northside is full of people walking and taking the bus who would seem to benefit greatly from an easily useable transit system connected to the current line that could bring people directly from Northline Mall to the Astrodome.

One of the the main argunents against it seem to be that the light rail construction would hurt neighborhood business. It’s a legitamite concern, since many of our businesses are actually on Fulton or Irvington. And then, for what? they don’t plan to actually give us a light rail car. The plans now are just to lay the light rail track, cover it up again, and create a guided busway for what they call “BRT” or “Bus Rapid Transit”. Don’t know why they need the new name. Isn’t “Bus Rapid Transit” just “the Bus”? We already have buses. The argument from Metro is that the North corridor doesn’t have the ridership to necessitate the expense of light rail – which we all know is bullshit since we currently have like 8 different buses that run down North Main!

But then, it’s public knowledge that ol’ Tom Delay was able to sleeze federal transit money to build more highways that only go from suburb to suburb and then even more money to expand I-10, but only that stretch that goes from Downtown to Katy. This obviously left no money for the Light Rail transit solution, so Metro now has to pull off a solution that was voted for without any money to do it. So now metro can’t afford to put full light rail up the north corridor. Or so they say…

Apparently, Metro DOES have money to add light rail – full light rail – to the Richmond/Westpark area going form the Wheeler station to the Galeria even though most people don’t want it and there really wasn’t a decisive vote on it. So even though most Northsiders DO want rail, we’ll only get BRT and maybe even get downgraded to a guided busway with no track beneath it at all and even though most people down Richmond are against rail, they’re fighting hard to keep it from happening although it probably will be done whether they want it or not.

Don’t forget about the next Metro meeting regarding the North Corridor Light Rail expansion:

North Corridor Public Hearing
Saturday, August 5, 2006
1 p.m.
Jeff Davis High School
1101 Quitman

this was also on the Metro website but I don’t know if it’s public:

Metropolitan Transit Authority
Board of Directors’
Regular Board Meeting
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
1900 Main, 2nd floor Board Room
1:00 PM

Although these meetings are only mandatory by the federal government in order for Metro to obtain the funding for these projects, it’s a good idea to attend them and become aware of what people are planning to do in your neighborhood. it’s true that we can’t do much to stop them, be we CAN plan for a way to adapt to these changes if we can get a sense of the new situations.