And we wonder why we can’t afford great urban transit yet?
Before each Tuesday meeting of the Commissioners’ Court, all the Harris County department heads gather for an agenda briefing on Monday. I sat in on it this morning and this item caught my attention:
1.a.3. Recommendation that the County Judge be authorized to execute transportation improvement agreements as part of the Metro Multi-Cities Program between the county, Metro, and the cities of:
a. Hilshire Village to provide funding for improvements on Ridgeley Drive from Westview Drive to Wirt Road.
b. Spring Valley to provide funding for improvements on Voss Road/Bracher Drive from IH-10 to Spring Branch Creek.
c. Bunker Hill Village to provide funding for improvements on Memorial Drive from Strey Lane to Clarendon and Knipp to Briarforest.
d. Piney Point Village to provide funding for improvements on North Piney Point Road from Innesfree to Surrey Oaks.
The “Metro Multi-Cities” program — also known as the “General Mobility” program — is the brain child of former Houston Mayor and transportation czar Bob Lanier. Since 1978, transit investment in Houston has been funded by a 1-penny sales tax paid by everyone in METRO’s service area. Mayor Lanier’s argument was that “most Houstonians will never ride the transit their sales taxes are paying for” so to be fair, they should get something, too (i.e. road and bridge construction). So METRO gives up a bunch of sales tax revenue and gives it back to cities in the service area to fund non-transit projects. (Of course, I would argue that good transit benefits drivers, too: I reckon that Houston freeway drivers would notice if the more than 40,000 commuters who board park-and-ride buses each weekday were in cars on the freeway, contributing to congestion, instead.)
So how much money are we talking about? $100 million/year. METRO’s 1-penny sales tax currently generates ~$400 million/year. Fully 1/4 of that is carved off for General Mobility, and allocated according to a formula. This week, Hillshire Village gets $1.73 million, Spring Valley gets $2.35 million, Bunker Hill Village gets $1.37 million, and Piney Point Village gets $281,370. But these are just four examples of a much larger redistribution. The City of Houston, Bellaire, Bunker Hill Village, El Lago, Hedwig Village, Hilshire Village, Humble, Hunters Creek, Katy, Missouri City, Piney Point, Southside Place, Spring Valley, Taylor Lake Village, West University Place, and major portions of unincorporated Harris County all benefit from METRO’s largesse.
Even if you like the idea of spending transit money on road construction in wealthy jurisdictions and places with no bus service, some Houstonians may wonder why it is that more than 90% of METRO’s sales tax revenue is collected in the City of Houston, but Houston only gets 73.7% of the General Mobility money.
But it’s the $6.5 billion lost opportunity cost that really gets me. Let me explain: METRO’s CFO, Francis Britton, estimates that since the program’s inception, more than $1.3 billion has been reallocated. Houston could have built a LOT of high-quality urban transit with $1.3 billion. What’s worse: that local money could have been used as the match to secure another $1.3 to $5.2 billion in federal dollars, for perhaps $6.5 billion for new transit investment. But it wasn’t. And the program is scheduled to continue until 2014.
Now instead, we all have to work hard to help Congressman Culberson understand the importance of connecting the centers and encourage him to bring us the scant ~$1 billion in federal money METRO needs to build Houston’s next set of urban transit lines.
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