Should transit money just go to transit?

[Bob]

In my Transportation Whatnot blog, I argue that the METRO General Mobility "deal" has cost Houston billions in federal transit investment. What do you think? Robin

[Barry Klein]

Metro's 29 page book of promises, released before the August 1978 election authorizing the "one cent" tax, made it very clear that some of the new agency's funds would be used for road work.

The booklet also stated that the agency would target a farebox recovery rate of 50%. That was the standard that each route was supposed to be subjected to.

The over-all rate has never gotten above 28%, if memory serves, and today sits around 15%. Metro is suffering daily losses in excess of a million dollars, while it provides about 1.5% of the area miles travelled.

(The Metro service area is not the whole Houston area, to be sure, but it is spending tax monies partly collected from auto users region-wide out of the highway trust fund. So the region is part of the picture.)

I think we have to acknowledge that Metro is already a great agency, as Robin wishes it to be, in at least one sense. A transit ageny losing a million dollars daily is making a heroic effort, and it makes no effort to present that distressing news to the public in a bid to win our sympathy.

The taxpayers should be given high marks too, for being so tolerant of losses so much greater than anticipated.

Taxpayers may not realize that the average Metro household is contributing about $300 a year, however.

Barry Klein

[christof]

Metro's 29 page book of promises, released before the August 1978 election authorizing the "one cent" tax, made it very clear that some of the new agency's funds would be used for road work.

Yes, road work has always been part of METRO's mandate. In fact, METRO spends money other than the General Mobility funds on roads. The $215 million dollar Downtown/Midtown transit streets project was funded 50/50 by METRO and the feds, and it considerably improved Downtown streets not just for buses but also for cars and pedestrians.

The problem with General Mobility is that it isn't about mobility at all. Hunter's Creek Village (to pick a random example) isn't using its money to expand streets or put in more sophisticated traffic lights or anything else that would actually move people more efficiently; it's using it to fill potholes and repave streets. That's the basic level of public service a city should provide, and it should be funded not with "mobility" funds but with property taxes paid by the residents of Hunter's Creek. On a basic level, General Mobility means the taxpayers in METRO's service area contributing to help places like Hunters Creek lower their property taxes. I've been to Hunters Creek, and it doesn't look all that needy to me.

General Mobility isn't about sitting down and figuring out where our transportation money can do the most good. It's about METRO writing a check to other governments, who can spend it however they like, regardless of what the best interests of the "region" are. It's a 1/4 cent municipal sales tax grouped with a 3/4 cent transit sales tax. It's not mobility.

[Barry Klein]

The 25% set aside for a "mobility fund" (not a term in the original '78 plan) grew out of Metro's 1988 election and subsequent decisions by Metro and the legislature, under prompting by then-Mayor Lanier. It was a change in the state law that allowed the participating jurisdictions the broad flexibility they now enjoy in spending the cash gifts from Metro.

The vote in 2003 sets in place a schedule that will bring it to an end around 2010.

The city of Houston used to get $50 to $60 million more a year that it now foregoes so Metro can build a rail system. This decision began to be implemented early in Mayor Lee Brown's tenure, and has been a setback for

1) the transit dependent, according to most bus riders I have spoken to, who find reductions in bus service a great nuisance, and
2) Houston taxpayers, who must be content with fewer servives, such as as a police manpower shortage.

Barry

[Bob]

The 25% set aside... grew out of Metro's 1988 election... under prompting by then-Mayor Lanier. It was a change in the state law that allowed the participating jurisdictions the broad flexibility they now enjoy in spending the cash gifts from Metro.

That last phrase really hits the nail on the head for me. The General Mobility program turns transit tax revenue into "cash gifts" that go for lots of things totally unrelated to transit. That's pretty mediocre public policy. I think Houstonians should revisit whether we want to keep doing it.

A transit ageny losing a million dollars daily is making a heroic effort

I'm not sure what you mean by "losing" money. METRO -- like TxDOT, City of Houston Solid Waste Management, Harris County Flood Control, and the US Military -- is a public agency. All of these public agencies provide "public goods" to benefit the public, and they are supposed to be funded by tax dollars. That is the exact nature of a public good. Barry's notion that any of these agencies "lose" or "make" money ignores their nature. (What would a good "farebox recovery" rate for the army be?) The policy question is whether each agency is spending its resources on the right things.

the transit dependent, according to most bus riders I have spoken to, who find reductions in bus service a great nuisance

I agree that transit-dependent riders who lose bus service have few options and that's bad. But METRO is expending finite resources and trying to serve as many people as possible. They cut no bus routes for any reason for more than a decade. In the last two years, they have cut a small number of routes that were in the bottom decile of ridership and cost performance, in the interest of using those resources to serve more people on stronger routes. Cutting a handful of very expensive routes that serve only a few in favor of adding service to serve the many seems like a reasonable tradeoff to me.

Houston taxpayers, who must be content with fewer servives, such as as a police manpower shortage

I don't believe for an instant that you genuinely believe spending transit tax money on police protection is good public policy.

To reiterate, I'm not saying that Houstonians were tricked. I'm just asking -- 28 years later -- whether Houstonians think it might be a good idea to spend more of our transit taxes on actual transit.

[kf5nd]

[MikePH]

The reason Metro abandoned bus service was not due to the light rail system. MetroRail allowed Metro to save money by substituting light rail for buses on some central routes. One rail operator carries as many people as three bus drivers. Bus service has been severely cut due to ridership dropping. The reason ridership dropped is because this area and the US continue to pursue road-oriented, suburban growth. It's the only thing they know how to do when times are bad. Unfortunately, that isn't in the plan for the twenty-first century, which has a singular difference from the previous: hydrocarbon fuel penury. Most people haven't read the warning signs, but there's a price shock in our future.

The fuel costs for transit buses all over the world have risen. Metro's reeling from fuel hikes. It's starting to sound like a mantra, but buses are far less energy efficient than rail.

Layoffs at major energy trading companies downtown didn't help, either. It's been minimized in the fit-to-print local media, but the job loss after big layoffs at Enron, Dynegy, Reliant, and a dozen companies most of you have never heard of took their toll. A lot of those former downtown employees were transit riders. The same thing happened in Dallas after Y2K, but there it was telecom that had the layoffs.

Basically, this is the same transit system that existed over 20 years ago, although the population has steadily increased the whole time. And all this was in the face of massive general fund subsidies for roadbuilding, new toll roads and a whole third generation of exuburban development for people that are in the preposterous, no-win position of driving 50 miles to where they work. The transit system hasn't kept up for decades. Bus routes haven't been extended, and bus service alone in a metropolitan area this big isn't enough. New light rail has slowed to a crawl, and by this time after their voter referendum, Dallas was building two new light rail lines and opening a 33-mile commuter train. Suburban commuter rail for Houston is years off, if ever.

By the year 2000 the average Houston household was spending $10,000 for automobile transportation, and it's much higher today. Basically, Harris County Metro is a cash cow for road builders, especially since Lanier. The politicans are apparently running a contest to see how much consumers can be made to pay for motor vehicle transportation, all to the benefit their highway and real estate contributors. How local voters can support this kleptocracy and at the same time pay 25-30% of their incomes for motor vehicle transportation is beyond me.

All but those in blissful denial can read today's oil and gas exploration and development news and conclude that, long term and short term, the cost driving has no where to go but up. How high will the price of gas need to go before joe and jen sixpack conclude that possibly some transport diversity might be a good idea? Are we going to wait until we face mass unemployment, outright insurrection and the complete collapse of the economy? Or will we finally come up with a plan for different living arrangements than those that depend upon cheap energy?

You have less time to implement decent transit systems and railroads in the US than you think. Keep procrastinating, keep building the strip centers, gated subdivisions, frypits and muffler shops and eventually, energy demand will reach the shear point, and things will start to happen automatically.

[Barry Klein]

Well, the idea of revisting the 1978 decision to allocate one cent of sales to transit and roads, a tax that now generates $400 million yearly and costs the average Metro houshold about $300 a year, is an attractive suggestion.

Would the participlants in this forum support a change in the state law that controls Metro to allow petitions that would compel elections on Metro policies if a requisite number of signatures were gathered?

This would be something like the charter amendment elections that take place in Houston and other home rule cities. In Houston's case 20,000 signatures must be gathered in a six month period.

Barry

[MikePH]

Well, the idea of revisting the 1978 decision to allocate one cent of sales to transit and roads, a tax that now generates $400 million yearly and costs the average Metro houshold about $300 a year, is an attractive suggestion.

Would the participlants in this forum support a change in the state law that controls Metro to allow petitions that would compel elections on Metro policies if a requisite number of signatures were gathered?

This would be something like the charter amendment elections that take place in Houston and other home rule cities. In Houston's case 20,000 signatures must be gathered in a six month period.

Barry

The important question is whether this will be another well-funded campaign by highway, real estate and the usual suspects to curtail Metro service, scrap light rail entirely and/or fund more toll roads, collector boulevards and road widening. You could be like George Will or Jeb Bush and just say we don't need no stinkin' transit system, which is practically what Houston has now.

Florida voters approved a statewide high-speed rail network. Jeb Bush didn't want TGV's in Florida so he had his friends in the legislature run another referendum. The usual suspects ran a well-funded campaign smearing high-speed rail, which lost. If you want to ride a TGV, go to Korea. Who needs transit when an obscene war machine and drive in utopia take all the bucks?. It's all high-energy consumption, all the time in North America. Don't trouble yourself about how badly government transportation money has been wasted since WWII and don't worry about the non-existent prospects for cheap energy in the future.

Only twice in Metro's history, have voters approved important transit measures. The first time was the establishment of Metro, replacing a bankrupt and almost non-existent bus system which during the 1940's and 1950's had heavy ridership. It took a huge effort supported by most of the business community and civic groups. Many communities opted out, and no provision was ever made to serve communities outside of Harris County. Galveston, Conroe, Rosenberg, Hempstead, Cleveland, etc, are left to be mauled by inexorably increasing motor fuel prices with absolutely no alternative. The Woodlands has abbreviated service on business days only.

The second political success for Metro was approval of the referendum as presented to the 1 million voters in 2003. This was for an initial 22-mile rail system and its political campaign had a very long list of business interests, civic groups, and private individuals throughout the area. Judging from the number and small average size of donations to the Citizens for Public Transit 2003 effort, it was indeed a grassroots campaign. This voter referendum was nullified by the agreement of local republicans in congress. At the rate Metro's going now, it will be 10 years before any rail construction is started. The current Metro administration was installed by Culberson, Eckels and Delay to block any further rail construction and substitute buses instead, if even that. Many of the people reading this forum will unfortunately be dead before they ride any cross town light rail line or commuter rail.

Take Bob's 6.5 billion and say 2.5 billion to run daily bus service to the large sections of Metro's tax area that don't have bus service now. This is about a 125 square miles in Houston and unincorporated Harris County. These are roads like Eldridge, Dairy Ashford, west Airport, Highway 6, Barker Cypress, West Little York, Fry Rd, Mason Rd, and Almeda Genoa. You can't count park and ride buses because they are only for people who work downtown during daylight hours on business days. They don't carry anyone in the opposite direction, most routes have no intermediate stops and those that do have either non-existent or poor local bus connections. HOV buses are an experiment that has failed because 99% of the people in their service areas cannot use them. What Houston really needs is more express buses that run locally at the end of their route.

The other 3.5 billion should be split for rail. Three billion buys 75 miles of light rail, based on 40 million a mile, some of which should be elevated or grade separated at high speed in the worst traffic areas. Five hundred million buys 25 miles of diesel commuter rail (or 20 miles of electrified commuter rail) with some grade separation and several passing tracks serving Long Point, Little York, West Road and (for the diesel price) Cypress, TX. Counting all electrified rail transit operating, under construction or planned, whether it is subway, elevated, light rail or streetcar, 75 miles would put Houston in ninth position after New York, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Denver, Dallas and Philadelphia in that order. For commuter rail, Houston would be in tenth place after New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, South Florida and Dallas.

That's how bad transit is in Houston, Barry, and what it would take to get to even a modest level for a population this size. If you include Canada and Mexico, Houston is even further down the list. Note that most of the transit and commuter networks listed above serve multi-county or multi-state regions.

The only large metropolitan area in the US or Canada where effective transit has an even bleaker future is Detroit. And southeastern Michigan has been losing people, not increasing by a million every ten years like the greater Houston-Galveston area. It's not a flattering comparison.

[Barry Klein]

Mike — I do not have time to reply to your many points. Let me simply say that I disagree on many. There are three websites that I have often relied on for my technical objections to rail. You may want to give them a glance.

www.publicpurpose.com
(Run by wendel Cox....this site has lots of data on the international transit picture and related issues (roads, sprawl, etc).

www.ij.org
www.americandreamcoalition.org
(these are run by Randal O'Toole. His is mostly oriented to the US transit debates and Smart Growth issues.

I am prepared to send you a small packet of information if you want to give me a snailmail address.

Barry
713-224-4144

[christof]

It's fun sometimes to disagree with everyone.

We've got an argument going here between "all rail is bad" and "all rail is good" which is both ridiculous and useless.

HOV buses are an experiment that has failed because 99% of the people in their service areas cannot use them.

Huh? 40,000 boardings on an average weekday=failure? Driving outbound on the Southwest Freeway this morning, I passed multiple inbound commuter buses, and every one seemed to be filled. Those riders could have driven their car, but they're on the bus. I bet they don't think it's a failure. By those standards, all new commuter rail systems are failures -- LA's METROLink, by far the most comprehensive commuter rail system opened since WWII, has 36,000 boardings. Is that a success simply because there's steel under the wheels?

(The Metro service area is not the whole Houston area, to be sure, but it is spending tax monies partly collected from auto users region-wide out of the highway trust fund. So the region is part of the picture.)

If you're going to criticize METRO for not carrying any riders in areas it is not legally permitted to serve simply because those areas pay federal gas tax, why not point out what a low proportion of trips in the entire US METRO serves?

The booklet also stated that the agency would target a farebox recovery rate of 50%. That was the standard that each route was supposed to be subjected to.

the transit dependent, according to most bus riders I have spoken to, who find reductions in bus service a great nuisance.

You can't have it both ways. Either you want to improve farebox recovery, or you want METRO to keep operating every bus route it has, regardless of how few people ride. METRO's been systematically cutting buses routes with very low farebox recovery, and it's actually been increasing service on routes with high ridership.

[tmck]

I live in Hilshire Village. Several years ago, all of our streets received a new topping paid for with Metro "general mobility" funds. My street is one block in length, as are several other streets in the village. The topping looks nice, but hardly improves mobility. The issue here is what to do with the money that Metro has to keep throwing at us. One way is to "improve" Ridgley Drive, whatever the county commissioners approved toward that end. It is now two lanes, and has entrances on Wirt Road and on Westview. The village has a 20 mile-per-hour speed limit because there are many children, runners, and cyclists who use our streets that are rural in nature and have no sidewalks. Unfortunately, some non-resident motorists use Ridgley to cut through the village to avoid a traffic light at Wirt Road and Westview, and they seldom stay within the speed limit. There is absolutely no reason to "improve" Ridgley. This decision was made by Hilshire without public input or notice.

[WindmillChasr]

Barry has now shown his true colors. Wendell Cox and Randall O'Toole are heavily pro road and are paid hefty dividends by the road lobby to smear transit. Whats worse is that thier studies are easily torn down by real statistics. Barry, every single argument those two make against transit as completely dishonest. I knew something was up when i saw your claim that only 1.5% of trips are taken by transit. False...This statistic is not an accurate method of determining the success of light rail. It is not a measure of transit or commute trips. Rather, this figure accounts for all trips in the region, 24 hours a day, including freight trips.

A more accurate assessment can be made by looking at the percentage of “transit-competitive” trips, those trips that are competitive to the automobile, in both time and convenience. Transit-competitive trips are generally between 22-40% in favor of transit. In areas that are not served by transit, the only option is to drive, which, in part explains the high percentage of commutes by automobile. The U.S. has over 8.2 million lane miles of roads. Only 4.3% of those roads are served by transit. Additionally, transit buses or parallel passenger rail lines run on only 168,603 miles. Why would you compare apples to oranges? Transit should be compared with the corridor it serves. During the Denver Transit strike a few weeks ago, the 37,000 riders that took the light rail from the south took to the streets. You can imagine which freeway won the traffic congestion award that week and proved to the detractors of light rail that it really does make a difference. Also, your comments hint at the subsidizing of transit saying that millions are spend each day to support it. This is also false...According to the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) the annual cost for automobile users ranges from $2.1 trillion to $2.9 trillion. User fees cover between $1.7 trillion and $1.9 trillion. This means highways receive an annual subsidy of somewhere between $439 billion and $1 trillion. According to APTA, taxpayers contributed roughly $17 billion annually (2000$) to transit. 17 billion is pennies and that $1 Trillion dollars in road subsidy does not count parking spaces, which often cost $17,000 a piece in structured parking. This also does not count the value of time wasted on the Katy Parking Lot Freeway. Anything Cox and O'Toole say can be torn down immediately.