Transit stimulus details
Last week, I noted that the Federal Transit Administration was refusing to let METRO use any stimulus money to start work on the North and Southeast lines. That picture seems to have changed: Sheila Jackson Lee is saying that she has convinced the FTA to let METRO use the money. As I noted in my last post, the rail lines are exactly what the stimulus money was intended for: “shovel-ready” projects with environmental clearance in place. So this is the right result; the fact that it took a congressperson to intervene to make it happen shows once again how much harder the federal financing system is for transit than for highways. If these light rail lines were a highway, they’d probably have been completely funded from the stimulus (and if TXDOT were a transportation agency instead of a highway agency, it might have allocated it flexible transportation dollars to light rail instead of the Grand Parkway.)
The stimulus dollars going to the rail lines — $30 million for utility relocation – are only a part of the $90 million that METRO gets from the stimulus. So is the $48 for converting the HOVs to HOTs. The remainder, it appears, will go to buses and railcars which, unlike construction projects, don’t require environmental studies. A preliminary request that METRO submitted to the Houston-Galveston Area council calls for 100 new buses and 29 light rail vehicles for Main St. Corridor. METRO has a fleet of about 1200, and they need to be replaced every 12 years or so. That means they need to buy 100 buses a year just to keep the current fleet in shape, and in the past they weren’t always doing that. 29 light rail vehicles are enough to run 2-car trains every 6 minutes (which would still be standing-room-only at rush hour); combined with the current fleet, they could run 2-car trains every 4 minutes (which is the ultimate capacity limit of the Main Street Line.)
METRO can spend the stimulus money on rail under “letters of no prejudice” issued by the FTA, which let the METRO spend federal funds on portion of a project before that project has gotten full funding approval. The possibility exists that METRO will in fact be able to spend more than $30 million on the stimulus money on rail.
Incidentally, METRO does not get all of Houston’s transit money. Harris County gets $0.9 million for bus service in Baytown and for equipping its paratransit service with smart cards that can work with METRO’s Q-card system. Fort Bend County gets $2.7 million for TREK park-and-ride service, paratransit service, and smart cards. In addition, Galveston, Lake Jackson/Angleton, Texas City, and The Woodlands are counted as separate urban areas; they get $1.6 million, $1.4 million, $1.6 million, and $1.7 million, respectively. Many of these transit agencies depend heavily on federal funds. Harris County, for example, is using largely federal funds to provide transit service to Baytown, which did not choose to join METRO when it was created. Island Transit in Galveston has bene getting nearly half is operating budget and 100% of its capital budget from the feds.
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