David S. Wolff

Metro has made great strides

Outgoing chairman of METRO (since 2004), president and chairman of Wolff Companies. , Mar 29, 10.

Tagged with transportation, transit, houston, metro

Six years ago when Mayor Bill White asked me if I would consider serving as Chairman of Metro, I asked my friend Tom Simmons what he thought of the idea.

“I wouldn’t do it,” said Tom.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I don’t take criticism too well,” he replied, somewhat prophetically.

Some things never change, and Metro still receives more than its fair share of criticism, but it is important for all of us to realize that our new mayor and the five new Metro board members appointed by her will inherit a transit system that has made tremendous — almost unbelievable — strides in the past six years towards providing a modern mobility system for this region.

As I and the other city-appointed members complete our work (with no pay) and prepare to leave the board, it’s important to separate the truth from some of the misinformation and hysteria that has been somewhat pervasive in recent weeks. To appreciate the real progress Metro has made over the last six years, one really has to recall the problems confronting us when we answered the call to public service in 2004.

We didn’t start on a level playing field. We started deep in a hole. We inherited a fractured congressional delegation whose leadership repeatedly blocked Metro’s path to critical federal dollars to build light rail. We had to overcome a history with the Federal Transit Administration that held Metro in low regard. Why? Not only because of local squabbling, but also because of local political maneuvering that took $500 million from the funds allocated by Congress to the FTA for transit and steered those dollars to street construction (“transit streets”), normally a local, public-works project. As U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told me, “When I was in Congress, we couldn’t figure out what was going on in Houston (regarding transit).”

While much had been accomplished by previous hard working boards, we inherited an aging bus fleet, a very confusing fare system that had not been adjusted during a time when inflation had increased costs by 40 percent, an inefficient route structure (11 percent of our vehicle miles were carrying only 3 percent of our passengers), and a new light-rail line besieged by accidents because motorists weren’t accustomed to it.

We also faced financial constraints because Metro’s previous administration had been forced to use $325 million of local funds to build the Main Street line since (rather unbelievably) two Republican congressmen had prohibited METRO from obtaining any federal funds.

Despite these and other challenges, an objective review of Metro’s progress during this board’s tenure would conclude that we accomplished a great deal (I like to say that we moved Metro “from last to first” at the FTA) and have positioned the organization for a bright future…

Full story: Metro has made great strides
Source: Houston Chronicle, March 27, 2010

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