Robert Muhammad

Lost: $5 billion transit funds

Host, Connect the Dots radio show, Apr 02, 09.

Tagged with transportation, transit, metro

The public transportation system of Harris County has been looted for the past 21 years by the City and County to the tune of $2.5 billion. Let me be explicit, 25% of public transit revenue from the one cent public transit sales tax has gone for street, drainage, and landscaping projects. This is NOT what voters established Metro to do when it was created in 1978. This has taken place while politicians in City and County government tout their tax rate cutting policies and control of government spending. In this case, there ought to be a law compelling truth in advertising. It is easy to balance your budget when you use the revenue of the area public transportation agency to do it.

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We have been effectively robbed of $5 billion dollars for public transit. We could have built the inner city light rail network and commuter system twice over by now. You don’t believe me? Just look no further than our neighbors to the north in Dallas.

Full story: The Great Train Robbery of Houston, Texas Pt. 1
Source: The Connect The Dots Crew Blog, April 1, 2009

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Comments

Janet Redeker said:

You are exactly right, Robert, and thank you so much for bringing this out. The current 10 years of this fiasco ends in 2014 and we need to get started now alerting the city and county to get off the METRO dole. They and the small cities who benefit can begin planning now to do without the money so METRO can have its 1/4 cent back to build much needed transit.

Posted on Apr 07, 09 at 10:42 am

Peter said:

Where do we get a copy of this agreement? We should post it to the CTC Forum

Posted on Apr 13, 09 at 2:23 pm

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