Houston Metro: We're a Trainwreck.

In more ways than one it seems....

(Metro tied bonds to fare hikes in early ’10, Michael Reed, West University Examiner)

An idea to use automatic fare hikes as collateral to secure approval for at least $400 million in Metro bond sales had been known at City Hall for nearly six months, documents show.

In fact, a lawyer already working toward securing approval for such a plan met with committee members prior to the release of the Mayor’s Transition Task Force report on the Metropolitan Transit Authority on March 13.

With Bill White's supporters scrambling to assure Texans this Metro thing was beyond his span of control (While at the same time telling us he's a detail man who worries about font size in political ads)) the reality is Houston-area taxpayers are just on the cusp of being taken for a very expensive ride.

I still haven't seen cost estimates pertaining to the, now inevitable, delay of rail construction, there's been very little written about the eminent domain fiasco and not much said, as of yet, about how this single-minded desire to build a poorly planned rail system is going to decimate transit service to those who need it most.

The only phrase to describe it is: Train Wreck. The types of train-wrecks that inevitably happen when the group-think majority drowns out reasonable objections to what is an obviously flawed plan by mis-casting doubters as those that are "just against anything". At one time for Houston there were workable transit options. Now it appears that Metro's financial ship has sailed.