So, a contractor doing road construction misses a deadline and you use the four day extension as an impeachment of METRO as a whole.
Andy, I would like to consider this delay an isolated incident, but doing so would completely ignore the past 4 years of construction in Houston. This is the *norm*, not the exception. Contractors are consistently missing deadlines. You can guarantee that whatever time frame is laid out by Metro for its cost-ineffective rail plan will be grossly exceeded.
Just look at downtown! That has been the biggest mess for the past 3 years. An absolute nightmare. And guess what, they're woefully behind schedule. There needs to be a serious evaluation done of how road construction takes place in this town.
I'm glad the city of Houston is taking baby steps towards developing a public mass-transit system. This city was built backwards. I've lived in Manhattan NY and in Atlanta, where the transit systems are unbeleivable and are part of your daily life. What concerns me is the "light" part of the Houston rail plan. Light rail seems like just that. LIGHT. What happened to a more beefy (for lack of a better term) system? Larger capacity cars and faster lines? I imagine Metro has done numerous studies on the different types of rail options available? Why did they decide to go with a rail that will only scratch the surface? Unfortuantly the conservative thinking among the people at city hall and many Houstonians is only going to hinder Houston's development. In other words grow some balls and quit building more lanes on highways. If your going to do something, don't just half-ass it. Build a rail system that won't be a joke (dallas).
I've spent a long time working in Atlanta and would hardly call their system "unbelievable". In fact the only use I found for it was for going from downtown to the airport or vice versa. Atlanta is similar to Houston in that it is spread out with a large suburban population. The people in the suburbs gripe about marta to no end.
Does Houston have something in place where one doesn't have to drive to the airport? Does houston have a rail system that connects directly from points in the city to IAH? or even to downtown? No and another no. Atlanta and Houston are not similiar.
Atlanta's rail system has the same stigma as Houston's bus service - many people won't ride it due to feeling uncomfortable around the type of people who typically ride on it. And Houston has express bus service from IAH to downtown. We are looking for transportation solutions. It is a faulty assumption for you to think that rail is the best way to achieve that.
