This is it! Metro Light Rail Day!

Ohh.. everyone's lining up! It's the world's longest Metro Board meeting day! I'm doing a little live blogging:

5:37 PM Metro has provided the link to the full map. Click and pick apart.  A little clarification, METRO voted to continue to Eastwood if money allows, I lumped it all together in an earlier post because I was typing very fast! The linked map shows the Eastwood connection.  I hope new readers who never visited this political blog will bookmark it and return for more entertaining missives!

4:45 PM Waiting for updated map while doing lots of liveshots for various newscasts.  All the politico wonks are gone... just us TV types with our live trucks.

3:11 PM The entire board, plus Sue Lovell, Carol Alvarado, Mario Gallegos, and of course, Mayor Bill White, are standing around for a news conference.  They are all very excited in that politically somber way.  Construction is expected to begin next summer. The politicians are promising a better construction schedule than the Main Street line.  I hope so, I lived through that one! Again, stay tuned to the news!  Also, Peter Brown came back for the news conference.

2:35 Adopted! Going West: Richmond, Cummins, Westpark to Hillcroft Transit Center. Going East: Wheeler, along Ennis, North to Scott, along Elgin, and ending at the Eastwood Transit Center.

2:01 PM And we are back for the big vote! Sue Lovell's in the house, the METRO PR folks are running around, and there's going to be a press conference immediately after! Watch at 4, 5, and 6 on Channel 13 for the full take... now if I can just get a Starbucks....

11:40 AM Board meeting now in Exec. Session.  My count of public comment: 21 Speakers in Favor, 15 Speakers opposed. Vote starts at 2pm, come back for more fun!

11:25 AM Tom Bazan got his chance, but just moments before, the chair and Frank Wilson, the CEO, left!  The Real vote is expected around 2-2:30 so stay tuned. Now a variety of "interesting" people are talking about how they are not getting their metro cards stamped, complaining about a lost ticket, and various other unrelated stuff.  Meanwhile, I've uploaded an image of the proposed route! Click and enjoy. 

11:05 AM Standing room only at Metro meeting. Carroll Robinson, looking a little slimmer than he did a few months back, is talking it up.  A number of elderly homeowners along Wheeler testified that they are worried their trash pick up would be affected.  Doug Childers of Richmond Rail is the tallest guy here, and Tom Bazan is waiting his turn!

9:59 Metro staff recommends Main-Richmond-Cummins-Westpark route.  Council Member Peter Brown, Jeff Moseley from the Greater Houston Partnerhip, and various others have begun testifying.  Tom Bazan is here, so is Carroll Robinson, Jason Fuller from KBH's office, Carl Davis from Michael Berry's office.  And the biggest surprise so far? If the Light Rail is built along Westpark, the dog park will have to be moved from Westpark to East of Buffalo Speedway.

Comments

[LTM]

That does it. I'm heading to the dog park and chaining myself to a fence.

[urban_houstonian]

Curious to know how METRO was able to conceal that little tidbit of information about the dog park having to be moved for the Westpark line. How ironic if that is the dog park of choice among Afton Oaks residents. Had they allowed the rail to run through their neighborhood, they wouldn't have lost the dog park. You get what you give.

[Cory]

Thanks for live-blogging this.

So I guess the Light Rail is a no pet zone? :)

(that's a joke rail folks. calm down)

[kim]

come on houstonians wake up it is 2007 this has to be the only large city in the country that has more peole that ride horses than public transportation. get with it the the change is gonna come eventually the more people that move here from other cities the more thier influence will be changing houston sorry cowboys.

[urban_houstonian]

Kim, keep the condescending comments to yourself. Houston is not expanding LightRail because of some kind of influence from tranplanted urbanites from other cities.

[kim]

a dog park??? wow houston is in worse shape than i thought. have they ever heard of a pooper scooper.LET THE TRAIN BEGIN!!!

[Jax]

Thanks for the live blog, great idea. I'm looking forward to an expanded Metro Rail system in Houston. I personally use the rail almost every day. While I can't give up on my car entirely at this point, the more they expand the rail service the less I will have to rely on my car to get places. I am really looking forward to hearing the results. The Richmond Cummins option is the only one that makes sense to me.

[Charles Kuffner]

Urban Houstonian - The issue of the Westpark dog park has been known for a long time. See http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/006984.html for instance - scroll down to the bottom and you'll see what I mean.

[Royko]

Fastest two minutes I can recall. At least I got two out of three minutes. Three months ago, METRO just took my name off the speaker list. And when I arrived to speak, I was told they could not put my name back on.

I wanted to put into the record that there were several instances of Stray Current damage to infastructure.

I had METRO's studies which documented the stray current leakage at Hermann Drive and San Jacinto, where there was a premature failure of an 8-inch concrete reinforced water line.

They can not challenge the fact that both the tram line bridge anchors for the Buffalo Bayou as well as the Braes Bayou have been replaced. Who knows all that was replaced after the near-$1 million was spent last year just location all the problems from the shoddy initial construction.

And I included the photos I took in late July 2005 of CenterPoint replacing the metal gas lines with plastic along Commerce Street and Main Street. METRO still has stray current leakage problems there, and CenterPoint quietly just replaced the lines, but will not talk about it.

I am still trying to get an audio tape of Mike Marcotte speaking to an AWWA meeting in September, where he stated to the peer group that Houston will spend $2 million this FY repairing stray current damaged infastructure resulting from METRORail.

I could not get NACE to take any formal action on a request for peer review of a two-page memo report concerning stray current potential at the three 40-year old expressway bridges which span METRORail. NACE wants to work with METRO to do more testing, adopt better testing metodologies for this type of instance, and add to their knowledge base. They know who butters the bread, with our sales tax dollars.

[Chrissy]

YES!!!! My husband and I ride Metro everywhere and I have to say the train is (going to be) more reliable, then the bus going down Richmond. Good job Metro!!!

[jim]

How does the light rail go over the freeway at Cummins and what about the shopping center there. I work in Greenway near cummins, across the freeway from cummins is a shopping center.

[T.J]

Friends of Houston, lets get real. I think only people with passports should comment on this point. This will allow only the people who have ever traveled out of the USA and experienced a Subway or Train in Major Cities like London, Paris, Toronto, Mexico City, etc. Come on, we are in 2008 almost, so we need to be ahead of the game, mostly because our population is growing. Lets look at what other major international cities have done. Otherwise major companies based here that we rely on, like Continental, will move to other metropolitan cities with easy access and less traffic to business areas. A 20 lane highway won’t get it for us in Houston anymore my friends... Amazing we are even having this conversation..

[Chuck]

Too little to late! I am moving out of Dodge City(Houston). This should have been done 10 years ago But big real estate is and was in control of city hall and they dictate what goes were and when!

[Kenneth Fair]

You've stated that the east side of the line will go Wheeler-Ennis-Elgin to the Eastwood TC. Rad Sallee reported that the line will be Wheeler-Ennis-Alabama to UH. Which is it?

[Cynthia]

Yay! Now where can I find a bigger picture of the proposed plan...I want to start planning my route to work!

[TAZ]

GOOD!!! I'M GLAD THE TRAIN TO NOWHERE, IS
FINALLY EXPANDING.....

[Master Dragon]

As a native Houstonian, I would love to see Houston get a decent mass transportation system. But ground level rail is absurd here, and a subway is totally unworkable. Not to mention, my attempts to drive trough areas the current light rail serves have been terrors - there are no crossing gates, and the trains will run over you fast if you are the least bit attentive. I wish they would use an elevated monorail - out of the way, little noise, and no interference with any form of traffic. AND...it can't flood! But of course, the people with the least knowledge about rail are running the show. Too bad. Houston will never be a world-class city if we can't look to the future and act accordingly.

[Bob]

What is this light rail going to do to Westpark Drive, both during construction, as well as during operation? For many of us, Westpark is a vital access to and from work, and it has already been affected by the installation of the Westpark Tollway (i.e. paid traffic jam). Is this light rail going to once again hobble the speed, number of lanes and access to Westpark, a vital link for many of us that live in West Houston, between I-10, and 59, to allow us to get from the west side of town, into the Galleria area, Downtown, and east parts of Houston? Light Rail is not going to help us, nor is it going to help about 95% of the commuting public that travels to/from this side of town. But it will make it that much more difficult to get to work, won't it? One more thing to watch out for, to be delayed by, on the way to work!