June 02, 2004, 07:00 AM
My View: Abolish METRO
It would appear that we've all come to accept on faith that having a municipally-owned transit company is the best way of managing public transit in Houston. Although many people challenge the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority, known blandly as METRO, there are few voices out there actually calling for its abolition. METRO is, at worst, seen as a necessary evil.
We're long overdue for a paradigm shift, and we should be taking our leads from the past.
METRO was created by referendum in 1978, after financial troubles rocked HouTran, the private corporation that had managed Houston's public transit system for over a century. It started out in the 1870s as the Houston City Street Railway Company with mule-driver streetcars. In the 1890's, electric streetcars were added and the company was renamed Houston Electric. In the 1940's, following the “all-bus modernization program,” they simply became Houston Transit, which was later shortened to HouTran.
What all of this proves is that the old paradigm of public transit being managed by a private company was indeed workable. It only hit a snag in the 70's, which was used as a pretext for a municipal takeover. We've been paying for that decision ever since.
METRO has been obsessed with massive, cost-ineffective transit projects since its inception. It first pursued a commuter rail project in the early 80's that would have cost more than a billion dollars to complete and achieved only scant ridership. Voters rejected it by a 2:1 margin. After that failure, METRO didn't give up on rail, but it never mentioned rail in another referendum.
A private corporation wouldn't be doing this. They'd look for the most cost-effective solution, and pursue that in the most efficient way possible. Undoubtedly there would be shortcomings, but unlike METRO, they would actually run the risk of going out of business or losing their charter. That's the strongest incentive there is not to waste money, and it's one that METRO lacks.
Accordingly, we need to either privatize METRO, or restructure it in such a way as to prevent them from seeing transit projects as ends in and of themselves. Houstonians deserve frugality in government, and they're getting nothing of the kind from METRO.
I'm Owen Courrèges, and that's my view.
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