Draft Map public comment...closed!

As of this past Midnight, the nigh-on-three-month window of time for you to give METRO a piece of your mind over the System Re-imagining Draft Proposed Map is over and done with.  8 May of this year was the big huge unveiling of this draft proposed network to the greater Houston public and the world which began this time of public comment which has included numerous public meetings as well as an online survey.

With this ending of public comment comes the process of bringing about and (hopefully) adopting a Final Proposed Network Map as our new transit network going forward - a reimagined transit network carrying us into a bright future.

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Kurt Luhrsen, Jim Archer, and all angels in the Planning Department are chomping at the bit to get the Final Proposed Map approved as soon as humanly-possible.  Everything in their implementation-logistical plans hinges on the 'switch' being flipped to the new network from the old on Sunday 7 June 2015.  To that end, the Board needs to give the green light.

In lieu of a normal monthly Strategic Planning Committee meeting in August will be a Special Board Meeting with all Board members for the sole purpose of going through all the public comments, online survey responses, and voodoo incantations from happy and irate individuals and making sense of all of them.  This meeting should take place in the first two weeks of August (hopefully - this is speculation on my part only as of this writing).  Everyone has been warned it will be long, 'grueling', and very interesting.  I have not been to a METRO Board Meeting in a few months, but I'll definitely be around for this one.

Once that meeting is done, METRO will continue the behind-the-scenes process of getting the Final Map together, accommodating as much public input as it can while keeping the integrity of the efficiency of the new network, and if all goes well, this final map will be presented to the full Board at its regular meeting on Thursday 28 August.  Presumably, there will be lots of continued Board discussion that day followed by the post-meeting taking the map back behind-the-scenes and working on it even more.

Look to Board Member Cindy Siegel and others to successfully push for another Special Board Meeting in the first two weeks of September to further work on the thing.  The Board will get the final, final, Final Map sometime in advance of the 25 September regular Board meeting at the same time it is presumably posted to METRO's website for public consumption.

Thursday 25 September is currently the date slated for the METRO Board to vote System Reimagining up or down.  By this time, I cannot imagine the map not being worked on to at least the passing satisfaction of every single Board member.  Archer, Luhrsen, et al are breathing down the Board's neck for its okay to go forward with implementation.  We may rest assured there being a 99.999% chance the final Board vote will be on this date, and we may rest assured there is (at least in my estimation) at least a 95% chance of this plan being approved.

And once that vote is done and approval is given, Kurt and his friends as well as Dominick Mazoch, Mark Hogue (hopefully), Mark Smith (perhaps), I, and many others in and out of METRO will breathe a huge sigh of relief.