Harrisburg @ Hughes.
A part of the coming light rail East Line, this intersection sports railroad track along Hughes. METRO had originally planned for an overpass through this railroad crossing for the light rail line though in 2011, it changed its mind and opted for an underpass, but with the discovery of accumulated gasoline underground, the agency was put into a quandry.
The first half of this year has been fraught with METRO's wringing its hands in indecision as to building an overpass or an underpass as well as the necessary process of getting public input. The presence of an overpass would affect many businesses and homes. And from what I can tell, the east end of Houston has been divided almost evenly as to whether to build the overpass or build an underpass. Witness the 6 May 2014 Special Board Meeting, in which things get a little hot under the collar...
More on this situation from Charles Kuffner...
Yesterday, METRO - in its regular monthly Board meeting lasting three-and-a-half hours (with as concise, yet comprehensive a presentation as one will ever find on the background and present situation at 2:49:50 onward), two-thirds of which was a steady stream of public speakers, among them Houston's Mayor Pro-Tem by proxy - the Board voted first to not delay the final vote on overpass or underpass by another thirty days, and then at last, the Board 8-0 voted to build an overpass, closing a long and tedious process of discernment.
After the public speakers were done, and before the two aforementioned votes, METRO's President & CEO, Thomas C. Lambert delivered the stupefying news that designing and constructing this overpass via the option voted for by the Board would take about thirty-one months...putting the end of the construction of the East Line in my estimation to God-Knows-When.
During this months-long process of public input, the memory and reality of Love Canal was more than once invoked by long-time mass-transit activist Dominic Mazoch. With the plume of contaminants lurking underground, in this process, it's best to let sleeping dogs lie. The overpass is the right choice, and I'm relieved METRO has finally come to a final decision here.
The only other news of any note is that CAF is staying on its revised schedule with the completion of the new facility in Elmira, NY specifically for METRO's cars still being on the schedule 6th of June. I was unable to make the meeting, but thank Heaven for METRO's copious meeting archives!
The meeting was well-attended and most-productive. Board Member Christof Spieler is out of the country on a long-planned tenth anniversary vacation he sorely needed, though he did send an email to the Board expressing his support for the overpass. That email was read aloud at the meeting. Seeing Christof these past few weeks, I look upon a guy that is very, very tired. Happy - but still in dire need of some rest and relaxation...
The next regularly-scheduled METRO Board meeting is on 26 June 2014.
Jeff Ragsdale's musings on all-things mass-transit in the greater Houston-Galveston area
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