Christof Spieler asks a question. I respond more-directly than perhaps he can.

In a recent guest article by METRO Board Member Christof Spieler on METRO's 'Write-In' blog, he asks the question, "Why, people have asked me, didn't METRO do [System Re-imagining] long ago?"
I'm not sure if the METRO Board has ever-before boasted someone who is the particular sort of civic architect Christof is.  Add to that a Mayor who actually cares about mass-transit being something more than just trains, trains, and more trains, with a Board chairman and seven other Board Members who are genuinely-receptive and we have a potent combination.

Jim McConn helped preside over the creation of METRO in 1978, making Houston's first appointments to the Board.  Kathy Whitmire was 'monorail', 'monorail', and more 'monorail', but did we ever hear about better bus service?

Bob Lanier?  Not sure about him.  I suppose he was prudent, and in my memory of him, bus service did not get worse, and maybe got better?  People will need to enlighten me about Mayor Bob.

Lee Brown was obsessed with trains, trains, and more trains at the expense of everything else.  (I've discovered then-President-CEO Shirley A. DeLibero was actually forward-thinking on better-integrating buses with rail.)  Bill White put people on the Board who helped turn the agency into a laughingstock.

Finally, Houston gets Annise Parker who has come the closest of any of our mayors (save McConn, perhaps) who in terms of transit actually 'gets' it and who has turned out to be the best mass-transit Mayor Houston has ever had.

The past twenty years has been about the turning over of old ways of doing things for more ergonomic and holistic ways of thinking.  The rise of the consumer internet has, in-part, fostered this.   And 'The New METRO' has bought into this fad and eternal truth - to the betterment of our community - hook, line, and sinker.

Of course, my great fear is that the people of Houston will in 2015 elect a mass-transit-do-nothing Mayor and that it will be Bill White-appoints-Board-who-allow-Frank-Wilson-to-flourish all over again.

God help us all.