From: "Tom Bazan" <tbazan@houston.rr.com>
To: "Randy Wallace" <wallace@fox26.com>
Cc:
Subject: METRO IS QUICK TO CROW OVER THE "ILLUSION" OF INCREASED RIDERSHIP ON THE TRAM
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 05:03:32 -0500

As Rube Goldberg would say "No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney!"

After the initial four days of free rides, many of the riders in the Medical Center received "Free" Stored Value Cards (SVC's) from METRO which were reportedly paid for by the taxpayers, just taken from a different pocket. METRO knew from day one that there was no way to ever debit any credit from these SVC's at the Ticket Vending Machine (TVM) kiosks, yet the official METRO policy has been that all the rider needed was possession of a SVC as "Proof of Purchase." Nevertheless, since the opening weekend, for the past six months, these and others who were quick to realize that the SVC's are virtual "Lifetime Free Passes" for METRORail, ride for Free along with those hapless poor and minority, bus transit dependent riders (half of METRO's bus routes) who have been forced to transfer onto the tram just to artificially inflate the "body count."

After all that, METRO's April and May average daily boardings was only 14,000 (7,000 round trips). I am not the only skeptic who believes that the first three months, before METRO installed any automatic counters, were totally concocted numbers, as likely these June ridership numbers still may be. METRO never has provided me with any manual daily ridership count sheets, thus, I must presume no daily count sheets exist, and that METRO employees concoct (estimate) any ridership number which sounds good to them.

If METRO, providing virtually free fares to anyone over the past six months, and now herding the poor and minority bus transit dependent riders off of more than half the METRO bus routes in the entire service area can only muster about 13,000 free fare riders, I must conclude that the 1/2-billion dollar "Transit Backbone" is an absolute, abject, absurd failure.

One could only conclude that METRO orchestrated this artificial ridership in order to try and achieve at least a nominal ridership number to base wildly optimistic forecasts in their application to the FTA in order to qualify for federal pork funds needed to build 54+ miles more of extensions to the demented "Demolition Derby" on Main Street."

There was no mention of the required Certification of Financial Capacity (CFC) which must also have veracity. In light of METRO slashing service to the poor and minority bus transit dependent riders, METRO's application might not survive scrutiny in Federal court.

Now, before being awarded a single federal dollar for boondoggle rail, METRO is talking about out doing Boston with their own version of a multi-billion dollar wasteful "Big Dig" subway.

Tom Bazan
P.O. Box 2786
Houston, TX 77252

832.673.0018

BAZAN, a long-time real estate broker, appraiser and environmental consultant, is the Independent Candidate for the 18th Congressional District of Texas, running to replace Sheila Jackson-Lee

www.BazanForCongress.com

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Original online article:

July 1, 2004, 12:05AM

MetroRail ridership rises in June
Preliminary numbers indicate daily passengers nearly double May's
By LUCAS WALL
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

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