METRO will review questionable Uptown bus numbers
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A major development in the controversial plan to tear up Post Oak Blvd for exclusive bus lanes.
Metro Chairman, Gilbert Garcia is announcing the transit agency will re-examine the numbers that Uptown has been using to justifying the need for the project.
Studies by an Uptown contractor claims more than 14,000 people will be using buses to Uptown by 2018, just two and a half years from now, even though that number now is now about 5 percent of that. That number is also based on the theory that by 2018 Park and Ride lots will be overflowing with cars, even though some of them are only at 10 percent capacity.
An investigation from Dolcefino Consulting has proven the numbers are just wrong.
One easy example, Uptown claims its study proves more than 1,000 people will be taking the 285 bus from Katy by then. One major problem, that bus route has now been discontinued because of low ridership.
The Uptown numbers also claim nearly half of the riders will suddenly materialize, not from Uptown workers, but from shoppers. Those shoppers already have a bus to use to get in and out of Post Oak. One bus and it’s rarely full. Now they want to spend taxpayer’s money on at least 14 buses travelling up and down Post Oak every six minutes?
Uptown has even refused to conduct a study of major employers along the street to gauge interest in the bus plan. Why?
“I will tell you why, because Uptown knows what employers have been trying to tell them, says Wayne Dolcefino, President of Dolcefino Consulting. Their workers don’t want to first drive to a Park and Ride lot, and then take two buses to get to work, and then do the same thing at the end of a long day.”
“This isn’t a battle between people who want mass transit and those who don’t. This is a battle to save jobs, taxpayer money and to stop projects that are unneeded and smell like self-dealing,” says Dolcefino.
Uptown Chairman, Kendall Miller has been the biggest cheerleader of the plan to tear up Post Oak and widen it to accommodate two exclusive bus lanes. That widening will force Uptown to spend more than 40 million dollars paying landowners for their right of way.
Guess who gets a big chunk of that money? Guess who benefits if the construction kills the shopping centers, paving the way for more high-rise construction? Guess who benefits from all the expansion of utility lines being done for the project?
Kendall Miller.
Miller and two other Uptown Board members disclosed potential financial conflicts with the project early this year, even though they lobbied for federal and state grant money, and city council approval without disclosing conflicts. Other board members in Uptown have yet to disclose their potential financial benefits from the project.
“I have heard defenders of Uptown say it is hard to avoid conflicts because they are property owners, but that is why we have disclosure,” says Dolcefino. “And now we know the Uptown Board is nothing more than a rubber stamp selection process that fits the definition of a sham.”
Miller and his mom both serve on the Uptown Board.
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