Houston passed a transit referendum in 2003 and it is due to expire. So they are replacing with a General Mobility Program.
This Mobility Plan Referendum is scheduled for a vote on November 6th, 2012.
http://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/Referendum/about.html (http://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/Referendum/about.html)
The GMP is funded by a 25 percent allocation from METRO's 1-cent sales tax revenue and pays for the construction and maintenance of:
Streets and roadways
Bridges and grade separations
Traffic-control signals
Sidewalks and hike and bike trails
Streetlights
Drainage improvements related to transportation facilities, streets, roads or traffic-control improvements
The other 75 percent of METRO's sales tax revenue goes toward METRO programs, including local and Park & Ride bus service, light rail, vanpool, HOV-lane operations and METROLift.
In other news RideMetro has made progress on their light rail project:
(http://www.lightrailnow.org/images/hou-lrt-nbound-main-st-sq-stn-pax-close-feb2004_m-harrington.jpg)
Per Trains Newswire:
HOUSTON â€" Houston transit agency MetroRail is on pace to complete more than 15 miles of track for three new light-rail lines that will open in 2014. Overall project construction is more than 60 percent complete.
The first steel structural columns for the station canopy at the East End/Green Line Lockwood/Eastwood Station have been erected, and work has progressed on construction of the Kuhlman Gulley Bridge on MLK Boulevard and a sound wall on Wheeler Avenue.
Utility relocations are 90 to 99 percent complete on all three lines, road paving is at 79 percent or more across the project, and track construction is more than halfway complete. The agency currently operates a 7.5 mile light-rail line. Once complete, MetroRail will have 22.7 miles of light rail in service.
(http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/houston1.jpg)
Houston is one of the cities that sold me on the idea of the incremental approach to implementing fixed rail. The 7.5 mile LRT line that exists today was done locally and against the wishes of the state and feds, both of which favored BRT. After the success of the 7.5-mile line between downtown and Reliant Park, the public ended up demanding rail over BRT from the start. There was even a study done to show that building rail upfront was significantly cheaper to taxpayers than building BRT and converting it to LRT at a later date (the original concept). Now within a short time span, nearly 15 more miles of rail are being added. I don't believe having 22-miles of LRT in Houston by 2014 would have been possible if the public did not get to witness the success of the smaller starter line, which opened for Houston's Super Bowl.
When my father had pretty bad case of cancer and went to MD Anderson for treatment, my parents ended up renting a place in Houston for 6 months. They used the LRT almost exclusively for transit to the Texas Medical Center and back to their place, plus other destinations. It was fantastic.
Last month I met a man who was receiving Proton treatment at Shands. He and his wife rented a place above Uptown Market. And I thought how great it would be if the street car was connecting main street with Shands. People come from all over for the Proton treatment, and connecting available housing options with Shands would be a boon for Springfield and the surrounding areas. You could essentially eliminate the need for a car for some of these people coming in out of town.
^That's how a well laid out line works. It doesn't matter whether its five or twenty miles long and it doesn't have to immediately serve every single acre of a city. If it is reliable and ties two or more major pedestrian scale destinations, employment generators, neighborhoods, etc., you start to create an environment where a car isn't exactly an everyday necessity.