I don't know why I continually read the ramblings of the New Mrs. White. I really don't. Maybe it's because I'm waiting for the editorial to come along that admits this board has all been a joke and it's been on us. Maybe it's because I have an affinity for reading comedy.
I don't know why I've continued to read Mrs. White over the years, but I suspect that, above all, it's because they always seem to provide me with wonderful blog fodder. If Falkenberg hadn't been handed the insider-baseball Pulitzer of the year, the Chron Ed Board could make a strong case they are the perpetually uncrowned winner in the humor division.
One of Mrs. White's oldest tricks is salivating every time the Houston Area Survey is released and desperately looking for places to misapply it. This year, the obvious target is the suburbs. That's because the survey takers expanded the survey into the suburbs, asked a bunch of context-less questions and then published the responses as definitive.
That's enough for Mrs. White, who has now decided to apply this to just about every negative road bond outcome she can find, whether it makes sense to or not. But especially when it's in one of the counties newly covered by the survey and especially when she thinks the case can be made, tenuously, for rail.
But, that wasn't the case here. As a matter of fact, had the architects of the bond issue simply carved out the Woodland's Parkway expansion the bond would have passed just fine. A similar bond, defeated in 2008, was struck down because of a failure to list specific projects. Nowhere in the opposition to either of these bonds was a yearning for increases in public transit expenditures. No where.
Yes, it's true that the The Woodland's Express bus service is very popular. So popular, in fact, there's talk of bringing in MORE busses. And while Mrs. White tries to offer this up as proof of case for her argument that the suburbs want no cars and all buses and trains, the truth is actually the opposite.
People like Park n' Rides because they allow them to keep their car, just not drive it all the way into work everyday. This doesn't mean that there's going to be a flurry of votes for new expenditures for trains and dedicated bus lanes. You can try to spin it however you want, using whatever flawed study you want, and it still won't make it so.
Most (not all for sure) people like their cars, but hate their commute. What they hate even more are government agencies trying to spend a ton of taxpayer money with minimal accountability. That's right, I'm looking at you Metro. It's also important to remember that, in opinion poll after opinion poll, people usually view public transit as things for other people to use. The real hope is that the rest of us take the (now mythical) train and bus while they continue scooting into work traffic-free allowing them to arrive before their latte gets cold.
Public transit then, loved by the Rice/Kinder Houston Area Survey, Mrs. White, and caffeine-addled selfish people everywhere.
There's an editorial for ya.
