Metro’s new budget invests heavily in new vehicles

Metro adopted its fiscal 2025 budget Thursday, cementing the agency’s redirected focus on improving customer experience and investing in its aging vehicle fleet rather than expanding the transit system.

The unanimously adopted spending plan includes a $980 million operating budget and $598 million in capital expenses. Those represent increases of $65 million and $177.6 million respectively from the current budget. 

“We are excited to report that we are laser-focused on ridership and initiatives that will help us increase ridership,” Metropolitan Transit Authority Board Chair Elizabeth Gonzalez Brock said.

Metro is projecting a revenue increase in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 of 35.7 percent, spurred by more than $148 million in additional sales taxes and almost double the amount in grant funding. All together, the agency has budgeted more than $1.3 billion in revenue. 

Despite the increased capital budget, the agency has greatly pared down its list of planned projects, including cutbacks in its voter-approved expansion plan known as MetroNext. The current budget projected $718 million in capital spending in fiscal 2025.

The capital budget includes significant investment into what Metro considers “core services,” mostly pouring money into an aging vehicle fleet after a four-year pause on purchasing new vehicles. The agency is investing just shy of $210 million on new vehicles, an increase of $147 million. The agency expects the purchase or delivery of 234 buses in the next year.

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When the agency first released the budget book to the public on August 29, it included descriptions of all of Metro’s capital projects and a five-year financial outlook for each. That version of the budget came in at 274 pages. 

In updates since then, the agency has pared down the publicly available budget to a 60-page summarization, minus details of individual projects and other aspects of the budget. Metro leaders said the language was removed from the budget book to provide “a more streamlined and easier to understand look at the numbers.”

The budget still mentions the Inner Katy HOV, signaling the agency’s intention to alter a bus rapid transit project that originally was slated for a corridor of Interstate 10 from the Northwest Transit Center into downtown. That move comes after Metro opted to pause its planned University BRT line, citing rising costs and changes in ridership.

Both projects, along with a BRT line in Gulfton, were part of the MetroNext plan. The Gulfton project remains a part of the agency’s plans, according to Metro’s fiscal 2025 budget.

Bus rapid transit is designed for higher capacity ridership than normal bus routes, and often utilizes dedicated lines. The idea is to provide the flexibility of buses with the reliability of trains. High occupancy vehicle or HOV lanes require two or more occupants and can be separated from other lanes by barriers or painted markings.

EARLIER: Metro budget plan reduces Inner Katy BRT to HOV lane, further signaling shift in priorities

The agency’s new focus on customer experience, dubbed MetroNow, accounts for $173.8 million of the capital budget. MetroNow initiatives focus on five areas of the customer experience: service and reliability, safety and security, cleanliness, workforce support, and infrastructure enhancements.

That money will be used for such items as public facility upgrades, traffic signal priority and a fourth BOOST corridor. The agency already has begun work on three other corridors, which include sidewalk work, accessibility upgrades, bus shelter improvements and traffic signal prioritization.

BOOST corridors originally were part of MetroNext, which still has a presence in the capital budget. That includes an approximately $60 million investment in the Missouri City Park and Ride and more than $1 million on an extension of the light rail Purple Line. 

Metro’s operating budget also takes on investment into MetroNow. Of the $65 million increase in the operating budget, $43.3 million is centered around MetroNow initiatives, with the remaining $21.7 million dedicated to maintaining current services. 

That includes roughly $10 million for new microtransit service and expansion of the agency’s curb2curb service to a new area. The on-demand shuttle currently services Kashmere Gardens, Hiram Clarke, Missouri City and Acres Homes; a new expansion area has yet to be identified. 

Notably, the agency will no longer pursue a proposed bikeshare program that was due to launch this past summer. That decision can be attributed to Metro’s growing interest in microtransit.

Metro also will add $5 million in new bus service, and an additional $7.2 million for security services and hiring incentives to fill available positions with the Metro Police Department.

Metro also is planning to transfer $217.5 million to its general mobility program, a 9.3 percent increase from previous years. The fund diverts roughly a quarter of the agency’s sales tax revenue to its member municipalities for street improvements and other mobility projects. 

In a related agenda item, the board was set to consider authorizing Interim President and CEO Tom Jasien to negotiate and enter into an agreement with the city of Houston that would allow the agency and city to work on street projects together outside of the general mobility program.

According to the agenda item, the agreement would allow Metro to use the city’s on-call paving contractors to perform work repairing roads along bus routes. Metro would pay for those repairs through the city without utilizing the General Mobility Program.

The item, however, was a late addition to the agenda, and Director Robert Treviño moved to delay any vote until the agreement could be discussed in committee. The item was pulled, and referred to next month’s committee meetings.

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