Lawsuit targets Metro's expansion plans

Correction: The legal motion Scarborough filed was not a lawsuit, as some media outlets reported, but rather a motion seeking information from Metro officials.

Ubiquitous Richmond Avenue rail opponent Daphne Scarborough has pulled out a new weapon in her fight against the light rail expansion that she says would destroy her livelihood and her street: Scarborough has sued Metro, claiming that the transit agency has broken a "contract with the voters" established by the 2003 passage of the Metro Solutions referendum. Scarborough's focus in the suit isn't solely the contentious Richmond light rail alignment, but that's certainly a part of it: The suit claims that Metro has isn't complying with the terms of the referendum because the western section of the proposed University light rail line won't run totally on Westpark. Scarborough said she's filing suit because she has tried to talk with Metro for three years and has gotten nowhere: "I can't seem to get any straight answers," she said.

The language of the referendum has been the central issue in the fight over whether to run a rail line down Richmond Avenue all along. The ballot language seems innocuous enough — among a list of seven proposed light rail/commuter lines is this:

4. WESTPARK

Wheeler Station to Hillcroft Transit Center

The anti-Richmond rail side contends that "Westpark" there means Metro may only run the line along Westpark — or along Westpark, over some neighborhoods and along the Southwest Freeway, or whatever it would take to get the line from Wheeler Station on Main Street out to where Westpark begins. The pro-Richmond folks point out that the ballot language doesn't specify routes for the lines: "Inner Katy," for example, is another name for a proposed rail line on the ballot; it would run from downtown to the Northwest Transit Center, but there's no street called "Inner Katy." Metro Chairman David Wolff has noted that, west of Shepherd Drive, any of the proposed University Line alignments would contain longer stretches along Westpark than along Richmond. "The vast majority of people in Houston know that we cannot function without a great transit system," he said. "When you build it, some people are not going to be happy with where you build it, how you build it."

As we said, Scarborough's lawsuit doesn't only have to do with the question of light rail on Richmond: It also seeks to find out how closely Metro has stuck with other aspects of the referendum, too, including how it has used federal assistance, whether the agency has given a portion of its tax revenue to Houston, Harris County and other cities for mobility uses, and why Metro is planning to build four bus rapid transit lines instead of an all-rail system. "They are in bait and switch," Scarborough's lawyer, Andy Taylor, told KHOU. "They won't agree, and how long does it take Metro officials to stand up and confess that they can't get the job done with what the voters approved?"