That is a Metro bus getting hit by Houston's only light rail train in downtown. The light rail line, which opened in 2000, has gotten the nickname "The Danger Train" because it keeps running into things. Or, more correctly, things keep getting in its way. Things like cars and buses. Has nobody in Houston heard of these?

Seven years after a referendum passed to expand the one light rail line to six, a single mile of additional track has yet to be laid. Only in the past year has any work begun at all. And the University Line, the most critical link that would tie the city's major employment centers together, is the one that hasn't been fully funded yet.

All this is to say that the critics of mass transit in Houston (and they are legion) smell blood in the water, and are circling. The new mayor has thrown the executive board out on its ass, and is now openly questioning the future of the system expansion. The City itself is in a budget crisis that could cause end in a furlough of city employees. But nowhere is this anti-transit message clearer than over at Houston Strategies, where author Tory Gittis has endorsed the following under the title "The Real Future of Transportation":

Randal O' Toole has such a great essay in the Wall Street Journal this morning, I have to pass it along (with my own highlights). Its main theme is about the self-driving cars of the future, but it also brings up a lot of inconvenient facts about the alternatives, like inter- and intra-city rail - which are the emerging themes of the next federal transportation bill.

I'll give you the short version. O' Toole is proposing that, instead of investing in alternative transportation infrastructure, we should continue to build more streets and highways because, soon, cars will be driving themselves... in the future. *jazz hands*

So let me get this straight: we can't keep a bus from crashing into a train, but we're going to be able to design a system that drives millions of cars every day that will reduce traffic and congestion? And its only a convenient coincidence that the potential of this technology means that we should sustain the status quo of more roads and more sprawl.

And yet, for an alternative, I must turn to Metro. The sad thing is I can't decide which one is more pathetic.