Title
Urging the Metropolitan Council to add to construction and business mitigation efforts along Central Corridor given new information in the FTA's recent Supplemental Environmental Assessment.
Body
WHEREAS, the Metropolitan Council and Federal Transit Administration (FTA), on March 1, 2011, released for 30 days of public review the Draft Supplemental Environmental Assessment: Construction Related Potential Impacts on Business Revenues; and
WHEREAS, the Draft Supplemental Environmental Assessment made a number of key findings, including:
· Little work has been done nationally to quantify the impact of completed light rail or roadway construction projects on small businesses, leaving our region with imperfect mechanisms with which to project potential impact; and
· A regression analysis of the impact of a highway construction project on a Houston business district in 1993, concluded that not all businesses were impacted equally by construction (de Solminihac and Harrison, 1993). Particularly vulnerable to a loss of sales revenue, based on the Houston analysis, are grocery (-37%), auto retail (-32%), furniture (-17%) and general merchandise (-28%) stores. All other businesses can be expected to experience minimal positive or negative impacts; and
· Some kinds of mitigation-construction phasing, close coordination with individual businesses, businesses counseling, traffic management and public relations/marketing-can serve to reduce the impact of construction. Of particular note was the effectiveness of the TxDOT strategy of scheduling work in the lanes directly in front of businesses early in the project so the businesses could start receiving the benefits of the rehabilitation before the end of the project;
· The same businesses negatively impacted by construction can expect to experience an increase in sales in the year following completion of the project; and
· Consultants to the FTA document 798 businesses with revenue less than $2 million/year ...
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