New METRO President Elizabeth Gonzalez Brock Changes Agency’s Approach to Attracting New Houston Riders

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Elizabeth Gonzalez Brock took the wheel in February. She now leads an agency with a $1.6 billion budget and hundreds of thousands of people who rely on its security, speed and convenience.

“If a service is easy to use, people will use it,” Brock told ABC13.

That’s the simple mantra of the new METRO under Brock. She wants to change the agency’s approach. Instead of building first in hopes of attracting more riders, she wants to attract them first. This means improving what exists instead of increasing the footprint in the name of growth.

“I would love to see light rail expanded to airports,” she said, “but I think we need to focus today on our current core services and make sure we increase our ridership.”

Attracting riders was not easy.

According to METRO, ridership improved after the pandemic last year, but remained below pre-COVID-19 levels. This year, so far, 48 million people have used METRO. To improve, Brock says the agency must be reliable, easy to use, secure and on time.

“I think we have some work to do. Obviously with our attendance dropping, it’s an indication that we’re not where we need to be. And so we’re working toward that,” she said.

As for security and the possibility that Houston Mayor John Whitmire will ask METRO police to fill Houston’s police shortage, Brock isn’t worried about the impact it might have on the ability to the agency to proactively combat crime on and around buses and trains.

“We should treat taxpayers’ money as such, right?” she asked. “And we don’t separate them into categories. I think the taxpayers would really appreciate us being responsible with this money and collaborating. We’re working together to see how we can solve our city’s problems and our transportation problems and how we can work together. We’re looking at this process now and seeing how we’re going to be able to affect more people and have a greater presence on our transit system I think presence is really important.

Over the past five years, statistics show relatively consistent levels of crime, with an average of one major crime per 133,155 trips, including non-violent crimes such as theft.

Brock says they’re working together to improve the state’s largest transit agency.

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