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Subways: Are They Possible?


IronTiger

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There's a ton of light rail discussion on HAIF to browse through (and half of those are blaming politicians), but is there a reason why subway hasn't been discussed for the Houston region? Dallas has over three miles of subway line paralleling (and going under!) a major highway, which feels really great for a city in the South. And because there's only one station (connected to an office building) and it is only for that section, it doesn't feel grimy and depressing like New York City subways are.

Is it because Houston's traditionally non-rail attitude won't even consider subways, or is the ground physically unstable?

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Given that Houston streets aren't really very wide, and the difficulty in buying right of way without destroying a ton of houses and businesses, I would say subways are probably inevitable. I would hope that they are bored tunnel lines, not cut and cover. Cut and cover is hugely disruptive and destructive, which is why London quit using the method something like a century ago. Cut and cover is also more difficult to keep from flooding. With today's tunneling techniques, I don't think there's any technical reason preventing construction of bored tunnels.

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See, in the case of the much maligned University Line, I think it would be the best, since bridging over 59 would end up demolishing buildings and messing up Richmond, not to mention the fact that the light rail would end up stopping at lots of stoplights anyway--going from Weslayan and Westpark Road to Edloe and Richmond would have less jerky curves than what was previously proposed, and then it could use the old "Westpark ROW" the rest of the way, solving (most of) everyone's worries.

While a full "spider-web" network is still pretty unrealistic, it does reopen a lot of corridors for ideas.

I was thinking that a subway wouldn't be possible not just because of the proximity to sea level but softer ground that makes it unattractive to build. Subways aren't possible in say, Galveston.

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I think the stronger "anti" argument might be about cost, not feasibility.  E.g., the BART in San Francisco goes under their bay, and even Amsterdam has a subway despite being at or below sea level.  Also, there's the sub-channel tunnel between England and France that carries both highway traffic and trains.

 

We could do it, but it would be more of a matter of deciding it's worth it (if we funded a significant amount of it locally) or else being able to get a Houston-friendly federal government to shoulder most of the cost.  The latter seems unlikely these days, though.  Houston historically has paid a lot more in taxes to the federal government than it has gotten back in funding ... unlike DFW.  For that, I blame our choices in local elected officials.

 

 

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See, in the case of the much maligned University Line, I think it would be the best, since bridging over 59 would end up demolishing buildings and messing up Richmond, not to mention the fact that the light rail would end up stopping at lots of stoplights anyway--going from Weslayan and Westpark Road to Edloe and Richmond would have less jerky curves than what was previously proposed, and then it could use the old "Westpark ROW" the rest of the way, solving (most of) everyone's worries.

While a full "spider-web" network is still pretty unrealistic, it does reopen a lot of corridors for ideas.

I was thinking that a subway wouldn't be possible not just because of the proximity to sea level but softer ground that makes it unattractive to build. Subways aren't possible in say, Galveston.

 

Amsterdam has a subway system. Their soil is pretty squishy. If they can do it, we could do it. All you really need are lots of pumps.

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Can anybody name a tropical or subtropical city essentially at sea-level with a water table just a few feet below ground that has successfully built subways?

 

I'll take Amsterdam as an analogue.  From an engineering standpoint, the makeup of the soil is more important than ambient temperature - particularly for something that is going to be more or less constant temperature since it's well underground.  Also, the North Sea can generate some pretty wicked storms.  

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Never, we cannot build light rail our commuter rail.  If possible we will not need it in 2050 we can use the cars in "Blade Runner" or the pods in "Logan Runs".  LOL!  So what DART has a subway there ridership has decreased.  

 

Let's not turn this into a discussion about Dallas please.

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Amsterdam has a subway system. Their soil is pretty squishy. If they can do it, we could do it. All you really need are lots of pumps.

 

In all fairness though, the European attitude is different wrt subways.  The viewpoint there is sort of "If you don't have a metro, you're not really an important city."  Metro systems are more of a base case expectation.  

 

I couldn't speak to the engineering aspects of a subway in Houston, although I tend to assume that it would lie in the realm of the feasible but expensive.  It's interesting that one rarely even hears of the idea of a subway, while the monorail concept gets trotted out pretty regularly. 

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It's interesting that one rarely even hears of the idea of a subway, while the monorail concept gets trotted out pretty regularly.

It is interesting. Monorails seem to have all the disadvantages of an elevated viaduct and there's no city where monorail is actually a practical investment (Detroit has a rather useless people-mover system, Disney World has one, but that's not exactly an urban area, and Sydney dismantled theirs after it was a failure).

Dallas does have a subway, but it's not like the Washington DC/NYC style subways, it still uses light rail stock and overhead power poles (in a way, basically a tunnel for the light rail).

For those asking if it would fill up with water during floods, is that always the case? When were the times when Washburn Tunnel flooded? That's been in place for decades.

146 also had a tunnel (backfilled for years now and replaced with a bridge, but that's because they wanted the road widened, and it wasn't feasible to do it with an aging tunnel). Both of those tunnels mentioned ran under the Ship Channel, which was dredged to about 45 feet deep.

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Given that Houston streets aren't really very wide, and the difficulty in buying right of way without destroying a ton of houses and businesses, I would say subways are probably inevitable. I would hope that they are bored tunnel lines, not cut and cover. Cut and cover is hugely disruptive and destructive, which is why London quit using the method something like a century ago. Cut and cover is also more difficult to keep from flooding. With today's tunneling techniques, I don't think there's any technical reason preventing construction of bored tunnels.

The reason light rail was built is because it was all that was affordable with local funds because tom delay blocked federal funds. If we got a $900 match from the Feds I think the Main Street line could've possibly been a subway.

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The reason light rail was built is because it was all that was affordable with local funds because tom delay blocked federal funds. If we got a $900 match from the Feds I think the Main Street line could've possibly been a subway.

Downtown is slightly different and was better off as a surface rail. Reason being is that the tunnels were already in place, and those are privately owned. Trying to retrofit a subway in would either require new stations to be built and accessed from other blocks or trying to fit subway stations in the tunnels. Notice that the Dallas light rail isn't below ground either.

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Downtown is slightly different and was better off as a surface rail. Reason being is that the tunnels were already in place, and those are privately owned. Trying to retrofit a subway in would either require new stations to be built and accessed from other blocks or trying to fit subway stations in the tunnels. Notice that the Dallas light rail isn't below ground either.

 

One more time, not that Dallas has anything to do with the topic.

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The reason light rail was built is because it was all that was affordable with local funds because tom delay blocked federal funds. If we got a $900 match from the Feds I think the Main Street line could've possibly been a subway.

 

There's a lot of logistical problems with running a subway through downtown, specifically, there's the interaction with the tunnel system as Iron Tiger mentioned as well as impact to underground infrastructure.  Also, from what I've read, there was pretty strong resistance to the longer timeline to build a subway and the length of the surface level disruption that it would have caused.

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In all fairness though, the European attitude is different wrt subways.  The viewpoint there is sort of "If you don't have a metro, you're not really an important city."  Metro systems are more of a base case expectation.  

 

I couldn't speak to the engineering aspects of a subway in Houston, although I tend to assume that it would lie in the realm of the feasible but expensive.  It's interesting that one rarely even hears of the idea of a subway, while the monorail concept gets trotted out pretty regularly. 

 

I think there's 2 things at play, first there is a really strong majority of citizens that want public transportation, second is the age of the cities, and getting around them.

 

Getting to Amsterdam centrum can be done a few different ways.

 

Drive to a parking lot in centrum and walk/tram/bike the rest of the way to your destination.

Drive to a parking lot on the ring and take metro to centrum, and walk/tram/bike the rest of the way to your destination.

Drive/walk to an outer city train station and ride the train into Amsterdam central station and metro/tram/walk/bike the rest of the way.

 

All of them will take the same amount of time. Parking in centrum costs as much as fare price (for one person). So unless you are carpooling, it makes no sense to drive.

 

Amsterdam is way more unique than a lot of other cities that have a subway, in that cycling makes up a lot of the traffic, so cars have other cars and lots of bikes and trams to deal with as well, it can be disquieting. Barring that, all European cities are very dense and difficult to navigate by car because of their design and layouts. Contrasted with public transport (subway, tram, whatever) you find your destination, pick the colors to follow, exits to take and go.

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Can anybody name a tropical or subtropical city essentially at sea-level with a water table just a few feet below ground that has successfully built subways?

 

We already have highways below the water table.  

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We put MEN on the moon, and have a 24/7 habital pod in space where which has been inhabited since 1998... We have power plants powered by atoms and have ranged weapons capable of obliterating mankind 100 times over.  Add to that the successfully re-launched Twinky!

 

Of course we can build a subway!

 

Houston isn't below sealevel - yeah the average height of the city is fairly low and unlike DC/NYC we don't have bedrock to anchor into.  Boston has a subway and much of what we consider present day Boston is/was infilled swamp.

 

The issue is cost.  Subways would be more expensive than any LRT/Commuter system above ground.  Honestly though I could see a hybrid subway/above ground line running between DT-Midtown-Montrose-Upper Kirby-Uptown-Westchase and running mostly below grade.  The big problem would be controlling the water during rain events.  Not like we don't get "gully washers" on occassion here.

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Even the systems with subways are only below ground where it makes sense.  BART has subway, at grade, and elevated elements; 40% of the New York subway is at or above grade (h/t Wikipedia), less than half of DC's Metrorail is subway.

 

Downtown's existing infrastructure would pretty much require that a subway be built even deeper.  My back of the envelope guess is that the roof of the tube could be no less than 25' below grade to clear the tunnel system, probably a bit more in places - which you'd have to do anyway in order to put the northern portal north of Buffalo Bayou.  Sure, the trains on the street are a bit in the way (particularly when METRO gets overly aggressive with the traffic light overrides), but overall not that big a deal.

 

I think where a subway would really make sense would be in a dense area that has a laughably inadequate surface street grid - something like Post Oak/Westheimer (in honor of another contributor, I'm not going to use the popular yet trademarked name stolen from the nearby shopping mall; in honor of my own refusal to bow to the silly I'm not going to use the Pretentious Alternate Name that makes no geographic sense, either).

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