History of houston rail propositions

[Slick Vik]

Found this treasure online, gives all the maps of what was studied, proposed, and ultimately never built

http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth246651/m1/10/

[mfastx]

Money in place and vehicles ordered for the 1983 heavy rail plan?! 

 

Jeez, how did they manage to screw that one up??  Imagine how much more ridership we would have today if that were built. 

[citykid09]

Money in place and vehicles ordered for the 1983 heavy rail plan?! 

 

Jeez, how did they manage to screw that one up??  Imagine how much more ridership we would have today if that were built. 

 

I wonder what they would have looked like?

[Slick Vik]

Money in place and vehicles ordered for the 1983 heavy rail plan?!

Jeez, how did they manage to screw that one up?? Imagine how much more ridership we would have today if that were built.

Same thing for monorail

[Trae]

Money in place and vehicles ordered for the 1983 heavy rail plan?!

Jeez, how did they manage to screw that one up?? Imagine how much more ridership we would have today if that were built.

Metro didn't screw that one up actually.

[mfastx]

I wonder what they would have looked like?

 

Maybe similar to Atlanta's system? 

 

Same thing for monorail

 

Eh, I'm not as gung ho for monorail.  From what I've seen, its crazy expensive to operate, and I've never seen monorail as the backbone of a transit system.  It hasn't proven itself to be efficient and work well like rail has.

[mfastx]

Metro didn't screw that one up actually.

 

From the way the article put it it seemed like they did.  It seemed to me that they could have went ahead and built it, but they went to the public for a vote on a more extensive system.  They should have just built it and let the people see how successful it was.

[livincinco]

Money in place and vehicles ordered for the 1983 heavy rail plan?!

Jeez, how did they manage to screw that one up?? Imagine how much more ridership we would have today if that were built.

Wasn't that about the same time that the bottom started to fall out of the local economy?

[mfastx]

Wasn't that about the same time that the bottom started to fall out of the local economy?

 

Right, but the money was there.  IMO they should have just built it and not take a super ambitions plan to the voters before they even built the initial line.  They didn't stop building it because the economy went down the drain.

[samagon]

I'm astonished how much the price of a large pizza has gone up over the last 15 years. $6 wouldn't even get you a personal pizza these days

 

Timing seemed to be the biggest failings (and a town that loves their cars) for previous attempts at any type of rail. That and unrealistic pie-in-the-sky (monorail) type ideas that were never meant to get off the ground.

[Slick Vik]

Pizza Patron $5, even Little Caesar's.

[citykid09]

I wonder what will happen once the Mertorail becomes obsolete? Will there be a plan in place for a system like the proposed 1983 one?

[livincinco]

I've attached a 1985 LA Times article on transit in Houston that presents a different take on the 1983 referendum. The relevant parts to the '83 initiative are on page 3.

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-09-26/news/mn-1774_1_los-angeles-metro-rail

[samagon]

The first page of that article was really generous towards the use of the carpool lanes. Fast forward nearly 30 years and the lanes are open to toll users and I observe a breakdown in the lane at least once a week (gulf freeway) that brings the lane to a crawl, and at best it appears the traffic in that lane is going maybe 10-20mph faster than the main lanes.

 

I assume the 5 year goal of 150,000 users per day was met, but I have to wonder if they've met the other goal of shaving 1 minute for every mile, and if they did then, do they still meet that goal today?

 

I wonder how this article would have been written today?

[livincinco]

The first page of that article was really generous towards the use of the carpool lanes. Fast forward nearly 30 years and the lanes are open to toll users and I observe a breakdown in the lane at least once a week (gulf freeway) that brings the lane to a crawl, and at best it appears the traffic in that lane is going maybe 10-20mph faster than the main lanes.

I assume the 5 year goal of 150,000 users per day was met, but I have to wonder if they've met the other goal of shaving 1 minute for every mile, and if they did then, do they still meet that goal today?

I wonder how this article would have been written today?

Part of it is contextual. This was right when LA was working on their plan to implement rail and there was a lot of opposition to the cost of the project.

I thought it was interesting though that they blamed the failure of the Houston referendum on METROs arrogance and insinuated that they ordered the vehicles without voter authorization.

If that's correct, then "money in hand and vehicles ordered" is pretty misleading.

[Slick Vik]

Funny that we are still being charged tolls for the tollways even after they are paid off. Also, HOV cost $1 billion to make overall. With that money at that time we could have had a good heavy rail system. This is the fault of autocentric people who voted it down and also a METRO board that nobody had faith in, but they created that situation themselves. They lost the trust of the public. HOV's are heavily underutilized. Why not use the HOV and make them into heavy rail pathways? And the most ironic thing is, people like Bob Lanier who always credit the bus, never ride the bus. That being said, it's amazing that we went from a great bus system to a horrendous one. In the end, I think LA made the right decision and is light years ahead of houston in terms of rail construction.

[samagon]

Part of it is contextual. This was right when LA was working on their plan to implement rail and there was a lot of opposition to the cost of the project.

I thought it was interesting though that they blamed the failure of the Houston referendum on METROs arrogance and insinuated that they ordered the vehicles without voter authorization.

If that's correct, then "money in hand and vehicles ordered" is pretty misleading.

 

Yeah, it read kind of biased towards the bliss of the HOV.

 

'money in hand and vehicles ordered' and still voted down, I read that as 'business as usual' considering the recent incompetence considering the source of the rail cars for the lines they're currently building.. Makes one wonder how much it cost the city that time to back out of the order?

[august948]

Funny that we are still being charged tolls for the tollways even after they are paid off.

That's what happens when you create a bureaucracy. They are self-sustaining and self-expanding.

That being said, it's amazing that we went from a great bus system to a horrendous one. In the end, I think LA made the right decision and is light years ahead of houston in terms of rail construction.

I've always thought we had a pretty good bus system, especially compared to other southern cities. Try riding a bus in the Atlanta area.

[Slick Vik]

That's what happens when you create a bureaucracy. They are self-sustaining and self-expanding.

I've always thought we had a pretty good bus system, especially compared to other southern cities. Try riding a bus in the Atlanta area.

Atlanta has METRA

[august948]

Atlanta has METRA

I assume you mean MARTA. Thing is, though, the Atlanta area is broken up into many local jurisdictions, some of whom don't participate in MARTA and/or have their own systems. The actual city of Atlanta is only the core and had a population of around 500k out of a metro area of 3 or 4 million when I lived there in the 90's. Many of the surrounding cities and counties deliberately kept themselves out of the MARTA system or only had minimal interchanges with it. Trying to actually cross Atlanta on public transit could be a real ordeal depending on where you were coming from and going to. Not so much here in Houston where we've got a comparatively extensive bus system that allows you to ride from one side of the city to the other all on the same system.

[citykid09]

This is MARTA:

[mfastx]

Some of that article is really ironic.  The "never has so much money been spent to move so little" is particularly ironic, because one could easily say that about the HOV system that METRO was building at the time.  Almost a billion dollars for about 30,000 people, lol.  Considering that MARTA has over 200,000 boardings a day, the starter line would easily be about half that.  If a 7 mile light rail line has 40,000 boardings/day imagine how successful heavy rail would be. 

 

The GM payments came about in part because METRO had so much extra money to build a real transit system.  Now that the extra money is taken away from them, it's that much harder to build an effective system.  Any successful transit system is going to require high capital costs. 

 

Anyway, there's no doubt that METRO would have a lot more ridership today if the line had been built.  The real question is if the city would allow METRO to contiune to keep it's whole tax and continue to improve the system.  That's MARTA's problem.  The initial line was built, but after that nothing got done due to no funding.  They're kinda stuck now, albet with a better transit system than any other southern city, save for Miami perhaps.

[livincinco]

If a 7 mile light rail line has 40,000 boardings/day imagine how successful heavy rail would be.

I don't think that you can necessarily make that assumption anywhere other than the original line. One of the problems that both Atlanta and Los Angeles have experienced is that they are both getting diminishing returns on the later lines that they built.

I really want to be a rail believer, but (imo) I haven't seen where it's been particularly effective in any of the post WWII growth cities.

[Slick Vik]

I don't think that you can necessarily make that assumption anywhere other than the original line. One of the problems that both Atlanta and Los Angeles have experienced is that they are both getting diminishing returns on the later lines that they built.

I really want to be a rail believer, but (imo) I haven't seen where it's been particularly effective in any of the post WWII growth cities.

Vancouver is a good recent example. Also when LA finishes the line to Santa Monica ridership will sharply increase

[livincinco]

Actually, let me phrase that slightly differently. There's a lot of talk about government subsidies for highways and how it impacts rail. If the rail line had been built in 1983 as shown, what highways do you not build in the intervening years? I don't see how that would eliminate building the beltway, widening the Katy Freeway, etc, because they are different target markets. I don't think it's a trade off. It's additional transit expense.

[livincinco]

Vancouver is a good recent example. Also when LA finishes the line to Santa Monica ridership will sharply increase

Not particularly familiar with Vancouver, so I can't comment. I'm less optimistic of ridership on the Expo line after the extension to Santa Monica being a game changer.

For reference, with all the rail that has been built in LA, it still draws only about 1/3 of the number of riders that the bus system does and that includes the existing portion of the Expo line.

[Slick Vik]

Not particularly familiar with Vancouver, so I can't comment. I'm less optimistic of ridership on the Expo line after the extension to Santa Monica being a game changer.

For reference, with all the rail that has been built in LA, it still draws only about 1/3 of the number of riders that the bus system does and that includes the existing portion of the Expo line.

Istanbul's transit population is expected to increase 10 fold after its expansion is done. I think for LA once the Santa Monica expansion and airport connector via the other new north south line is done their ridership will rise dramatically. Vancouver extended as a result of the Olympics and sees tremendous gains as a result. It is heavy rail though

Delhi metro is another very successful metro system to a city that desperately needed it

[Slick Vik]

Actually, let me phrase that slightly differently. There's a lot of talk about government subsidies for highways and how it impacts rail. If the rail line had been built in 1983 as shown, what highways do you not build in the intervening years? I don't see how that would eliminate building the beltway, widening the Katy Freeway, etc, because they are different target markets. I don't think it's a trade off. It's additional transit expense.

It depends if the ridership was strong enough it could've prevented Katy widening. Probably not beltway though

[mfastx]

I don't think that you can necessarily make that assumption anywhere other than the original line. One of the problems that both Atlanta and Los Angeles have experienced is that they are both getting diminishing returns on the later lines that they built.

I really want to be a rail believer, but (imo) I haven't seen where it's been particularly effective in any of the post WWII growth cities.

 

Well, of course you aren't going to get good results by plopping heavy rail down all over the city.  But on inner loop routes and connecting employment centers, I can say with high confidence that ridership would be very high.  For instance, if you replaced our current Red Line with heavy rail (subway downtown and TMC, elevated elsewhere) then you can reasonably expect ridership to go up.  Atlanta just did two cross town rail routes and they have 200,000+ boardings a day.  Atlanta didn't build any later lines, they haven't expanded their lines since the 80s.  Same with Miami (except for the airport extension, which is like one extra station so it doesn't really count).

 

Los Angeles aready had an extremely high bus ridership before any rail was built.  And now they have over 200,000 boardings a day just on light rail, about 15% higher than a year ago.  Add the 150,000+ boardings on their very short heavy rail line, and you've added almost 400,000 riders just by investing in rail (I'm including their commuter rail ridership as well).  And you're moving them more efficiently too. 

 

Actually, let me phrase that slightly differently. There's a lot of talk about government subsidies for highways and how it impacts rail. If the rail line had been built in 1983 as shown, what highways do you not build in the intervening years? I don't see how that would eliminate building the beltway, widening the Katy Freeway, etc, because they are different target markets. I don't think it's a trade off. It's additional transit expense.

 

Houston is building a lot of freeways it doesn't need at all.  Take the Grand Parkway for example.  In the short term, you'll still have to expand freeways.  But decades down the line, you might not need all the extra capacity, depending on how the city grows. 

[livincinco]

It depends if the ridership was strong enough it could've prevented Katy widening. Probably not beltway though

But that infers that building heavy rail would have prevented continued development out west and would have driven that development along rail lines and I don't know how you can make that assumption.

Take the example of San Francisco, which has the most established rail system in the Western US. Even though there was extensive rail throughout the Bay Area, it had minimal impact on where growth occurred in both new job centers and new housing. Urban sprawl continued to proliferate primarily in areas that BART doesn't service. As a result, even though there's an extensive rail network there, it misses huge segments of the population and is now trying to catch up.