cspwal

That's the rendering of the dedicated bus lanes. Theoretically, only buses should be on it - it's not going to be an HOV lane

I wouldn't say never, but the last new heavy rail subway in the US was made in San Juan in 2004, but it only has 2 subterranean stations. The Seattle light rail tunnels, which are closer to what I was thinking of, has a mile long tunnel downtown that was made in 1990, as well as another tunnel built in 2005 and the one that is currently being finished up. So it is possible for new subways to be built, especially one based on "light rail" but the biggest issue is getting funding

And a subway tunnel only has to be a little wider than 2 trains wide, except at stations. I'm imagining the same light rail vehicles just in a tunnel

Yeah it's nowhere close to being done. I'm surprised they still think 2020

Elevated line might be harder to sell, especially in the River oaks area. In lower westheimer, there's really not that much room for anything - the support structure would have to be a lot of really skinny poles or else you're going to be taking ROW that is at a premium I think you would have to have at least 5.5 miles of underground tunnel between Main st and Sage road. The eastern terminus might have to go further east than Main - I'm not sure how you'd connect it to the current and proposed LRT network. The western end could go at grade in the median after Sage street - there's wide enough medians there and so many lanes that at grade light rail could work. You'd want the rail to go all the way to Gessner (probably a little further to beltway 8 to hit that proposed BRT line), so that's another 5 miles of surface rail. Assuming that a subway tunnel could be dug under westheimer for the same cost as Seattle's new tunnel (it is using light rail vehicles similar to MetroRail), it's $600 million/mi The metro next plan is to build 16 miles of new light rail for $2.1 billion, so its about $131 million/mi for the light rail portion That means the line would cost $4 billion, if prices can be kept similar to Seattle's new downtown tunnel.

Slightly different topic: has anyone seen any serious proposals for heavy rail along Westheimer? The 82 bus has such high ridership, a Metro line under Westheimer would get high ridership every day

If the fly over was designed to only hold buses (and it looks like it - the cantilevered sections don't look like they are train ready) then it doesn't matter if they are legally allowed to transition it to light rail - they'd have to build a new flyover bridge

A complete bike lane down one block is more useful than a half built bike lane down two blocks

The problem is the unfinished project isn't useful to bicyclists yet - if you're in a nice 2 way bike lane that is suddenly blocked by cars, you either go into traffic or on the sidewalk. Neither are good options, and it might have been better to do the full treatment block by block as opposed to do the whole thing in stages

I think the federal funding for the bus lane down 610 had language that strictly prohibited it from being upgrade to light rail. I think that was part of a double bank shot to try to prevent the entire project - make the bus lanes non-upgrade-able, and then say the whole project is illegal because the voters voted for rail. It got struck down and they built the project anyway, but the bus lanes are still only up to bus spec not train spec

Bike lane is nothing if people just park in it

Drove down Post Oak from 10 yesterday, and I didn't realize how far they still have to go on the bus lane to the transit center. The flyover is mostly done, but the ramp is only tamped dirt, and there isn't any pavement yet for the bus lanes themselves

I know they are just forms for the concrete, but I like the wood look for the bridge

I agree that the gold line should go downtown once the BRT lanes are made, but I think it can stop at Burnett TC if that is a more direct route. The Purple/green line tracks downtown are barely better than what a regular bus would be on - having the BRT vehicles have to get to them wouldn't be great

Here is what HGAC has already approved: from https://communityimpact.com/houston/transportation/2019/01/18/grand-parkway-widening-fm-2920-improvements-among-top-road-projects-being-considered-for-federal-funding/ I'm very curious how it's going to go from the existing 2-way I-10 HOV lanes to Burnett transit center. Will they have another bridge T'ing off of the current HOV lane? Or will there be street running to get from Franklin up to Burnett transit center? How congested will the new 2 way HOV lane be if they are letting HOV commuters into it? That's already a step down from LRT service - I hope they make the BRT a priority to keep flowing otherwise it will be a bad foot start on for the new MetroRapid system