How would you connect light rail to both airports?

[IronTiger]

Fun topic--when Parker ran for mayor, she made some comment in her campaign about light rail to both airports. Obviously, that's a bit of a stretch, but if you were going to connect the Metro to the airports, how would you do it? Express them along existing right of ways, or take them along major corridors? The choice is up to you in this thread!

 

Anyway, here's mine for Hobby...

 

- Demolish 4100 Griggs and have the light rail tracks extend from the Purple line

- Have the rail parallel the south side of Griggs as it prepares to elevate into a raised viaduct. The EZPawn parking lot access to Long Drive may be cut off.

- This viaduct curves into paralleling the freight rail and Mykawa Road

- The elevation drops before going under 610.

- Build another elevation over the railroad spur, or convince businesses to abandon it.

- Cross Dixie Drive at-grade, with the stoplight upgraded to work with the light rail (no right turn during trains, etc.)

- Elevated station at Mykawa and Bellfort, with a parking lot being built at the northwest corner.

- Continue at-grade, go to elevated around Dillon Street.

- Another curved viaduct to parallel with Airport Blvd. and crossing the freight trains, property line of building at NE corner of Airport and Station Drive may be clipped

- Rail remains elevated to allow better ease-of-access, though some turnarounds are closed permanently.

- Rail comes to a terminus at the northeast corner of Airport Blvd. and Telephone Road. The station is also elevated, but there's parking at ground level (paid parking) and walkways to the main parts of the airport.

 

IAH is a little harder. Rather than extend the Red Line, a separate Airport-focused line splits off at Bigelow, Irvington, and Fulton.

 

- The line takes out part of the lot (not the building) of C. Martinez Elementary School, and descends into a tunnel east until the freight railroad at the southwest corner of Collingsworth and Carr, where it ascends and crosses at-grade with Collingsworth.

- The freight railroad is slightly adjusted to the west to provide adequate ROW for the light rail.

- The light rail is elevated above the Cavalcade and Porter Street/Jensen Drive/Porter Street crossings.

- After going over 610, a station with a parking lot is built at Kelley Street (southside), and the rail crosses Melbourne Street at-grade (Kelley Street is already sunken) then elevated over another freight line as it prepares to go into Eastex Freeway.

- This next part would be part of a widening of Eastex Freeway, with HOT lanes on either side and the rail in the center.

- The LRT then goes underground as it goes underneath the frontage road of the southbound IH-69 frontage road

- At the Harris Co. Corrections Dept. office, a combination (private) parking garage/station is built next to the building, north of Wimberly Street. This is the Wimberly Station. A connection actually connects it to the rail portion.

- The next station is the Tidwell Transit Center.

- At East Mount Houston Road, the rail curves west and finds itself in the median of the road.

- Hartley Road re-aligns to meet up with Gloger Road, and the railroad passes through this intersection. Rather than stopping at Hartley Road then curving into Gloger, going west meets up with a stoplight and a left hand turn lane for Hartley (protected due to a railroad crossing) and a right-hand yield lane for Gloger.

- The railroad clips a number of property back-lines near the drainage area and goes through part of the MacArthur Ninth Grade Center before it connects to the median of John F. Kennedy Blvd.

- There's stations at Aldine Mail Route, Lauder, and Aldine-Bender.

- Finally, the rail starts elevating to reach a fourth level over the exit/entrance ramps from the Beltway.

- Still elevated (though not at the heights it was reaching earlier), it comes to a station near Park N Fly.

 

I'm sure there's a better way to do that last one. It seems complicated...

 

[mollusk]

Without going into parsing the routes, what on earth is the point of having the end of the line anywhere other than the airport terminals themselves?  

 

I can't even imagine trying to slog all the way from Telephone and Airport to the actual airport... that's somewhere around a one mile walk.  With baggage.  The proposed trudge at IAH is even worse - about four miles.  

 

I loves me some trainage, but...

[JLWM8609]

Regarding the extension of the purple line, the intersection of Griggs, Mykawa, and Long Rd at the railroad crossings is a SNAFU intersection.  The SH35 freeway is also slated to go through there at some point along with a stack interchange at 610. That that entire intersection will likely be completely redesigned to accommodate everything coming through there including a light rail line, and also eliminate those at-grade railroad crossings.

[IronTiger]

8 hours ago, mollusk said:

I can't even imagine trying to slog all the way from Telephone and Airport to the actual airport... that's somewhere around a one mile walk.  With baggage.  The proposed trudge at IAH is even worse - about four miles.  

Who says you have to walk? There would be shuttles. As for why they aren't connecting to actual terminals, I'd say security/logistics reasons.

[cspwal]

Most train connections are a bit away from the terminal, just due to the fact that they need turn around space.  At least IAH has a sky train you could extend to the stop, or maybe the people mover underground.

 

Or moving sidewalks.  Something that Midway needs from the station in Chicago btw

 

I believe the plan for the airport was to extend the green line down Harrisburg and then down Broadway straight into the airport.  I saw that somewhere, idk where.

The median of the Hardy toll road could be a good place for a commuter line going out from downtown that stops at IAH; maybe not even light rail.  I'd guess that it would terminate at Burnett transit center, especially if it is heavy rail instead of light rail.  

[mfastx]

One of the reason I wish Houston did more to try and build heavy rail is that we have a lot of areas that would be great if connected by transit but are far away.  Light rail connecting both airports would be great, but heavy rail would achieve significantly more ridership, especially since IAH is so far away from where most people live. 

 

Knowing that we've gone ahead and built light rail, I would extend the red line north with limited stops in the less densely populated areas to speed up travel times as much as possible.  It's much too slow when being run in the middle of the street, so some grade separation would have to be involved. 

 

I think a light rail connection to Hobby would get more ridership, and we're already almost there. Just running it down Broadway to the airport would get decent ridership IMO. 

 

 

[samagon]

the skytrain is only accessible once you have passed security, I think?

 

the toy train in the basement isn't behind security though. you could tunnel the last mile of the LR right up to the D terminal basement toy train. 

 

since light rail can go both ways, it doesn't need room to turn around.

[cspwal]

1 hour ago, samagon said:

the skytrain is only accessible once you have passed security, I think?

 

the toy train in the basement isn't behind security though. you could tunnel the last mile of the LR right up to the D terminal basement toy train. 

 

since light rail can go both ways, it doesn't need room to turn around.

 

The not needing to turn thing for light rail I didn't even think of - my bad.

 

I wonder if you could have a stop at each terminal - either in a loop or straight in straight out.

And I was thinking you'd have a small security check point at the light rail station if you extended the sky train there.

A good light rail terminal might be right where that hotel is.  It's already centrally located and has the toy train connection.

 

 

1 hour ago, mfastx said:

Knowing that we've gone ahead and built light rail, I would extend the red line north with limited stops in the less densely populated areas to speed up travel times as much as possible.  It's much too slow when being run in the middle of the street, so some grade separation would have to be involved. 

The top speed of the trains metro has been buying for the light rail is 66 mph - that's the signed speed limit on the test track south of Fannin south.  To get that speed you would have to grade separate - it would be much better if you could get a 70+ mph train with grade separation all the way to downtown.

[LarryDierker]

I would extend the green line to Hobby.

 

 

This route would offer a cool view of the ship channel as you cross Brays bayou, and a potential stop near the future Botanical gardens.

[astros148]

A light rail to the airport wouldnt work, lets not kid yourself folks. We need a commuter train going down Hardy and straight to the airport. Anything else would be a waste of money. 

[JLWM8609]

16 hours ago, cspwal said:

Most train connections are a bit away from the terminal, just due to the fact that they need turn around space.  

 

 

Atlanta is an exception. The MARTA subway line ends at the airport, but the connection is right at the terminal. They don't need turn around space. They just switch tracks as they depart the airport.

[mollusk]

SFO's BART stop is in the International Terminal, Oakland has an elevated cable car from BART, DCA has a Metro station on the B/C Concourse, and JFK has Airtrain that is part of the MTA... and these are just the ones that spring to mind.

 

There's also no need for turn around space if the airport isn't at the end of the line.

 

[Montrose1100]

I have to say using only light rail to connect to the airports is a bad idea. Hobby might not take forever but IAH would. It's fine if they're on the grid but we need express. HOU - Downtown - IAH. A metro train going top speed would suffice but something faster would be more ideal. Apart from passing through neighborhoods white people are afraid of, it would be nice for foreign travelers to have just the one stop. Connecting the international airports would be great. Plus maybe people would stay at Hotels Downtown if they had a long layover. Spend their money at restaurants & bars.

 

On a larger scale The Woodlands could fork over some money to have a direct line as well. One by one we could connect all the business districts with a few of the suburbs as the network grows. If it doesn't, we still have a sweet connection from Downtown.

[Houston19514]

9 hours ago, Montrose1100 said:

I have to say using only light rail to connect to the airports is a bad idea. Hobby might not take forever but IAH would. It's fine if they're on the grid but we need express. HOU - Downtown - IAH. A metro train going top speed would suffice but something faster would be more ideal. Apart from passing through neighborhoods white people are afraid of, it would be nice for foreign travelers to have just the one stop. Connecting the international airports would be great. Plus maybe people would stay at Hotels Downtown if they had a long layover. Spend their money at restaurants & bars.

 

On a larger scale The Woodlands could fork over some money to have a direct line as well. One by one we could connect all the business districts with a few of the suburbs as the network grows. If it doesn't, we still have a sweet connection from Downtown.

 

Light rail would be fine, as long as it runs in exclusive right-of-way for the long portions of the trip.  It's not the car technology that makes the current service run somewhat slowly.  It's the frequent stops at stations and traffic lights.  As has been posted above, our trains can go 60+ mph.  For comparison, Washington Metro rail cars are limited to 59 mph (operationally).

[Montrose1100]

1 hour ago, Houston19514 said:

 

Light rail would be fine, as long as it runs in exclusive right-of-way for the long portions of the trip.  It's not the car technology that makes the current service run somewhat slowly.  It's the frequent stops at stations and traffic lights.  As has been posted above, our trains can go 60+ mph.  For comparison, Washington Metro rail cars are limited to 59 mph (operationally).

Exactly. The cars could even be modified to add overhead storage for luggage. Using the Heathrow Express as an example, it does connect to multiple terminals. It only reaches to Pattington, which I guess is okay, but hauling luggage on the tube sucks if you're staying in the financial areas/canary wharf.

 

Even if It was a stop slightly north or east of Downtown, the hotels could run shuttles combined with an uber & taxi drop off point.

 

Damn Metro and the none existence intermodal. Makes me raise my first to the sky!

[IronTiger]

For what it's worth, I thought about adding light rail in the median of the Hardy Toll Road, but they triple-tracked it and there's not enough room now unless the light rail was stacked or buried.

 

Anyway, light rail probably is worse for Intercontinental as even with higher speeds if they don't have to stop at lights and make sharp curves, as the distance for Hobby is far less than the distance to IAH. Measuring "as the crow flies" and not ground distance, the end of the Purple Line and the Hobby terminal is 4 miles. The distance from the end of the Red Line to the IAH terminals? 11. Even if we take to the airport zone at Greens and JFK outside the borders, that's still twice as far.

 

Heavy rail to IAH is impractical if you expect transfers before downtown, though a "I-45 line" that connects The Woodlands, IAH, Red Line North, Downtown, and points south to Galveston almost might work.

[mollusk]

Perhaps something like the Shanghai maglev... it takes less than 10 minutes to make the 19 miles from the airport to its connection with the rest of the grid.  Here, we could stack it over rights of way that already exist for freeways, light rail, or what have you to save property acquisition costs.

 

Or maybe it's more of a Shelbyville idea.

[BeerNut]

I just got back from Japan and I liked the idea of having limited and express limited trains that were for people going to the airport.  Probably wouldn't be feasible for here but I liked the idea of waiting a little longer at a stop or transferring trains down the line to avoid stopping at every stop.