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METRORapid University Corridor


BeerNut

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METRORapid University Corridor Project

Join us at the public meetings listed below to learn more about the METRORapid University Project, ask the project team questions, and provide input. We look forward to meeting you!

Tuesday, July 12

Meeting #1
Meeting will be held at the Chinese Community Center.
6-8 p.m.
9800 Town Park Drive Houston, Texas, 77036

Meeting #2
Meeting will be held at the Emancipation Park Conservancy Cultural Center.
6-8 p.m.
3018 Emancipation Avenue Houston, Texas, 77004

 

Wednesday, July 13

Meeting #3
Meeting will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Houston in the Greenway Ballroom.
6-8 p.m.
6 E Greenway Plaza Houston, Texas, 77046

Meeting #4
Meeting will be held at the BakerRipley Ripley House (Gymnasium).
6-8 p.m.
4410 Navigation Blvd. Houston, Texas, 77011

 

Thursday, July 14

Meeting #5
Meeting will be held at the Wisdom High School (Auditorium).
4:30-6:30 p.m.
6529 Beverly Hill Street Houston, Texas, 77057

Meeting #6
Meeting will be held at Houston Community College, Felix Fraga Academic Campus. (Facilitated in Spanish / facilitado en español.)
6-8 p.m.
301 N Drennan Street Houston, Texas, 77003

 

Saturday, July 16

Meeting #7
Meeting will be held at the Julia C. Hester House.
9:30-11:30 a.m.
2020 Solo St Houston, Texas, 77020

 

Monday, July 18

Meeting #8
Meeting will be held at the Third Ward Multi-Service Center.
6-8 p.m.
3611 Ennis Street Houston, Texas, 77004

 

Wednesday, July 20

Meeting #9
Meeting will be held at Houston Community College – Central Campus in the WW Harmon Building – Room WWH 100 (green building located on the corner of Holman and Caroline).
6-8 p.m.
1300 Holman Street Houston, Texas, 77004

 

Thursday, July 21

Meeting #10
Meeting will be held at the Northeast Multi-Service Center.
6-8 p.m.
9720 Spaulding Street Houston, Texas, 77016

 

Monday, July 25

Virtual Meeting #11
Meeting is virtual, and will be recorded and posted online afterward. The meeting link will be provided a few days before the meeting.
6-7 p.m.

Edited by BeerNut
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  • 2 weeks later...

Looks cool. It is a massive disappointment that Metro is having to settle for BRT instead of at least LRT for this corridor. BRT will generate less ridership, require a higher operating subsidy per person (although with less initial capital costs) and generate less economic development/benefits for the city. Thank you Culberson. 

I still hope that this will be more successful than the Silver line which hasn't done well at all. Maybe after it's connected to this it'll do better. 

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1 hour ago, mfastx said:

Looks cool. It is a massive disappointment that Metro is having to settle for BRT instead of at least LRT for this corridor. BRT will generate less ridership, require a higher operating subsidy per person (although with less initial capital costs) and generate less economic development/benefits for the city. Thank you Culberson. 

I still hope that this will be more successful than the Silver line which hasn't done well at all. Maybe after it's connected to this it'll do better. 

another plus is it should be faster to implement.

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I also wish it was light rail, but BRT is a great way to get the system built out. 
 

I can see a long distant future where these are transformed into light rail

 

also, the silver line currently goes nowhere, which is why ridership is low. I can see it getting a huge boost with this line 

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Struggling with the regret for light rail to be built here. Do we consider the green, purple, and red line LRT extensions a success? Ridership on these new lines has been pretty abysmal (even controlling for effects of the pandemic). 

University Line BRT construction is already estimated at $84MM per mile. Building light rail here would likely require at least triple the investment per mile for little to no incremental return.

 

 

 

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I think it still will. The uptown line makes very little sense in isolation; this is a whole different story. This connects the east end to UH/TSU to Midtown/Museum District to Montrose to Kirby to Greenway Plaza to Uptown to Little India. That's *a ton* of destinations and a tens of thousands of homes and apartments. 

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2 hours ago, Heights88 said:

Struggling with the regret for light rail to be built here. Do we consider the green, purple, and red line LRT extensions a success? Ridership on these new lines has been pretty abysmal (even controlling for effects of the pandemic). 

University Line BRT construction is already estimated at $84MM per mile. Building light rail here would likely require at least triple the investment per mile for little to no incremental return.

 

 

 

The rail extensions have DEFINITELY been a success. Look at the surrounding areas around the purple line and specifically along Scott st... almost every block has either already been developed or is currently under construction, the area around the green line is getting is also getting a lot of attention from developers lately. However, it takes time for ridership to increase in these areas. Don't forget, these LRT extensions were in areas/ streets with almost nothing/ empty/ abandoned lots. So, now that these extensions get built, developers have to step in to redevelop these empty lots/ low density areas (which they have). This entire process takes time, decades even. Houston is thinking of the future with these LRT extensions. We're going to wish we had a lot more of them in the future when it takes an hour to get from uptown to downtown. Our highways/ streets cannot and will not keep up with our increasing population. I'm sure you've noticed how horrible traffic is becoming, imagine in 10 years when we add another million people and their cars. Or imagine 2050 when we're projected to add another 7 million people.....and their cars :)

 

Also, I'm not surprised that the silver line isn't successful yet. It literally goes up and down 1 street and connects to 2 park and rides that's literally .5-2 miles away. Not only that, the street itself has an abundant amount of parking. It doesn't make any sense to me to drive all the way from Sugar Land/ West University/ Pearland/ etc and park at the West Park P&R (which isn't immediately off the freeway), then take the BRT to ride .5 miles to the Galleria. If anything it feels like that would waste more time. Now, imagine if they can take the park and ride from their suburb and get on a BRT that goes down the highway and straight to the silver line. Or, imagine a BRT down Shepherd/ Durham that connects to the silver line. That would make a lot more sense (and cost more I know), until then or until it connects to other lines, I don't see ridership changing much. 

In summary, we're wayyy too car dependent, and the longer we wait and oppose BRT/ LRT, the more we're going to be screwed in the next 20-30 years. 

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3 hours ago, cspwal said:

The original midtown to galleria route down Richmond through montrose would probably have rivaled the redline in ridership. 

Isn't the only difference that it goes down to Westchase at greenway? That isn't terrible. 

If I can get to the Galleria on this thing in 25-30 mins from the Wheeler Transit Center, I feel like thats a big win. 

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5 hours ago, Heights88 said:

Struggling with the regret for light rail to be built here. Do we consider the green, purple, and red line LRT extensions a success? Ridership on these new lines has been pretty abysmal (even controlling for effects of the pandemic). 

University Line BRT construction is already estimated at $84MM per mile. Building light rail here would likely require at least triple the investment per mile for little to no incremental return.

 

 

To to fair, the purple line and green line were built with the intention of the university line feeding into them. It's like if you build Spur 527 before you build US 59. Also, from what I've seen in the Metro presentation, they expect the University BRT to generate more ridership than the 3-4 planned light rail expansions combined. I think that warrants rail for an "incremental return."

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19 hours ago, Heights88 said:

Struggling with the regret for light rail to be built here. Do we consider the green, purple, and red line LRT extensions a success? Ridership on these new lines has been pretty abysmal (even controlling for effects of the pandemic). 

University Line BRT construction is already estimated at $84MM per mile. Building light rail here would likely require at least triple the investment per mile for little to no incremental return.

Part of my regret comes from the fact that I believe they did it backwards. This and the uptown corridor definitely warranted rail, while the east side lines were more suited to BRT, in my opinion. 

I disagree that there would be no incremental return. Substantially higher ridership and lower subsidy per passenger on an operational basis definitely qualifies in my opinion. Higher capacity is a plus too - the system can be in place for decades longer without needing capacity upgrades. And then the economic benefits with LRT outweigh BRT, although I'll grant that it's not THAT much more benefits (substantially higher benefits come from HRT which unfortunately will probably never be built in Houston). 

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Is the section before Chimney Rock going to come in a different phase? Or are they still hammering out the details of it and decided not to release a rendering of it right now? I’d thought that the University Line was gonna start before BW8

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On 7/14/2022 at 11:51 AM, corbs315 said:

I see James Coney Island survives in this vision of the future

 

On 7/15/2022 at 8:36 AM, samagon said:

the guiltiest of my pleasures, I hope they survive!

https://houston.culturemap.com/news/restaurants-bars/07-11-22-james-coney-island-jci-grill-shepherd-location-closed-shuttered/

They actually shut down quietly last week

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On 7/15/2022 at 2:40 PM, BEES?! said:

Is the section before Chimney Rock going to come in a different phase? Or are they still hammering out the details of it and decided not to release a rendering of it right now? I’d thought that the University Line was gonna start before BW8

Yes, I believe that they are going to do Westpark/Lower Uptown TC to Eastwood TC first. They didn't have the full renderings for the other sections. 

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21 hours ago, Amlaham said:

That was just one location that closed (although a couple of others are currently up for lease). Other locations are still in business, there just aren't any inner-loop ones left.

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21 hours ago, Amlaham said:

the one on i45 near Woodridge closed before the pandemic, there's not a single location in downtown Houston area. thinking about it, I don't even know if there's another location inside the loop after this one closed.

that's why I made my comment about I hope they make it, they've been slowly closing locations for years, the easiest one for me to get to now is in Meyerland. 

on a more topical note, I guess they are still working on the design, but I was really hoping to see how they handle the Elgin/Spur5/Railroad/i45 intersection.

I do hope they include a bicycle lane (and better pedestrian access) in that mess of an intersection. the most difficult part I see is (unless the RR will make their bridge wider) they have a very limited width within which they will have to work, specifically under the RR.

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4 hours ago, Texasota said:

Elgin certainly has more ROW and this routing allows one fewer turn, so it makes sense.

I wonder why it turns onto Blodgett if they aren't going to put a station on it?

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14 hours ago, Texasota said:

Elgin certainly has more ROW and this routing allows one fewer turn, so it makes sense.

Wouldn't it make sense to stay on Wheeler to Ennis?  Even fewer turns.  Maybe I'm just being salty cause the closest stop is now twice as far from my place.

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It might be because it will be easier to make the turn onto Ennis from Blodgett than Wheeler:

Blodgett is already widened at that point and the lot at the NW corner is vacant. They can acquire vacant land to build the curve rather than encroaching onto (and probably acquiring outright) someone's house.

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Then as soon as this comes out jolanda Jones wants to cry foul

miss Jones - 

where were you when Wheeler Ave BC bought 2-3 streets off Scott for a church expansion and a parking lot?

where were you when the state bought out the back of the community off MLK and OST and bulldozed homes years ago for the spur 5 extension and nothing has happened?

where were you when all those homes on Alabama disappeared or how every small lot inside the loop is now being bought and 10 town homes made of crap quality are being thrown out which prices out another family in the area?

why no fuss about the private developers buying land on Scott and displacing residents for high rise student housing?

cause metro is considering running by TSU and some homes will have to be displaced you want to rile up the masses (most don't even live out there) but use that same energy for the other developments across Scott and Elgin - this end needs a development like that

Stay in your lane 

 

 

 

 

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