METRORapid University Corridor

[BeerNut]

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 June 29, 2022 by BeerNut

[BEES?!]

Maybe University Corridor ought to get its own thread soon?

[editor]

11 hours ago, BEES?! said:

Maybe University Corridor ought to get its own thread soon?

Done.

[tigereye]

Conceptual video of the University BRT line. 

 

[mfastx]

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. 

[samagon]

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.

[pablog]

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 

[corbs315]

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

[Heights88]

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.

 

 

 

[cspwal]

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

[Texasota]

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. 

[BeerNut]

Houston business owners concerned about METRO's proposed bus rapid transit

Quote

The proposed route would run along Richmond Avenue, where Abraham Aguilar runs a boot shop.

"Hopefully our quality withstands it, but I know we're going to lose business," Aguilar said.

 

[BeerNut]

Here are pics of some of the slides that took at the Emancipation meeting on Tuesday.

[Amlaham]

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. 

[X.R.]

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. 

[Some one]

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."

[samagon]

20 hours ago, corbs315 said:

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

the guiltiest of my pleasures, I hope they survive!

[mfastx]

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). 

[BEES?!]

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

[Amlaham]

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

[wilcal]

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. 

[mkultra25]

21 hours ago, Amlaham said:

 

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

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.

[samagon]

21 hours ago, Amlaham said:

 

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

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.

Edited July 19, 2022 by samagon

[BeerNut]

On 7/14/2022 at 3:57 PM, BeerNut said:

 

 

Old route

Any thoughts on why they changed this segment routing?

 

[Texasota]

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

[iah77]

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?

[Houston19514]

I think it might be at least partly for the purpose of getting that station adjacent to TSU.

[BeerNut]

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.

[Texasota]

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.

[hbcu]

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 

 

 

 

 

[hindesky]

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/transportation/article/Metro-s-next-step-to-a-bigger-transit-system-is-17323310.php

[editor]

In light of the map title, I suggest we now refer to this project as "Big BeRT."

Also, it should be the Yellow Line.

 

[BEES?!]

Metro’s recent virtual meeting about the University corridor line is on youtube:

They are also running a survey (the one shown in the video), but I did not see a link to that. 

[rechlin]

The survey link is here (there was a QR code with this address on the video, and it's also linked from the main project site):

https://ridemetro.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4SJWbsekHAVTR9c

[august948]

Houston METRO to receive over $21 million for electric buses from federal grant program

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/transportation/2022/08/12/430614/houston-metro-to-receive-over-21-million-for-electric-buses-from-federal-grant-program/

 

 

[Texasota]

neat, but seemingly unrelated - these are replacements for the general fleet.

[kennyc05]

Sorry if this has already been answered but will Richmond be rebuilt and on the other BRT routes planned are the streets being rebuilt or is it as needed?

[wilcal]

5 hours ago, kennyc05 said:

Sorry if this has already been answered but will Richmond be rebuilt and on the other BRT routes planned are the streets being rebuilt or is it as needed?

I believe the entire line will end up with a dedicated lane just for the BRT line, so almost all of it will need to be rebuilt. 

If you watch this video it will show you what the configuration is currently planned as: 

 

[Justin Welling]

5 hours ago, kennyc05 said:

Sorry if this has already been answered but will Richmond be rebuilt and on the other BRT routes planned are the streets being rebuilt or is it as needed?

Yes, all the roads and sidewalks along the BRT corridor will be rebuilt. 

[kennyc05]

15 minutes ago, wilcal said:

I believe the entire line will end up with a dedicated lane just for the BRT line, so almost all of it will need to be rebuilt. 

If you watch this video it will show you what the configuration is currently planned as: 

 

 

7 minutes ago, Justin Welling said:

Yes, all the roads and sidewalks along the BRT corridor will be rebuilt. 

Thanks appreciate the responses!

[samagon]

I believe they also rebuild the sidewalks within a specific distance of the lines as well?

[77002er]

On 10/3/2022 at 10:02 PM, Justin Welling said:

Yes, all the roads and sidewalks along the BRT corridor will be rebuilt. 

I wish, but if history has taught me anything, they will rebuild all the sections of the BRT route except the stretch from the spur through Shepherd .... they obviously think that rotten roads and broken sidewalks add "character" to the neighborhood

[Texasota]

Unclear what history you're referring to. When building the red line, green line, purple line, and the Uptown BRT they completely rebuilt the entire street/sidewalks etc.

Now, on Harrisburg that was admittedly to mixed results - the sidewalks are too narrow in some places. But they're definitely new and not "broken".

[Texasota]

On a positive note, from the last Bicycle Advisory Committe meeting slides, it looks like the City *is* coordinating with Metro for bike lanes + BRT on Lockwood.

PowerPoint Presentation (secureserver.net)

[felt38]

From the public meeting posted above, it looks like the schedule is that construction is projected to start in 2025 and finish by 2028.  We all know these things take longer, but at least that's what we're starting with.

Currently METRO is in project development for this route and begins engineering phase in the next year or so.

[004n063]

On 11/12/2022 at 1:15 AM, felt38 said:

From the public meeting posted above, it looks like the schedule is that construction is projected to start in 2025 and finish by 2028.  We all know these things take longer, but at least that's what we're starting with.

Currently METRO is in project development for this route and begins engineering phase in the next year or so.

I remember when the Silver Line was being built the line on BRT over LRT was that BRT was so much quicker to build...

[BeerNut]

[hindesky]

https://www.ridemetro.org/about/metronext/metrorapid/metrorapid-university-corridor-project/#UpcomingEvents

[HouTXRanger]

Attended the Zoom meeting on the 28th. They said they were at 30% design completion. Some interesting tidbits:

• They plan for 6-minute frequency during peak hours, just like the redline (why doesn't the silver line BRT run this frequent?).
• The alignment between the Wheeler Transit Center and UH is now as follows: directly east on Wheeler to Ennis Street, north on Ennis Street to Elgin, east on Elgin Street until it turns into Lockwood when it crosses 45. They said this was changed after feedback to serve the residents of 3rd Ward better instead of just trying to get from Wheeler to UH as directly as possible.
• On Lockwood, there will be a bridge over the rail line between Rusk and Harrisburg.
  • They are committed to doing the bridge because the R in BRT won't work if the bus gets stopped by trains.
  • A tunnel won't work because the rail line currently acts as a makeshift levy for the neighborhoods to the south, and a tunnel would cause all sorts of knock-on flooding concerns they couldn't touch.
  • The bridge will not include space for cars, but they are going to add space for bikes and pedestrians, or at least some way for bikes and pedestrians to use the bridge to cross the tracks.
  • They also made a point of saying they would fund artwork at the bridge on Lockwood to make it suck less, I assume something like what they did for the green line bridge.
• On Lockwood, they said all the older trees on the roadsides should stay, and they only expect to remove the trees in the median.
• Apparently there were actually plans in motion to convert the intersection of Lockwood and Canal into a roundabout, but that won't happen now since they couldn't find a way to make that compatible with the BRT design.
• They are generally trying to avoid ROW eminent domaining wherever they can (of course), only project they often need to do that to make room for stations.
• They are planning on completely rebuilding the street along the entire alignment. So should include utility undergrounding if needed, sidewalk reconstruction, new crossings, better crosswalks, better drains, etc.
• They are taking into account where the project intersects with the high injury network and how to generally design the streets safer since they're rebuilding it all anyway. For instance, on Richmond, you won't be able to cross the BRT lanes at unsignaled intersections, only at intersections with stoplights. They will be adding more signals along that route to make sure the community around Richmond doesn't become too disconnected.
• Claimed plans for security cameras at all stops, and low emission or no emission busses including electric. I personally doubt this one comes to fruition but would be nice.

[trymahjong]

I attended the BRT Metro meeting at HCC-  very informative, great graphics to help with trying to visualize Metros proposal.