cloud713

Those two 12 stories are more like 8... But I agree. The residential boom will help transform the area.

i wonder what will be in the little corner on Milam/Preston, on the right side of the building.. a pocket park? seems pointless as Market Square is right across the street. maybe an outdoor dining area for a restaurant/cafe or something? or the pool.. didnt look like there was room anywhere on the roof for one?

hard to tell, the bottom got cut off in Urbannizers picture, and the rendering is so small in the link i cant tell whats going on on the ground floor besides some trees.

Don't forget the architectural feature/fins jutting up another 5 or so stories..

But yeah, I thought it was 49 stories?

new rendering for the Holiday Inn..

block Z (rendering in the bottom middle of the page)

http://www.downtownhouston.org/site_media/uploads/attachments/2014-03-05/140303_Project_Renderings_11_x_17.pdf

dammit i liked the old one better.. this design looks more like a skinnier/taller sovereign.

damn.. i had dreams of a residential tower going on that sliver of land, extending the TMC skyline north towards the museum district. heh. seems like a perfect location, right between Hermann park, a prestigious university, and the largest medical center in the world.

bring em back!

Appreciate the opportunity to have a serious discussion about this as it seems that you are clearly interested in discussing the nuances rather than just posting rhetoric as too frequently happens in this forum.

 

I think that you raise valid points regarding building earlier vs. later, however I do think that there are additional costs related to building early that you might not be considering.  The first is that while rail's operating costs are clearly lower than bus, I do think that they are frequently understated by rail proponents.  In keeping with the focus on Dallas, I agree that there's some advantage to having built the system early and the lower construction costs that were incurred, but it's also relevant to consider the operating costs that DART has to absorb on an annual basis.  In 2012 (the most recent full year financials available), DART generated $80m in operating revenue and suffered an operating loss of $565m across the year.  Their financial projections don't look like they improve anytime in the near future either.  So you can argue that maybe they save a billion in capital costs by building their system before there was sufficient demand to support it, but I'd argue that it's costing them multiple billions to support that system with minimal return in revenue to due insufficient ridership.  I'm not necessarily opposed to subsidizing the operating costs of a transportation system, but $80m in operating revenue and $645m in operating costs is pretty extreme.

 

I understand your point about Dallas having their system in place, but I do think that it's very relevant that most of us agree that they built the wrong system and that's my concern with rail in Houston.  I completely agree that rail is the right approach for cities that have dense employment centers that are concentrated in a downtown area, but I don't see that ever happening in either Houston or Dallas.  I would expect that employment in both cities (and throughout most Sunbelt cities) will continue to fragment through an increasing number of job centers as long as those cities continue to grow.

 

In my opinion, both cities really need a transit network that looks more like a spiderweb than a hub and spoke system.  Which allows multiple points of access to any job center rather than a single line of connections from point to point and that kind of system is much better served by bus than by rail.  That type of system generates lower traffic on any single corridor, but provides better access to most locations.  Building that kind of system by rail would be both prohibitively expensive and would provide honestly more capacity than the city needs.

 

Bus provides far more options because of the lower up front investment.  It's very easy to convert a standard bus line to a "Quickline" type of service and then continue to upgrade features to various levels of BRT, until you move to a dedicated BRT if ridership demands it.  If ridership gets really strong, then you already have ROW to build rail.

 

The same is true with commuter rail - Carpool lanes and Park & Ride already service a far higher percentage of the population than transit does and they have corridors established.  It wouldn't be difficult to convert those corridors to rail, but why do it if there isn't anywhere close to sufficient ridership to support it?  Why not take LA's much more successful approach of establishing transit once the demand actually exists? 

 

LA built it's first rail line in 1990 and then has built their system out from that point with great success.  However, the population of the Greater LA area in 1990 was 14.5 million, more than double the current population of Houston.  Their system has been successful because their population and density was sufficient to support it at the point that they built it.

 

As I've mentioned before, I just don't see rail as being the right tool to improve Houston's transit issue in the forseeable future.  We would be much better served by providing reliable extensive coverage that while it wouldn't generate the same ridership in individual corridors, it would provide higher overall ridership numbers at a lower cost.

wow, those DART numbers are extreme. (though to be fair, no one ever said this transit system would be profitable.. as i dont even think the NYC system is profitable) but to counter that, what about all the development those rail lines have brought to the area? there was an article recently about how over the last 10 years DART has attracted 7 billion dollars in development along its rail lines. one could say by having an extensive transit system in place, it makes your city more attractive to developers and potential new residents, driving more growth to your city. that 7 billion dollars is more than enough to counteract the 5.65 billion loss over 10 years in the profits vs operating costs. 

yes jobs are spreading out, but they are doing so along established corridors (for the most part), so rail could theoretically have stops at those job centers (if there are rail lines near/along those corridors, like Westpark, 290/Hempstead, and i10 would be, if they decided to put that planned rail down the middle of 10 that they strengthened the new bridges for).

heh.. funny you mention that. i believe ive used "spiderweb" to describe my plan in this very thread. or maybe it was over in the ideal transit plan, but i completely agree. thats what the busses are for that are being taken off the highways with the rail system in place. all those P&R busses could be rerouted to spiderweb out from the rail stations into the surrounding areas, so that people dont have to find their own way or walk long distances, to get from the rail station to their final destination (or from their starting point).

and yeah the ease of BRT to LRT conversion is why im fine with building the richmond/westpark (hopefully?) and uptown lines as BRT initially, since culberson is blocking LRT.

i dont think HOV lanes should be used for commuter rail. i love the HOV system. i just think commuter rail would take all the busses and more of those commuters out of the HOV lanes, freeing them up for the expanding population increase we are having.. the HOT lane conversions already slowed down many HOV lanes apparently, with all the additional vehicles. it would be the same effect with the population boom, just slower, over a longer period of time. but its still going to happen, and i dont want our HOV system to be rendered useless (if that ever happens, then by all means im down to throw commuter rail lines down every HOV lane in Houston, lol).. 

and yeah, it would be nice to build rail when its needed, but by 1990 LA was far and away the largest city in the US without rail. just as before 2004 Houston was the largest city without rail.. its just more expensive to acquire the ROW in the future, so im all for acquiring that ROW now to reserve it for when its needed. but as arche pointed out, it takes years to build this type of stuff, so we need to technically start before its actually "needed". otherwise all the heavy traffic and lack of any alternative ways of getting around town is going to hinder our growth as the traffic/area becomes less attractive to potential new residents.

whattttt...... so they DID start construction of the tower in march like they said they would.. and early march too. they arent messing around.

NICE!! i was wondering about OPP and Embassy Suites when i looked through the first post. this model is unbelievable.. and i thought i was getting caught up with my fantasy transit map.. heh.

ah.. Fairfield the community (sorry, i had family driving back from Dallas today in the nasty weather and was thinking of the other Fairfield), i have rail extended out to the outlet mall/neighborhood there in my little fantasy plans. but beyond the Grand Parkway i dont see the point in wasting money to connect any further out. we might as well build a commuter rail to Beaumont (which i dont think we should do) if were going to build one to College Station. its a shorter distance than College Station, and the Beaumont metro is larger than Bryan-CS.

As I've stated before, I fully support METRO investing money to buy ROW to potentially, I just don't agree with putting the rail in before the demand supports it.

 

In my opinion, DART is a cautionary tale that Houston needs to look at carefully.  DART invested their money heavily in rail and I hear all the arguments that DART has "invested for the future", but I think that it's relevant to look at what else has happened as a result.

 

- DART has increased their LRT ridership from 2008 to 2012 (the most recent actuals listed in the 2014 DART financial plan), but the total system ridership decreased by more than 10% in that same time period.  I frequently hear rail advocates argue that rail bolsters the entire system, but that's not what has happened in Dallas.  Interestingly enough, although the bus system has suffered continues declines during that time period, the biggest decline was in users of the HOV and it occurred at the same time that the Orange Line was opened.  It's not a stretch to then conclude that ridership on the Orange Line pulled heavily from people that were already carpooling with little impact on those who drive alone.

 

- Rail proponents frequently talk about the lower operating costs for rail, and DART has a 2014 budget for operating costs of $238 million for buses and $184.5 million for rail.  However, they generally don't include the debt service that is incurred by the large capital outlays of rail.  DART will pay an additional $180 million in debt service in 2014 due to the bonds issued to construct rail.  That makes the annual outlay to support the rail system $364.5 million in comparison to $238 million for buses.  Additionally, that plan under funds operations by $178 million with no indication as to how that gap will be made up.

 

- DART has a long term financial burden that is going to impact their ability to operate their existing system for years.  DART has budgeted between $200 - $300 million/year in revenue to pay down the debt incurred from the initial construction a total of $4.66 billion over the next 20 years and that is a severely underfunded plan.  Long term debt in 2014 at the start of 2014 is 3.59 billion and at the end of 2033 is still 3.09 billion.  That means that DART is going to pay $4.66 billion in the next 20 years to reduce their overall debt by only $500 million.  To be fair, part of that is due to an additional $1.1 billion in bond measures that are projected to be issued in 2025, but those are to keep the system in a "good state" and are not designed to provide further service enhancements.  Capital outlays drop dramatically during the next 10 years indicating that the agency has no ability to make further investments.

 

So what's the end result?  Houston has had a horribly mismanaged transit agency for years, Dallas has a rail network that makes many on this side envious.  So who's further ahead?

 

- Which metro has a higher percentage of transit usage - Houston

- Which metro has a higher percentage of drivers commuting alone - Dallas

 

You can draw your own conclusions, but I'm not particularly anxious to follow the path of Dallas.

 

http://www.dart.org/ShareRoot/debtdocuments/BusinessPlanFY14.pdf?nocache=1

thanks for the very informative response. it is interesting to know that DART wont have much funding for expansion for the next 20 years (though Houstons not supposed to get more rail funding till 2025, according to that law last year, right?), but they have already built out their planned system, whereas Houston still has over 15 more miles to build before its original 5 line system plan is built out (a plan less than half the size of DART), and considering the Culberson mess with the other 2 lines, and the law we passed a year ago keeping METRO tax money from going to rail until 2025, by the time we get around to building the additional light rail, it will probably cost close to 200 million a mile.. or $3 billion total.. on top of the 2.5 billion or so weve spent for the first 3 lines. almost 6 billion for 40 miles of light rail. if the "initial construction cost estimates" you quoted were the total construction costs to build out DART, not just the balance they still have to pay, then they built a system over twice as large for over a billion dollars cheaper.

i agree, i wouldnt of gone with DARTs approach to build where they hope future development will happen along the rail lines, instead of building where the people and the development already are, like METRO did with its first line. but they certainly were able to get it built much cheaper and in the long run will have a larger system with more destination options than our system could ever provide (unless we plan to add 100+ miles of commuter rail)..

and btw, im not saying we need all of this commuter rail now, im saying we need to be planning for the future by reserving vacant ROWs and start acquiring additional ROW alongside current corridors [like alongside the Hempstead line, or the future Hardy downtown connector {acquiring ROW through land purchases or eminent domain can be the toughest part of building new rail}], like you are advocating. though i certainly wouldnt mind seeing a commuter rail line or two along certain corridors once METRO finishes the LRT system (of course by the time METRO finishes the university and uptown lines well probably actually need commuter rail).

Well sure, there's downtown, but not everyone works downtown. Overall, I think the only viable commuter rail is on the 290 corridor, with an Austin commuter rail like "toy train" stopping at downtown, Northwest Mall or a spur to the Northwest Transit Center, Jersey Village, Cypress, Fairfield with occasional service even to College Station perhaps.

Other than that, it becomes far more troublesome. Building a line from Sugar Land to downtown, starting from 90-A and US-59 is at least 24 miles versus 18 miles, with additions depending on how many stations you want to add.

Rough truth for everyone is that it needs more highway lines--and in hurricane evacuations, the more highway lanes you have, the better.

i agree not everyone works downtown, which is why there would be that stop at the extended uptown LRT spur from Northwest TC to Northwest Mall for people who work around Uptown, or for people to transfer over on to get to the University Line, or a particular bus route, to get to other nearby areas like Greenway/Upper Kirby.

what makes you say 290 is the only viable corridor? i think Westpark would make a great starter commuter rail line. it would pass within half a mile from Westchase, hit the Hilcroft TC, have a stop at Post Oak/Westpark to transfer to uptown, and have a stop at Greenway/Upper Kirby, before ending at Wheeler Station, just a short LRT ride from downtown/museum district/medical center..

and i assume you meant Prairie View (or Hempstead?), not Fairfield (which is on i45, ~90 mi south of Dallas).. but i wouldnt waste the money double tracking the current Hempstead/Hwy 6 rail line all the way out to Prairie View/Hempstead, and especially not all the way to College Station. that would be 100 miles of commuter rail, compared to 26 miles running it from downtown (Post Office site/UH-D or Hardy yards) to Cypress. the largest population between Cypress and College Station is Hockley, with 23,000 people.. every other town between the two is less than 10,000 people. i just dont think its worth another 74 miles of commuter rail (or at least 740 million, at the conservative 10 million a mile estimate, not counting costs to acquire additional ROW) to connect a metro of less than 250,000 people, when we could use that money to connect larger populations (and destinations that are likely to be commuted to/from) here in Houston. 

how would a line from Sugarland get to downtown? the METRO study has the line ending at Fannin South station/TC. i guess it could jump over to 288 and run up the median to 59 (and over to Wheeler station?), but once you get to 59 there isnt really any available ROW to run rail into downtown. its about 12.5 miles from 90A/59 to Fannin South station. 

i think we all agree Houston needs more lanes of highway.. but most of us realize we cannot continue pouring concrete and asphalt until our highways all merge into each other and there is no land left for development/people to live. at some point we are going to have to start seriously considering alternate modes of transportation.

haha, learned something new today. yeah that retail space is pretty small.. i believe the ceiling is as tall as the space is deep. but as far as i know (or assume), Novare hasnt had any problems leasing out that retail space in the other SkyHouses, or else they wouldnt continue designating that space for retail in the new ones..

since i already had a big ass map sketched out i figured i may as well go ahead and add onto it (though my OCD forced me to resketch the center page after all the white out corrections..) heh, so here is the update. 
(everything is drawn to scale so the roads/corridors shouldnt be too hard to figure out)

i added a couple commuter rail lines, (northwest Houston/the tracks that run near 249, and a trenched bypass/connector on the westside to connect the hempstead line to i10, Westpark, and 90A lines/avoid having to go into the city and transfer over on slow light rail), and then rerouted my Hobby line because i didnt like the fact it was taking up the only room for HOV on that portion of 45 (unlike i10 where there could still be 1 HOV lane in each direction, along with rail). it now goes down Mykawa/spur 5 and hits the Eastwood TC/end of the university line, and also hits the end of a slightly extended (half mile at the most) southeast line to where the train tracks cross at Griggs/Long, before continuing down Mykawa and finally over/east on Airport Blvd to Hobby.
then a few more streetcars on the west and northwest sides, covering a few other densely populated areas (blue and light blue/grey on the population density map i posted a few posts up) that i had missed.. (the only blue area in the metro not being serviced by this system is in Greenspoint) and i added in streetcars in the Woodlands. (along with the Galveston streetcars, there would also possibly be a streetcar in Webster going down Nasa Parkway, past Nasa and on to Kemah, but thats outside of my map [i didnt continue the map down 45S because it would of gone on another 4 or so sheets of paper until it finally hit Galveston])

heres a close up of the inner city system..

The And game depends on the assumption that the FTA will provide a higher level of funding to rail projects than BRT. Rail advocates love to throw that around as an assumption, but recent evidence seems to indicate that the FTA is on board with BRT.

id be interested to see a study where they have compared ridership on a line that was once BRT, but later converted over to LRT, to see if there is a noticeable difference in ridership between the two services. one would think the LRT would have a higher ridership, but it would be interesting to be proven wrong or that theres a negligible difference.

I understand that you're saying that you believe that it's foolish to think that commuter rail is "foolish" to think commuter rail might fail.  I'm more than happy to lay out my concerns about commuter rail. 

 

- The plans that I've seen are a "hub and spoke" system focused around getting commuters to downtown.  METRO's statistics show that 53% of downtown workers already utilize public transit or rideshare.  Assuming those numbers are correct, then downtown is pretty adequately serviced by public transit and isn't the issue.  Providing transit to other areas is the issue.

 

- I do not agree with assumptions that people will connect to the network of public transit and connect to other job centers.  Doing that significantly increases transit time to the end destination.  The average commute time in Houston is currently 28 min.  Using commuter rail and transferring between lines will almost certainly end up increasing commute times.

 

- Assumptions that commuter rail will drive development back into downtown are questionable.  Houston has no commuter rail and downtown is booming.  Dallas' has commuter rail and a 30% vacancy rate in downtown.  It's just not that simple.

 

- Further on the Dallas example, Dallas' commuter rail line carries about 8,000 daily riders and has plateaued in ridership for about three years.  That's only marginally better than the Katy Park & Ride line at a much larger expense.  We may disagree on this, but I wouldn't consider 8,000 daily riders on a commuter rail line to be a success.

 

In light of those comments, I would be very curious to hear why you think it would succeed other than just saying it's "foolish".

- does the highway hub and spoke system not work for getting people to other destinations besides downtown? i havent really seen any commuter rail system plans for Houston besides the fantasy/ideal ones on here, but most of those implement current rail or open corridors with available ROW. many of these transit lines would have stops/connect into the light rail system and other popular areas besides downtown.

- i didnt notice anyone assume commuter rail would drive development downtown. especially since it would serve much more than just downtown, and lines like Westpark and 90A couldnt even go to downtown.

- i look at Dallas' LRT to be more like commuter rail, in that it extends out to the suburbs, has fewer stops, and its own grade separate ROW throughout much of the lines. those 85 miles carry over 100,000 people. and many of DARTs lines were built through some rather desolate places in hopes to spur development, or else they would surely have a higher ridership.

I agree that commuter rail certainly sounds great: although the Westpark and Katy lines have been dismantled, there are existing rail corridors that stretch out to Cypress (and beyond, Hempstead and College Station), Sugar Land (and beyond, Rosenberg and Sealy), and other destinations.

There's a few problems with that, though: the lines are owned by UP, which means that they'll have priority in freight traffic, even in double-tracked areas, so the areas that aren't double tracked will have to be, resulting in major investment. That cuts into the "pre-existing network". Secondly, they start in the suburbs, where do they go?

Even if UH-D became a transit center where you could switch commuter rail to light rail, the main destination isn't downtown in most cases. Where else would you have the 290 commuter trains stop? The Northwest Transit Center? Those transfers will build up average commuting time (and frankly, I think ~30 minutes average is great) and probably won't noticeable impact in gridlock.

what do you mean they start in the suburbs, where do they go? into the city of course..

there are talks of possibly extending the uptown line to Northwest Mall.. if that happened, there could be a stop there, serving the uptown destinations. then there could be a stop where the rail line from Memorial Park (could be a future connector from the Hempstead line to the Westpark line and then down to the 90A line) hits the Hempstead line, northwest of the TxDot building, before continuing on to the Hardy Yards or Post Office site/UH-D. yes those transfers may add a little bit of time to take another form of transit to your final destination, but this whole commuter rail proposition would be planning for the future. when Houston has 10+ million people in 2040 traffic will be a ****storm and commute times will likely be at least double what they are today.

METRO indicates that the Park & Ride system currently carries 29% of downtown workers, and another 8% of downtown workers utilize other means of public transit for a total market share of 37% of the downtown workforce.

http://downtownhouston.org/site_media/uploads/attachments/2013-02-15/Mechanics_and_Cost_of_Transit_Service.pdf

If you look specifically at Park & Ride on the Katy Freeway, it currently has three locations which have a combined average weekday ridership of approx. 5,500 people.

You're proposing a system that would move 12,000 people/hour which would be approx. 36,000 people during a three hour peak rush hour period, but the statistics from METRO don't indicate that kind of demand. Their statistics indicated that there's only (rough math) about 18,000 people that are going from those locations to downtown. That's admittedly a very rough analysis, but I'd be very curious to see some statistics that refute it.

The base assumption that you're making is that a high percentage of the people that are riding the Katy Freeway are going to downtown but METROs statistics seem to indicate otherwise. They indicate that the people riding the Katy Freeway are highly fragmented in their destinations and that's a huge concern when discussing rail on that corridor.

What's so fragmented when rail can have multiple stops? Downtown doesn't have to be the only stop... There could be one somewhere in the EC, one at the beltway/city center, one at memorial city, one at the transit center at 610/post oak, and then finally downtown.. Commuter rail can go as fast as 125 mph, plus with traffic it's sure to be faster (even only going like 60-80), even with the few stops.

And if the rail replaced the HOT lanes on i10, or coexisted, it would provide a more attractive mode of transit than busses, more people would likely use the system. The problem now is they can't get to their destination from the HOV lanes without a car. the busses taken off the highway could be rerouted to spiderweb from the stations, so they would service more local areas around the stops

And I noticed you mentioned in another thread waiting on the bus is generally the longest part of the trip. Commuter rail is timely as it doesn't have to deal with surface street traffic, so you know when to expect the train, and thus are able to factor that into your schedule so you don't have to wait so long.

I agree mass transit generally serves more of the poor people. But taking first time visitors of our city through those decrepit areas seems counter productive to the impression we want to give of our city. Idk, the undesirable areas are a small concern. More importantly taking the light rail into the city from hobby would take 45 minutes or so. As long as some of the shorter flights.. A direct line down 45 and Broadway would be much faster. Or down Mykawa and then over on airport blvd.

Build rail so the transit is on a timely schedule and doesn't have to fight traffic on the streets like busses. Heh

I think the major issue is (for Houstonian's):  Cost+Construction Time vs doing nothing (which is free).

 

Waiting until we have total gridlock is foolish, since then we will end up waiting another 10 years or so for full buildout.

 

And for anyone to think that Houston with 6 million people is not big enough/populated enough for commuter rail to work is silly.  Just how many millions more do we need until we are no longer the exception to the norm?

THIS. completely agree with your posts in this thread.. waiting until traffic becomes that bad is extremely ill advised and would have adverse effects on our growth and economy. and like i pointed out, only 3 of the top 8 metros with commuter rail (by ridership) have bigger populations than Houston. even the Baltimore area (26th biggest city in the US, 20th biggest metro) has commuter rail..

There are corridors where ridership would be extremely high. Westheimer from downtown to highway 6 would be a great corridor. If you put it in the right place, people will ride. If there were no corridors that justified the use, we would have no traffic, and that is not the case.

 

Also, rail could be built on HOV infrastructure, so that sunk cost could be eliminated.

 

Frequency is a strength of rail. Our light rail is 3 times faster than our buses except park and ride, and there are cities like Vancouver where it runs every 3 minutes, and in mexico city every 2 minutes.

 

FYI BART carries 400,000 people a day.

 

The one advantage that LRT has over buses is, it's not a bus.

huh.. Westheimer would be a great corridor for commuter rail? maybe a subway..

agreed rail could be built on HOV infrastructure. thats how i originally envisioned it years ago.. but i kind of like the HOV system, and it would operate even better with the busses taken out of the equation, so i figured ROW along existing rail lines for some corridors could be acquired instead. though i would put rail down the Katy tollway, leaving one HOT lane in each direction, and unfortunately/possibly take out the HOV on 45 from Broadway to downtown (well, as far as it goes towards downtown at least, and extend the rail to the METRO HQ station) for an express line to Hobby. light rail to Hobby would take quite a while to get into town/make transfers/ect.. plus a LRT extension from Palms TC would go through some undesirable parts of town that you wouldnt want to "showcase" to out of towners as their first impression of our city.

thinking about it, its sad they dont leave available ROW or build a rail line alongside the Hardy extension into downtown, because north of 610 there appears to be room for a third line, where there are currently only 2, but south of 610 im afraid they might take up all of the potential ROW with the tollroad.

i wish METRO planned long term and set aside more corridors in the past, like the Westpark ROW, for future commuter rail when its needed. because by the time its needed, if we dont have any ROW set aside it will be a ***** and a half to acquire new ROW from whoever/whatever is developed along the corridors.

That's because the tenant will not leave 800 Bell until next year. If all the new towers were to break ground, it will not stop Shorenstein from redeveloping the building.

completely agreed. though maybe if they felt too much other office space was being developed they would go with a residential approach and keep the fins/newly repurposed balconies? heh.. ive always dreamed of them keeping the mid century modern design and converting it to residential.

Macy's has said they are interested in opening a smaller store in downtown Houston.

thats interesting.. where did you hear that?