cloud713

Agreed this was dart's mistake but now they are working on making streetcars within the city to help connectivity once you arrive. Basically they took the reverse approach of us which may work out better in the long run because I don't see us building commuter rail after university and uptown lines.

i agree about the DART mistake. but why dont you see us building commuter rail after university and uptown lines? that seems like there wouldnt be a better time.. the inner city system would finally be built out as envisioned (granted, IMO we need streetcars in some populated/dense areas to extend the "last mile" reach of the light rail).

Further to my earlier post, FWIW, there are approximately 19 metro areas in the United States that have commuter rail systems.  Of those 19, only 7 have ridership greater than our P&R System.

i count at least 8 (unless you arent counting NJ and NY as separate.. you did say metro i guess).

top 8.. (keep in mind 5 of the 8 are metros with lower populations than Houston)

NYC

Chicago

(NYC again.. different rail operator)

NJ

Boston

Philly

San Fran/San Jose

LA

Baltimore

the one i find most impressive is Caltran in San Francisco/San Jose.. 77 miles of track, moves over 47,000 people a day. 

We've already spent a ton of money on the P&R system.

I'd rather we focus our resources on improving inner city transit, not suburban transit.

Not enough potential transit riders that far out.

i agree for the most part.

and let me be clear.. i dont think we actually need commuter rail down all of the corridors i mentioned. i was just saying theoretically with the amount of money weve spent on light rail, we could of built commuter rail (at 10 million a mile, which was pointed out to be a flawed assumption) to all of those places. i would however not mind seeing commuter rail down Westpark (and a couple of the other routes), to take busses off that narrow/congested tollroad, and put that expanse of ROW along the south side of Westpark to use. it would be the easiest commuter rail to implement (unless we were able to convince a railroad company to somehow integrate commuter rail into their cargo schedules, though most of those lines are at capacity as someone mentioned.. maybe the 90A line?)

i disagree however that there arent enough potential transit riders that far out. Houston has almost 4 million people living outside the city. if they were able to reroute the busses that were taken off the roads by rail, to spiderweb outward from each station to serve the local areas so that people were within "walking distance" of the busses, and thus the train stations, it may help boost numbers. also its a pretty common notion that trains are more appealing than busses. not to mention the whole "reverse white flight" phenomenon thats predicted to happen in the coming decades as the inner cities gentrify and home values go up, forcing the poor out to the suburbs.

In the latest stats available, (YTD through November 2013), average weekday ridership on the P&R system was 33,108.

 

Average weekday ridership for Metro (rail and bus combined, including P&R) was 286,772.

 

Average weekday ridership for MetroRail was 37,558.

where did you find the park and ride number? that seems pretty low. especially considering how much higher the total bus ridership is.

Great points.. You'll have to forgive my wild ramblings. I've been sketching out a fantasy transit map recently and have been implementing different modes of transportation. When I did some research on the costs I was stunned at how cheap commuter rail is. You're right, a lot of the lines would need additional ROW for commuter rail, and/or possibly need to be trenched, which would be a good deal more than 10 million a mile but the Westpark corridor up to Montrose wouldn't need new ROW. I hope METRO is serious about the 90A proposal. It's kind of sad we don't have a single mile of commuter rail..

why doesnt Houston have commuter rail? it only costs ~10 million a mile, vs 100 or so million for light rail. we have spent over 2 billion on light rail over the last decade.. with that amount of money we could have built over TWO HUNDRED miles of commuter rail.. that would be enough track milage to build rail to Conroe (Hardy), Galveston (Highway 3), Highway 6 (288), Rosenberg (90A), Kingwood (Hirsch/494), Willowbrook/1960 (the rail line that eventually parallels 249), Cypress (290/Hempstead), Katy, and down Westpark..

i understand the importance of having a core/base system (light rail), but now that we have (almost) 3 lines built out (and in a couple years an uptown BRT line), we have something to work with/transfer to when the commuters get into the city, so i think its time to start looking at building some of these commuter rail lines. traffic is bad and only going to get worse as millions more people move to the area.. at what point do we finally say enough is enough, its time for an alternative?

tracts of land this large don't just grow on trees you know.

speaking of large tracts of land.. whats up with the property on the beltway between Westheimer and Richmond? Meadowglen Ln runs right through it.. the property with a 4 story apartment complex in the middle of the lot but other then that it has been sitting undeveloped (albeit with roads on the property). 

sorry to get off topic, i didnt want to start a new thread just to ask about it.

It's cute! It's a baby BG Group Place!

haha, exactly my thoughts. its even lined up with BG Group on the same row of blocks, facing the same direction.. i dig it though. looks much better than the older renderings.

They should expand the TMC into midtown....and have a Midtown Medical Center....which would be an extension of the Med Ctr....have the hospitals close to the rail...and just put a TON of office buildings/Hospitals in Midtown and we can finally have midtown connected to the TMC

i hope i dont sound this crazy when i ramble about connecting skylines one day.. heh.

you do realize TMC is like 2 miles from midtown, right? as pointed out, there is an entire district/neighborhood in between midtown and TMC, along with a very large park separating TMC from the Museum District. they would have to triple the size of the medical center and gobble up everything in between to have it all be one big medical center. our museum district would be an odd mish-mash of museums and hospitals.. doctors mingling at rail stops with tourists.. it would be weird. midtown may (hopefully) get some high rises one day. maybe this one will start a new trend but there arent many areas to develop high rises along the light rail in midtown. the main one i notice is the lot between HCC and the SuperBlock. other then that they could maybe redevelop the Sears, or the 3 block site north of McGowen thats used for parking.

true.. i didnt really give a time frame, though id like that to be achieved sooner rather than later (20 years or so?). ive heard Dallas has like 40,000 people living downtown (though maybe they were using that dallasified stretching of boundaries to boost numbers, by including uptown and the surrounding residential areas into "downtown"). if true, id imagine a lot of that has to do with them having so much empty office space they had to convert a number of buildings over to residential.. hopefully a problem Houston never has.

Personally, I don't think that the amount of residential population in downtown impacts office development in that area that much.  Right now at least, that seems to be much more heavily driven by cost judging by the developments that are underway.

 

I do think that residential population is huge in driving the kind of retail development that people are looking for downtown and would agree that something around 10k is the right number.  From what I've read from various sources, that seems to be the tipping point in being able to support basic neighborhood retail.

if 10,000 is the tipping point, we are well on our way to passing that figure. before the residential initiative there were ~2,500 units in downtown, and close to 5,000 residents i believe. with this initiative and the projects announced so far we are at like 3,500 new units being built in downtown over the next few years, more than doubling the population. (i would like to see that trend continue and have a base of like 25-50k residents in downtown eventually..)

with that said i really hope the city raises the cap for the number of residential units that get incentives, since they are well past that 2,500 mark now. it would be a shame if they didnt raise it and some of these developments didnt happen because they didnt get in with the first 2,500 units of incentives. 

Marcus Allen made a post yesterday about 5 cranes at Briar Forest Drive.. i guess they constructed a 5th after i drove by?

Would that make if the tallest residential building in Houston?

probably not.. its on 12 stories of parking garage. plus, 2929 Weslayan is 40 stories. and that 40 story Market Square residential should hopefully be in the pipeline soon (though also on a garage)..

id be interested in a list of all the residential highrises going up or proposed for Houston.

42 story Hermann Place

40 story 2929 Weslayan

40 story Block 35)/Market Square block

38 story Block 98

38 story Texaco redevelopment

36 story Gables Post Oak

33 story Hines Market Square

30 story Hanover Montrose

30 story Uptown Park

29 story Hanover Post Oak

28 story Marquette 1400 Texas

28 story Astoria

26 story Belfiore

25 story The Southmore

25 story SkyHouse River oaks

24 story SkyHouse downtown

21 story The Sovereign

20 story Chelsea Montrose

20 story The Woodlands condo tower

18 story Azalea Court/Mid Lane Phase III

17 story Azalea Court/Mid Lane Phase II

17 story Bunker Hill mixed use development

15 story Azalea Court/Mid Lane Phase III

13 story The Kirby Collection

12 story Camden highrise Phase I

12 story Camden highrise Phase II

10 story Allied Orion Group

(sorry to get off topic.. did i miss any? thats quite an impressive list of residential highrises)

And it conservatively moves 350,000 people a day. DART light rail cost over $5 billion and it moves 95,000 a day.

DART built 85 miles of light rail for over 5 billion? im interested to know where you got that figure. i know they were able to build cheaper than us but i didnt realize it was that much cheaper. were barely managing to build 23 miles for ~3 billion. i realize some of their routes were old railroad ROWs that are much cheaper than running rail down surface streets, but still.. we have that option for Westpark rail, and had the option along i10 before it was paved over (yes, supposably they built the bridges on 10 to handle train cars, if we ever decided to put rail down 10) yet there is no rail running down Westpark, or immediate plans to build any down the Katy Tollway. all Houston has to show for its first decade of rail is a measly 13 miles of light rail (granted were going to open another 10 or so miles by the end of the year).. DART rail hasnt even been in service for two decades and they have over 6 times the amount of light rail as us (not counting the 30 or so miles of commuter rail they have built in the same span).. is Culberson really to blame for all of our shortcomings?

Hermes is definitely moving to Highland Village unless all their employees are misinformed (as much as I hate to see that happen)

you mean River Oaks District?

the Westpark corridor goes all the way out to Eagle Lake? crazy.. but what use would they have building a tollway or commuter rail out to a town of 3,000 people? i thought the Prairie Parkway would be far out.. this corridor goes over 20 miles past that. interesting METRO would give up the southern portion of the ROW to FBCTRA when it seemed like they were reserving the southern half for commuter rail (still not sure what theyre going to do with the light rail segment between 610 and Hilcroft TC.. the only option really is to use the southern ROW, which would block commuter rail from going all the way to Wheeler Station) would another agency operate commuter rail in Ft Bend county that FBCTRA could sell the southern half to? or would a commuter rail line just stop at 1464?

Watch out skyline view.. We've got a creeper over here. Heh. Your place definitely lives up to your name...

so are they, or are they not trying to sell the 4 building "Phase 3" section off to a different developer to build out? because if so, those plans will likely change..

haha, im not trying to be a fear monger.. just pointing out that it looks like they wont be developing the whole site after all, and are trying to sell the rest of it...

Wait.. According to the information urbannizer posted, they are only building the 8 story and 17 story apartments, before selling off the whole property to someone else to develop the southern portion..? Who knows how long before the rest of the property finally gets developed..

And I thought the 17 story was breaking ground the same time as the 8 story..?

they definitely need to update the site...i wrote them telling them too...lets see if that works haha! http://blvdplace.com/

what needs to be updated? they posted new pictures of the construction a month ago..

There is still the "Westpark" ROW that extends along the power lines east up to Montrose.. But between Montrose and 527/Wheeler station it gets tricky...

I dunno, ask Upper Kirby District http://www.upperkirbydistrict.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=115

There are a few typos in that report so I assume the Bellaire accent is wrong too.. And go figure that was written by an Afton Oaks resident... Heh. I guess I wouldn't mind a 4 stop Westpark only route.. It would be quite a bit quicker getting from uptown to the main st line, but it would miss a few destinations like the menil and st Thomas..

Why doesn't METRO split up the University Line into segments? Instead of trying to get the whole thing built at one time, build the eastern section from Eastwood TC to the Menil Station. This seems to be the uncontroversial segment. Then hopefully by the time it gets built, they should have the western segment routing all sorted. Building the eastern segment first works best anyways since it ties into the existing system.

I have wondered this too.. I believe they would have to resubmit the plan though for federal funding if they split it in half, but it would still probably get the eastern half built before they resolve the Culberson issue/build the western half.. Plus like you said, the eastern half is where all the current rail segments and universities are. I'd run it all the way west to the shepherd station though.. Might as well build it out as much as possible, unless you think they'd have to turn the rail across 59 before a shepherd stop to avoid culbersons district.