The Voice of University Oaks

They've been talking about building this trail for years. I'm glad it's finally happening because this will be an amenity for a community that deserves it.

I guess another advantage of LRT over BRT is that the trains are electric as opposed to using diesel fuel. They create less pollution and smell better than busses too!

It is possible to have electric buses propelled by overhead catenary wires. Quito, Ecuador is one city that does this; notice the dual pantographs on the back of this bus:

The problem with that parking lot is that so many people have figured out how to park there and then "walk through" the Dog House Tavern on their way to Tipsy Clover or the Red Door.

Finally, the group will study creative partnerships with METRO to enhance commuter service in that corridor. This could be as simple as designating additional Park & Ride routes or providing non-revenue EZ TAGs for buses to use the tollway.

I've never understood why this didn't happen immediately after the Westpark Tollway opened. METRO and HCTRA signed a Memorandum of Understanding several years ago in regards to the ability to run buses on the Katy Freeway's new managed lanes. But they never bothered to generate a similar understanding regarding the Westpark Tollway, even though there are four transit facilities (Mission Bend, Westchase, Gessner, Hillcroft) directly adjacent to the tollway. Hence, the 274 Westchase/Gessner runs in surface traffic along Harwin and Westpark Road (read: slow travel times) and there is no 2XX-level service to Mission Bend. Putting buses on the Westpark Tollway will result in shorter travel times and that, in turn, will attract more riders.

The other lesson from this episode is that congestion pricing, for all the favorable literature written about it from economists, engineers, etc., still has a long way to go before it gains public acceptance.

Robertson Stadium is a Works Progress Administration-era structure. It was completed before the United States entered World War II. Although I love the stadium itself - it's a great place to see a game - it has its shortcomings, namely in regards to capacity, amenities and handicapped accessibility.

The expansion and renovation it received prior to the 1999 season, i.e. the lowered field, new seating tier, endzone seating and four restroom and concession pods, can be regarded as the first phase of a long-term project to upgrade, modernize and expand the stadium. The next step will be to complete the endzone facility in the north endzone. That is the most crucial need at this point and that is what UH Athletics Director Dave Maggard is currently focusing on. Once the endzone facility is complete, then we can look at refurbishing (or a complete demo-and-rebuild) of the west and east grandstands themselves as demand warrants.

Anyway, a couple of interesting tidbits from the .ppt presentations on UH's Facilities Planning page:

- Apparently, UH plans to build a new parking garage across Calhoun from the Calhoun Lofts development; the graphic says "January 2009" but I can't tell if that's a start date or a completion date. The graphic indicates that the Pizza Hut and the strip center containing the Chinese Star will be demolished to make room for this parking garage. Hopefully, the Pizza Hut and the Chinese Star can be relocated to another venue prior to construction. The Chinese Star, specifically, is a campus institution and I'd hate to see it completely disappear.

- A "soft closure" (whatever that means) of Cullen is planned for the summer of 2008. It looks like UH is already in the process of "taking" Cullen and Holman from the City of Houston. METRO, as has been noted, has already routed all of their buses off of Cullen in anticipation of this street's closure. Personally, I'm not too fond about the imminent closure of Cullen - how will I get to Combat Kroger once Cullen is closed? - but this has been in the works for a long time.

It will be interesting to watch what happens in and around campus over the next several years.

Take a look at the City of Houston's Major Thoroughfare Plan (.pdf here).

You can see that the plan is to link up as many major roads as possible in order to provide a network that operates in a grid-like fashion, even if it is not perfectly orthagonal. For what it's worth, however, you can see that a one-mile-square thoroughfare plan is eventually planned for the west part of the county.

Houston developed in a radial fashion, with railroads and later freeways spoking out from the center, and the city's throughfare network reflects that characteristic. Gaps or interruptions in the grid, by and large, occur where there are natural features - Buffalo Bayou/Ship Channel, Memorial Park, Addicks and Barker Dam - as well as where independent municipalities are located - Bellaire, West U., The Villages, etc.

Notice that the most important quote in this article comes at the very end:

However, Adams said an engineering solution may be possible. "If you have a very significant amount of money to devote, you can probably solve any problem," he said.

In other words, if commuter rail is going to operate on UP rights-of-way, a very significant amount of work (such as double- and triple-tracking, adding new grade separations, installing new signal systems, etc.) is going to need to be done so that UP's freight operations (which, after all, is what they are in business for) do not get impeded.

Joe Adams is not saying anything today that he hasn't already said at previous meetings regarding commuter rail, whether they be with METRO or other agencies. He said these same things at every meeting of H-GAC's Fort Bend County commuter rail feasibility study a few years ago. The reality of the situation is that UP's local track network, in its existing state, simply cannot support commuter rail. It's going to take a lot of negotiating, a lot of upgrading and a lot of money to make it happen.

What we're seeing here might be a bit of public theater between METRO and Union Pacific which is intended to show the TPC that, if they indeed think commuter rail is a viable option for Houston, they need to pony up the money for it.

UPDATE: see Christof's latest blog entry for further insight on what's going on here.

Not that I really want to wade into this debate, but there's something about the original post that bothers me. I also have an anecdote about Randal O'Toole.

It is true that METRO ridership increased from 1996 to 2001 (which, incidentally, reversed a trend of decreasing ridership from 1990 to 1996) and then began decreasing until the influx of Katrina refugees in September 2005. But The Mighty Wizard seems to be inferring, without explicitly stating as such, that the decline in METRO's ridership is somehow related to the construction (not the actual operation) of the light rail line. However, many other things happened in 2001 (the post-dotcom economic downturn, the collapse of Enron, 9/11, etc.) that could be blamed, at least in part, on METRO's ridership decline. In my experience, economic conditions seem to have a considerable effect on transit ridership; when there are fewer jobs, there are fewer people riding transit to get to them. Inferring a connection between decreasing ridership and the initial construction of the rail line is very weak, especially since METRO's overall route network remained largely unchanged until the rail line was completed.

Now, if the author wants to argue that ridership decreased in 2004 as a result of the bus system being restructured to feed into the rail line, I'd probably agree. While eliminating some bus lines that run parallel to the rail is sensible, I think METRO took it overboard and truncated too many lines (or failed to reroute them in a manner that would bring even more riders to the rail line - more on that in a moment) and made transit use less attractive for many people. My point is simply that ridership between 2001 and the rail line's opening in 2004 would have decreased under any circumstance. In order to accurately document the effect of the rail line on overall ridership, he should have used 2003 - the year before the light rail line began operation - as his baseline year.

This critique extends to the author's observations about decreased ridership on routes that have been truncated into the rail line, such as the 2 Bellaire or the 14 Hiram Clarke: he is selectively using baseline years that will show the greatest decrease in ridership to make the rail look as bad as possible. He uses 2000 as the baseline year for the 2 Bellaire and 1999 as the baseline year for the 14 Hiram Clarke because ridership on these routes began to fall in subsequent years. These routes, however, were not truncated into the rail line at the Texas Medical Center until 2004. While I don't doubt that this restructuring cost both routes some riders, any ridership decreases that occurred on these routes before the rail line opened simply cannot be blamed on the rail line's construction; these routes were losing riders before construction even began.

This is not to say I disagree with everything in The Mighty Wizard's blog: his observation about the 18 Kirby, and how its ridership decreased after METRO reduced its frequencies from 30 minutes to 15 minutes, is spot on. The elasticity between bus ridership and bus frequency is well-researched.

I also think that the discussions on this thread about METRO's decision to merely truncate lines at rail stations, rather than extend them across the path of the rail line and provide new service to areas that weren't serviced before, is also valid. For example, instead of truncating the 25 Richmond at Wheeler Station, METRO could have extended it down Wheeler to TSU and UH, thereby filling a gap in Third Ward between the 42 Holman and 80 Dowling. It would also have begun building ridership for their future rail and BRT expansions; I certainly would begin using such a route because it would have been a one-seat ride between my home and my office.

I'm obviously not defending METRO here - I think they make a lot of bad decisions and, as somebody who works in the transportation industry and is an advocate of expanded public transportation, that annoys me - but I really think that The Mighty Wizard is twisting the statistics to make METRO's ridership losses due to the implementation of rail worse than they really are. If he were completely honest about the negative effect of the rail line's implementation on METRO's ridership, he really should have used 2003 as the baseline year for all of his calculations instead of 2001.

Both sides of the rail debate have a habit of selectively using statistics to make rail seem better or worse than it really is, and it annoys me. Let's compare apples to apples and get an accurate understanding of the pros and cons of urban rail systems.

As for Randal O'Toole: about a year ago, I happened to be copied into an e-mail exchange between himself and a handful of rail proponents. The discusssion ended up as most debates about rail transit do - a lot of selective statistics were thrown about, the discussion devolved into mind-numbing tedium, and nobody's mind was changed - but it was interesting to read O'Toole's arguments. He is an unabashed libertarian, and I think that he truly does believe what he writes. But some of the things he wrote had me shaking my head wondering "is this guy for real?" He always seemed to want to have it both ways: if a rail line failed to live up to its ridership projections, it was because the agency building the line artificially inflated the numbers to get FTA funding. If a rail line exceeded its ridership projections, it was because the agency building the line artificially supressed numbers so that the line would appear to be more of a success than it actually was. If rail ridership grew less than bus ridership over a given period of time, the rail line was a failure because it was not growing as fast as the system as a whole; if rail ridership grew faster than bus ridership, it was because the rail system was taking resources away from the bus system (to be sure, I think this latter condition is what has happened here in Houston; my point is simply that O'Toole employed a "you can't win" rhetorical approach that I found to be rather cheap). He also made frequent use of non-sequiturs; he made a point of mentioning that the mayor of Portland who originally championed its light rail system was later convicted of child molestation. That might make the guy a scumbag, yes, but what that had to do with Portland's light rail system itself was anybody's guess. He kept noting that he actually loved trains and that he helped restore vintage passenger cars and steam engines, as if that gave him some sort of extra credibility when it came to his criticisms of urban rail systems. Finally, an angry condescension in his responses was palpable; I honestly got the feeling that he took a personal offense to any sort of urban rail project as well as to those who defended them. (Indeed, he's now even come out against the 2nd Avenue project in Manhattan; not even a subway in the densest, most transit-friendly location in the nation that is projected to carry 213,000 riders a day is good enough for him).

I came away from the debate with the reinforced opinion that he really is too extreme to be considered a reliable source on rail transit. This isn't to say that some of his arguments aren't valid, or that all of the arguments that the rail proponents threw at him were valid. I just find his rhetoric to be so strident that I view his writings with a great deal of skepticism. That O'Toole found his way into one of Niche's economics textbooks is, in my opinion, unfortunate. However, economic academia does generally seem to have a bias against rail transit, so I guess it's not surprising.

The problem with LRT is that it takes most of its passengers from bus systems that are already in place. Some bus routes are then eliminated, others reduced, and still others remain but get less ridership. Here's a simplified example: if you're just taking riders off of a bus system that cost you $0.65 per passenger mile (which is the average, nationally as of 2002) and put them onto LRT at an operating cost of $0.60 per passenger mile (which is the average for DART as of 2002), then all that you've saved are $0.05 per passenger mile.

Just to be fair, I'd argue against comparing national statistics for one mode to local statistics for another mode. In 2002, according to the National Transit Database, DART's operating expense per passenger mile for bus was $0.89. That's a savings of $0.29 per passenger mile, which at 75 million passenger miles annually represents a net savings of $21.75 million per year.

Now, the end result of your equation will probably still be that the capital cost of DART's light rail system is greater than its amortized savings by putting bus riders on trains, and I wouldn't argue with you (I generally don't get into arguments about the efficacy of rail systems, as they tend to be mind-numbingly tedious). However, I just think that apples should be compared to apples.

As an aside, it should be noted that the operating cost of light rail by passenger mile varies widely from city to city. It is absolutely not assured that LRT operating costs per passenger mile will be lower than the bus alternative.

The Dallas configuration has many grade seperations and as such has less of an adverse impact on traffic. The Houston configuration can cause significant mobility disruptions, especially at peak hours. The Mayor himself was quoted in a recent Chronicle article stating that the City's attempts at timing street lights have been hurt by the Red Line. Any car needing to cross the line has about a 25% chance of having to stop and wait for a LRT vehicle, but at peak times, spots like Fannin & South Loop require a very long wait as LRT vehicles dart by with high frequency, blocking turns to the west. There are also fewer places to cross the LRT line than there had been, which funnels more cars into fewer intersections, causing peak-period congestion, more road miles travelled to make the detour, more emissions, and more wasted time. The problem isn't just felt by drivers, but also with the LRT vehicles themselves. LRT vehicles often have to stop where cars are blocking the route or where the signal timing is off (which is frequently). LRT drivers are also overly cautious at times.

The root of the problem is poor design and implementation, and there do not appear to be any signs of a shift in thinking on the part of METRO. Dallas' configuration is superior and will without a doubt remain superior as Houston's system expands.

Yep. Dallas built light rail. We built a glorified streetcar.

Which is frustrating. I don't dislike the Red Line by any means, in fact I use it whenever I can, but it was clearly designed and built "on the cheap." I'm not saying that the whole thing should be grade separated, but what about at least providing some key separations at key locations? Main and Richmond/Wheeler is a disaster, for example. Or the Texas Medical Center. The fact is, there are so many constraints inherent with operating a line entirely at grade (for example, the capacity of the line is severely limited by downtown and midtown block lengths which essentially dictate that nothing longer than a two-car consist will every be able to regularly operate along the line) that the overal efficacy of the system is hindered; in some cases, severely. And you can bet that METRO won't do anything different for Richmond.

METRO discontinued the 210 and closed the West Belt lot in mid-2004. The park and ride was the least-utilized in METRO's system, and the 210's ridership was abysmal.

Part of the reason the facility was unpopular is as you mention: its only access was from the southbound Sam Houston Tollway frontage road, which made it inconvenient for commuters to get to. There was no T-ramp from this facility to the Katy HOV lane, and the buses had to make a long, slow and circuitous trek to get to and from the lot.

I understand that when the lot originally opened in the early 80s it was actually well used. However, as the Sam Houston Tollway mainlanes were built which made northbound access to the lot difficult and as newer park and ride facilities further out west (Addicks, Kingsland)came online, the West Belt fell into relative disuse.

After closing the lot, METRO declared it surplus property and put it up for sale.

The 4(f) issues associated with taking out a chunk of Chew Park alone will kill Culberson's option, let alone the poor cost per rider numbers that will doubtlessly keep it from getting a positive rating from the FTA New Starts evaluation process.

I made three trips to Dubai last year and will likely make more trips over there in the future. I'm obviously very happy that this service is being implemented. The only drawback is that it doesn't start until December...

And yes, Emirates has the best in-flight entertainment I've ever experienced. Literally thousands of movies, albums and TV shows on demand.

It will be interesting to see how Jackson-Lee and Al Green fare in their effort to get extra money so these four bus rapid transit corridors can actually be built as light rail, which is what we voted for in 2003. I imagine it would have to be directly through the means of earmarks - the Federal Transit Administration has already decided that at least two of these corridors (north and southeast) weren't going to be competitive as New Starts projects through their rating criteria, which is apparently the reason METRO went from light rail to BRT to begin with (and, to be fair to METRO, the FTA changed their criteria after the 2003 referendum).

It would be nice if they were successful in getting more money for thi system, because if these lines are constructed as currently planned (so-called "guided rapid transit" consisting of BRT that can one day be converted to light rail), we're going to stuck with a substandard system for years, if not decades, to come. This is because 1) the "GRT" corridors as they are currently being designed are going to be substandard transportation facilities in many respects, and 2) I honestly don't think the BRT-to-LRT conversion is going to take place anytime within the near future. Not five years, not ten years, maybe not twenty years. I'll expand on both of these points:

1. The GRT corridors as they are currently being designed are going to be substandard simply because METRO is indeed, as theNiche reported above, "cheaping out" on their design. I've seen the conceptual engineering drawings. It's as if they came up with construction budgets for these lines that turned out to be low, and now they're having to cut corners everywhere.

Case in point: grade separations. I think the North GRT line will be elevated over the BNSF tracks that run parallel to Crosstimbers. But of the four corridors, that, to my knowledge, is going to be the only significant grade separation. There will not be separations over any busy streets or intersections. The East End line won't even be separated over the UP tracks that run across Harrisburg! Apparently, METRO doesn't think that there is enough train traffic along that line to warrant a grade separation, a notion which strikes me as odd because a ) even a couple of mile-long freight trains per day are going to severely disrupt their planned six-minute-headway service schedule, and b ) there's no guarantee that the number of trains on that line won't increase in the future. It strikes me as odd that METRO wants to spend all this money to create an exclusive guideway, but can't put in an extra $20 million or so to grade-separate over this railroad so that the system will actually work reliably.

Another case in point: the diamond lanes downtown. The conceptual engineering drawings for the Southeast GRT line are here. Notice that the "line" consists of nothing more than diamond lanes along Capitol and Rusk Streets, which then meander down Delano and Paige Streets to McKinney Street, which then turn down York and Sampson Streets until those two streets merge to form Scott Street. The actual guideway portion of the line doesn't begin until the intersection of Scott Street and Polk Street - a good mile outside of downtown! They didn't want to buy up any of those vacant plots of land or industrial buildings between Capitol/Rusk and Scott to make a more direct line through that part of town, so they ended up with dog-legs on existing streets. This means that the buses will have to operate in mixed traffic (the diamond lanes are supposed to be reserved for right turns and buses, but we all know how well that law is observed downtown), with turns, traffic signals and all, all the way from Polk Street into downtown. And that impacts reliability; it takes the "rapid" right out of "guided rapid transit". Christof Speiler has a more detailed analysis of the diamond lane design. Yet they're still going to spend money to knock down everything along Scott Street and buy out all of the homes on the south side of Wheeler so that there will be enough right-of-way for a guideway from Polk to Palm Center. It's like they're only building half of a line!

2.There is some logic to building a "convertible" system: start with buses, but install the duct vaults for OCS and comm wiring underneath the guideway and embed railroad tracks in the pavement, so that conversion from BRT to LRT will be relatively easy to do once the time comes. But when will the time come? I honestly do not believe that it's going to happen anytime soon, regardless of how well these BRT corridors perform in terms of ridership.

To my knowledge, upgrades to these four corridors aren't included in METRO's near-term budget projections; they're just going to build them now as BRT and let somebody else handle the upgrade process later on, after the current mayor, city council and METRO administration are gone and new people have taken their place. What will their priorities be with regards to upgrading these facilities? What will the city's economic outlook be like in the future? What will the Federal Transit Administration's matching funds criteria be like in the future? There are, quite frankly, *no* guarantees that any of these corridors will be upgraded from bus rapid transit to light rail transit at all!

Here's a hint: when METRO finally purchases the sleek, "train-like" buses for these corridors, pay close attention to the expected operational life of those vehicles: that will give you an indication of how long we're going to have to wait, at a MINIMUM, for these four lines to become light rail.

Part of the problem is that METRO's decision to "cheap out" on these lines now will make conversion of these lines from bus to rail that much more difficult in the future. Like I said, initially buses are going to travel downtown in "diamond lanes" along the sides of Capitol and Rusk. That's fine for buses. Light rail, not so much; ideally, some sort of facility similar to the Main Street Line would need to be constructed (or, better yet, a subway, which would eliminate all the problems of at-grade operation but which would cost something like $300 million for 1.5 miles between Dowling and Bagby - METRO, to their credit, undertook a very detailed analysis of such a subway a couple of years ago and yes, subways can be built in Houston). Again, METRO is leaving the issue of an east-west rail line through downtown as something that somebody else is going to have to resolve (and fund) in the future.

Given all this, I firmly believe that if BRT is what gets built, its what we're going to be stuck with for a long, long time. And that doesn't even address the issue of the University corridor, which I'm increasingly becoming convinced is not going to be built anytime soon, or at least not as long as Culberson is in office. I cannot fathom that the Southwest Freeway - to - Westpark option that was included on the short list at Culberson's request will be rated as a competitive project by the FTA because it costs too much and generates too little ridership. But as long as Culberson is steadfast in his opposition to anything going down Richmond, I think the chances of anything getting built are somewhere between slim and none. Just because his party's no longer in power in Congress doesn't mean he no longer holds any influence over the funding decision; he's still the area's rep, and he still sits on the House Appropriations Committee. (I don't, however, think he is going to stand in the way of Jackson-Lee and Green's quest to get more money for the other lines.)

And there's no use in building the Uptown line if the University Line doesn't get built. It won't connect to anything.

Bottom line: If you're going to build transit, for cryin' out loud at least build good transit. METRO's not doing that right now. We'll see if Jackson-Lee, Green and KBH can find a way to help us out, lest we get stuck with a system that disappoints everyone.

...you'll just have to forgive me if I am suspicious of the techniques utilized to stimulate such high ridership and capacity on a line that has already been established as the shortest stand-alone LRT line in the nation.

Actually, I think Buffalo's line is shorter: 6.2 miles, or something like that.

The Uptown line (which, as has mentioned, will initially be bus rapid transit instead of rail) will intersect with the University Line at wither the 59/610 intersection or at the intersection of Westpark and South Rice. Transfers from one line to another will be made at that point. It's not as nice as providing a one-seat ride into the Galleria, but it will work.

Afton Oaks was simply too much trouble for too little benefit.

The presentation from today's meeting, along with maps and preliminary cost and ridership numbers is here:

http://metrosolutions.org/posted/1068/Boar...1_06.140142.pdf

There's also some good discussion about the eastern portion of the University Line to TSU and UH.

I'm sorry I haven't posted any pictures yet; I'll try to do so this weekend when I have some free time.

The Dubai Metro is the reason why I'm here! The Red line will be up and running in 2009; the green line in 2011 or 2012. They've already begun work on the underground stations at Union Square and the Burjuman, and some trackway supports are already going up near the airport and Jebel Ali.

I'm going to be making several trips between Houston and Dubai this fall. Emirates Airlines has plans for non-stop flights from Dubai to Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston. I really wish they'd hurry up with that service!

Today I finally got to ride down Sheikh Zayed Road to Jebel Ali and back. They've made a lot of progress since my last trip here in January. The Burj Dubai is coming along nicely, as is the rest of Business Bay, and new office towers are well underway. The Dubai Internet City/ Media City / Knowledge City areas are really looking nice. The cluster of high-rises around the Dubai Marina is impressive; a few of them are completed but it's otherwise still a mass of cranes and construction. Before long the canyon of skyscapers around the Dubai World Trade Centre area will extend all the way up and down Sheikh Zayed. It's really quite amazing.

The impetus for the construction frenzy here is related not only to tourism (although that is a large part of it) but also to business, finance and trade. Dubai is in an ideal geographic location: to the east, there's the growing economies of India, China, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. as well as the established economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. To the west is Europe and North America. Then there's the Middle East itself, which is currently swimming in oil profits. Dubai sees its central location as an ideal place for an international business hub and they are aggressively promoting its business-friendly, tax-free laws to multinational corporations.

The traffic here puts Houston's congestion to shame. Forget the West Loop during rush hour; try crossing one of the bridges over the Dubai Creek during rush hour and it gives a whole new meaning to the term "gridlock." It's after 10:30 pm right now and traffic is still crawling along Al Garhoud Road (the E 11 highway linking all the Emirates) outside my window.

The Burjuman makes The Galleria look second-rate, and it's not even the nicest mall in Dubai anymore...

Anyway, I made it here safely, and I'll definitely be taking pictures while I'm here over the next few weeks.

The mind-boggling amount of construction here is continuing apace. My office is near Wafi City and I haven't been able to get out of that general area yet; hopefully I'll be able to make a trip down Sheikh Zayed Road in the coming days to see how much progress has been made on the Burj Dubai or the cluster of towers around the Dubai Marina. I am seeing, however, considerable progress on some developments such as Festival City and Dubai Healthcare City. The third bridge over the Dubai Creek is also well underway and hopefully will be open soon nd take some of traffic off the existing crossings along al-Makhtom Bridge and al-Garhoud Bridge.

Construction on the Dubai Metro Red Line is also beginning. Right now they're just doing excavations, civil works, utility locations and the like; we won't start seeing tracks for a while but if everything goeas well this much-needed train will be up and running sometime in 2009.

Progress on the airport expansion continues. That along with the continual growth of Emirates Airlines' fleet gives me hope that there will be nonstop flights between Houston and Dubai sometime in the near future.

More updates as I'm able to do so...

I'll be in Dubai this weekend. I'll try to provide a report as to how things look right now.

There has been discussion about putting the train inside the 59 trench, but it's problematic for many reasons, chief among them that it would probably require the removal of traffic lanes in order to make room for the rails. The Reliant right-of-way on the south side of the 59 trench is problematic as well - there's very little room and the high - tension power lines would somehow need to be relocated. That's why METRO wants to use Richmond to at least get to Shepherd before crossing over to Westpark.

This latest alternative suggested by Clutterbuck and Culberson is bizarre. Run the train on the north side of 59 from Dunlavy to Edloe? Where? Along the northbound frontage road? Or in an elevated structure (at about $80 million a mile, give or take)? What about all the homes and businesses on the north side of 59 that would need to be bulldozed? Why are they less important than the homes and businesses along Richmond (from which METRO would only be taking a few feet of right-of-way)?

I know that one option using Dunlavy has been discussed internally by METRO before, but I don't think it was ever under serious consideration. There's a huge vacant property owned by HISD on the southwest corner of Richmond and Dunlavy; one possibility is that the train could turn off of Richmond onto this property, run behind Chew Park, cross 59 on its own bridge between Dunlavy and Woodhead, land in the Reliant right-of-way (where it appears to be wide enough to handle a two-track section) right before Woodhead, and continue out to Hillcroft on the Westpark right-of-way.

It's not ideal; it's already been discussed on this thread that the Westpark alignment misses most of the residents and businesses (e.g. ridership) along Richmond, including Greenway Plaza, as well as the fact that it would likely disrupt north-south traffic along Shepherd, Greenbriar, Kirby, Buffalo Speedway, Edloe, etc. Not to mention the alignment's impact on Chew Park and the neighborhood adjacent to it. Really, the only "advantage" that this alignment would have had is that it would reduce the train's presence on Richmond to a few blocks between Main and Dunlavy (but that's okay, because that's apparently the only thing that Culberson cares about). And I guess it makes more sense than tearing out homes and businesses along the north side of 59 just to keep it from going down Richmond. That's just stupid.

I remember talking with METRO's boarding stats guy about this time last year. He mentioned that they have an electronic counter system that accurately counts the number of physical boardings.

Yep. There are little sensors right above each doorway that can tell how many people get on and off when the doors are opened. Several systems around the world use this same type of technology.

Why the hell is Metro even messing with this, when there are FAR more pressing needs for rail running down I-10, 290, 45, 59 and 610?

METRO already has a perfectly good suburban park and ride service using dedicated HOV lanes along I-10, 290, 45 and 59 that provides a level of service that is in many ways superior to what rail could provide.

You look at LA, they don't have these idiotic lines running down city streets through neighborhoods. Cover your bases first Metro. For Christ's sake, use the freaking freeways.

I'm guessing you've never ridden the Blue Line in Los Angeles. Much of it runs in the street.

If you did put rail down a freeway, where would you put the stations? And how would people get to them?

The 2004 Referendum stated the WESTPARK CORRIDOR. I am still waiting patiently for some one to provide the boundaries of the Westpark Corridor. Can't any of you Pro rail folks enlighten me. Is it from the Sabine River to San Antonio or something slightly narrower. Beaumont to Columbus maybe, or is it as the voters were led to believe the right of way along Westpark?

This is where METRO screwed up, IMO. Instead of using their internal names for the corridors on the ballot, they should have just standardized all the names by geography. North Hardy should have just been North. Harrisburg should have been East. Westpark should have been West. They were able to do it with the Southeast corridor; after all.

Had they done that, we wouldn't be having this Clintonesque "does 'Westpark' really mean 'Westpark'" argument now.

I suppose I'm being pessimistic here. Although Federal funding isn't soley in Culberson's hands, I still fear he has enough "back scratching" ability to influence his buddies on the committee from other states to block funding to Houston as a favor to him. I just have trust issues with politicians of his type.

That's exactly right. Just as Tom DeLay was able to withhold federal funds from METRO, Culberson will probably find a way to do the same.

Of course, if the Democrats regain control of the House this November, then it becomes a lot harder for him to do so. But I'm not betting on that happening.

I still can't help but wonder why Culberson is so worried about the businesses and residences along Richmond, but that he wasn't sticking up for all the hundreds of homes and businesses that were demolished so that the Katy Freeway could be expanded.

What do we have to look forward in the coming weeks ?

There might be some more legal maneuvering, but without Congressional support for a Richmond alignment, the project just isn't going to be built. There isn't enough ridership along the Westpark ROW to make the project competitive for federal funding.

Unfortunately, I think rail on Richmond is dead for as long as Culberson is in office, or at least until he loses his seat on the House Transportation Committee. And the chances of either of those happening are slim: Henley's not likely to take Culberson's gerrymandered Republican district from him, and the Democrats probably aren't going to pick up enough seats to regain control of the House (and its committees) this fall.

All this should come as a surprise to no one. Cluberson is anti-rail. He co-chaired the Texas for True Mobility organization that opposed the 2003 referendum. He was never going to support the construction of more rail in this city regardless of what he said or what the voters did.

What if they did put forth a Westpark plan, and it is canned. Could they then submit a Richmond plan ?

WHat would be the chances of success if this went back to the voters, more carefully worded ?

Not great. The only reason the 2003 referendum squeaked through is because of the support from the people in the near north side, east end and near southeast. And now they're upset becuase they're getting buses instead of the trains they voted for. A re-vote on the plan would easily be defeated, IMO.