The Voice of University Oaks

Pickup driver killed in crash with METRORail

It appears that the driver was at fault in this case (as was the case in all but one of the previous 47,635 METRORail collisions), but that doesn't make me feel any better.

I am a transit professional who supports an expanded rail system in Houston. But this is what happens when you build a train at street level in a city that is home to some of the nation's worst drivers.

I had hoped that there would be a learning curve associated with this thing as drivers learned how to co-exist with the train, and it is true that the number of accidents began to decrease (from a high of 11 in March 2004, for example) as adjustments were made. But it's become clear that, as long as this thing continues to operate in its current configuration, it's going to continue to smack in to drivers who run red lights or ignore "no left turn" signs on a regular basis. And I really don't know if there's anything practical that can be done about it. Put crossing gates at every intersection along the line? Replace the existing rolling stock with smaller streetcars capable of stopping quicker and operating in line-of-sight conditions?

Houston's rail line is the laughingstock of the nation and rail opponents both local and nationwide are having a field day with it. I am very frustrated.

It's called "slugging" in Houston, too. There was an article about it in the Chronicle a couple of years back. METRO doesn't condone the practice of slugging, but they're not exactly trying to stop it, either.

It's especially prevalent at the busier park and rides which feed into 3+ HOV lanes, such as Addicks and Kingsland along the Katy Freeway and Northwest Station along the Northwest Freeway. There they actually have informal "slug lines" of people waiting for rides. I suppose you could do it at just about any facility, however. I think I've seen it done once or twice at the Fuqua park and ride along the Gulf Freeway.

In the afternoons, people drive along Louisiana or Travis holding up signs with the bus route number on them, looking for riders so they can take the HOV lane back home.

It's a peculiar practice - people are getting into cars with complete strangers, which is exactly what momma told you *not* to do when you were a kid - but it seems to work out for everyone involved. The driver gets bodies so he/she can take the HOV lane into work, and the rider doesn't have to wait for a bus and saves credits on his/her bus pass (which, in the case of downtown workers, has usually been pre-paid by the employer, so METRO's not really losing fare revenue). The "slug leakage" saves room on METRO buses, so they don't have to incur the cost of adding more buses to growing park-and-rides as quickly.

The concept that rail won't solve traffic problems is something transportation textbooks stress.  But they do emphasize the concept of choice to give the commuter the power to be in control of his or her travel.

Exactly. This is something that both rail proponents and rail opponents oftentimes get wrong. People who support urban rail construction oftentimes assume that it will relieve congestion, when in fact there really is little evidence to support that contention. Rail opponents, on the other hand, argue that rail is a wasteful failure because congestion is always increasing in cities with rail, like Atlanta or Washington or Dallas. (Never mind the fact that sixty years of highway-building in those cities hasn't improved congestion, either...)

The simple fact is this: in an urban area that is constantly growing and adding people, houses, jobs and cars, there is ALWAYS going to be congestion. That's just a fact of modern life. Whether it's rail or more freeways, we cannot "build our way out of congestion." This is not to say that more highways or tollways or busways or heavy/light/commuter rail projects should not be built. We need every piece of the puzzle we can in oder to keep up with ever-growing travel demand in our nation's cities. But we also need to accept that traffic congestion is going to be a problem that will always be with us as long as our citites are vibrant and growing.

What rail can do is provide an extra layer of capacity to the transt network and give commuters a choice as to how to travel to work. It is highly efficient at moving large volumes of people along heavily-traveled corridors, people that would otherwise be mixed in with the traffic flow. Washington Metro carries 853,000 trips per day, according to the latest APTA figures. How much worse would the traffic situation in DC be if there were no Metro and all those trips were added to the road and freeway network? This is something the anti-rail folks (including self-proclaimed "experts" like Wendell Cox, who is in fact a charlatan) continually fail to understand. It's about adding capacity and travel options, not about solving congestion.

Buses are also good at adding capacity and providing alternatives, and they've worked very well in Houston because of the HOV network, but as traffic volume rises trains become more efficient than buses.

On the other hand, commuters aren't going to jump out of their cars and onto trains just because a parallel rail line is built, either. Some will opt for the train, but others will continue to drive because they like the convenience, privacy and autonomy that their own car offers. Rail isn't convenient for everyone because it can't go everywhere, like the car. And some people have commitments (like picking up family members after work) that can only be handled by the car.

There is no one solution to traffic problems, and this is something that the TTI report stresses every year. It's going to take a little bit of everything - more freeways, more vanpools, more buses, more cars, managed lanes, telecommuting, parking cash-outs, incident management, etc. - in order to keep our cities from becoming hopelessly clogged.

As my handle implies, I live in the neighborhood right behind the University of Houston. I brought this house for well under 200k. I grew up in this neighborhood, and my wife and I wouldn't think of living anywhere else.

The only drawback are the schools. In this neighborhood, it's either find a magnet school or shell out the $$ for private school.

I currently drive to work. I'd take METRO, like I did when I lived in midtown and worked downtown (sometimes I even walked), but there's really not a convenient way to get between the University of Houston and Greenway Plaza. The options are either to take the 77 MLK downtown and then transfer to the 25 Richmond (which requires a bit of a walk because the 25 doesn't go through the downtown transit center) or take the 42 Holman (whose route through Third Ward is slow and circuitous) to midtown and catch the 25. METRO did have plans to begin a new route straight down Wheeler and Blodgett directly to Wheeler Station (which TSU and UH students could have used for easy access to the train and bus routes westward), but then Frank Wilson came along and put that idea (along with some other proposed bus routes that actually made sense) on indefinite hold.

The late Friday and Saturday trains were started about a year ago at the request of city leaders and downtown businesses. They were not initially successful in terms of ridership (I've ridden them a few times, and on one occassion I was the *only* person on the train) and METRO's service evaluation manager recommended several months ago that they be eliminated. I'm not sure why the trains are still running - either ridership has improved (which is a possibility) or METRO's under a lot of pressure from businesses and politicians to keep these late trains in operation (which I seriously doubt, since METRO had no problem ignoring business leaders and elected officials when they recently killed the downtown trolleys and eliminated a lot of "low-performing" bus routes).

Ummm, does everyone really think that zoning will cure Houston's ills?

Since I attended both Gregory-Lincoln and HSPVA, I've been following this story pretty closely. I don't inherently see a problem with HISD's desire to combine its fine arts magnet middle school (Gregory-Lincoln) and its fine arts magnet high school (HSPVA) into one big fine arts uber-campus. And I certainly agree that both schools need new facilities: the current Gregory-Lincoln campus is an ugly and delapidated concrete monstrosity and the current HSPVA facility is hopelessly overcrowded.

However, why do they have to build it on the edge of Fourth Ward? Aside from community opposition and archaeological concerns (that have been referenced in the aforementioned Chronicle article as well as a recent Houston Press article), wouldn't it make more sense to put the new school in a more prominent and accessible location (such as Midtown, as suggested by the Main Street Master Plan)? I'd be interested in hearing "the story behind the story" from the HISD facilities planners.

Fearing plans for a toll road will resurface in the future, Ryden said residents of established neighborhoods "should not be penalized to address the needs of commuters who choose to live outside the city."

This quote sums it up nicely. Road-building agencies such as TxDOT or, more likely, HCTRA, are going to run into this type of opposition whenever they propose a new freeway or tollway that cuts through an established neighborhood, especially when said freeway or tollway is perceived to benefit exurban commuters at the expense of closer-in development.

It's kind of ironic that, as the urban area continues to sprawl and new rings of exurbia are built, areas that might have once been considered "suburban" and been the beneficiaries of freeway construction - in this case, an Oak Forest subdivision which gained easy access to a freeway when 610 was built - are now finding themselves the possible victims.

If something has to be put in the Tomball/249 BNSF corridor, let it be commuter rail. Between Harris County and METRO, the possibility of commuter rail on this line has been studied at least three times in the past dozen years. Nobody seems to want to take the next step.

I agree with making METRO and HCTRA one RMA.  That way, they would have to work more together. 

I've always thought this made a lot of sense, but I have a feeling that politics will get in the way of any sort of merger. METRO and HCTRA don't have a great working relationship as it is.

My old office at 1201 Louisiana faced the Sheraton. There really isn't much to see in there; as others have said, it's been completely gutted.

It's also quite leaky. Everytime a storm blew through downtown you could see big puddles form on all of the floors.

Interesting idea, but it would probably get a chilly reception from residents, elected officials and community associations such as the Greater East End Management District.

The idea of new freeways running through inner-loop Houston don't seem to be very popular anymore. HCTRA had to scrap their idea of a toll road running along the Union Pacific line parallel to the West Loop because of outcry from residents in Bellaire, West U., Afton Oaks, et al. We saw folks in The Heights go ballistic last fall when HCTRA merely suggested that the old MKT alignment possibly be used as a toll road. More recently, First Ward residents got upset when a member of the Downtown Management District's board of directors suggested that I-45 be re-routed along Houston Avenue. You'd probably get the same kind of response here.

There'd likely be resistance from the development community, as well. This old warehouse district is beginning to redevelop; new townhomes (even if they are mainly Bob Perry crackerboxes) are popping up in this area, and new plats are being approved by the Planning Commission all the time. Lofts are being developed here as well. Plus, as you note, your alignment cuts through the Hardy Yards development as well as the Olajuwon property between Main Street and Buffalo Bayou.