ToryGattis

Because the board of directors of Metro are appointed by these entities, and the people who appoint these board members, including the Mayor of Houston, want to continue the GMP because it's critical to their mobility budgets.

A "no" outcome is a big unknown, but given what Chairman Garcia has said and the make up of the board and the heavy dependence on that funding by the member entities, I would expect the GMF would continue, probably somewhat close to whatever the "yes" outcome would be. Kinda ironic - so much for voter choice. Culberson has banned funding for the U-line in legislation. Even if that is overturned, given budget realities, it is a big question mark if the feds will continue funding rail projects, esp. 5 or 10 years from now.

Um, nope. Houston and Dallas have two of the top 4 hubs in the country. What would be the point of consolidating that and adding a 1 hour train ride and $100 ticket to every flight? (these trains aren't free) Especially when DFW and IAH already exist as mega-airports and are paid for? I did consider something similar for San Antonio and Austin (along with sports stadiums between them to attract professional teams - "Hill Country Honchos" baseball or football? ;-). If they did it, they might attract a major airline hub (probably Delta, given United and American are already set in Texas). But it just doesn't make sense that they both already have fully functioning airports with plenty of capacity. Austin's is a relatively new converted Air Force base. If they ever reach their capacity limits and need a new one, then maybe it's something worth talking about, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Heard Gilbert Garcia, Metro Chairman, speak on this at a blogger lunch event today. He was much more excited about it than the old proposal, because it did get extra money for Metro, even if it was dedicated to non-rail. Money is fungible: they can move buses into this new budget, as well as debt payments, and free up old budget for rail. He said that by 2025 the GMP will be less than 18% of the 1% sales tax, rather than 25% now, because the growth past 2014 will be split between Metro and the smaller entities. The Mayor seemed to be happy with it too (she was at the event), although the city is giving up the extra GMP split they could have gotten.

They want to increase fees to pay for a new FAA air control system that will cost billions of dollars but allow GPS based free flight, increasing efficiency. I can't speak for history, but I suspect even a lot of those early airports were paid for up front by governments then had fees recover the money over time (probably by issuing bonds). Even if not, if you assume a typical 30 year capital life before renewal, the system we're flying on today has been pretty much fully paid for by users of the system. This post of mine has more on the beneficial network economics of airports over rail. http://houstonstrategies.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-reasons-to-be-skeptical-of-high.html Still, none of this should matter if the new proposal is truly private. They obviously think they can cover their capital costs out of passenger fees (note they won't have to pay any of the aviation taxes/fees).

But I think both of those are covered by fees paid by passengers and airlines, not by taxpayers. Here's a story on how the Feds even want to use airline fees for general deficit reduction, beyond just covering the costs of the aviation system: http://www.executive...-passenger-fees And here's an web page on how the FAA budget is paid for by user fees, not taxpayers. http://www.faa.gov/a...fices/apl/aatf/ And here's how the overall national air system is paid for by user fees, not taxpayers. http://www.tcpilots.org/funding.html

I'm not sure that's really true. Airports are self-supporting on their own passenger, gate lease, parking, and other fees. Not as sure on the FAA, but it's a relatively small part of the cost of the system.

I think they mainly advocated for a level playing field subsidy-wise. Nobody wants a taxpayer-subsidized competitor. This plan should alleviate that problem. As far as the land: I'm pretty certain that even if they don't ask for subsidies, they will definitely be counting on eminent domain for fair land prices, just like pipelines, utilities, and railroads do (I believe). It will certainly be awkward handling grade separations and risks like wayward cattle.

Well, by your population logic, Houston should do more tourism than Orlando, New Orleans, or Las Vegas, but it doesn't really work out that way.

It's not about being by the sea, but having a steady stream of tourists, and San Antonio is the clear winner for Texas because of the River Walk, Alamo, river tubing, hill country, and so on. It's just the town everybody drives to for a weekend getaway.

People buy the best value house - and school district - for them and their family within their commute tolerance, usually about a half-hour each way. That's inevitably out rather than in. Then there are the two-income couples (hard to live next to both employers), and the fact that people change jobs on average every 4 years or so, yet don't want to uproot their family every time if they can help it. So even if people do buy close to work, it probably doesn't last long for one or both spouses.

Could a PPP do the Hempstead Tollway and buy some time on 290?

This is what would work (bottom paragraphs): http://houstonstrate...-potential.html ... What if Metro kept the GMP as-is, but to raise funds for the Universities line, it sold its HOV/HOT lane network to HCTRA or TXDOT (who I think would do a better job managing and expanding it) and sold its commuter buses and Park-and-Ride lots to private operators? Metro would get the capital it needs, and Houston could get the vastly more effective commuter transit system it needs: a comprehensive urban network of HOT lanes (maybe branded as “ MaX Lanes (Managed eXpress Lanes) - moving the maximum number of people at maximum speed”) connecting all of the job centers and residential areas. These lanes, in turn, may be best utilized by a private express bus/shuttle/van and park-and-ride market providing single-seat service connecting every suburban residential community with each of Houston's decentralized major job centers. Private shuttle operators could compete on routes, schedule, reliability, price, service, and amenities like wifi and laptop trays. These services, in turn, could enable Houston to hold on to and even grow our job and tax base rather than see them dispersed to the far suburbs because of increasing traffic congestion (the new Exxon Woodlands mega-campus is a canary in the coal mine here). It could also be of great benefit to employers, allowing their employees to be more productive during their commutes (especially email). Finally, it could also open up new job opportunities to Houstonians by bringing additional options within their acceptable commute range. I don't know how much money Metro might raise with this approach. They say they've put $1+ billion into the HOV network. I'm guessing the net present value of the expected cash stream from them being converted to HOT lanes is far less than that. Don't know what the P&R land or buses are worth. But I'm guessing they might get into substantial hundred-million dollar numbers, which would have to be a boost for the Universities line. An option at least worth exploring?

My understanding was that they would have liked to make Westpark wider, but METRO reserved the land for rail, which would be at least 20+ years from now.

In my dim memory of the distant past, I seem to remember that when the Inner Katy line was first proposed, it got immediate pushback from the Heights community just like the Afton Oaks community did against the Universities line, so it was dropped from the plans, and the Universities line got routed around Afton Oaks. Talk of routing a 290 commuter line somewhere through the Heights into downtown also got a pretty harsh reaction. I don't think any organized residential community - no matter how "progressive" - seems to want rail of any kind going through it.

Details: http://www.fly2houston.com/A380party Flight status currently shows a landing time of 1:38pm

First, it's worth keeping in mind that those bus numbers include low efficiency local routes that cover a transit agency's service area. They run the buses as a public service even if there are only a handful of riders. This should not be the case with P&R, where schedules and routes should be adjustable to keep the buses reasonably full. If Metro encouraged more private operators, we might see smaller buses/shuttles that could more effectively serve the thinner routes. And I'd love to see 80+ person double-decker buses like Megabus has on the stronger routes. Second, in Houston's specific case, we do have consider that the HOV/HOT lane network is an existing sunk cost, whereas commuter rail would be all new spending. It just makes sense to squeeze everything possible out of that lane network with incremental capital costs. Third, keep in mind that the heavy/commuter rail numbers in that table are averages based on routes that can support that kind of investment, mostly in NYC, DC, Boston, and Chicago - older, denser cities with a far higher concentration of jobs downtown than Houston. Just because we decide to build commuter rail doesn't mean we can hit those cost numbers if we can't fill the trains - and run them frequently - the way those cities do to amortize those high capital costs. It's also worth pointing out here that HGAC forecasts show almost no job growth in downtown Houston over the next decade or two - it's almost all at the other job centers and spread around the metro area. In fact, if trends continue, the Med Center may eventually pass up downtown in total job count - and probably already surpasses downtown in total daily passenger trips (including non-employees like patients and visitors). Fourth, I was surprised that the light rail numbers were so much higher than the heavy rail numbers. Seems counter-intuitive at first glance, but I guess not once you consider the street tracks vs. normal railroad rights of way. Metro, with some federal funding and an agreement to use HCTRA's EZ-Tag system.

I actually don't know what the P&R system cost. It would be very difficult to tease out from the general freeway construction, as well as take in account all the cars and vanpools that also use it. One of the other great things about buses is the relatively small increments of people (vs. trains), so they can run more frequently and have differing routes based on demand, serving the exact destinations people need. That also means that you can design the bus route to attract a full bus load, whether that means a single stop at the job center, or circulating to multiple stops. And you can add more buses easily if the route grows in popularity. BTW, from what I've seen in the past, commuter rail is only more cost efficient when the massive capital expenses are excluded and they run nearly full. This often leads to hard tradeoffs like running them less frequently but full for efficiency, or more frequently but not full for convenience. Again, buses can be deployed in more finely grained increments. TMC is one of the job centers that I mentioned being grossly underserved by the existing downtown-centric HOV/HOT network, which needs improvement.

Almost all P&Rs are right next to or very close to the freeway. I am not counting on it ending next to a freeway, since the bus can circulate among the buildings of a job center - a major advantage over rail. I still believe that both of those statements are approximately true when you consider the total time of getting to the typical actual end point office building destination, considering all transfers and walks that would be required from commuter rail.

Thanks for the hard numbers, Houston19514. Also, I'd like to point out that the Kingsland P&R scenario gets people to an actual destination downtown with numerous office buildings within a few blocks. The old I10 commuter rail idea would have stopped at a station at the very northern edge of downtown, requiring either a very long walk or a local transfer. Add 10-15 minutes, minimum.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that any bus that goes immediately from a P&R into an HOV/HOT lane and goes nonstop in a protected lane to its job center is going to be much, much faster than commuter rail with stops every few miles, not to mention if any transfers are involved. If they have bottlenecks or slow areas, those are the network improvements I'm talking about. Actually, I think Metro and other transit agencies are the ones stuck on a single form of transit - rail. They all have New York envy. I'm just trying to work out the most efficient and cost-effective solutions. Occasionally, that's even rail, witnessed by my support of the Main St. and Universities LRT lines. But generally, for a decentralized, low density, post-WW2 city like Houston, it's not.

Obviously, the 290 project is a general widening, not an HOV/HOT project. But even if you used those numbers and changed them to cost per passenger mile, I think you'd find the 290 project much, much cheaper than the train.

That's my point. We need a better lane network that can sustain higher speeds to non-downtown job centers and better nonstop options, optimally provided by private operators rather than Metro. http://houstonstrategies.blogspot.com/2010/09/better-vision-for-metro.html

We're getting to the point of just agreeing to disagree on our opinions. A few items: - Midtown has grown pretty much totally independently of the rail, and seems to be connected in almost no way. I discern no difference in its growth pattern before and after the LRT opened. - I think it is crazy to expect commuters to ride heavy rail downtown at net speeds of 30-40mph, then transfer to ~17mph light rail to get to their actual job center (TMC, Uptown, Greenway). Commutes would easily top more than an hour each way, when an express bus could get them there in half that time, and get them right to their building as well without the walks and waits for transfers and stops. - Bogota has a much, much larger transit dependent population, thus outstripping BRT capacity. Houston doesn't have that issue. Build it as BRT, if it's full in a couple decades, upgrade it to LRT and redeploy the BRT vehicles to new routes.

- BRT gets you more miles for the same money - We are unlikely to ever densify near to what LA has. It has geographic constraints and a strong desire by people to live near the coast. Houston will, for the most part, continue to spread out. Our core will densify to some extent, but nothing like LA. - Main St. LRT has not transformed its immediate neighborhood (i.e. blocks on either side) after 8 years - The HOV investments we need involve connecting up other job centers (esp. Uptown, TMC) and making it a true network instead of pure downtown-centric. If we don't, employers will continue to leave the core and move to the suburbs, like Exxon is doing. - Here's why commuter rail doesn't work in a city like Houston - LRT connect major employment/activity centers: as the Universities line would have done, but the 3 lines under construction don't - The capital consumption also includes the 3 lines currently under construction