livincinco

Given that I've already stated that I don't think that LRT is a cost effective solution for Houston, I'm not overly concerned about whether rail funding is taking away from BRT. I would be very happy to hear your plan on how to obtain the sufficient funding for bus, BRT, and LRT. I think that you need to check your math. It's almost exactly 20 miles from the intersection of Westheimer and Grand Parkway to the Galleria if you travel Westheimer. In order to make that trip in 20-25 min, you'd have to average about 60 mph. That seems...aggressive.

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

That's hearsay. There's been widespread discussion on this thread that John Culberson single handedly killed the University Line, but now you're saying that it was killed by "implied threats" by the FTA. Please provide some evidence to support that statement. The FTA has approved a number of BRT projects recently, especially in light of the recent study that showed well-planned BRT provided a greater economic benefit than LRT. EDIT - for reference, I have attached a copy of the FTA evaluation process. http://www.fta.dot.gov/documents/FY13_Evaluation_Process.pdf

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.

What an astute observation! Maybe that's the reason that I wrote "Since I personally think".

Curitiba has a good plan then. I think Houston should follow it. Invest heavily in BRT and then convert to subway when ridership hits 2 million passengers a day.

I agree with you 100% about the idea of making the local bus system relevant as the top priority in Houston today. Not sure I agree with your statements about BRT vs. LRT though. Don't forget that METRO has ditched LRT to go with BRT on the uptown line, so that indicates that their thinking has evolved on that. I'd be very curious to see some citations that show BRT at a comparable construction cost to LRT because that's not what I've found in my research. General findings that I've seen is that LRT runs between 4x-10x of BRT depending on a variety of factors.

Since I personally think that we're going to go through a period of "rail regret" in many cities across the country 15-20 years from now, I don't see the value, but that's just my personal opinion.

I'd still argue that increasing a BRT network makes more sense than building rail at this point of time. For example, if you assume a 4x cost for LRT vs. BRT (which is pretty conservative), I would have much rather have had 60 miles of BRT than the 15 miles of LRT that the three new lines are contributing.

BTW, some interesting statistics regarding commute methods are found in the following. If you want to test yourself, I've listed stats for three cities below - Houston, Dallas, Austin. Pick the city first and then look at the report and see how correct you were. If you're feeling really brave, post your answers before you look at the report. http://demographia.com/db-jtwmma2012.pdf City A 79.7% commute in car alone 11.0% car pool 3.5% work from home 2.6% use mass transit 1.4% walk 0.3% bike 1.6% other City B 81.0% commute in car alone 10.1% car pool 4.6% work from home 1.5% use mass transit 1.1% walk 0.2% bike 1.5% other City C 76.3% commute in car alone 11.1% car pool 6.4% work from home 2.3% use mass transit 2.1% walk 0.8% bike 1.1% other

Given that there are finite resources, the cost of building rail is underfunding bus and BRT.

1. Not really, BRT just requires dedicated lanes during hours of operation. Those lanes could be easily used for freight during off-hours. Additionally those lanes could be utilized for disaster evacuation planning. LRT does not achieve either of those purposes. 2. Curitiba moves 2.3 million passengers a day through a 66 mile BRT system. Dallas runs 95,000 passengers a day through a 85 mile LRT system. Capacity doesn't overly concern me. 3. That's why driverless will be a private system. Government will sit back and say that it's hypothetical until after it happens and then they'll be trying to figure out how to respond to it. Mercedes, Nissan, Ford, Google, Audi, Tesla, and BMW are among the companies that are investing heavily in it and are all racing to be first to market with it. Tesla recently announced that they will have a car that is capable of handling 90% control automatically on the market in three years. http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-driverless-cars-elon-musk-2013-9 BTW, you might want to look at the "hypothetical" 2014 Mercedes S550 which features "Traffic Jam Assist" which allows the driver to enable autonomous driving when the car is traveling at up to 37 mph. It also keeps the car in lane while driving autonomously. http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/sedans/1306_2014_mercedes_benz_s550_first_drive/ I'd discount that too. After all, it's just Mercedes, it's not like they have any history of innovations that then lead to widespread adoption. http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/innovation

Which gets back to finite resources. I think that everyone agrees that there is not enough funding to fulfill all transit needs in the immediate future so all investment is, by definition, removing needed resource from another. Given that, I believe that over the next five years, METRO should invest heavily in bus and BRT to provide improved access and frequency, and evaluate opportunities to continue to acquire potential rail corridors where such acquisition has potential future benefit. LRT and commuter rail should remain in a "plan and analyze" stage during that time.

Jarrett Walker calls for a 6 min frequency for buses.

It all depends on how you categorize "beneficial". I would categorize it as a metric of the number of individuals moved relative to the cost of the project. For example, I think that there's a pretty strong argument for the success of the Bellaire "Quickline" bus which has 8,200 average daily boardings which is about double what the North rail line currently does at a fraction of the costs. My question about Westheimer was - if the question is commuter rail, how do you run a line down Westheimer and out to Katy and make it effective for transit time. LRT in Houston runs at 15 mph. Let's assume that you can run a line down Westheimer at 20 mph. That would make a trip from Katy to the Galleria one hour. I don't see that as attractive to people.

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".

I don't like light rail because it requires dedicated infrastructure that can't be used for multiple purposes. It has virtually no capacity advantage over well run BRT. It's not cost effective for the ridership that it supports, and I believe that 50 years from now, most cities are going to be regretting the amount of money that they invested in these systems as automotive technology continues to develop. Any other questions?

Plenty is when supply is sufficient to meet demand.

I agree that heavy rail, preferably grade separated, makes sense when capacity is extremely high. I have yet to see a convincing argument for LRT over BRT especially because emerging technologies are continuing to erode the few advantages that LRT does have. I don't believe that Houston has any corridors that justify the use of heavy rail at this point in time, however agree that METRO should be establishing ROW for the point that they will need it. I believe that the most pressing need for Houston is expanded coverage and frequency. Neither of which are strengths of rail. Regarding the Park & Ride vs. rail, it's an extremely flawed comparison because Park & Ride utilizes existing infrastructure while rail requires construction of an entirely new set of infrastructure. The cost comparisons aren't even close. For example the Katy Freeway Park & Ride is entirely contained in the existing infrastructure that supports an estimate 274,000 vehicles/day which significantly exceeds the daily ridership of any light rail system in the United States.

We'll just agree to disagree then. Let's talk about two hypothetical people. Person A - single mom, needs the bus to get to work. Person B - owns two cars but doesn't like to drive them. I want every transit dollar dedicated to person A until we have an excellent bus system. Rail comes after the bus system is running efficiently and only in areas that have sufficient density to justify us. Couldn't care less if that makes us a laughingstock.

I saw a stat the other day that really surprised me. 65% of rail users in the US are in the New York City metro.

Those are the official METRO numbers.

No question about that, but I would suggest that it changes the decision making process for transit planners because it changes a lot about capacity and utilization of highways. Autonomous trucks have much more opportunity to function at off hours relieving peak capacity. Buses become much more flexible because of the capability of stacking buses so that they function essentially as train cars. For example, it would be relatively easy to run five buses at a time through a Park & Ride during peak because they no longer need to be staffed. I'm not a fan of light rail, but subways certainly make sense in very dense areas.

As I've stated multiple times, my belief is that a much higher preference in terms of transportation planning should go to those that use transit because they can't afford a car rather than those who use transit because they don't want to use a car. Rail bias isn't a factor for those people. An improved bus network is the best way to leverage finite transportation dollars and extend coverage throughout the city. Regarding Westheimer, not sure what you would be achieving given that this conversation was about I-10 commuter rail. If you're proposing running rail all the way to the suburbs down the middle of Westheimer, that strikes me as a prohibitively long transit time.

Depends on what the business model is. If it's private and for-profit, I would say that it's pretty likely that there will be multiple companies competing and plenty of vehicles in the fleet. If it's government run and subsidized, I have a lot less confidence that it will be executed correctly. I'd much rather see it run as a regulated private marketplace with a government subsidy for the underprivileged (a la food stamps).