livincinco

People are moving every day from other cities where good public transit is normal. At some point this will have an effect on the city's politicians and finally force real investment in a comprehensive public transit system.

You do realize the irony of what you just said right?

I disagree. Houston, with just the slightest planning, could have made our inner core freeway system aesthetically pleasing either submerging it like 59 or getting rid of frontage lanes or planting a wall of trees alongside the freeways decades ago or all of those things or combination of them, We need the mobility of our freeways connecting to downtown, but the way we did it destroyed many neighborhoods. 

I agree with you that urban freeways could have been better planned, but it's always easy to look at things that were built 60 years ago and criticize the way that they were constructed.  I doubt that many people at that time expected that the Houston of 500,000 people at the point that the Gulf Freeway opened was going to grow to a regional population of 6,000,000.

There are a lot of people passionately against it because this is their last stand. There isn't any other major city in the country that isn't investing heavily in rail projects. Houston is the last one standing.

And just as quickly rational conversation goes back out the window.

I'm sure that different transit systems have different results in different cities, but there's no doubt that more ridership = more cars off the road...and considering how many more miles of roads and freeways there are than there are for trains/subways, I don't think it's fair to label this method of transportation as largely ineffective. The problems we have with rail ridership have more to do with how our cities are so spread out (which is largely due to roads/automobiles in the first place) than anything. It's not close to a level playing field. There's simply not nearly enough access to mass transit. If we had the infrastructure (and we wouldn't need nearly as much as we do for roads and automobiles) in place, and built it the right way...we would have MUCH different results.

There's more of a need for higher speeds for commuters coming in from the suburbs. If we had a rail/subway system somewhat similar to the one I "proposed," we could get from The Woodlands and Katy to GWP with or without a transfer. There are many ways to do it, but some are better than others.

I agree that the Katy Freeway expansion has played a huge role in the activity that's gone on throughout that corridor since then...but I wonder what makes you think that the rest of Houston wouldn't have at least gained a net positive by now from what's been going on in the Energy Corridor lately if the Katy Freeway wasn't widened (if that's what you're saying)? We've still had a lot of growth of all sorts in town lately (and lots more to come apparently) despite rising prices. I'm not really arguing that the Katy Freeway expansion hasn't helped, but what if we build a subway system as well?

I'm also not saying that more development would be concentrated in central areas...just that these areas may still be experiencing the same kind of growth they're seeing today if the Katy Freeway wasn't expanded, and perhaps more...most likely dependent on any overflow from would-have-been Energy Corridor employees. Not sure how much the difference would be or how much it would affect prices. The more development, the higher the prices more likely go. That said, I'd be willing to bet that all of this new development in the Energy Corridor (and The Woodlands) has contributed to increased prices in and of itself.

Agreed with your points and that's why I get testy when its suggested that there are simple answers to very complex issues like mobility. I think that everyone here has good intentions, but history is littered with good intentions that have gone awry due to poor execution and/or poor planning.

Natural surroundings do contribute but even without them san Diego and Vancouver are not even in the same stratosphere as a city like houston. It's like comparing a freshman high school basketball player to Michael Jordan.

Another good analogy would be comparing this discussion to a rational conversation.

Houston is the last big city in America that resist proper mass transit, but it too will give in with time.

Last time I checked, Houston just completed construction on one light rail line and is currently constructing two others.  That's the strangest form of resistance that I've ever encountered.

Houston has five more functioning miles of light rail transit extending the Main street line from the University of Houston Downtown to the Houston Community College campus at the Northline Mall, according to ABC 13.

Houston’s Main Street light rail line is the most successful modern light rail line in the nation in terms of ridership per mile of rail, according to Wikipedia, behind only Boston’s green line, which opened in 1897.

Federal transportation officials now have a much better relationship with Houston’s Metro than several years ago, according to KUHF:

Federal Transit Administration chief Peter Rogoff says he thinks Metro has done a good job with the light rail projects, with no reports of cost overruns or major delays.

And he’s pleased to see Metro is opening the North Line extension ahead of schedule.

“More recently, their performance in building out the north and southeast lines, as well as delivering the system on time and on budget, they’re actually ahead of time, ahead of schedule, and providing the service to the citizens a lot sooner than expected, which is all good news.”

...

Rogoff expects Houston will be a strong candidate for more federal money in the years to come, especially if local officials are able to come up with matching funds.

But he says it’s hard to predict what the future holds, despite the Obama administration’s request for more money for bus and rail projects around the country.

However, Metro is having issues with the vendor for new light rail vehicles that will be used for the coming additional expansions of the East and Southeast line expected later this year, according to the Houston Chronicle.

I think that you might have accidentally posted this on the wrong thread...

Several of those would tend to skew the balance toward liberal cities, and before you say something ignorant like "Because liberal cities are better, duh!" keep in mind that most of the publications that do these quality of life things are liberal, too.

Notice that the above statistics also ignore things like congestion and cost of living.

It skews the balance pretty heavily toward coastal cities without a question.  Let's be honest here, I don't think that there are a lot of people that will say that if money was no object, they wouldn't want to live along the beach on the West Coast instead of living in Houston.  Most of us though have to consider cost as a factor and choose the highest quality of life based on what we can afford.  That's kind of the equivalent of arguing that people will buy a Mercedes instead of a Toyota if cost is not a consideration.

Incidentally, there's a huge discussion going on in San Francisco about the continued gentrification of the city and the strong opposition that's starting to develop to that.  The increasing belief is that San Francisco is becoming very homogenous (young rich tech workers) and that it is fundamentally changing the nature of the city by driving out a lot of long time residents.

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/16/san_franciscos_rightward_turn_why_it_may_no_longer_be_americas_iconic_liberal_city/

Transit in Austin and San Diego is far better than in houston for the record.

Austin light rail - 1 line - 9 stations - daily ridership - 3,500

Houston light rail - 2 lines - 24 stations - daily ridership - 38,300

Austin bus - 112,000 daily boardings

Houston bus - 221,000 daily boardings

Please explain why this is considered far better.

Regarding San Diego, you'll notice that the comparison was with Dallas not Houston.  Care to comment that perhaps there may be differences in natural surroundings that contribute to Seattle and Vancouver ranking highly in quality of life surveys?

The people advocating taking out i-345 view it as a unnecessary short cut, particularly for people not from Dallas. First if the car is just passing through they can use 35, 635, loop 12 or 190. I can't find the source but taking 645 to get to 45 is an extra 6 or 7 minutes. Removing the freeway could encourage much needed DART ridership. I think a major compromise that might be necessary is to add more capacity for the one lane on ramp loop from Woodall Rodgers West Bound on to i-35 S and to do that same for the on ramp from i-35 N on to Woodall Rodgers East Bound,

 

If these are commuters from outside of Dallas who work within the CBD and Dallas wants to foster density then it's time to stop easily accommodate the growth of the suburbs at the expense of Dallas proper. The metroplex's employment hubs (high rise) are pretty spread out (Fort Worth, Las Colinas, Dallas Tollway, Richardson) so it's not as if a third of the metro works within a 5 mile radius of downtown. While we still need Arlington, Grand Prairie, Collin Country to join DART and the Cotton Belt Rail Line but for the most part the rail infrastructure is there, it's just time to start using it.

Removing a freeway that's a throughway with 160,000 cars that travel it daily would be a very interesting social experiment that I'm sure would be studied heavily as most prior removals have been stubs not throughways. 

Your comment appears to assume that removing the freeway and encouraging DART ridership would not have an adverse effect on economic growth in the Dallas area.  Given that vacancies in the CBD are currently in excess of 30% with the existing freeway and DART in place, I'm think that it's reasonable to question whether restricting ease of access to the CBD would have a positive impact on that area and whether it would lead to your desired result.

Sure, natural beauty and easy access to nature are a big part of "quality of life." 

 

Nevertheless, most of the cities mentioned have terrible freeway systems (Austin) or have actually starting removing existing freeways (Seattle).

 

Freeways are excellent at providing convenient connections between dispersed locations, but they are equally good at creating boundaries in the communities they cross. 

We're using quality of life in a generic sense which makes it something that is not definable.  However, many published surveys that provide quality of life rankings do not actually consider transportation as part of the criteria to determine quality of life.

To state that high quality of life scores are based on something that isn't considered as part of the ranking system is a highly questionable conclusion.

Look at Vancouver and look at Seattle. That gives you a good idea.

Vancouver - as described on their tourism website

Oceanside location...mountains 20 minutes north of downtown...temperate climate, surrounding snow-covered slopes for winter sports and breathtaking views of the city below.

Vancouver is one of the few places in the world where it's possible to ski in the morning and sail in the afternoon.

Gee!  Sounds just like Houston!  Clearly based on the above description there is no question that any difference in quality of life ranking is due to differences between the transit systems of the two cities.

Seattle - from the New York Times "36 hours in Seattle" - This is one of the rare American cities where you can be outdoors year-round without either shivering or sweating... stunning natural beauty...

Well that certainly wouldn't have anything to do with quality of life rankings.  I hear people talk about Houston's stunning natural beauty all the time.  Seattle must have higher rankings because of its transit system.

Since all quality of life rankings are based entirely on transit, I bet that Dallas has a really high rankings on all those quality of life rankings and cities like Austin and San Diego must do really, really bad because they have no transit.

Wait...these rankings must be wrong.  Austin and San Diego rank in the top 10 and Dallas doesn't.  Don't these people realize how bad transit is in Austin and San Diego????? 

So when I took BART in San Francisco, or SkyTrain in Vancouver, I didn't save huge amounts of time avoiding traffic?

San Francisco - #3 worst commute in the United States - http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/05/04/worst-traffic-cities/2127661/

Vancouver - worst traffic congestion in all of North America - http://globalnews.ca/news/949901/vancouver-has-worst-traffic-congestion-in-north-america-report/

That tells you something about the power of the highway lobby.

Or it tells you that no one knows where to route the 160,000 cars that travel that highway daily if it's not there.

I would consider that a "massively crowded" transit system would be almost as much of a failure as a success. When that happens, it means that both freeways and transit systems have reached critical mass, commuting is universally miserable, and quality of life suffers.

What city has the highest rail ridership in the US?  New York.

What city has the longest commute in the US?  New York.

This is not a coincidence.

I don't think it'll happen, either. I just want to connect the city to the suburbs with more options than driving. Like we were talking about earlier, a lot of people seem to care more about their community or their personal space than what's best for the masses, and "harsh" or not, that (and having 6 million of us) has largely brought us to this point. We can't keep going like this forever, and like I said the other day...it's a hell of a lot easier to manage this issue now while there are "only" 6 million, 300 million and 7 billion of us than when there are 10-20 million, 500-700 million and 20-50 billion of us. Future generations are being left with a bigger "load" (so to speak) every day we continue to look the other way.

If it was up to me, we would have subways all over this town and lots of covered moving walkways in the busier districts. A 100 mile network could make Houston the world-class city we aspire to be. We could have subway lines connecting areas such as:

 

- Hobby Airport, U of H, Downtown, Greenspoint, IAH and The Woodlands

- Reliant Park, TMC, Rice U/Hermann Park, Midtown, Downtown 

- TMC, Rice Village, GWP, Galleria area

- Midtown, Montrose, Upper Kirby/River Oaks, Galleria area, Westchase, Terry Hershey Park, Energy Corridor

- Energy Corridor, City Centre/Memorial City, Memorial Park, Allen Pkwy/Regent Square/Eleanor Tinsley Park, Downtown

 

I think that would be a great start to a new era in Houston. Add in a bullet train to D/FW and/or ATX/SA and we've got even more sustainable growth management over time.

 

***

 

I agree that the I-10 expansion helped the growth we are seeing out there today, but I'm not sure that the same kind of growth wouldn't have happened elsewhere in town if we didn't do I-10 the way we did. I wonder if it came down to "the Energy Corridor, or OKC/SA" for some of these companies. That's a very interesting take.

I'd rather be "overbuilt" if it means we're moving than "under built" if it means we're sitting in traffic. You're right, though that even some of the best mass transit systems we have are "massively crowded" during rush hour, too. That demonstrates their demand if they're planned and built right.

 

I'm not saying or advocating moving people from the suburbs closer in. I just want us to stop building any further out than we already have and build smarter in all phases of our transportation system.

Pretty much without exception in the US, a transit system becomes "massively crowded" when the functional "cost" (in either time or money), becomes so high that users find transit to be preferable.  Systems that are located in cities that don't have those constraints rarely generate large amounts of ridership, Dallas being a perfect case in point.

The other problem is that the idea that transit improves commute times is really not accurate.  Commute times generally highest in cities with extensive transit systems, not the other way around and that's due to the logistics of following a fixed network.  One of the big problem that I've personally experienced with rail networks is the hub and spoke design that most follow is not particularly suited to Houston.  Take the example of running commuter rail from Katy to downtown.  Nice in concept to run rail directly to downtown and then connect to a fully built out light rail network, however the actual logistics get pretty problematic.  If you live in Katy and work in Greenway Plaza would you take rail to downtown, transfer to the Main Street line and then transfer again to the University line in order to get to Greenway Plaza?  Probably not and that's the problem with rail in a decentralized city.  The network looks great on paper until you start to consider the transit times involved in getting from point to point if you're not moving to the hub.

Regarding I-10, I tend to disagree with you that businesses would have focused closer in.  A couple of assumptions here, first is that we've clearly seen that increased demand inside the loop has a dramatic impact on prices.  The appreciation of the last couple of years has clearly shown that.  The second is that the office market in Houston is price sensitive.  The last couple of years have shown that as well as a high percentage of businesses have chosen to locate in the periphery rather than centralize which I think can pretty directly be attributed to the difference in prices between those areas.

So let's assume for a moment that I-10 doesn't get widened and overall demand in the Houston market stays consistent.  Per your theory, more development gets concentrated in central areas which per our assumption will increase prices even more significantly than current trend.  Failure to built I-10 decreases the attractiveness of suburban areas because of the higher commute times associated with getting to jobs (both because they're concentrated in the urban core and because of decreased capacity), which drives the prices in the urban area another level higher.  In the meantime, competing markets do not suffer the price pressure that Houston does and are able to offer significantly lower prices for both office and residential. 

The question then becomes whether the companies that we're talking about are willing to absorb these additional costs to be in Houston.  I would argue that most of them wouldn't.  I don't think that Houston has the appeal to demand the kind of increased costs that San Francisco or New York does. 

The reality is the city is gaining population daily and at some point we need an effective alternative to simply driving to handle what's ahead. Even LA figured this out. The longer we wait the more it will cost.

Agreed, but the big question is given that there is a finite amount of resource to be allocated to transportation in the foreseeable future, what is the appropriate way to allocate that resource?  As I've mentioned before (many many times), my opinion is that the primary need in the city of Houston is to provide usable mass transit to as high of a percentage of users as possible with a specific preference to ensuring that people with the highest need for mass transit (i.e. the most economically disadvantaged).  Rail is effective at moving a large number of people along a defined corridor and, in my opinion, that's a secondary need for the city of Houston right now.

My stance has continually been that Houston needs to focus resource to building the most effective bus system that it can prior to significant investment in rail because it will provide the largest benefit to the population that has the biggest need.  Once that's in place, then focus on specific corridors that generate sufficient demand for rail.

In my opinion, focusing METRO resource today on building 2-3 rail lines that will serve a very small portion of the overall population is not a good use of finite resource.

You question everything you don't agree with.

I question everything I agree with too. There's a large amount of data/studies that are biased to support a particular conclusion. Bad data leads to bad conclusions.

I'm not any rail by any means. I'm just pro-reality and I think that a large amount of the tranportation discussion that happens on this thread has no interest in reality. If you want the world to be exactly like you wish it would be, go play SimCity. Otherwise, you have to question your assumptions as to why things happen the way they do.

I guess you're not aware of the many apartments going up all along the line and the midtown and the super block and MATCH. Also regarding BRT vs LRT the costs aren't as drastic if there is a all of tunneling and bridges. Also the FTA strongly prefers LRT and thus if a city wants federal funds it would be wise to stick with rail. As far as DART there has been quote a bit of development along the line. And finally a lot of people have "rail bias." Unfortunately buses just aren't attractive to many people.

I'm not convinced that those things are getting built because if the rail line by any means. It's really a stretch to credit a burst of activity to the rail line when that burst occurs 10 years after construction was completed. Apartment buildings have gone up all over Midtown without any real concentration on the rail line, so unless you're going to credit all development in Midtown to the rail line, which I would again find to be a stretch, then it's hard to find a pattern.

Regarding DART, we've already discussed that on another thread. I have questions about the investment figures provided by the study that DART commissioned to identify development along the rail lines because it doesn't consider subsidies provided to projects. That's going to skew results pretty heavily because it makes it very difficult to understand what was built because of incentives and what was built because of rail.

Regarding rail bias, I have no interest in transit for people that are too good for the bus. I'm interested in transit for people that need it because it's their only choice. Once those people have their needs covered, that's the time to consider transit for people that own cars, but don't want to drive them.

Yea those guys in San Diego, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Seattle, Portland, charlotte, Orlando, Dallas, Denver, Austin, and Oakland are all clueless making major investments in rail.

I would question that list, but it's an interesting point that you bring up, because mosg of those cities and many more are making major investments in highways. If your measure of whether a project makes sense is the number of cities that have active projects, then you must be a huge proponent of highways, unless you think that all those cities are clueless.

The problem is implementation and funds. I think a lot of cities (in particular sun-belt cities) try to stick that type of Chicago, NYC, etc doctrine of trying to make a centralized city. Houston just needs LRT connecting it's largest and densest employment and activity centers (DT, Uptown, Greenway Plaza, TMC, our 4 professional sports stadiums and our educational and cultural institutions) which happen to all be within 8 miles of each other. Not to mention, actually have enough money left over to make sure it doesn't happen at the expense of our bus network and P&R expansion.

Furthermore, while Houston is decentralized, our rush our traffic is heavily inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening. A great investment would be in doubling our P&R system that could feed commuters into the core and start building ridership in places like Greenway, Woodland Town Center/Exxon, Energy Corridor, and Westchase with express bus service. .

As far as BRT vs LRT; I would argue that BRT couldn't do what the Main St line accomplished and BRT should be used instead of LRT for the current expansion.

Lastly, all this would ideally be done while simultaneously rebuilding our roads and highways.

Agreed that an expansion of P&R would be beneficial including increasing the size of the parking lots in the outlying regions.

Regarding BRT vs. LRT, recent studies have found that BRT provides the same development benefits of LRT and I really question how much of the development in the Main Street corridor can be credited exclusively to LRT. Development along the line has been concentrated pretty heavily in the vicinity of Market Square Park and really didn't take off until that park was completed. Given the amount of development that Discovery Green has driven (with no proximity to rail) and the development of the Market Square area, I think that there's a pretty credible case that can be put forward regarding how much development parks have driven downtown.

Once you get out of that area, development along the Main Street line has been pretty sparse and I think that it's questionable to consider either Main Street Square or Houston Pavilions a transit success story.

To me the question of LRT vs. BRT though comes down to a question of scarce dollars. Given that there's an extremely large area to cover with transit and given that LRT costs approx 4x as much as BRT per mile. My personal opinion is that the city would be better served at this point with a 100 mile BRT network than a 25 mile LRT network. I'm sure that the immediate response is going to be that the city would be better served with a 100 mile LRT, but I'm personally of the opinion that in about 5 years we're going to start reading a lot about the financial problems that DART is suffering from based on the massive long term debt problem that they've created. Houston has enough problems related to METROs past mismanagement already to add that layer.

weekly or weekday? if you meant weekday, no way that will happen. probably wouldnt even happen if the line was connected to Hobby. it should be higher than the North extention though i would think..

You're right. I meant weekday. I blame autocorrect.

Projects like this are an investment in the future, but Houston doesn't seem to have the collective will for such stuff anymore. Nowadays, it seems as if two types of attitudes predominate in Houston: (1) apathy or (2) opposition to doing anything that isn't guaranteed to be an instant success. I do think most people here like the idea that we will continue to grow a lot, but relatively few consider future quality-of-life issues. I guess some people are comforted by the notion that they can just move farther out as the city crumbles. I don't want us to fall into a pit like the one Detroit is in.

To overcome that and get things done requires good leadership, both in the public and private sector. I think Dallas benefits from more of that than we have in the last 30 years. People are unaware of how infrastructure projects shape the development of a city. I remember my dad telling me that when the Gulf Freeway -- the first in Houston -- was originally completed, people thought it was a waste and that "all those lanes" would never be needed.

Houston is my home town and I love it. But ... I'm afraid that if we don't make well-thought-out infrastructure improvements, 50 years from now people will be surprised at the notion that Houston was ever considered to be competitive with Dallas.

I think that it would be more appropriate to say that Houston is not investing in commuter rail than it is to say that Houston is not investing in infrastructure. There has been considerable investment in infrastructure in the Houston Metro recently including major highway projects, significant improvement to drainage, large investment into the Port system, and a major push to improve the parks system across the city (which I would consider infrastructure).

It's valid to question whether infrastructure improvements are being focused in the right areas, but pretty questionable to say that Houston isn't investing in infrastructure.

Remember, for the Main street line, initial ridership numbers were a paltry 17,700 boardings/day for the first quarter of 2004. It took a few years for ridership to rise to current levels, and I expect the same thing to happen with this line.

That's fair, but these are METRO's numbers not mine.  Not sure when these numbers were calculated, but it seems like they should have already been aware of the experience of the Main Street line at the point that these projections were made.

I can't find projections for the East line, but the METRO projection for the Southeast line was 17,200 average weekly boardings for year 1.

Rush hour both starts and finishes early on Fridays. The Katy Freeway is still in the red (according to Houston Transtar) both inbound and outbound during hour, and "not in the green" for a large chunk of the average day.

 

The population density of the Heights is listed at 5,722 per square mile. I know "Katy" technically only applies to the city limits...but I'm inclined to think that Katy's "official" density of 1,248 per square mile isn't more than two or three times that when you factor in "the entire Katy area." I agree that we need to come up with an "optimum growth pattern" for sure.

 

There's no doubt that the "inner loop" would be much more crowded if people didn't move to the suburbs...but traffic wouldn't necessarily be worse. In fact, it may be better because if we would be more likely to have a real mass transit system (and one that wouldn't "require" going 25 or 30 miles outside the city).

I think that's an interesting point, but I generally find that no one is willing to provide reasons that this will occur.  It's great to speculate that people (and businesses for that matter) shouldn't move to the suburbs, but I've yet to hear tangible reasons that this is going to occur that consider economic realities.

As more people move and development occurs inside the loop, prices rise, which makes surrounding areas more attractive.  As more people move into the metro, demand continues to increase in surrounding areas which makes exurban areas more attractive.  Urban growth boundaries then increase prices across the region and decrease incentive for people and businesses to move into the metro.

I see no signs whatsoever that the Houston region has any interest in taking any measures that are going to reduce the attractiveness to people and businesses to move here, so I'm not sure why we would expect a major change in development patterns.