livincinco

Remember - by Vik's logic, increasing capacity increases congestion and reducing capacity decreases congestion.

Your stance is that it's not possible to move a bus from one route to another? I quote from the FTA guidelines for BRT "BRT's flexibility derives from the fact that BRT vehicles (e.g., buses, specialized BRT vehicles) can travel anywhere there is pavement and the fact that BRT's basic service unit, a single vehicle, is relatively small compared to train-based rapid transit modes. A given BRT corridor application might encompass route segments where vehicles operate both in mixed traffic and on a dedicated, fully grade-separated transitway with major stations." http://www.nbrti.org/docs/pdf/Low%20Res%20CBRT%202009%20Update.pdf

I am against the 25% of METRO tax going to roads and agree that the gas tax should have been indexed to inflation so that it would adequately cover the cost of roads. Both are politicians distorting the system to achieve their own goals. Where we disagree is that I don't believe an accurately indexed gas tax would significantly impact behavior. I think it more likely would result in better maintained roads that would increase mobility and reduce congestion.

Um, no. Even if BRT is on a fixed guideway, you can move a vehicle off of that guideway and use it on any road. Hence the term common infrastructure. Please explain how you can drive a train down the 1000s of miles of road that already exist in Houston.

I'm a huge proponent of BRT because of the flexibility that it provides. The biggest problem with rail is that it's highly inflexible. Changing capacity is difficult (cars need to be coupled and uncoupled) and it runs on a very limited set of infrastructure. It can't be used on the vast network of roads that exists in this country. In my opinion, BRT becomes hugely preferable to rail the minute that autonomous driving becomes viable and that's projected to be less than 20 years away. (Google is planning to have production vehicles in 3 years). Existing high end BRT replicates an LRT experience already with the appropriate vehicles. The difference is that you need additional labor to run it and have lower capacity than LRT. Autonomous changes all of that. With that, you can run buses literally back to back to match capacity of rail without the increased labor costs, but you also gain dramatically increased flexibility. Since buses run on a common infrastructure, you could very easily add additional buses to select routes during peak parts of the day and redeploy them to other locations in a very short time period. With rail, redeployment options are restricted due to infrastructure. In an interim scenario, this could even be deployed much faster with a driver in a lead vehicle and driverless vehicles following behind. In a slightly further out scenario, you could utilize that kind of a system to eliminate transfers. Consider the above scenario where five buses arrive at a station in downtown in an LRT configuration. They could perform the function of LRT for the distance of the line, but at the end of the line, instead of requiring a transfer, each would head to a different destination on regular streets utilizing existing common infrastructure. There's a seamless transition from a high ridership area to a low ridership area with no change in infrastructure. You also have huge flexibility in dealing with changes in ridership levels on specific routes. There's no reason that all vehicles have to be the same size and they could be switched out for larger or smaller vehicles in minutes as demand changes. Autonomous is also going to reduce congestion from trucks. The military is already starting to use autonomous vehicles for convoys and we're not far away from the time that the majority of long haul trucking will be able to shift to unmanned convoys that plan their routes so that they pass through congested areas at night or at off peak hours. Another huge impact is going to be the widespread adoption of route planning technology. Not a big stretch at all to program your planned travel points into your computer and have it propose recommended departure times and routes based on traffic conditions. This is the same concept as congestion pricing, but uses information instead of cost as the motivator. There are large numbers of people that would change their departure times if they knew the impact with a high degree of certainty. None of these things are based on "futuristic" technology and they all utilize existing infrastructure, so implementation costs are low. What seems speculative to me is thinking that we're going to improve mobility by discarding a huge network of existing infrastructure and building a new network with a fraction of the reach on the expectation that usage in 50 years is going to justify the cost.

Agreed. Part of the reason that there's a deficit in the funding from the current gas tax is because $10 billion annually gets diverted from road construction to subsidize mass transit. At that point, it ceases to be a use tax.

That makes sense, but I think that most of those jobs are already outside the loop anyway. Most of the light industrial/manufacturing type jobs are out on the beltway or other such areas. The ones that are in the core will probably move as land prices continue to increase.

Could be, but that's very hypothetical. I also don't find the comparison between a $400,000 town home in Montrose and a $275,000 house in the suburbs to be particularly accurate. I think that you're understating the discrepancy in housing costs between the two areas.

I think that those are fair points and I think that the city is taking the right steps by starting to do some real long term planning. Most of my concerns about rail relate to my views on future technology. I do a lot of work with companies related to long term logistics planning and I truly believe that we are in the starting stages of a transportation revolution that will match what occurred with the implementation of the automobile in the early part of the last century. I think that anyone that is old enough recognizes that the last couple of decades have resulted in a communication and information revolution that are comparable to any shift in human history. As that technology continues to be implemented across transportation, we are going to see huge shifts as a result. I have a lot of difficulty believing that 50-100 year infrastructure investments in light rail are appropriate at this point given the potential impact of these changes. I think that the same thing is true of energy generation as well, but that's a subject for another post and thread.

A lot depends on the type of work that you're doing. In my opinion, the key is providing the financial incentive to workers to keep up productivity. I don't maintain an office for my business. Everyone works from home or onsite at a client and they all know that they share in the financial savings of not having an office. They get to live wherever they want as long as they can get to clients and get to pocket any cost of living savings that they gain as a result. They know they have a good deal which provides them tons of incentive to keep up productivity. However, it's a highly professional workforce that generally doesn't require a lot of watching in any scenario. Plenty of other offices have different situations. There are definitely risks, but it can lead to huge increases in productivity if managed correctly. I personally would never want to go back to the traditional structure after living this way for a couple of years. In the not so distant past, you used to have to hide the fact that you were at your house if you were on a conference call. In my experience, it's now a regular occurrence to hear kids and dogs in the background on calls. We made jokes about it and then just ask people to go on mute. Continuing increases in connectivity are just going to decrease costs related to conference calls and videoconferencing, while continuing to improve quality of those services.

^^ Completely agree with your comments. I think that it's also interesting that very few of our conversations regarding transit on this forum include either work from home or independent businesses which are two of the fastest growing trends in the country. The number of people that work from home is much higher than the number of people that use mass transit and is growing much faster as well. There's also a rapidly growing sector of independent business people that don't follow traditional commute patterns. Those are both patterns that are likely to continue to grow as technology improves. I think that it's highly likely that the biggest result of tolls on roads would be an increase of 4/40 and 9/80 work plans, both of which have huge implications on transportation planning.

Would more people ride a train than a bus is not a simple question, it's a simplistic question. You state that there will be a time that the density will be there and the demand will be high enough. I agree with that point related to heavy rail, but the capacity question regarding BRT and LRT is much more of a debate as most real world numbers attest. You make several statements that I think would require much more detailed discussion than you attribute in your statement. I totally agree with you about setting aside ROW, but if demand isn't sufficient today to support a line, I would suggest that it's entirely appropriate to identify when demand will be sufficient and target construction to be closer to that timeframe. If demand in a corridor isn't projected to be sufficient to require rail for 30 years as an example, wouldn't it make more sense to set aside ROW now and have that line ready for use in 25 years which would still be well before the time that the projected demand exists? I also question the statement that we need to build now because it will cost so much in the future. That's a huge economic assumption that doesn't consider inflation, long term interest costs, potential technology improvements, and operating losses that occur due to unused capacity during the interim. It also ignores whether it's the best current use of the money. I think that we all agree that there are large opportunity for improvement in current METRO coverage. Why should METRO divert money that could be used to improve current usage to fund projected future demand that may not be required for decades? Why not budget for future construction at the appropriate time? I think that these are all reasonable questions to ask rather than just saying more people will ride rail than buses. Of course, these all assume that a government agency is capable of making rational long term decisions and that might be the most questionable assumption of all.

I think that's an indictment of our current society more than a specific commentary on economics. A large percentage of what passes for "research" today is heavily politicized and generated for publicity purposes.

Hearst Media is a joke.

It really doesn't surprise me that there's a lack of development in the East End because the subsidies are drawing the developers to downtown. When developers choose to building in the East End instead of taking advantage of the subsidies downtown, that feels like a sign that they've exceeded demand for downtown residential.

That's really the challenge isn't it? There is a school of belief that giving more money to government is the answer, but it is helpful if that money is spent efficiently and that rarely seem to happen. I am under no illusion that this is going to change anytime soon.

After all look at what happened when the Westpark toll road got built. The people rebelled, demanded alternative transportation, and now the Westpark sits there empty while the train that parallels it is completely full. Just like the Beltway, the Hardy toll road, the Fort Bend toll road. All empty because of the tolls.

No, I'm saying that if you feel that BRT capacity is overstated because of obese people, then LRT capacity is equally overstated by the same people. As IronTiger pointed out, it's not true that the majority of Houstonians are obese, but that's not even relevant to your point. Your point is that the FTA has overstated capacity for BRT because it's not considering that people in Houston are obese. The only thing that you've offered to support that is personal observation. Yeah, probably. Transit with a capacity of 18,000/hour is pretty easily capable of handling a demand of 49,000/day.

Whether Houstonians are obese is a ridiculous argument and is irrelevant as well. The numbers provided by the FTA far exceed the projected demand for the corridor. Additionally, the weight of individuals is irrelevant because it would reduce the capacity of light rail by an identical proportion, unless you're now going to claim that LRT riders are skinnier than BRT riders and can meet the vehicle capacity as a result.

Couldn't agree more completely. I think that solar has huge potential, but until a mechanism exists to store excess electricity efficiently, there are serious limits to its value. The struggles that Germany is encountering while trying to ramp up its renewable usage are a good illustration of the challenges that still need to be overcome.

This really isn't just a Texas problem. It's a national problem. The American Society of Civil Engineers puts out a comprehensive report card on all aspects of the nation's infrastructure and in 2013, they gave a cumulative grade of a D+. Texas actually received a grade of C which is above average for the country. Spotlighting Texas is really just an attempt to put a partisan slant on something that really should be a national, bi-partisan issue. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

To clarify, these aren't my numbers. These are the official capacity numbers of the Federal Transit Administration. If you have an issue with those numbers, take it up with them. I will add that I find it absolutely hilarious that the numbers cited in the official federal guidelines from the US Department of Transportation are being written off as unrealistic due to personal observation of "the bus I ride everyday".

Actually a standard 45' bus carries 60-70 passengers seated and standing. An 80' articulated bus has a total capacity of 110-130 passengers. Estimated practical capacity for a system with designated lanes is 18,000/hour with peak capacity 19,500/hour. Of course, those numbers are from the official FTA guidelines on bus rapid transit. I'm sure that "back of the napkin" calculations that you and JamesL did are much more accurate. http://www.fta.dot.gov/documents/CBRT.pdf (BRT capacity figures are found in Exhibit 3-22)

Quoting DCStreetsblog does not count as a study.

Only if you don't consider the ongoing finance charges that are related to the much higher upfront construction costs. Actually our highway system looks exactly like a spiderweb. It's hub and spoke only if you don't consider the ring roads. Take out the Loop, the Beltway, and the various arterial roads and it's a hub and spoke.