samagon

Here's the plan for Uptown Line and a bit of Cy-Rail, which I hope to explain further. The Uptown Line would go on the University Line and others, but I haven't done all that yet. I found that METRO's plan for Uptown Line has far too many stops, which I deleted. Oh, and for the most part, this Uptown Line tends to run mostly underground. Additionally, it was extended to Brookhollow Business Park, which I think needs to be connected with the rest of the city.

 

Notice that Cy-Rail stops at Northwest Mall and not Northwest Transit Center...I felt like since the rail was removed near there it would be problematic for the train to back in (even if you restored Old Katy to its original configuration).

I'd think that an extension west of the green line would make better sense, right down memorial drive, stop at Waugh, stop at Shepherd, stop at Memorial Park, finish at uptown line. It would probably get an ok number of customers on weekdays, but I'd imagine weekend traffic would be really high.

I also would like to see the university line going down richmond again, not jogging all over the map to avoid one neighborhood. go underground through that little neighborhood, from the railroad tracks, out to 610. and also it could go underground inside montrose to the spur.

Wish my regular office was accessible by bike, maybe I'll ride to the coffee shop. But that's not as special since it's so close to home I bicycle there anyway.

Hope she has a full recovery, that sucks.

I made the mistake of reading the comments. I can't believe how many hate filled ignorant people there are out there. 

I think you bring up some great points... We will witness in the next decade a sharp rise in home based offices as telecom advances have allowed us to work/live/play differently.  Imagine an ipad (or similar) with 500gb or 1tb?  Think of that.

 

I can easily see my work - small architectural firm - running a work out of home style business a couple days a week if transit became such a hassle.  Outside of office updates and the occasional call (which could be easily re-routed to cell or home lines) I don't really need to be in the office every day.  I imagine there are quite a few businesses like this out there as well.

 

Personally I wouldn't mind it.  Even a reduction of just 1 day at work would be a nice savings for me on the car.  The trick is accountability.  If employees would and can work well from home and accomplish what needs to be done, then that's possible, otherwise I think we may see a sharp decline in productivity.

That works well for work that can be done over a computer.

Someone who is assembling widgets can't really do that effectively from his home. So there's no work from home capability for 'blue collar' type jobs. Jobs where you have to work in a team environment, jobs where you are in the service industry. Work from home is a solution for a very small set of individuals.

Granted, a lot of the jobs I've mentioned, they're already on a 4/10 schedule, or non m-f 9-5 type schedule, so the impact is far less from them already.

I would like to see what would happen if they combined METRO and the HCTRA, I think that would be interesting, and possibly worth its own thread.

I think one way to do it since a lot of the infrastructure strain is due to newcomers to Texas--a tax that slowly decreases depending on how long you've been a resident. This way, you avoid the sticky issues of punishing rich people and/or poor people, and you don't affect the people who are used to low taxes all that much.

based off the percentage of time you've lived in the state! yes, I love it!

I've lived here 100% of my life, therefore I'd have a 0% tax!

Where can I vote for you?

They should implement more of a European style tax when you buy a car. You're taxed on the weight of the vehicle and size of the engine, then there's a gas tax on that as well. The gas tax needs to be raised, it's never been this low of a percentage of the cost of a gallon of gasoline. As it's been said though, political suicide to anyone willing to do so.

I like how the bayou really widens up as it passes east of downtown.  It creates a quite different impression that most people aren't aware of.  

 

I think the area has a lot of potential ... and I hope "we" will realize that by guiding its development with an eye to the future, rather than just letting things happen piecemeal.

I think that the widened areas are artificially wide. I know that ships would go right up into downtown. A lot of the land that homes are built on in the east end are built on dirt that was dug out of the bayou to make it wider. or so I've heard.

Jenson just north of Clinton drive offers an interesting and not often seen view of downtown.

I ride a standard bus every day. There is no way it fits 60-70 people. It has 39 seats (20 was a guess last night I admit) and sometimes less since 6 are reserved for the disabled. But I'm sure you knew that, a bus expert rides the bus right? 60-70 people is if you have an additional 20-30 people standing together like sardines, I think maybe 10 people would even be able to fit standing anyway, 15 absolute max. I don't ride articulated buses but I doubt your numbers on those too. Explain how 19,000 people could ride in an hour on those sized buses. That means 9500 each way, 158 per minute. Does that make any sense to you? Even with your unrealistic bus capacity, it's not feasible.

Perhaps I'm missing something.

How often does this 19000 per hour bus line stop? How many buses? 

what good does it do to have a number of 19000 boarding per hour, or 158 per minute if we don't have the full story?

I mean, if the line has 20 buses that stop every 5 minutes, then you'd have to average 39.5 people (call it 40) get on and off at each stop. Is that unreasonable? Here's the math:

P = people per minute (158)

M = minutes between stops (5)

B = number of buses (20)

X = average number of people that have to get on and off each bus at ever stop (39.5)

(P * M) / B = X

You can plug it whatever way you want, it's 7th grade algebra. If you feel comfortable knowing you only want 20 people getting on and off each stop, you can calculate how many buses you need, or add more frequent stops. See how long it takes to make the situation ludicrous. 

but then even that is kind of a pointless exercise without knowing how long the bus line is. if it's a 30 mile line, only 20 buses seems a bit thin in that situation. so you go up to 30 buses, and you're now loading/unloading 26 people on average per stop.

The other question is, let's assume the 60-70 passenger bus exists in Houston, what percentage of the passengers getting on/off is considered optimal for a bus with that many passengers?

Keep in mind that the time it takes to load/unload passengers doesn't really matter, so long as the loading/unloading and getting to the next stop can all happen in that 5 minute interval.

I don't think anyone has to 'make driving less appealing' that is happening, and will continue to happen without influence.

operating costs, traffic, all that stuff is getting worse on its own, no outside influence necessary. Of course, anti-rail types are certainly doing their part to help in both of those departments. no rail means the alternatives to driving are worse, so more people stay in their cars, raising demand for fuel, and with more people opting to stay in their cars due to lack of option, there's more traffic.

I guess, in the long term game, people who are for rail should thank all the politicos who won't pony up for rail.

Saying that the system will be around for centuries is awfully speculative.  The first prototype steam engine (which failed miserably) was invented almost exactly 200 years ago and there's no reason to believe that anything resembling today's rail will be an effective mode of transportation in 2200.  I would expect that most of today's technology will be no more relevant than the technology of 200 years ago is today, especially since every indication is that the pace of change is accelerating, not slowing down.

 

I've already gone into how operating costs for rail are lower only if you don't consider the interest costs that were incurred as part of the original construction so I don't think that it's necessary to rehash that.

This is not exactly a glowing endorsement for cars, a technology that has been in wide use for less than a century.

But then, ships have been around for as long as history is a tale to tell. Walking has been around probably longer.

Communications technology though, that's a different story, phones have been around for about a century, and the technology backbone for that communication method, while still going over copper wires, has changed numerous times, going from ladies connecting your call, to clicks and whirs, to tones, and now the tech is pretty well dying with different communications protocols carrying voice. When I was a kid my parents had a rotary phone, then they got a touch tone, then we had a cordless, then I got a cell phone, today I have a smart phone, tomorrow that technology will have passed on and I'll be using some new fangled thingy that I'll have to learn to use. Maybe when I'm 70 I'll be too scared of the new technology to adopt it, don't know, I certainly won't recognize it as a phone. Anyway, technology from a communications standpoint, yes, it changes, it evolves, we move on.

transportation though, that's a different beast. The technology that underpins the method of transit will and does change, but we will always recognize the method of transit for what it is, we'll call things that float in the water ships, we'll call things with pedals and 2 wheels bikes, we'll call things with 4 wheels and a seat a car, we'll call things that ride along a fixed guideway and carry multiple passengers a train. They won't go or change, they're here. When someone invents a new method of transit.

What methods of transit have died? stagecoaches? horseback riding? replaced by the car and the bus? 

I'd make a bet that I won't be able to collect, but maybe we can draw something up for our childrens children to win/lose (you'll need to provide me with a wife so I can make babies and they can collect, or pay up). I'll bet you $10 that rail, or something resembling rail will be an effective means of transportation in 200 years.

I can, Istanbul

Geneva

Dublin

Both have commuter rail dumping you unto street cars/light rail

Amsterdam

Munich

etc.

In the USA though...

First off, while clearance is an important issue, 22-23 feet seems extreme. I can stand up and a train can come roaring past me at easily twice my height, but I imagine a clearance of at least 21 feet would be needed for the "piggyback" cars that I imagine the Ship Channel area cars would have.

Secondly, remember that the train is already running in the street, dealing with stoplights. While crossing a freight train is obviously counterintuitive to a light rail's reliability and speed, it only runs into the issue of scheduling and stopping times.

Thirdly, East End/Harrisburg residents tend to be NIMBY types and have always been, and I don't think that there should be all this fighting over overpasses and underpasses.

What if there was an even more radical plan: just abandon the line. There's half a mile of track in there and just two stations (three if you count individual platforms). That's not very much for just a short bit of track. You wouldn't need to strip out tracks, just dismantle the platforms, remove the Botts dots for the track, and reopen necessary left turn lanes and all. The main line will still function as always. The actual track will be mothballed for future use should they come to a compromise and will be reactivated at that date.

This is not nearly radical enough.

There's another even more radical idea. Trench the entire freight line. from 45 till it gets to buffalo bayou. not only do you get to have the LR cross at grade, but the railroad gets to go faster with no street crossings (which is why they'd get the honor of paying for it, cause it benefits them the most). potentially, the rail could be covered and above it could be turned into greenspace, or a hike/bike trail.

My cousin lives about 40 miles north east of London (about 10 miles outside the metro). The town has about 60,000 people but it is only about 4 sq miles. Between that town and the london metro there are mainly fields and about 4 or five smaller towns with between 15k and 25k people. All these towns were served by the commuter rail and it is highly successful because all these towns were about a mile across and surrounded by fields. In all these towns you could walk to the stations. I cannot think of one burb in Houston that more than a meager percentage of the population would be able to do that.

 

The same is true of the Netherlands.

Small towns surrounding the larger cities, commuter rail leading into the cities, there are speedy trains that go from big city to big city, and stop trains that hit every little town.

each town is really tiny, but they also have recently started doing bus service around the little towns that circulate people to the train station.

It's not just a web, or a connection point to point. These systems have to be like root systems for trees, large trunks, and small feeders going out, then even smaller feeders from there. 

I'm actually really pleased with the selection at kombat Kroger. But then I stick mainly to the outside isles (produce, meat, dairy) they've got really fresh produce. Not as great a selection as the Montrose heb, but it gets me through the week.

I've started calling my neighborhood 'Broadmoor heights' when people ask where it is, I tell them it's near 'Harrisburg heights'

I thought we were supposed to double?  Besides, think back... 1960 to today (roughly) that's 50 years.  Imagine the changes in this country since that time.  Peak Oil/Energy will happen eventually... perhaps the "peak" won't be when we reach the end of our supply, but rather when events external or internal cause prices to skyrocket and force the hand of many metro's to adopt better transit planning.  Maybe I'm being too far thinking?

Not to get into another tangential discussion, but that's what Peak Oil is, it's not when we run out, it's when the production peaks. In the 80s in the USA it was different cause there were other sources of oil, so it was pumped till dry for cheap. When the world production hits peak, if demand doesn't slow down, that will be really bad (assuming alternatives aren't available). It's also different because unlike the 80s, the price will go up, and as that price goes up it makes economical sense to go after harder to reach deposits.

So all this fracking that's happening in the US right now, they're going after stuff they knew was there, it just wasn't economically feasible (and the technology didn't exist either, but if it had made economic sense to go after it then, they would have developed the technology then) to go after it at the time.

Anyway, it's not when we'll run out, but when the cheap to get stuff that is still being produced runs out, the price will keep going higher. Eventually, the cost of the product will be too high for people to sustain and they will move to other energy sources. demand will slow down, production will slow down, but since the price to produce will still be high, the price won't go down. How this impacts Houston overall (from an economy that, so far as I know, is still nearly 40% O&G related) is gloomy, I think, much less whether we have a subway built by that time.

My point is that the rail line is not the panacea that lots of folks think it is. Construction was painful and disruptive, and I have seen no evidence that Midtown between 45 and Elgin in particular has benefited to any great extent, especially East of Main. I know about the rail construction firsthand, we lived East of Main at the time, having moved to Midtown in December 1998.

Panacea or not, it's an amenity, just as a freeway is. You can move about from Katy prairie into town without a freeway, but the 2 football field wide I-10 is an amenity to Katyvillians who commute into town, it makes the area more valuable. So too does light rail, we're only just starting to really see that value being realized, but to deny that the value is there, is just as silly as saying there is no value in freeways.

Light rail is listed as an amenity to any and all housing in midtown. whether it is 1 block away from a station, right next to it, or as far away from a station as you can be and still be considered midtown.

Every listing I see in the east end heralds the expansion of light rail as an amenity. Why then, if it is not doing anything, is it being used as a carrot for people to buy/rent property in the areas?

The last time Houston stopped and thought "Are there other and better uses for that money that should be considered?," The city ended up dropping its heavy rail plans to use that money on more police and more roads. Now come on, I am all for safety but I can assure you that Houston would have been much better off had that heavy rail that Bob Lanier stopped had gotten built. You can give me every reason in the book why Houston should not have a heavy rail system, but at the end of the day it does not matter. There is no reason for the 6th largest city in North America not to have a heavy rail system.

 

Sometimes I look at cities in developed countries such as Australia which is a bit smaller then the State of Texas in population and wonder why are their cities so much more advanced then the cities in Texas. I mean I know that Texas is a State in the United States and money made in the State does not always stay within the State, but there is a big difference in the quality of amenities offered. You can say that those cities are much older that Houston and other Texas cities but I still don't buy that. What about all of the Asian and Middle Eastern cities that have sprouted up over the last few decades going from rural to super urban. They have been able to come up with money for amenities such as subways, why not Houston? A city in the WEALTHIEST country on earth! I guess that is why the United States will not be #1 in GDP in a Couple of years, we just don't look beyond tomorrow any more.

In Houston, at that time, Lanier made the right choice. 

Regarding the cost, I know I'd be fine paying $10,000 over a 10 year period, that's about $83 a month, I got that. And for the amount of rail infrastructure $40 billion would be able to build in Houston (considering we don't have to account for earthquakes so I'd guess more like 50-60 miles of rail, at least), I'd be able to offset about $100 worth of driving costs over a month. It would likely be a net gain for me. Let's do it. I'm ready.

Perhaps I should've also included in my original post if it was feasible costwise. Digging a light rail line under Richmond may be possible, but not for miles out. Light rail as subway has significantly lower cost--a certain transit agency considered a 6 mile branch that had several miles of underground track and had a price tag of $700 million for the whole thing, considerably less than the $2 billion/mile NYC had done.

Given the soil conditions here, would building a subway be MORE expensive than other cities?

richmond is still a good idea, and an even better one if you mix above and below, go under just before the midtown spur stay under till just past montrose, then stay above ground till weslayan and tunnel under the railroad tracks and that neighborhood of pooheads, then come back up once it's past post oak.

In all fairness though, the European attitude is different wrt subways.  The viewpoint there is sort of "If you don't have a metro, you're not really an important city."  Metro systems are more of a base case expectation.  

 

I couldn't speak to the engineering aspects of a subway in Houston, although I tend to assume that it would lie in the realm of the feasible but expensive.  It's interesting that one rarely even hears of the idea of a subway, while the monorail concept gets trotted out pretty regularly. 

I think there's 2 things at play, first there is a really strong majority of citizens that want public transportation, second is the age of the cities, and getting around them.

Getting to Amsterdam centrum can be done a few different ways.

Drive to a parking lot in centrum and walk/tram/bike the rest of the way to your destination.

Drive to a parking lot on the ring and take metro to centrum, and walk/tram/bike the rest of the way to your destination.

Drive/walk to an outer city train station and ride the train into Amsterdam central station and metro/tram/walk/bike the rest of the way.

All of them will take the same amount of time. Parking in centrum costs as much as fare price (for one person). So unless you are carpooling, it makes no sense to drive.

Amsterdam is way more unique than a lot of other cities that have a subway, in that cycling makes up a lot of the traffic, so cars have other cars and lots of bikes and trams to deal with as well, it can be disquieting. Barring that, all European cities are very dense and difficult to navigate by car because of their design and layouts. Contrasted with public transport (subway, tram, whatever) you find your destination, pick the colors to follow, exits to take and go.

See, in the case of the much maligned University Line, I think it would be the best, since bridging over 59 would end up demolishing buildings and messing up Richmond, not to mention the fact that the light rail would end up stopping at lots of stoplights anyway--going from Weslayan and Westpark Road to Edloe and Richmond would have less jerky curves than what was previously proposed, and then it could use the old "Westpark ROW" the rest of the way, solving (most of) everyone's worries.

While a full "spider-web" network is still pretty unrealistic, it does reopen a lot of corridors for ideas.

I was thinking that a subway wouldn't be possible not just because of the proximity to sea level but softer ground that makes it unattractive to build. Subways aren't possible in say, Galveston.

Amsterdam has a subway system. Their soil is pretty squishy. If they can do it, we could do it. All you really need are lots of pumps.

relevant to this thread....

I found out this past weekend that the owners of Blacksmith now own Inversion on Montrose.

Montrose has already changed. Fewer tattoo parlors, more restaurants. Fewer unique places, more blandness. When they built that strip center just west of Taft, that's when it started transforming, so like 15 years ago, at least.

Now a days you can say you live in Montrose, or that you spend time there and people don't ask you questions about why. This is neither good, nor bad, it's just changed.

As for the East End and EaDo, EaDo is only a small part of the East End, it has a very different flavor than that of the rest of the East End, EaDo is like Montrose is now, you can't live there cheap, and there aren't a lot of unique places you can go, there are still some parts that aren't taken over by blandness yet (and because it used to be very industrial, it's a bunch of warehouses rather than unique houses or businesses, so there was no uniqueness to begin with).

The East End itself though, it's still got plenty of unique left in it for people to come and remove and put in starbucks on every corner.