mfastx

So, has anyone tried out the new system?  I would if I didn't live in DC

This is not "Houston Tomorrow" idea. J. Sam Lott is vice president of Kimley-Horn.  He did a slide show of Houston's Impending Transportation Crisis.  He has a great idea I have not seen anyone with anything better.

I've got one.  Heavy rail technology like what was proposed in 1983, running in a subway under Westheimer from Beltway 8 to downtown, turning north and becoming elevated north of downtown to IAH. 

Another line running from Hobby to downtown serving UH, with a transfer point to the other line downtown and continuing out along Washington Ave and eventually joining I10 and running out I10 to Beltway 8.  

Finally, a third line running from along 290 south towards the Galleria area, branching off the freeway at Post Oak and running under post oak, under 59 and back down 610 all the way down to South Post Oak/Main. 

To connect TMC, have a line from Sugar Land running up Main (with a connection to the Galleria Line at South Post Oak) and continuing to run up Main until NRG, from there take roughly the current Red Line path to the TMC, passing through the museum district and connecting with the 59-IAH line in downtown. 

In this system, riders from Katy can go directly downtown, and are 1 transfer away from the Galleria or TMC. 

Riders from Sugar Land can go straight to TMC/Downtown and are one transfer away from Galleria. 

Riders from north Houston can go straight downtown and Galleria, and connect to TMC via one transfer.  

In addition, you could run it like the WMATA in that there can be rush service serving different destinations to eliminate transfers. 

Cost of this proposed system if built today: probably between $20-30 billion.  So, yea, while this would never happen, it had a chance of happening had the 1983 proposal went through. 

Looks like a nice location. Sadly, not much to walk to within a few blocks.......

So what you're saying is that it's not in a great location... 

I do not want to proclaim anything without facts, but I believe the long term costs of rail, associated with ticket fare & usage, outweighs the same for buses per mile.

That is not necessarily true.  In some cases it is, but it really depends.  I've done some digging and looked at the National Transit Database operating ratios for the US's transit system on an operating cost per mile and per passenger basis.  Here's what I found: 

Houston's commuter bus mode is actually one of the best commuter systems I've seen, including both commuter rail and bus systems.  Look at these operating cost numbers - 

Houston METRO commuter bus    $0.33/pass mile,              $6.05/pass trip

This is really low and here's what it is compared to commuter rail systems that would probably be similar to what METRO is trying to build: 

Los Angeles commuter rail            $0.41/pass mile,              $14.08/pass trip

Dallas commuter rail                       $0.67/pass mile,              $12.89/pass trip

DC commuter rail (VRE)                  $0.41/pass mile,              $13.34/pass trip

However there are bus commuter systems that are just as bad, for example Austin's: 

Austin commuter bus                     $0.79/pass mile,              $12.04/pass trip

So for commuter systems, most are about the same cost and there really isn't that much difference in cost per passenger mile (except in Houston's case where it is really low, so congrats METRO, lol). 

All of that being said, rail is much more cost effective on a per mile and per passenger basis for local systems within the city.  Heavy rail (think NYC subway) is especially cheaper to operate than buses.  

Houston local bus                           $0.98/pass mile,              $5.02/pass trip

Houston light rail                             $0.69/pass mile,              $1.62/pass trip 

DC local bus                                     $1.37/pass mile,              $6.98/pass trip

DC heavy rail                                    $0.59/pass mile,              $3.32/pass trip

LA local bus                                     $0.65/pass mile,              $2.66/pass trip

LA light rail                                       $0.58/pass mile,              $3.69/pass trip

LA heavy rail                                    $0.49/pass mile,              $2.36/pass trip

Atlanta local bus                              $0.96/pass mile,              $3.69/pass trip

Atlanta heavy rail                             $0.47/pass mile,              $2.99/pass trip

The piecemeal commuter rail service most people propose around here is probably more like the TRE, VRE, or Los Angeles's commuter rail system.  If that is what is being proposed, I say just stick with the P&R buses, we've already sunk in over a billion dollars in the infrastructure and operating wise it's really cheap. 

I am in favor of a heavy rail system in Houston though.  It carries infinitely more riders than buses or even light rail, much cheaper to operate in the long run that either of those modes, and is much faster and more reliable.  Unfortunately, heavy rail hasn't been proposed in Houston since the early 1980s, and it's a shame, because that is easily the best form of public transportation out there.  It can act as a commuter system too like it does in DC and Atlanta.  

Why would you do this when expanded Park-and-Ride express commuter services could provide faster service for one-tenth the cost, if not less?

One-tenth the cost is a little misleading, the HOV infrastructure was certainly costly, we've just already built it. 

Rail generally gets more ridership than buses, and has higher capacity.  That is probably why they are recommending it as a 100 year solution. 

Interesting how they mention cities like DC, New York and such in their commuter rail paragraph when the bulk of the ridership in those cities is on heavy rail systems, not commuter rail, something they did not even propose. 

University Line should be way ahead of this in terms of priority.

In general, the roads are better than they were before Lanier came along. The Downtown streets were torn out completely, and properly engineered for the first time. Those projects took longer than expected due to the amount of crap buried beneath the streets. I recall Louisiana had telephone poles and rails buried in the ROW. You could see how poorly built the prior streets were by seeing the layers, with dirt at the bottom, topped by oyster shell, then brick, then many layers of asphalt.

 

West U really did it right. They voted in a tax increase, and redid just about every street in the city.

 

Houston wasn't ready for transit in the 80's. No one had a real clue as to what to do, and hte majority of growth was in the suburbs, with very few people interested in anything inside the Loop.

 

I agree with this, downtown has the best infrastructure in the inner loop for sure.  I was mostly talking about the Montrose, Midtown and other inner loop areas. 

Also I thought that most of those downtown streets were redone in the late 90s/early 00s as opposed to early 90s.  And what you described as "poorly built streets" is a pretty accurate description of many streets in the inner loop. 

And I agree that in the 80s Houston wasn't ready for transit.  One could even argue that even now it is not as required as it is in other cities.  But it's a shame that the proposal in the 80s didn't go through for a number of reasons: 1) the amount of federal dollars available for transit construction was much higher than it is now or will probably be at any point in the future, cities like Atlanta, Miami, DC and SF all took advantage of the availability of these monies - unfortunately we did not and 2) heavy rail was proposed which carries many more people than light rail and is generally more cost effective in terms of operating cost per rider than light rail and buses.  

Pretty bold statement. How did you arrive at that conclusion? Are you saying Houston did NOT have amazing growth in the last 25 years? The stories of Houston leading the country in jobs were lies? All the new airline routes from IAH did not happen? Tons of new home owners? etc, etc,.

 

From what I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong. But Houston is hot and muggy most of the year and flat and ugly all of the year? Houston has no natural beauty. But for some reason people flock here? Often times people flock here from heavy rail cities that have failed them.

 

No Lanier did not set us back at all. More police, better roads are what people wanted and got. Houston has thrived ever since.

I was talking about from a public transit perspective.  We would have been more advanced and had more ridership by this point if the late 80's light rail plan had been built.  

But that pales in comparison to the early 80s heavy rail plan which would have been better than anything proposed since. 

EDIT: Oh yea and Houston has the worst roads of any city I've ever been to, they just put that money towards cheaply patching roads, the did a shitty job.  So roads are not any better at this point. 

Lanier probably set Houston back a couple decades, but most people went along with it and were none the wiser. 

People generally don't start seeing the importance of public transit until it's too late and traffic is utter shit around the entire city (an example is LA, they were already at 14,000,000 people in the area by the time their first rail line opened).  

It takes a hell of a campaign and cooperation to get rail going before it's required (Salt Lake City, Denver, Dallas).  

Houston is trying but still too many politicians not on the same page and not enough of a majority to do something about it with voting. 

I mean seriously you can't expect random METRO cops to really know why we didn't build underground.  

It'd be insanely expensive to build underground here, but it's possible.  In the 80s the heavy rail plan included a subway in downtown and parts of Uptown.  

Politics got in the way though and we had to build the original line with local funds, didn't have enough money to build underground. 

They used it for testing IIRC when they built the original line.  I'd imagine it's been little used since. 

Yea these lines will probably get decent ridership, it took years for the original Red Line to get the ridership it does now.  Give it five or ten years then look back. 

Gosh that tower would have been the perfect downtown centerpiece... get a little sad everytime I see that old rendering lol. 

This is really neat.  Thanks for posting! 

In Boston they use green for bike lanes.. I was under the impression that green was the standard color for bike lanes. 

Interesting ideas, is all of that inner-loop stuff light rail? 

I think heavy rail would be more effective at getting people to ride, but it seems like Houston is "all in" on light rail so there's probably not a good chance of heavy rail happening in the next few decades at least. 

I'd honestly prefer the tracks to not be embedded in concrete, but rather just standard ballast and ties.  That way, no one would drive on the tracks. 

(Obviously in downtown it'd still have to be embedded in concrete.) 

The University Line should absolutely be the top priority, it has far more ridership potential and would be much more cost effective on an operational basis than the 90A line.  

I really hope they can find a way to build it still.  I am in favor of the 90A line but it shouldn't even be close to priority with the University Line IMO. 

But if voters approve the use of federal funds for this project, couldn't METRO do whatever it is they did toget the fed to pay for the Green (orPurple?) line?

The Feds only payed for half the cost of those lines, METRO still has to pay for the other half. 

There will be a massive anti-rail campaign whenever this thing eventually does come to a vote.  Just saying we aren't out of the woods yet, it is still more than likely that this line won't be built for quite some time. 

Why not?

METRO just doesn't have enough money, the vote to continue the General Mobility payments that passed last election was a big blow to rail expansion in the near future.  

This is good news, but unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that it is highly unlikely that the University Line makes any progress in the next decade at least. 

Westheimer is a low-hanging fruit for a heavy rail line, preferably a subway most of the way.  That's one of the few corridors in Houston that IMO justifies heavy rail. 

Can you post your reference?  The ones I found show Houston way further down the list.  It might also be relevant that Boston and SF have built out systems whereas we're still working on ours.  So, with lesser miles, the rider per mile stat goes up and might not be an apples-to-apples comparison.

 

Looked at ridership numbers sorted on a per mile bases here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_light_rail_systems_by_ridership

I think it's probably already too late.

 

At the rate Houston is growing, many freeways and surface streets will be pure gridlock in just a few years, maybe 3 to 5.

 

I can't wait for the solution the politicians will bring at that time when they propose a 50 lane highway. 

 

And it's not even mass transit we need more of. I think it's land use. Mass transit will be near useless in a suburban Houston.

I agree, I posted something like this just now in another thread.  However at our current growth rates it'll probably be three to five decades, not years.  

Eventually we will reach a point of critical mass and even the most staunchly opposed will give in to build some public transit.  Won't be for quite some time though.  

Something similar happened in LA, it too that region to get almost 15 million people for them to realize the value of mass transit and start investing.