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Thanks for the video, ricco. There's a lot of choppiness and pixels in the video for me, is that something wrong on my end? EDIT: looks fine now, nevermind.

Yeah, that's just one of the proposed locations, but it's doubtful that it gets inside of 610 whatever alignment they choose. Best chance for a downtown stop is the Hardy Yards area. They are also looking at the Post Office location. Of course nothing is set in stone but I'd assume they'd go with the cheapest option which would be a stop around the 610 loop, whether it's at the Northwest mall or near 610 and 45.

"Galleria Area" could mean around 290/Northwest Transit Center area, I've been told. It will be very difficult to get the line all the way to downtown or a more central area, which is a shame, but the cost of the necessary infrastructure to do that will likely not be worth it to a private company.

She's a beaut'!

Hell, at the very least I'd like to see some landscaping. The landscaping near the 59 interchange is nice but I wish it were extended down until 610 at least. Rail is an interesting idea but I'm not sure that 288 south has the population to support it, lot's of vast empty spaces before Pearland it seems. Commuter rail maybe, but it will be difficult to bring commuters into downtown using rail, lots of new expensive infrastructure needs to be built. Rail could be successful if done right, I'd like to see a branch off to the Medical Center if that's the case. Realistically I'd imagine that some sort of tollway will be built eventually, similar to HOT lanes.

I hope that a downtown Houston stop is a given and that is the reason for it not being mentioned in this article.

Just noting that I hadn't noticed it under construction yet. And yeah, personally, I'd prefer the rail system to be underground but whatever. It'll serve the hotel nicely.

Can see the new METRORail station in the lower part of that first pic... seems like that thing popped up pretty quick! Nice work.

I'm assuming that tunneling isn't an option due to cost. Removing it entirely and widening I-10 and US59 is an interesting idea. Realistically I don't see anything happening for the foreseeable future.

I think the difficulty is acquiring the ROW and constructing the infrastructure. Downtown Dallas is fairly easily accessible as they already have a decent train station there. With the proposed HSR line coming from the north, getting it to Hardy Yards is by far the path of least resistance. If they wanted to use existing ROW, they'd have to circle around quite a bit to reach the Post Office location. Besides, I don't think the Hardy location is bad. It's a very easy five minute light rail ride to the heart of downtown, and it's not that much different than 30th Street Station in Philadelphia that's outside of downtown, but right on the subway line.

Would be nice to have a station at IAH just to take care of the IAH-Downtown rail connection problem, would be nice to take an express train up there from downtown. And maybe one stop in the Woodlands. More than that is too much.

That's the most realistic spot IMO. Hopefully Amtrak can move their operations there as well, and we can have a hub with all rail service in one spot (even though Amtrak trains wouldn't be able to mix with the HSR trains, a separate track could be built).

It's gonna look nice when it finally fills in.

I remember seeing something about the anti-rail folk bringing in guys from SF and DC in '83 to testify how much of a colossal failure heavy rail was in those cities. Knowing that those rail systems are great successes, I chuckled when I read that.

New construction of rail has little impact on traffic congestion, especially if the city is still growing. On the other hand, if you get rid of an established rail system similar to DC's which carries 800,000 daily riders, then there will be a huge traffic increase. Cities build around rail systems over a period of decades, but that doesn't mean commuter patterns, housing and jobs in place before the rail line will go away. Personally I am on the fence regarding commuter rail in Houston. I am a huge proponent of a heavy rail system connecting destinations within the city, but we've sunk so much money into our HOV/P&R lane system that it seems like a waste to do it all over again on a commuter rail system, which would likely only marginally increase ridership over the existing P&R network. In the long run, it's more efficient and has the potential to carry many more riders, but I'd rather build our transit system from the core outwards, rather than pouring money into getting more people into the city and then forcing them to navigate an inefficient bus system/piecemeal light rail system.

The 1983 rail proposal was easily the best rail proposal we've had, and likely ever will have. All of the proposals since then have been a joke, not even close to having the same impact on ridership that the '83 proposal would have had, if fully implemented. Cities like DC and SF that went ahead and fully implemented their '70s/'80s rail plans are light years ahead of Houston in the public transportation department. Cities like Atlanta and Miami that only built out phase I and never finished the job on those heavy rail systems are still ahead of Houston.

Not loud at all.

I like the design a lot, just wish it was oriented towards Montrose though.

Nice! I like those.

They have an "airport" station on the blue line that has shuttle buses that get you to the terminals within 5 min. In addition they have the Silver line, so they have two methods of getting to the airport.

If I read the pdf right, it's suggesting that bus operations will be in general traffic (not in its own lane) along the stretch on 610??? Where traffic is the worst? Seems like they are setting this thing up to fail, no wonder why it's so cheap.

Seems like a pretty crude job of removing those ledges that stuck out, but I should probably wait until it's finished before I complain.

Very, very cool maps Cloud713! When you mention "commuter rail" are you talking about something like the TRE in Dallas or the Washington DC Metro? Many people call both of those "commuter rail" but they are entirely different things.

I thought those were excellent points to bring up. About the highways, I really only followed highways along I-10 and 290, reason being is that is currently where all of the development is happening. Large amounts of employment is cropping up and if we build a rail system I feel that it should work to connect existing employment centers. I guess I am following a highway with the Hardy Toll road to Bush airport but that is the only spot I can think to put the line, there wouldn't be that many stops going up there, not much in that area. I did also strongly consider running a loop, and yes, getting from Bush airport to Northwest Houston on the rail wouldn't be practical... but getting most everywhere else is an easy transfer away, and I tried to avoid excessive interconnectivenss where taking a bus route across town would be faster. In this instance, there would be bus that'd go along beltway 8 between a stop on the 290 line and the Bush airport line so that's an easy transfer, and quicker than going all the way into town. As for the stations, it would be very similar to the system in Washington DC if you are familiar with that. Inside of loop 610 stations would be about a half mile apart, then when you get further out there would be a longer distance between stations. There would be about five stations downtown three on the red line and two on the other two lines (a convention center station and a city hall station, along with a transfer station to the red line. There would be four or five stations on Washington Ave. and many more on the Westheimer section of the Red Line. This is just the heavy rail aspect to the system, and this map does not take into consideration the existing light rail lines. If it did, it'd probably look a little different. Thanks for the constructive criticism. I certainly don't have the resources/time to do anything more sophisticated, but hopefully others contribute to the thread as I'd love to discuss possible ideas on Houston transit infrastructure. And I will say that what I posted isn't necessarily just what could have been, as I feel that heavy rail transit is still a potential solution for Houston that hopefully gets explored in the future. It works fantastically in other cities and I feel it works best to cover long distances that are obviously prevalent in Houston. EDIT: Here are some pics of what I am talking about: 1) Design of the trains would be similar to this: 2) Here is a to-scale map of the DC metro system, and the station distances would be similar in my proposed system - closer together in the central area of the city and further apart once you get into the suburbs: 3) And here is a station along the highway that would be along on one of my proposed lines - lots of parking and bus bays for bus connections. These bus connections could utilize the extensive highway network to better connect the rail system:

Here is my heavy rail rapid transit plan for Houston (excuse the crude drawings). Both airports connected Northwest, Katy, and Sugar Land all connected Very west-centric (population is westward) Folks in Cypress, Katy, and Sugar land can all either one-seat it to downtown OR Uptown Sugar land has direct access to TMC Subway under all of Westheimer, Washington Ave, Downtown and Uptown. Trains would have top speeds of 80mph. Many of the lines follow railroad ROW as well. Transit centers would remain where they are today, and buses would feed into the rail lines from the surrounding areas. This model is very similar to the highly successful model in Washington, DC. This is also VERY similar to the proposal in 1983 which unfortunately was never passed. One change to the proposed map: the red line going out to Cinco Ranch should be a bit more south to follow Westpark after it gets to Beltway 8.