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mfastx

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Everything posted by mfastx

  1. mfastx
    That's a very unfortunate reality and a huge shame. IMO heavy rail technology would be the best way to gain the most ridership, cover the largest areas faster, and overall make the biggest impact of any new construction on the transit system. LRT and BRT are great in shorter corridors, but when you try to cover vast distances with them (something that is necessary in a comprehensive transit system in Houston) their effectiveness is limited due to slow speeds. In order for BRT/LRT to be faster they need their own ROW and when it's not in the middle of a freeway it's extraordinarily expensive.
  2. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    Parts of it are grade separated and other parts aren't. For the most part LA's rail lines are superior however.
  3. mfastx

    METRORail Green Line

    mfastx replied to a topic in Transit

    I agree with you that I'd have rather seen the money spent on heavy rail which would have had more ridership, more impact, and more durability. However the light rail lines in Los Angeles look similar to this. But they also have heavy rail and BRT as well.
  4. mfastx
    In my opinion, yes.
  5. mfastx
    This is going to be some fantastic infill.
  6. mfastx
    A stop in the Woodlands wouldn't be so bad. As long as it doesn't originate from there. To compare, Boston has three HSR stops in the area.
  7. mfastx
    The Hardy Yards area is easily the best place to construct a modern high speed rail station. It has direct access to a modern elevated light rail station with all downtown locations assessable within minutes, lots of space to construct parking/rental car facilities, most potential for redevelopment being right next to White Oak Bayou, and lots of space for new above the rail level boarding platforms as all of the freight lines have been taken out (so no need to worry about clearance with freight cars). We don't need a fancy station like we saw in the original intermodal renderings, just a clean, climate controlled, modern station. A good example of such a station would be St. Louis's Amtrak station. I would post a pic but the function doesn't seem to be working ATM.
  8. mfastx
    Thanks for the updates. I like how they didn't even completely tear out the parking lot, just the spot where the tower is and they left the rest of it, lol.
  9. mfastx
    I hope you don't. Everyone here is reacting negatively because it is possibly bad news, not because they don't appreciate the info.
  10. mfastx
    Screw waiting for anything official, I'm already panicking, guys.
  11. mfastx
    Hope so.
  12. mfastx
    This is a terrific idea and would take at least half the market from Southwest on the Houston-Dallas route. Competition is always good. Unfortunately, there are about ten entities studying this route and every couple of years there seems to be another study.. I'll believe it when it breaks down.
  13. mfastx
    Looks really nice. There will probably only be about 1/5th of the people in the renderings actually walking around, but still... nice.
  14. mfastx
    Westheimer inside the loop has so much traffic and so little room the only way you are going to put transit in a non-obstructing manner would be a subway. Would be a terrific idea, but awfully expensive. I hope that when the time comes to completely reconstruct Westheimer in that area (probably within ten years) that the city and METRO at least discuss the idea of running subway tunnels underneath at the same time.
  15. mfastx
    I don't think the poster dislikes grass and landscaping by itself, but in Houston when an urban development has grass and landscaping it usually means little or no sidewalks and poor street level interaction.
  16. mfastx

    METRORail Red Line

    mfastx replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    Interesting blog post and a good read. I wholeheartedly agree. The University line far and away would be the most utilized and highest ridden line. It's a shame that METRO and the city can't get the ball rolling on this, the FTA is literally trying to give us money for it. I hope some semblance of a better quality and higher capacity east-west connector is built sometime in the next 20 years or so, as it is sorely needed.
  17. mfastx
    Guys, average daily boarding statistics can be found on APTA's website (American Public Transit Association). For Philly, the daily ridership is as follows: Commuter rail - 127,100 Heavy rail - 336,600 (subway) Light rail - 111,600 (streetcar) Total rail - 575,300 Bus - 556,000 Total daily ridership for SEPTA is around 1,156,500 boardings/day. To compare, Houston's numbers are as follows: Light rail - 37,500 Bus - 229,500 For a total ridership of around 282,700. We got some work to do. Peak ridership was in the mid 90s with around 350,000 or so boardings/day.
  18. mfastx

    METRORail Red Line

    mfastx replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    Agreed, or at least in a subway in downtown/TMC/other higher traffic areas and elevated elsewhere. Would cost a lot more, but would be more useful over a longer period of time. EDIT: 1,000 posts, yeah!
  19. mfastx

    METRORail Red Line

    mfastx replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    Well, you have less ridership when you run trains in old ROW cause that's not where the people are. What you describe are short term problems that resolve themselves long before the rail line becomes obsolete. I wish the rail were in a subway in high traffic areas like the TMC though, and hopefully the consider separating portions of the line when they become a bigger problem.
  20. mfastx

    METRORail Red Line

    mfastx replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    Just got back from traveling the length of the extension. I thought it was pretty nice.. the elevated portions were nice and reminded me of transit in other cities. Too bad we couldn't do more grade separations here. Was on a two car train that was about half full on the way up, and was on a completely full one car train on the way back. Decent ridership right now, hopefully it keeps up.
  21. mfastx

    METRORail Red Line

    mfastx replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    I will be traveling the entire length of the extension tomorrow. Looking forward to see how many people are riding, how fast it goes, etc.
  22. mfastx

    METRORail North Line

    mfastx replied to Trae's topic in Transit

    I think this is pretty neat as well. In Boston the nearest WalMart is quite a hike from public transportation.
  23. mfastx

    METRORail Red Line

    mfastx replied to ricco67's topic in Transit

    If some folks are having trouble navigating Houston streets, I recommend Google maps, just type your destination in and it will show you the best way to go. There are also other map services, such as Yahoo, MapQuest, etc. You'll live.
  24. mfastx
    Will hold off on getting excited for this one, still lots of time before groundbreaking. Would be awesome to see though.
  25. mfastx
    Kind of a strange article since light rail is not a solution region-wide anyway. It's fantastic for shorter distances.. but if we are talking about region-wide, light rail would be awful. Heavy rail would have much, much higher ridership. Even further out, commuter rail would be the answer (not as much ridership but very cheap to operate).
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