mfastx

A certain amount of freeways/high capacity arterial roads is definitely necessary in any large city for obvious reasons. 

That being said, it's certainly possible to have a desirable, perfectly functioning city with less freeway miles per capita than Houston.  We have certainly invested more in our freeways than many other large cities. 

That seems rather silly.  Why not just extend the tunnel by a few feet and then you can put roadway shoulders. 

How come tunneled freeways work in other cities? 

Bummer, but sadly I knew there was no way TxDOT would consider the tunnel option anyway. 

that's a photoshop.. i know because I have seen a few in my days, and can tell by the pixels  

 

Good job, good effort.  LOL looks pretty cool though. 

Wow, that is gorgeous.

Have you heard of Facebook?  ;-)

Why post on Facebook, when you can post on the original social network? 

Wow that is a fantastic looking building. 

I think the building is fine.  It's better than what was there before, and it's a hell of a lot better than a vacant/parking lot. 

There's plenty of other lots in downtown for trophy towers.  Sometimes some classic infill is nice. 

Exactly.  METRO needs to get ahead of this and figure out how to serve outlying communities otherwise it will get boxed in.  The 93% of area residents who live outside the loop are going to be looking for METRO dollars to serve them, not the inner loop.  If they don't feel they're getting their money's worth they'll agitate against METRO and try to get control of the dollars back (as we have already seen).

 

It's really tough for METRO to allocate their investments for this reason, everyone wants the big projects to be in their area, but thus far there are more potential transit riders (and better return on investment) on projects closer in.  Transit ridership really thins out once you get outside in the suburbs, since there's no reason to use transit out there, unless you work downtown, which most people don't. 

Looks like a step in the right direction for Pearland.  if I read the article right, sounds like they might be able to divert some of METRO's federal funding away from METRO and to this project.  If they're successful with that, I wonder if other municipalites around Houston will try it and possibly pull out of METRO to do their own P&R.

That would suck for METRO, considering there's over a billion dollars in sunk cost in the HOV lanes out to the other municipalities. 

The question of new transit riders is a big one in my mind because that it is one of the key stated benefits for trains.  I think that it's going to be especially interesting to see how much of an impact that has in a lower income area which probably had a higher rate of transit ridership already.

 

To your point, we should be able to see an impact on ridership on parallel lines and get some feel whether people will bypass a bus station to ride the train. 

 

I watched an interview with one of the board members and he said that they would be restructuring the bus lines around the rail line to make them more perpendicular as opposed to parallel to the rail line, so it would be a little tough to measure ridership decline in neighboring bus routes. 

Although I will say that, according to METRO, around 20,000 of the daily boardings on the Red Line are "new transit riders."  I have no idea where that number comes from or how METRO arrived to that conclusion, so I'd take it with a grain of salt. 

The point there is that the vehicle that uses the pathway, in this case a bus in a HOV lane, can move off the guideway in flexible manner to connect any number of points.  A train can only travel along it's pathway.  Even a couple of blocks deviation is impossible without a large capital outlay and years of construction.  A bus, on the other hand can travel on and off the guideway as needed providing superior point-to-point service.

 

Which is why rail lines are usually built in core areas of the city where it will not be necessary to move the line at all.  This permanence can actually be a positive in some instances as developers know that an area served by a rail line will continue to be served by that line in the foreseeable future. 

And you also missed the point that HOV & P&R is cheaper, more flexible and more efficient than rail.

 

It isn't that much cheaper actually.  Flexibility is a moot point, HOV lanes are as fixed as rail lines.  And in most cases, rail carries riders more efficiently than bus. 

That being said, we've spent so much on the HOV system that tearing it down would be disingenuous.  I'd rather spend money on a few key rail lines to connect employment centers, so that commuters can get from their P&R stop to their final destination more quickly.

Never mind.  Answered my own question.  The number 15 bus route will be discontinued because it duplicates the route of the North line.  The current average workday ridership of the number 15 route is 2,281 and it saw a 10.3% increase in ridership over the last 12 months.  I would argue that any consideration of ridership numbers for the North line should consider that amount as a shift in existing transit ridership rather than an increase.

 

The projected ridership at opening is 17,400 average weekday boardings which would be a net increase of approx. 15,000.  Interested to see the actual numbers.

 

http://www.fta.dot.gov/documents/TX_Houston_North_Corridor_LRT_complete_profile.pdf

I too am anxious to see the APTA report for the line.  We may have to wait around a year or so for ridership to reach full short-term potential (the original line took about a year to reach ~35,000 boardings. 

I'm curious how they came to an average of 17,400 weekday bordings when the current bus route has 2,281.  Does that represent changed bus routes to force riders onto the rail line?  Is some of it people already on the existing line, just continuing on to destinations on the new segment?  Or did they pull it out of their posterior?

 

Some of the ridership comes from new transit riders who didn't ride the bus before.  Then you have a lot of ridership from people who rode similar (parallel) bus routes before the rail line opened.  Basically what the rail line does is transport many bus route's worth of people and consolidating them into one line.  This allows for greater efficiency long-term and also allows METRO to deploy hundreds of buses elsewhere in the fleet to bolster other lines. 

Not sure which three elections you're referring to, but it seems like we usually focus on 2003. Last estimate that I heard was that the U line was estimated at $1.3 billion. Right or wrong, that money isn't there from the 2003 referendum which means that some type of plan needs to be put forth to fund it. How would you suggest?

I know for a fact that the referendum that created the GM payments was also for the construction of a rail line. So 1988 was one.

I personally liked board member Christof Spieler's plan, which was to issue bonds to start construction of the university line while allowing the GM payments to continue. If the voters voted "no," then GM payments would cease and monies would be put into an escrow fund for future use.

This makes sense because GM payments and rail are tied together. The original referendum included rail, the whole point of the GM payments was to please the surrounding areas who whined about monies being spent on rail inside the loop.

It would be better if it were elevated the entire length, and if the downtown segments were underground. 

Still support and thankful for what we have though. 

The voters established the 1 cent sales tax and then decided to divert a portion of it to general mobility. They have since extended that decision two additional times. That indicates to me that the voters don't feel like they should be funded separately.

I am aware of how the GM payments came about and how most people in the region feel about them.  What I said still stands however. 

The voters have also voted in favor of rail on three separate occasions, yet only a fraction of it has actually been or will be built in the near future. 

Sure it does, since roads are a vital part of transit. Besides, you can't just make people who never come inside the Loop pay for rail. They need to get somethoing for their tax dollars. The alternative is that the far reaches of the County drop out of Metro, and that money is lost completely

Roads are essential, but they should be funded through other avenues than public transportation tax dollars.  Yes, technically roads are public transportation, but the METRO tax was created to operate a bus system and construct/operate a rail system.  Because of the GM payments, METRO is now having to operate a transit system on less money than most other agencies in large cities. 

And the surrounding areas are already getting something for their tax dollars in the HOV lanes/P&R buses.  They weren't cheap. 

Good to hear. This line will serve houston well for many, many years. Great addition.

In my uninformed opinion, I believe in a urban setting (such as the background), tracks should be under ground. Above ground works in wide boulevard (maybe), and open spaces. In these dense areas they only add clutter and close the space, casting shadows and creates a tunnel effect.

I agree.  No visual impact, and no stops for the train in between stations. 

Ya I know that, but how to post it Large in the post it self?

Not sure, but I think most would rather have the pics in a reduced size in the original post. 

Wow this is a surprisingly cool building. 

Yeah those shots are great.  Really make the glass look good. 

They're fighting the last war using 19th century technology.  Not too surprising, though, as that is almost always how governmental organzations operate.  That mentality is why the French built the Maginot Line and out-of-the-box thinking combined with modern technology is why the Wehrmacht outflanked them with ease.

 

Light rail is not 19th century technology, lol.  Not even close. 

Yet when Wal-Mart in the 'Heights' was built, all the 'improvements' to the street were credited back to the company in tax forgiveness.

 

What about 380 agreements with Metro? The city can give back some of their amount of that 1% sales tax they now get for the next 20 years or so in exchange for street improvement. To ask METRO to carry the whole burden is not fair in my opinion. Oh well. Reasonable solutions rarely get enacted.

Agreed.  METRO is already giving 25% or more of it's revenue towards street improvements.  It is pretty silly that they would have to pay for street improvements related to light rail in addition to that.  Especially since with our without light rail, those street improvements would have had to happen eventually anyway.

Yet when Wal-Mart in the 'Heights' was built, all the 'improvements' to the street were credited back to the company in tax forgiveness.

 

What about 380 agreements with Metro? The city can give back some of their amount of that 1% sales tax they now get for the next 20 years or so in exchange for street improvement. To ask METRO to carry the whole burden is not fair in my opinion. Oh well. Reasonable solutions rarely get enacted.

Agreed.  METRO is already giving 25% or more of it's revenue towards street improvements.  It is pretty silly that they would have to pay for street improvements related to light rail in addition to that.  Especially since with our without light rail, those street improvements would have had to happen eventually anyway.