mfastx

I'm curious, does METRO pay for all the cost to repave the whole street, put in sidewalks, upgrade intersections to comply with the ADA, and bury utility lines when putting in the rail lines?

Yes they do.  One of the board members had the idea of the city fronting the cost for the streets/utilities with METRO only having to pay for the actual rail infrastructure.  This would have allowed METRO to begin construction on the University line a lot sooner.  Of course everyone hated this idea. 

The Red Line cost only $300 million to build.  Not sure where the $900 million number came from.  That's the amount of federal funds going to the three lines under construction right now I believe. 

I think the HOV lanes are worth the amount of money METRO has invested in them, but it is somewhat annoying when people from the suburbs complain that METRO is only investing money on building rail inside the loop.  As this is simply not true. 

Where can one get a look at the old 1983 heavy rail master plan?   I think this is the first I've ever seen or heard of it going all the way out to Katy.

 

Only thing I could find is this article written by Spieler in the late 1990s.  In the second picture down you can see the master plan for the 1983 proposal.  Of course if it had been approved it would have been subject to change but what a great system that would have been.

EDIT: can't really tell if it goes all the way to Katy but there are two lines that extend pretty far westward.  What I liked about this proposal is that it had the lines centered west of downtown, which is where the majority of the people are. 

I've never seen a detailed map of the 1983 plan and would be really curious to see exactly where it was planned to route once it got inside the loop. While I was looking for that map, I happened upon the below article from the time that I thought provided some interesting historical context.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/16/us/houston-s-plan-for-rail-system-meets-opposition.html

Yeah, the master plan I saw wasn't detailed either. 

And that is a very interesting article.  We decided to spend the money on HOV lanes.  Makes you wonder what ridership would have been like had we built the rail lines instead. 

The problem is still transit time and last mile. Let's say you have commuter rail down the Katy Freeway and you're going from Katy to the Med Center. You have to get to commuter rail which will be by car most likely and then take commuter rail to downtown - combined 1 hour for those two things. Then you're getting on light rail which is another 30 min to the Med Center. You're a combined 3 hours a day for that commute and you still have to have a car. That's not even considering that I'm still waiting to hear someone explain where that Katy Freeway commuter rail line is going to run through once it gets to the loop because the HOV lane ends there. (The MKT right of way didn't run to downtown either).

It gets even worse if you consider Uptown if that line were built. You'd basically ask people to go into downtown and then travel backwards to go to Uptown at 15 mph. Ain't gonna happen.

That's usually the problem with this kind of thing. It looks great when you look at a high level...until you start to look at the details of actually executing it.

If you look at the old 1983 heavy rail master plan that was never approved, it had a line going from Katy to downtown, and from there you could transfer to a line going south.  Would have taken about 45 minutes.  Light rail and commuter rail is much slower. 

Wow all of the sudden it's almost topped out lol. 

Makes sense.  If they don't pay the tax for transit, they shouldn't get transit. 

Eh, better than a surface lot. 

I hope the first floor looks decent. 

Where is the option to keep the full penny of tax monies rather than giving up 25% of it to Harris County and various cities? This game is broken.

This.  METRO needs more funding if we are serious about improving transit in Houston. 

While I prefer wide side walks (min 8ft) that invite walking, there really should be a grass and tree buffer between the sidewalk and the street curb for pedestrians - especially on major thoroughfares or higher speed traffic streets like Post Oak.

 

Sidewalks should NEVER be placed right up against the street curb. Sure this makes for easy landscape maintenance since there's no little strip to maintain but the grass and tree buffer provide a perceived safety zone for pedestrians. That's Urban Planning 101!

Well I guess all the urban cities in the world are doing it wrong then.  If you're going to have something between the street and sidewalk, actually do something with it.  Don't put a cheap strip of grass.  That doesn't make pedestrians feel any more comfortable that putting it right up against the street.

I think the skybridge is fine.  And I'm about as much of the "everything needs to be urban" kind of guy you can get. 

If it is a nice day, perhaps some will walk across the park as an alternative. 

i prefer it over concrete sidewalk right on the edge of a concrete street curb. why are they moving the sidewalk closer to the street? a) isnt that awfully close to the street, especially a busy street like Post Oak? and b ) arent they widening Post Oak some for the BRT?

That's interesting.  I prefer a nice, wide sidewalk all the way to the street, like this.

Kinda wish every sidewalk in Houston were standardized like this, it'd make the city a lot more walkable.

I never understood why they always have to leave that 6 inches of grass between the sidewalk and the street.  Looks so weird. 

I'm pretty sure I already said this a few posts ago, but this is a huge improvement.  Really looks great.

I think it looks pretty cool.. still skeptical as of now, especially if swtsig isn't on board. 

There's an assumption of demand for a commuter rail system that I don't think has been substantiated.  It seems questionable to assume that if there isn't sufficient demand to keep the HOV lanes occupied that implementing commuter rail would create that demand.

I think there are a couple of corridors where commuter rail would work in Houston.  But the P&R system already serves many areas well.  The biggest improvement that needs to be made is getting around Houston once you get in from the suburbs. 

And HOV lanes should stay open even if commuter rail is built along the same corridor. 

Is the operating cost for rail less than 54 cents per passenger mile?

 

DART's "TRE" has an operating cost of $0.60 per passenger mile (according to the NTD), which is a similar number.  Although that statistic can be misleading because it does not reflect subsidy per passenger.  The same is true for the HOV lanes. 

It would be nice to have the HOT lanes open late at night and on weekends, and I would favor this happening, even if we have to subsidize it.  As long as a respectable amount of people are using it. 

When you work out the math, the cost per rider/car mile during this trial was .04.  Four cents per mile.  How does that compare to rail?

Well that depends.  An accurate comparison to an HOV system is a commuter rail system.  You'll find that operating cost per passenger mile on some commuter rail lines are similarly low.  Of course this is solely due to the fact that an HOV or commuter rail system goes for many miles without stopping. 

Conversely, cost per passenger boarding on many commuter rail systems is quite high.  I would imagine this would also be the case for an HOV system. 

Rail for sure needs maintenance.  Everything needs maintenance. 

However in the 21st century, many heavy rail systems are built in a way that minimizes necessary maintenance.  Of course every 50 or so years you'll have to modernize stuff and add new rolling stock.  Good infrastructure just costs a lot. 

Back on topic, I noticed that this route is very similar to the proposed extensions to the original 1983 rail plan.  This plan would have used heavy rail technology similar to Atlanta or DC.  Ridership would be very impressive if that had been built IMO.

That is a perfect route for fixed guideway transit.  I would prefer heavy rail over monorail thought.  Higher speeds (from what I can tell) and higher capacity, with lower operating costs.  Cheaper in the long run, but wayyy more expensive up front. 

Perhaps I need to do more research on monorail however. 

Really starting to come along well. 

They should have added grass so that it would be obvious not to go over it.

They should have done something. 

This is what the light rail tracks look like in Boston:

This is better design IMO. 

I hate to admit it but I laughed pretty hard at swtsig's comment. 

Anyway, the OP's rendering looks pretty good. 

I care.

I care as well. 

I honestly wouldn't mind if every parking/vacant lot in downtown went to something "mediocre" like this.  Development like this is great and it brings more residents to downtown, making it a more livable and healthy neighborhood. 

I didn't know the federal building renovation included such a nice plaza.   Really improves the area.

This is huge IMO.  Great building and I'm glad it's being restored instead of torn down. 

So from what I gather, the new parking garage will be located where that "hole" is on the north side of the block?  And the tower will eventually sit on top of that?