mfastx

You could say the same about any public transportation agency here in the US..

Haha, reading that email it becomes very apparrent that the writers know absolutely nothing about rail transportation, lol.

As a commuter who commutes from the Galleria towards Downtown every rush hour, it usually takes about 30-40 minutes to go those few miles. Whether it's along Richmond or Westheimer or 59. Today was the exception however, as 59 was pretty much clear until right before the Spur. A rare treat but a nice one only took me 10 minutes to get home! I think that's a new record, lol.

While this is true, sizable growth will still happen inside the loop. And this summer I've been in Houston and I drive on the inner loop highways and roads every day. The traffic is quite bad and unless we can start building double decker roads and freeways, the roads there cannot expand any more. Buses can get the job done, but they are stuck in the same traffic as everyone else. At some point it would really benefit the city if we invested more on public transportation to give riders another option. Whether it be rail or BRT, I'd like to see something built, preferably grade seperated.

I think that some solutions in Atlanta and Los Angeles can work well in Houston. And for a city like Houston, >10% transit ridership is quite good. We are about halfway there now (about 5%) IIRC.

I agree with this. While rail on the surface of Richmond isn't optimal, it would still be very effective. The traffic in the area is a lot worse than even one year ago, the last time I spent extensive time in Houston.

Local buses should be fine for the majority of inner Houston, but it'd be nice to have a few trunk rail lines to handle corridors with higher ridership more efficiently.

The prospect of driverless cars is a very exciting one to say the least. I dream of a day where a personal vehicle can take you to your destination with absolutely NO input from the driver (other than to input the destination of course)! It would take an astronomical amount of money to do so though, unfortunately.

While this is true, a lot of the "damage" METRO buses do are due to the cheaply made streets. The worst streets in Houston are the ones where the city just cheaply slathers a layer of asphalt down on the bumps, which actually makes things worse over time. There's no structural improvement. But yeah METRO buses do some damage, but there's also big trucks and larger vehicles that do just as much if not more.

Yes I do. METRO shouldn't be paying anything to maintain the roads. That's the city's responsibility. The city should stop being so damn cheap and repair the roads.

Don't they pay a quarter of their income to maintain roads? That seems like it should be more than enough.

That's great. I was afraid that we were going to hear a horror story. I'm happy that public transportation is improving in Houston, and I love to use it. It really is like viewing things from a whole new angle. Love to people watch too! Looking forward to the new light rail lines opening and the new bus routes from the "re-imagining" thing going into effect!

I'm very curious to see renderings of the north side of the Terminal. I flew into IAH a couple days ago and it looked pretty good from what I saw. They are dismantling the second old southern "banjo" terminal.

Wow!! Really liking this one. Architecture looks good.

Looks pretty spiffy!

Why is this in "Planes?"

Lol, well you could say the same for official city populations haha. We're all freaks here And that's true, Chicago's urban area only grew by a few hundred thousand in the last ten years, while Houston's grew by over a million. Both have their pros and cons, Houston is in a great position for the future.

To me, official city populations aren't that big a deal. The Chicago area is still much larger than us. Our urbanized area (a good way to gauge how big the city is) is still under 5 million while Chicago's is at about 8.6 million. Still a hefty difference.

Eh, I kinda have a hard time believing that it would be "too much" for the owners of the second tallest building in Houston to keep up, lol.

It is indeed a big improvement.

I'm very excited about the developments in this area to say the least.

True. DART has really taken on a lot with their light rail expansion over the last 15 years. I honestly have no idea how they can afford it or how there's political will to do it, because 1) ridership has been underwhelming and 2) their tax base is significantly less than METRO's. I don't think they have something equivalent to general mobility payments though. But again, they're happy with what they're building so I'm not going to criticize too much. And those benefits to light rail you listed are kind of silly. IMO, light rail works well in shorter high ridership corridors to carry more passengers at a more efficient rate, resulting in savings in the long run. But what DART is building isn't doing that. Perhaps decades from now the system will be more well utilized. I think the only area where DART is ahead of METRO is future ridership capacity/efficiency. But those benefits are not showing as of yet. Yeah, I think METRO seems to be doing better with the few resources they have that's for sure. The only way DART really beats METRO is that their seems to be more political support for it. But DART has potential though, things can change in the next few decades.

I love analysis like this. I spend lots of time looking at NTD and APTA numbers lol. Kind of a hobby of mine. Anyway, the original topic is basically asking why DART has been able to fund and build so much rail while METRO is broke. This is due to the fact that there is regional agreement on the system, and region-wide support. This is both a blessing and a curse, because while this allows for more higher quality transit to be built, it usually means that long lines are built out to the suburbs and therefore results in lower ridership. In DART's case, using light rail technology to build a commuter-like system was probably not the best decision in hindsight. But most people in Dallas are happy with the system so I'm not going to crap on it. Also, you have to consider that a huge chunk of the Metroplex's population isn't served by DART at all. If you take out Ft. Worth, Dallas is a lot smaller than Houston. So it having similar ridership is actually pretty impressive. All those new trains are running mostly empty when you get outside Downtown, which is causing the inefficient cost-per-rider numbers. But eventually the trains will fill up, it might take many decades though lol.

To combine this topic with another, it would be really cool if the Astoria took up the whole space, with a McDonald's as GFR Put a drive through around the building, with parking in the back.

I'm a regular Boston-Houston flyer, and I've been hoping that United would put one of their new planes on that route. Unfortunately, I'm usually stuck with an older 737-500/800/900 or the good ol' 757-200, lol. Now that JetBlue AND Southwest is now offering nonstop HOU-BOS, I might have to switch over. Unless United's prices drops dramatically.