Nightowl Transit Service

[DaTrain]

It's been a few years since METRO discontinued night owl service, primarily on the only one to have it: Route 82 Westheimer.

IMO METRO should bring it back not only to that route, but expand it to at least four more major corridors such as Main Street, Harrisburg and Airline. We could also be having a night owl bus route as a substitute for METRORail on Main Street between the non-operating hours. (I'd rather METRORail be out of service 1-5 am than have clubgoers puke all over the train adding to the disgusting human elements such as homeless riders in the daytime.) It won't be much since night owl bus service has 60 minute frequencies (or some cases 30) but it'll still make a difference for late workers and clubgoers at the most. Houston has 2 million people, and its very embarrasing to be the largerst city without Midnight to Five service from transit much less not be a 24 hour type of place.

This is a partial spinoff from Plastic's P&R Weekend service topic. That ain't gon happen, but if some night owl service deviates from the streets toward the end to at least some P&R spaces it may work. METRO might as well bring it back to cater to the after hour crowd I previously mentioned. The graveyard shift workers and clubgoers can just pay $1 to get home between 2 and 4 in the morning; it's better than waiting on taxicabs that are almost non-existant in the spread out chunk of the city that charge $50 to get them home. Think about it now.

[TheNiche]

The big hurdle for nightowl service is that Houston is so dispersed that it takes a full-fledged mass transit system operating simultaneously to effectively serve any given corridor.

So, for instance, a single all-night route down Westheimer is only effective if someone both lives and works/shops/clubs along Westheimer. If you add in Main Street, Harrisburg, and Airline, you still haven't got a large enough user base to justify the service. After all, very few people (as a percent of patrons of establishments served by those routes) actually live along or within walking distance of any of those thoroughfares.

[DaTrain]

^^^Very well, what about nightowl bus routes that run in one direction counter-clockwise or clockwise? Example: a route can go on Westheimer, come south down Gessner and turn east onto Richmond back toward DT Houston. Austin has implemented this style of routing when its bus system came out four years ago with its own nightowl service. Link

[musicman]

^^^Very well, what about nightowl bus routes that run in one direction counter-clockwise or clockwise? Example: a route can go on Westheimer, come south down Gessner and turn east onto Richmond back toward DT Houston. Austin has implemented this style of routing when its bus system came out four years ago with its own nightowl service. Link

looks like it only would serve a small area and as a result have small ridership.

[Houston1stWordOnTheMoon]

It's been a few years since METRO discontinued night owl service, primarily on the only one to have it: Route 82 Westheimer.

What were the ridership numbers for this route? Was it discontinued due to low ridership numbers or because of bus and bus driver shortages?

Edited March 23, 2007 by Houston1stWordOnTheMoon