Dream Light Rail Service

[TheNiche]

You could say the same thing about freeways, so I don't think it matters.

No...you can't. Let's examine the lives of two hypothetical people. One lives near the Texas Medical Center and works in the Stafford Business Park. The other lives in Stafford and lives near the Texas Medical Center.

The person commuting to the TMC can drive to the West Bellfort P&R lot, which utilizes buses to take that person directly to the Texas Medical Center Transit Center, where that person can hop onto the light rail, one of several shuttle routes, or use the pedestrian skywalk system to take them to their final destination, a short distance away.

The person commuting to the Stafford Business Park has to drive directly from their residence to their place of work. There is no other option. If P&R service were bidirectional, the bus would get them to the P&R lot, however the lot is at the periphery of METRO's service area, just barely beyond Beltway 8. Then they'd have to walk approximately two miles to their destination. They could get to Stafford's doorstep, but they couldn't get around...and as you can see from the aerial of the P&R, there's really nothing of note around it.

This is not unique to Stafford. Sugar Land has a fairly large employment base but no P&R at all; it relies upon the lot I linked to above as its closest access point. Further up the Southwest Freeway, going inbound, there is the Westwood P&R and then the Hillcroft Transit Center. None of these P&R lots is in any way walkable to anywhere of consequence. There is plenty of employment in between, a lot of it clustered up along the freeway, but no continuous bus service along that corridor. Anybody trying to reverse commute with P&R service to the southwest part of town can't go anywhere when they get there. ...compare that with the car trips that untold tens (hundreds?) of thousands of reverse commuters make every day by car.

It's no better on any other side of town, either. Here's the Gessner P&R, the Westchase P&R, the Mission Bend P&R. That's the extent of P&R service along the Westpark Corridor. Then look at this one, the Monroe P&R! What the hell do when you're reverse commuting there? I started out intending to anally illustrate my point, corridor by corridor, but I think that the Monroe P&R tells the story by itself. ...I suppose you're now going to tell me that a reverse commuter can't get there by car or that there aren't any reverse commuters on the Gulf Freeway.

EDIT: For the sake of civility, I will point out a constructive instance where your stance would be valid. That'd be where, in a hypothetical case, The Woodlands' existing private P&R service expanded to include bidirectional service from METRO's Downtown Transit Center in addition to local bus service throughout their commercial areas, with all of their local routes intersecting at their P&R lot. Only then is bidirectional commuter transit in any way functional. And even then...it just isn't as large of an employment subcenter; demand would be very limited.

[N Judah]

Do you really think transit and roads are competing for funding on a level playing field?

Did I say they were?

[JamesL]

Did I say they were?

I should have known you know better!

The point here is that the limited transit dollars we have need to be spent in the most effective manner possible. Rail transit to Houston's suburbs would not provide all that much bang for the buck, especially since METRO's Park & Ride buses do the job nicely, and, it should be noted, will have bidirectional HOT lanes in which to run soon enough.

[TheNiche]

I should have known you know better!

The point here is that the limited transit dollars we have need to be spent in the most effective manner possible. Rail transit to Houston's suburbs would not provide all that much bang for the buck, especially since METRO's Park & Ride buses do the job nicely, and, it should be noted, will have bidirectional HOT lanes in which to run soon enough.

That only applies to Interstate 10. All of the other existing HOV lanes will be converted to HOT but will still be reversible.

[N Judah]

The point here is that the limited transit dollars we have need to be spent in the most effective manner possible.

Yes. And that's different from saying that you need constant traffic in both directions to justify putting transit there. If we can put freeways in the middle of nowhere as a means of spurring development, we can easily do that with rail transit too.

[roadrunner]

Honestly, at this point I almost feel like Metro should just scrap the entire light rail 2012 plan and start over. Sure, we've wasted millions of dollars in the engineering, design, etc., but it has gotten to the point where all of that money just seems to be thrown in a bottomless pit anyways. Even with stimulus money coming in, I still am skeptical of anything being done related to light rail.

I say scrap it, build up capital and start working on the design of a couple of subway lines going through the west side of town to start service in 2020s.

[TheNiche]

Honestly, at this point I almost feel like Metro should just scrap the entire light rail 2012 plan and start over. Sure, we've wasted millions of dollars in the engineering, design, etc., but it has gotten to the point where all of that money just seems to be thrown in a bottomless pit anyways. Even with stimulus money coming in, I still am skeptical of anything being done related to light rail.

It turns out that the $92 million in stimulus coming to METRO doesn't apply at all to light rail. It all goes to HOT lanes.

[roadrunner]

It turns out that the $92 million in stimulus coming to METRO doesn't apply at all to light rail. It all goes to HOT lanes.

Yeah that's what I meant by nothing is happening. I mean, the light rail plan had a lot of flaws and I don't know how efficient it would have been. We might as well go back to square 1.

[Reefmonkey]

Why do you think the P&R has low usage? I don't use it, but work with many that do. Many times the buses are standing room only. I often hear them say "I hope I get a seat today". Also, judging from the queues at the pickup spots, I would say that alot of people use it.

I wouldn't assume that the buses that are currently allocated for park and ride being filled to capacity means that park and ride is being widely used. The number of people using park and ride, the number of people willing to use park and ride, is still a mere fraction of the number of people who use private cars to commute into the city along routes that are served by park and ride. Most people want to use their cars, like the freedom, don't want to ride the bus. I personally wish they felt differently, because it would be better for the environment and our dependence on foreign oil, but it is a cultural thing. Just like airlines reduce numbers of flights on certain routes if those flights are habitually not full, for cost reasons Metro is going to only run as many buses as market demands, and will probably err on the side of running too few buses to keep them full. that will create the appearance that P&R is being fully utilized, but in fact there are many, many more people who could be using P&R but don't want to.