The Boulevard Project

[hbg.50]

59 minutes ago, 004n063 said:

There's no question that the Silver Line was not a great choice of route for a flagship service (though my recollection is that the project was more of a TIRZ-led project than a METRO brainchild?), and they flubbed plenty of details when it came to things like stop location/spacing, signal priority, and frequency.

Combined, they made the paltry ridership numbers unsurprising to those of us who are deeply interested in transit functionality.

But that's a very small number of people, and @j.33's concern is spot-on: as the University Line gets ready to begin the years-long, expensive, highly visible, and traffic-slowing process of constructing the line, it's almost impossible to imagine Whitmire not trying to intervene, and an underperforming Silver Line is an easy tool for that objective.

You have a way of making excuses for Houston's lack of walkability, bike lane usage, transit usage - usually blaming city leadership.  But isn't the reality what Cuevas said (although I know he would disagree on bike lanes) "People are making this a big deal but Metro is always adjusting service to different routes based on overall demand."

Dallas has a similar issue... much more extensive LRT than Houston but just not enough demand. 

[004n063]

18 minutes ago, steve1363 said:

You have a way of making excuses for Houston's lack of walkability, bike lane usage, transit usage - usually blaming city leadership.  But isn't the reality what Cuevas said (although I know he would disagree on bike lanes) "People are making this a big deal but Metro is always adjusting service to different routes based on overall demand."

Dallas has a similar issue... much more extensive LRT than Houston but just not enough demand. 

I don't think I'm making excuses. I simply explained why nobody with any transit knowledge would have expected the Silver Line to be a high-ridership line. Anyone with high expectations was kidding themselves.

The University Line would be a replacement and upgrade for the heavily used #25 Richmond line in conjunction with the 153 Harwin express bus. 

It's also a line that seems much more likely to experience a significant increase in ridership after its introduction than the Silver Line, due to the high-value corridor from Greenway to Wheeler. A bus that comes every six minutes, doesn't get stuck in traffic, and connects to the Red line has much more appeal to the general population along the corridor than the current bus, which already gets a lot of riders.

[j.33]

17 hours ago, j_cuevas713 said:

we need to look at things with a bit of reason

I think some reasonable responses should be looking at trying to make the Silver Line better. For example, connecting the 9-Gulfton route to Lower Uptown TC...which would then allow an easy transfer between Silver Line and HCC West Loop Campus. Get TSP (transit signal priority) up and running along the corridor. Advertise the service to Galleria employees. There are a many other things the agency could look at it to make the line more successful instead of cutting frequency. 

[j_cuevas713]

12 minutes ago, j.33 said:

I think some reasonable responses should be looking at trying to make the Silver Line better. For example, connecting the 9-Gulfton route to Lower Uptown TC...which would then allow an easy transfer between Silver Line and HCC West Loop Campus. Get TSP (transit signal priority) up and running along the corridor. Advertise the service to Galleria employees. There are a many other things the agency could look at it to make the line more successful instead of cutting frequency. 

Metro in general does a terrible job marketing their services. In my opinion they should market to the younger crowd but they seem to not even understand their own audience and who supports them. I'm not happy about the service cut either but let's see where this lands with public input. I'm curious to see how people respond.