Is BART an example for Houston?

[Slick Vik]

I'm in San Francisco for a few weeks and am impressed with the transportation options here. In the city you have streetcars, cable cars, and Metro, and for the suburbs you have BART. I think Houston could do something similar. It's a big long term investment, but it's pretty interesting to see BART trains going faster than cars on the freeway even at top speed.

[arche_757]

^Have you ventured beyond San Francisco, say to San Jose or over east across the bay?  If so, I imaging those cities have different views of the effectiveness of that subway/heavy rail system.  Since San Fran is basically about the size of our Inner Loop (making any transit VERY effective).

 

Take some pictures if you can?

[Slick Vik]

^Have you ventured beyond San Francisco, say to San Jose or over east across the bay?  If so, I imaging those cities have different views of the effectiveness of that subway/heavy rail system.  Since San Fran is basically about the size of our Inner Loop (making any transit VERY effective).

 

Take some pictures if you can?

 

The expansion plan is for BART to go to San Jose.

[nativehoustonion]

The BART and the Muni System was built during the 70's and 80's.  Even though now the Bay Area has about 5 million residents they were smart and the BART now goes to SFO Airport and hooks up to San Jose light rail.  We are with 7 miles of light rail, not including the new lines.  We are so far behind it will take years to build heavy rail and commuter rail.  The University Line would be a nice start. 

[nativehoustonion]

At the Embarcadero station the BART station is above the Muni Station.  So you have passengers going on the Muni in the city, and BART passengers going to the burbs.  What a perfect system, all in one station.  

[nativehoustonion]

BART has 104 miles of heavy rail with 44 stations.  Houston cannot compare to that.  We do not have heavy rail.

[kylejack]

BART has 104 miles of heavy rail with 44 stations.  Houston cannot compare to that.  We do not have heavy rail.

 

Not yet...

[nativehoustonion]

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (San Jose) has 42.2 miles of light rail.  Houston is a joke, Culberson needs to be voted out of office!

[arche_757]

Actually greater San Fran (The Bay Area) is 7.1 million.  I thought BART ran to San Jose, but see that its actually CalTrans and other agencies.

 

Slick Vik is saying: "Houston needs something like BART, not, Houston is competing with San Francisco for transit city of the year.

[nativehoustonion]

Your right, but it took 20 years to build.  We cannot get the University Line built.  Please remember Pearland, The Woodlands, Sugarland, Katy, Baytown, Pasadena, Deer Park, Stafford, and Missouri City, do not belong to METRO.  If they pay their 1 cent tax maybe we can rail built.  But we are just building concrete.  TX Dot would love to double deck the freeways. W. S. Bellows would love to bid on that. 

[Slick Vik]

Actually greater San Fran (The Bay Area) is 7.1 million.  I thought BART ran to San Jose, but see that its actually CalTrans and other agencies.

 

Slick Vik is saying: "Houston needs something like BART, not, Houston is competing with San Francisco for transit city of the year.

 

Something like BART in conjunction with something like Muni is what I should have said, though we are more going the at grade route which is fine. As far as other parts of the Bay Area, there is ACE train, CalTrain, and VTA light rail. Pretty expansive but BART is the fastest of all of them. When/if it expands to downtown San Jose that will take a huge strain off the freeway system because currently BART doesn't go past Fremont and ACE only runs 4 trains a day in each direction.

[nativehoustonion]

The question was "Is BART an example of Houston". NO!  We are 20 years behind.  When I went to college there the Muni and BART were already running.  Houston was choking on traffic and the bust came in the 80's. 

[mfastx]

Having a system similar to BART would certainly improve our transportation outlook in Houston, but unfortunately that is just an unrealistic proposition in our current political climate.  First and foremost, we need to get people behind transit and fund it more.  Cities with great transit don't allocate a full quarter of transit dollars to roads, they actually create additional taxes to help fund capital projects. 

 

Houston almost built something similar to BART (heavy rail) in the 1980s.  If they had built out the full proposed system back then (with multiple lines going out west and centered around where the people are) we would have a much better transit system today.  Heavy rail is almost twice as fast as light rail and in an area where covering ground quickly is important to a transportation rider it would have been the most successful technology we could have built. 

 

But that ship has sailed now and we must make do with what we have.  Hopefully at some point in the next 50 years there will be more dollars allocated to public transportation and something like BART can be built here.  Putting a subway all the way down Westheimer to downtown would be genius. 

[BayouCityMan]

I've always thought a "dual system" like BART and MUNI in San Francisco or CTA and METRA in Chicago would be a perfect fit here in Houston. The METRO light rail is emulating MUNI in so many ways.

The heavy rail component will never be fully realized so long as those HOV lanes and buses remain cost effective. METRO is essentially using them as a heavy rail substitute for a cheaper price. Think about it, you already have that right-of-way and it is very easy to send more buses to a particular route if it gets more congested.

In order for heavy rail to be built, I think it will fall to an agency other than METRO, likely one that doesn't exist yet. We are so tax averse around here due to mismanagement and waste, that it may be awhile before the public will sign on. Then you have to fight the powerful highway lobby which will almost certainly mount a campaign to "save our roads". The area stands at 6 million people and counting. Other than double-decking and tolling us to death, will it be more buses and light rail with stops every 50 feet (sarcasm)?

[Slick Vik]

I've always thought a "dual system" like BART and MUNI in San Francisco or CTA and METRA in Chicago would be a perfect fit here in Houston. The METRO light rail is emulating MUNI in so many ways.

The heavy rail component will never be fully realized so long as those HOV lanes and buses remain cost effective. METRO is essentially using them as a heavy rail substitute for a cheaper price. Think about it, you already have that right-of-way and it is very easy to send more buses to a particular route if it gets more congested.

In order for heavy rail to be built, I think it will fall to an agency other than METRO, likely one that doesn't exist yet. We are so tax averse around here due to mismanagement and waste, that it may be awhile before the public will sign on. Then you have to fight the powerful highway lobby which will almost certainly mount a campaign to "save our roads". The area stands at 6 million people and counting. Other than double-decking and tolling us to death, will it be more buses and light rail with stops every 50 feet (sarcasm)?

The buses only run a couple of hours per weekday in each direction. Also buses don't feed into park and rides meaning you have to drive to them.

[nativehoustonion]

One bad example for heavy rail is MARTA (Atlanta).  They started building heavy rail also in the 80's.  But most people live in the burbs.  City of Atlanta has a population of 432,000.  Austin is almost twice the size.  So that means in Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta metro is 5.4 million.  Atlanta has the worse traffic.  So MARTA did not help reducing traffic. 

[Slick Vik]

One bad example for heavy rail is MARTA (Atlanta). They started building heavy rail also in the 80's. But most people live in the burbs. City of Atlanta has a population of 432,000. Austin is almost twice the size. So that means in Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta metro is 5.4 million. Atlanta has the worse traffic. So MARTA did not help reducing traffic.

They also had less funding, half cent I think, and the most recent referendum for funding for expansion they shot it down.

[mfastx]

One bad example for heavy rail is MARTA (Atlanta).  They started building heavy rail also in the 80's.  But most people live in the burbs.  City of Atlanta has a population of 432,000.  Austin is almost twice the size.  So that means in Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta metro is 5.4 million.  Atlanta has the worse traffic.  So MARTA did not help reducing traffic. 

 

MARTA would have been in much better shape if they had built out the full system from the original plan.  What they have is an incomplete system.  It would have been like if we built the initial line in the 1980s then stopped after that. 

 

MARTA still attracts more riders than most other post WWII growth cities. 

[IronTiger]

METRO will never be BART, and trying to "make up" for lost time just results in disasters like DART, which has miles of light rail but declining ridership and not helping congestion much.

[BayouCityMan]

^^^ Which is why I contend if heavy rail ever gets built, it won't be done by METRO. I could see a multi-county agency formed that would specifically build and maintain it, sort of like HGAC, only with a rail mandate. Not really sure how METRA, BART, or any of the other large commuter/heavy rail agencies around the US work but I'm sure it could be done here too. As I mentioned in my earlier post however, there are more than a few powerful lobby groups in our area that would not welcome this.

[IronTiger]

As much as blaming politicians is a popular subject in discussing rail non-starters, I believe I read somewhere on HAIF that the reason why existing heavy rail corridors (particularly along 59 and 290) cannot be used is resistance from the railroad companies.

[Slick Vik]

As much as blaming politicians is a popular subject in discussing rail non-starters, I believe I read somewhere on HAIF that the reason why existing heavy rail corridors (particularly along 59 and 290) cannot be used is resistance from the railroad companies.

BART goes down the middle of freeways much of the time. It would be better than HOV lanes

[mfastx]

As much as blaming politicians is a popular subject in discussing rail non-starters, I believe I read somewhere on HAIF that the reason why existing heavy rail corridors (particularly along 59 and 290) cannot be used is resistance from the railroad companies.

 

I think you are thinking of commuter rail.  Heavy rail doesn't need to utilize existing ROW at all. 

 

BTW, one of the reasons DART is achieving lower than desirable ridership is that it is trying to cover large distance with slow light rail.  Heavy rail is a lot faster and would be more successful in place of light rail in DART's network.

[IronTiger]

I think you are thinking of commuter rail. Heavy rail doesn't need to utilize existing ROW at all.

Yeah, I am thinking of commuter rail.

BART goes down the middle of freeways much of the time. It would be better than HOV lanes

No, it wouldn't: and we've talked about this. The reversible HOV lanes don't allow for much for more than one lane, and that would mean that a train would be sent out, come back empty, and take more people, whereas the HOV lane allows more buses to be fed continuously to supply demand.

It is worth noting, though, that the 290 expansion does set aside some ROW for a high speed rail system of some sort.

[cloud713]

Yeah, I am thinking of commuter rail.

No, it wouldn't: and we've talked about this. The reversible HOV lanes don't allow for much for more than one lane, and that would mean that a train would be sent out, come back empty, and take more people, whereas the HOV lane allows more buses to be fed continuously to supply demand.

It is worth noting, though, that the 290 expansion does set aside some ROW for a high speed rail system of some sort.

ive actually come up with what i think is a fairly ingenious way of running multiple trains on one track, between different hubs (610, beltway, grand parkway) with a hand full of trains at each hub that leave in intervals and each train goes to a separate station in between the hubs, all arriving at the same time, before returning to the hub as the trains from the hub on the other side send trains down the tracks behind the vehicles returning to the next hub, with an "express train" that travels at the front of each group and when the last train comes into the hub from the opposite direction, the express train shoots off toward the next hub, continuing down the line, whereas the other cars all stay back and forth between that one hub.

[Slick Vik]

Yeah, I am thinking of commuter rail.

No, it wouldn't: and we've talked about this. The reversible HOV lanes don't allow for much for more than one lane, and that would mean that a train would be sent out, come back empty, and take more people, whereas the HOV lane allows more buses to be fed continuously to supply demand.

It is worth noting, though, that the 290 expansion does set aside some ROW for a high speed rail system of some sort.

 

There is enough room in the HOV lanes to run two tracks.