METRO Next - 2040 Vision

[zaphod]

18 hours ago, Triton said:

I think you can look to 610 as the primary example. I think it's pretty clear that they would build an elevated structure along Beltway 8, whether that be in the median or between the main lanes and feeder road or both.

 

To do that across the entire length would be extraordinarily expensive though, compared to every other single corridor proposed thus far. And this corridor isn't being shown as having many stations. And the alignment in the highway makes having transfer stations to other routes tough to say the least.  Not saying it's undoable, but I can't imagine Metro deciding on such a radical upgrade on short notice with no fanfare. Especially when its part of a much larger project with a finite budget.

 

I get the feeling, personally, that maybe they are going back to the drawing board and showing a mere representation of a corridor and not a true plan?

[j_cuevas713]

8 hours ago, zaphod said:

 

To do that across the entire length would be extraordinarily expensive though, compared to every other single corridor proposed thus far. And this corridor isn't being shown as having many stations. And the alignment in the highway makes having transfer stations to other routes tough to say the least.  Not saying it's undoable, but I can't imagine Metro deciding on such a radical upgrade on short notice with no fanfare. Especially when its part of a much larger project with a finite budget.

 

I get the feeling, personally, that maybe they are going back to the drawing board and showing a mere representation of a corridor and not a true plan?

I’m sure there’s an engineer who can figure all that out. I think they’re going to build a dedicated lane alone the Beltway. Regardless of how expensive it is. 

[wilcal]

On 2/6/2020 at 3:22 PM, wxman said:

This city, known for its innovation in aeronotics and space along with advanced medicine is so freaking backwards. When will city officials understand that buses are NOT sexy and they have a negative connotation that they serve only the lower classes of people in our city--lone exception being The Woodlands Express.

 

Just... wow. Metro's Park & Ride has a very good reputation and is continuing to see increased ridership. Also, plenty of non low economic people take the bus. Also, METRO is not a city agency.

 

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Trains are much fancier, sexier and attractive and the focus should be bringing commuter rail to the main suburban centers like Sugar Land, Katy, Clear Lake, The Woodlands and Kingwood.

 

They also cost a shit ton more money. Like 5-10X as much. A commuter rail to Kingwood would cost nearly $2 Billion and the Kingwood P&R serves... 800 people per day. Even if you add in Eastex and Townsen it's less than 3,000/day. 

 

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They add to congestion, ride slowly in the fast lanes and are constantly stopping on main thoroughfares like Westheimer backing up cars and traffic to let one or two people off at a time. 

 

Clearly the more than 12,000 people per day that ride the 82 on Westheimer should just buy their own car, drive down Westheimer, and traffic would be greatly relieved. 

 

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Buses are a thing of the past.

 

Doubtful. There are significantly more BRT than light rail systems being planned around the world. Single occupant vehicles are more likely to be a thing of the past. 

 

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To see so much planning and energy being put into a stupid bus is typical government at work. So much money, so much time and so little in the way of moving our city into the 21st century. 

 

I agree, but then again I don't think taxpayers should be subsidizing massive highway and road projects. Less than 1/4 of TxDOT's budget comes from car registration fees and gas taxes. If car drivers had to pay their fair share and we could use the $20+ billion/year in car subsidies to actually develop a public transit network that would work and get people out of cars. 

 

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The high speed rail is also sort of a joke on Houston's end. The main terminal is in a piss poor location at a conjunction of two major, clogged freeways that is convenient for exactly nobody unless you live in Oak Forest. To stop before even reaching Houston is silly. I mean is it asking too much to at least get it to the Galleria area? It would be best to get it downtown like Dallas. 

 

Why didn't Texas Central think to just move the station closer into town? 

 

It does happen to be about a mile away from the Northwest Transit Center which allows zero-transfer access to the Galleria and Downtown on BRT. 

 

Also, Texas Central is making a significant real estate play, which is additionally why they chose the old mall. 

[Geographer]

Posters on another thread said that Tom Delay and John Culberson were primarily responsible for the cancellation of the University Line for MetroRail.  Now that both are out of office, will  MetroRail include it in their construction plans?

[Some one]

 

The proposed University BRT should be a commuter rail. I feel like the ridership count and the length justifies it. That and it makes more sense than the light rail expansion plans.

1 hour ago, Geographer said:

Posters on another thread said that Tom Delay and John Culberson were primarily responsible for the cancellation of the University Line for MetroRail.  Now that both are out of office, will  MetroRail include it in their construction plans?

Unfortunately no, or at the very least, not in a while. Metro said in an interview that the reason they can't build the University Line as light rail is due to cost.

[august948]

1 hour ago, Some one said:

 

The proposed University BRT should be a commuter rail. I feel like the ridership count and the length justifies it. That and it makes more sense than the light rail expansion plans.

Unfortunately no, or at the very least, not in a while. Metro said in an interview that the reason they can't build the University Line as light rail is due to cost.

 

So did something change cost-wise?  I heard for years and years it seems that the only block to the University Line LRT was political.

[Some one]

10 minutes ago, august948 said:

 

So did something change cost-wise?  I heard for years and years it seems that the only block to the University Line LRT was political.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2018/11/07/311132/metro-hopes-for-a-strong-advocate-in-congress-with-lizzie-fletchers-election/

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Patman said for cost reasons they’re now considering bus rapid transit for the Richmond corridor, to help provide better connections between downtown and The Galleria.

I'm also guessing the expanded length contributed to the cost. Either way it's unfortunate.

[BEES?!]

It looks like METRO's gearing up to  start the next BRT line- the extension north toward the proposed HSR site at the NW mall site from the NW transit center, and then moving east along I-10 to link the NW transit center up with downtown. I couldn't find anything on their site, but I did see this article from abc13. Nice to see that it sounds like they're moving forward on the next phases of the plan, which also makes me wonder if METRO has high confidence that the HSR to Dallas is actually happening (despite opposition from some folks at the moment)- I am so pumped to check out the BRT line when it's open this summer.

[samagon]

On 2/12/2020 at 3:26 PM, august948 said:

 

So did something change cost-wise?  I heard for years and years it seems that the only block to the University Line LRT was political.

 

what changed cost wise is that the matching funds from the national government were blocked by these two distinguished gentlemen, so the internal funds for the project were moved to other projects. 

[august948]

2 hours ago, samagon said:

 

what changed cost wise is that the matching funds from the national government were blocked by these two distinguished gentlemen, so the internal funds for the project were moved to other projects. 

 

So matching funds are no longer available?

[mollusk]

45 minutes ago, august948 said:

So matching funds are no longer available?

 

To the extent we ever got them, they've been reallocated.  Of course, these are long lead time projects so it's impossible to snap your fingers and bring them to immediate full fruition.

[BeerNut]

February 20, 2020 METRONext Business Now—Upcoming Projects

Sharing a few of the slides

 

[TheSirDingle]

Holy shit good stuff @BeerNut. So far it's looking to be a pretty good plan, that covers a good amount of Houston. Also I was looking at the total miles added to both the rail and BRT, and saw they didn't include the miles for the line to sugar land. So I went my way to google maps and measured the distance, finding it to be around 17.5 miles of commuter rail. Nearly doubling the proposed inner city rail line extensions. If they're able to get the partnership this would bring the total amount of rail to 49.5 miles. 

This On top of the new BRT (including Uptown BRT) would bring the total rapid transit mileage to around 129 miles. Increasing the total miles by 6.23 times the original system.  

Edited February 21, 2020 by TheSirDingle

[BeerNut]

3 minutes ago, TheSirDingle said:

Holy shit good stuff @BeerNut. So far it's looking to be a pretty good plan, that covers a good amount of Houston. Also I was looking at the total miles added to both the rail and BRT, and saw they didn't include the miles for the line to sugar land. So I went my way to google maps and measured the distance, finding it to be around 17.5 miles of commuter rail. Nearly doubling the proposed inner city rail line extensions. If they're able to get the partnership this would bring the total amount of rail to 49.5 miles. 

This On top of the new BRT (including Uptown BRT) would bring the total rapid transit mileage to around 129 miles. Increasing the total miles by 6.23 times the original system.  

 

That's listed as "Potential Partnership" meaning it's not part of the MetroNEXT plan.

[BEES?!]

I'm super pro-rail and pro-LRT, but I am also pretty surprised at just how much cheaper it is to build BRT than LRT. I totally get why, and I'm not knocking LRT, but wow that is pretty nuts, and it really makes a lot of sense why METRO's opting to go this route, and I respect it. I was disappointed that old maps that showed heavy implementation of LRT/heavy rail seem to have been scrapped in favor of BRT and less LRT, but now that I've actually seen the cost, and understand that it's been a huge fight for METRO to even get money for these projects at all, it does seem like BRT will be more bang for their buck, let them move more people, and maybe be able to prove that Houston CAN be a transit-friendly city.

 

Those BOOST lines sound neat, too. Are they currently being implemented around town? I think I saw on one of the bike path threads they were (painted bike lanes and 'floating' bus stops). If that's what the BOOST lines will all be like, that will be awesome!

[zaphod]

I understand why the current emphasis is on areas which are in the central part of the city. Suburban bus routes have a hard time attracting ridership.

 

Still, I've been playing around in google maps and discovered there are some underrated transit friendly corridors that are ignored. North of I-10 in the Energy Corridor is a Park Row, which is really the western extension of Dairy Ashford. It's solid apartment complexes and office buildings all the way out to Katy. Goes past Addicks P&R. Another area like that is Northborough and Ella in Spring.

 

[cspwal]

Another thing is there's a couple of spots the local bus network narrowly misses the existing park & rides - mainly at Fuqua and Kuykendahl.

 

16 hours ago, BeerNut said:

 

This image of the inner Katy BRT makes me a little sad that it won't be light rail (it could be an extension of the green or purple) but it will really increase frequency east-west downtown.  Even if each line is every 12 minutes, that's 4 minute frequency between the theater district and the convention district

[JJxvi]

So transit would end up running down both the North and West boundaries of Memorial Park with no access.

[Houston19514]

10 minutes ago, JJxvi said:

So transit would end up running down both the North and West boundaries of Memorial Park with no access.

 

The 20 Canal/Memorial runs right through the middle of Memorial Park with at least 4 stops in the park.

[Texasota]

Yeah, I really think there needs to be a BRT station west of Shepherd. To me, the obvious location is where Washington goes under I-10. I don't think you'd want a station that *only* serves Memorial Park, but this would provide access to the park, relatively dense residential neighborhoods, and an area that just in general is redeveloping pretty rapidly.

Edited February 21, 2020 by Texasota

[cspwal]

So I drew up the new routes as I think they could run them and color-coded them

 

Downtown detail:

 

 

It's kind of hard to tell, but I had the uptown line go all the way to the HSR terminal.

 

The IAH BRT line is on larger scale than any of the others, but it also has the fewest stations.  I know that the main stretch down 45 is dependent on the NHHIP design choices, but they could have at least a stop at the rental center (like the light rail will) or something else between Greenspoint and the airport. If there's good connections at Greenspoint TC and there's some added stops along 45, I think it will be fine, but otherwise it might as well just be an express bus.  It also is shown as terminating at the Theater district - I would prefer if it terminated at Central station main, so that you could more easily transfer from the Red line.

 

The red line extensions don't appear to be on the phase 1 plans.  I wonder what the timeline for phase 1, phase 2, etc are.

 

The University Line (blue) is unclear how it gets from Wheeler to UH - the map implies it goes straight through TSU, but I drew it as going around the campus.  There's a lot of connections to park and rides, and it hits almost every other transit line.  This is going to be a key line, and I could see the stretch from West Chase to Wheeler getting packed at rush hour every day.

The eastern section of it goes over multiple rail yards.  Possibly elevated?

 

The purple line only has one extra station before it gets to HOU; maybe they want this to be the express way to HOU from downtown?  If so, I wonder if they will have bypass rails at some of the stations on Telephone RD so that the purple line can go to HOU faster, while the green line is a local train.  

I also wonder how they are going to handle the mess of rails at Griggs/Long/Mykawa.

 

The Inner Katy BRT (pink) looks like it's going to share lanes and platforms with the street going purple/green trains.  It will really increase the frequency going across downtown east/west

 

I'm amused by the name "Lower Uptown" for the new transit center.

 

I didn't draw out the express bus network, but I wonder how Metro will advertise it - with the MetroRail/Rapid system, or with seperate maps?

 

Edit:

Here's a link to an interactive map, where you can zoom in on the lines and stops

https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/MetroNext_Phase_1/MgAYuARyHE

Edited February 21, 2020 by cspwal

[BeerNut]

here's an old light rail map for comparison.  Seems like there are more stops on the BRT alignment.

[cspwal]

It looks like the only extra stop on the BRT version of the University line is at Chimney rock - the rest of it is vast extensions of the original line

 

Same thing for the uptown line - the only extra stop appears to be at Westheimer...which is such a no brainier stop I don't know why it was ever not included

[X.R.]

I think I went back and forth with various peeps, including @Houston19514 and I think iah, about lightrail and my automatic disposition towards it, and I gotta say, they helped me rethink it and seeing the maps with the various funds associated with each line really shows that for somewhere like Houston, with so much ground to cover, BRT might be the better option. Cheers to people helping other people see the other side of things. The BRT lines for uptown, inner katy, and IAH look...great! Almost exactly what Houston needs.

 

So Richmond will have dedicated, enforced lanes like Uptown or nah? They have to, right? Otherwise its moreso MetroBoost? 

[Texasota]

I mean, we haven't seen any final drawings (nor do they exist yet) or anything, but that's the idea. Part of the reason for using Richmond is that it has plenty of right of way to use for dedicated lanes.

[cspwal]

What I'm more concerned about for the "University" line (is that going to be it's name?) is once it gets east of Wheeler station - there's less right of way, and the route isn't as clear

[samagon]

What I'm concerned about is the University line at S. Rice and Westpark. 

 

Bubba's Texas Burger Shack must survive!

[cspwal]

The new Transit Center should have it as GFR

[Trae]

On 2/6/2020 at 1:22 PM, wxman said:

This city, known for its innovation in aeronotics and space along with advanced medicine is so freaking backwards. When will city officials understand that buses are NOT sexy and they have a negative connotation that they serve only the lower classes of people in our city--lone exception being The Woodlands Express.

 

Trains are much fancier, sexier and attractive and the focus should be bringing commuter rail to the main suburban centers like Sugar Land, Katy, Clear Lake, The Woodlands and Kingwood. Buses are a thing of the past. They add to congestion, ride slowly in the fast lanes and are constantly stopping on main thoroughfares like Westheimer backing up cars and traffic to let one or two people off at a time. 

 

To see so much planning and energy being put into a stupid bus is typical government at work. So much money, so much time and so little in the way of moving our city into the 21st century. 

 

The high speed rail is also sort of a joke on Houston's end. The main terminal is in a piss poor location at a conjunction of two major, clogged freeways that is convenient for exactly nobody unless you live in Oak Forest. To stop before even reaching Houston is silly. I mean is it asking too much to at least get it to the Galleria area? It would be best to get it downtown like Dallas. 

 

I was just in Sacramento for a company outing and was heading out with coworkers. No one wanted to ride the bus so we instead walked a few extra blocks to the train station. People really have a stigma about buses. It's the whole reason why LA is trying it's best to convert the Orange Line BRT to LRT (aside from the fact that buses have lower capacity). There are so many buses that have limited capacity (you can't attach multiple buses together), LA had to construct overpasses because buses started to back up. Cities of Houston's size don't rely on buses as the primary transit option but Houston is doing this because politicians screwed the voters and city.

 

People will say "but BRT looks different" but it's not that different. It still looks like a regular extended bus and nothing like a light rail train no matter how low to the ground they try to make the bus.

 

And for those clamoring about Metro's Park and Ride, imagine how much higher the ridership would be if it were commuter rail. You'd have more flexibility with being able to get on at numerous stations and not have to fight freeway traffic to enter the HOT lanes (which causes more congestion). I hated being in the Katy Tollway during rush hour if I was stuck behind a Metro bus as they left lane hog because the HOV side is wrongly to the left instead of the right. Plus it'd be bi-directional and run throughout the day and night versus just a few hours in the AM/PM.

 

On 2/20/2020 at 4:37 PM, BEES?! said:

I'm super pro-rail and pro-LRT, but I am also pretty surprised at just how much cheaper it is to build BRT than LRT. I totally get why, and I'm not knocking LRT, but wow that is pretty nuts, and it really makes a lot of sense why METRO's opting to go this route, and I respect it. I was disappointed that old maps that showed heavy implementation of LRT/heavy rail seem to have been scrapped in favor of BRT and less LRT, but now that I've actually seen the cost, and understand that it's been a huge fight for METRO to even get money for these projects at all, it does seem like BRT will be more bang for their buck, let them move more people, and maybe be able to prove that Houston CAN be a transit-friendly city.

 

Those BOOST lines sound neat, too. Are they currently being implemented around town? I think I saw on one of the bike path threads they were (painted bike lanes and 'floating' bus stops). If that's what the BOOST lines will all be like, that will be awesome!

 

Cheap is nice but give me quality any day. That's what LRT lines are when compared to BRT.

 

The University Line from Gulfton to IAH would be absolutely PERFECT for LRT, as would the Inner Katy line. Those are the only two I think Metro should do everything in their power to convert to LRT instead. Those being LRT would change the landscape of Houston. BRT will be a cool novelty for a little while but you won't ever maximize ridership or redevelopment potential with a fancy bus.

 

People keep saying Houston is so different without saying why. Houston is a city seeing huge increases in highrise and urban living due to many factors including floods, downsizing, popularity of inner-city living in general, etc. Density in the urban area is going up across the board. A bus system is not going to properly support the city. No where in the first world is there a major city like Houston who has buses be the preferred method to rail. At best buses are the complement to the rail system. I have no idea why people think Houston will go against that trend with buses. What makes it special?

 

There is a reason why bus routes are converted to rail if ridership is high enough and some of these BRT lines will jump out the gate with ridership high enough to warrant conversion. Why wait until rail constructions gets even more expensive? Was the lesson not learned in the 1980s, early 2000s, etc.? What is Metro going to due when their pensions are sky high because they need to hire 3 operators vs 1 (3 buses for 1 train capacity)?

 

Houston is doing it backwards but time will tell if ridership holds. City has so much potential but it gets squandered. Where's the ambition?

Edited February 26, 2020 by Trae

[Triton]

3 hours ago, samagon said:

What I'm concerned about is the University line at S. Rice and Westpark. 

 

Bubba's Texas Burger Shack must survive!

The University line would run south of Westpark, not north.