METRO Next - 2040 Vision

[Texasota]

...yeah I really didn't say anything about Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, modernism, or any other "ism."

 

I basically agree with your diagnosis of the infrastructural issue in Montrose; I just disagree with your proposal. The history of couplets is *not* terribly positive, and it's time we start thinking seriously about re-purposing existing infrastructure from low efficiency (cars) to high efficiency (transit). And I genuinely think Westheimer is a good candidate. Montrose (the collection of neighborhoods) has a lot of bypasses - 59, Allen Parkway, W Dallas, Richmond, arguably W Alabama - and Westheimer is much less used east of Shepherd. Thinking of it more like the heart of the neighborhood *and* a high capacity transit corridor makes more sense to me than trying to replicate the theoretical 4-lane road that never really existed.

[Texasota]

One thing I would be in favor of is rethinking Lovett as a proper boulevard and essentially a bypass for east-lower Westheimer. There's plenty of ROW to keep it 2lanes each direction; you might just need to narrow the medians in some places and selectively remove some parking. Now this would of course require two pieces of eminent domain: the long block that is the privately-owned Courtlandt Place (just the street, not the homes), and, on the other end, the lot that Sweetgreen sits on.

 

This would integrate nicely with the removal of the Bagby connector ramp, though it would remain replacing it with a street connection rather than a park.

 

Then you'd probably want to get rid of street parking moving west of that point, so maybe you identify a site or two for public garages. With GFR of course.

[Texasota]

Haha, Houston19514. Just trying to find a possible compromise. I do genuinely relish the idea of taking back Courtlandt Place as a public street though. 

Edited March 3, 2020 by Texasota

[samagon]

commuters should be encouraged to use Allen Parkway/Kirby to access Westheimer as a through traffic route, rather than taking Westheimer through Montrose.

 

this could be accomplished by making a grade separated through lane on Allen Parkway/Kirby at Shepherd. do this at the same time as you increase to 3 lanes through the River Oaks section (it is 3 lanes on either side of River Oaks, and Kirby is a major thoroughfare, it needs to be built out like one). do all this at the same time you make Westheimer a single lane in each direction, and it just might work.

 

let the richie riches in River Oaks feel some of the through traffic love for once.

 

 

[Luminare]

2 hours ago, Texasota said:

One thing I would be in favor of is rethinking Lovett as a proper boulevard and essentially a bypass for east-lower Westheimer. There's plenty of ROW to keep it 2lanes each direction; you might just need to narrow the medians in some places and selectively remove some parking. Now this would of course require two pieces of eminent domain: the long block that is the privately-owned Courtlandt Place (just the street, not the homes), and, on the other end, the lot that Sweetgreen sits on.

 

This would integrate nicely with the removal of the Bagby connector ramp, though it would remain replacing it with a street connection rather than a park.

 

Then you'd probably want to get rid of street parking moving west of that point, so maybe you identify a site or two for public garages. With GFR of course.

 

Thats basically what I was proposing...

[Texasota]

Yeah I know; I'm just arguing that you don't need the couplet. Lovett has enough capacity on its own, and I think Westheimer west of that *mostly* does as well. 

[Luminare]

Just now, Texasota said:

Yeah I know; I'm just arguing that you don't need the couplet. Lovett has enough capacity on its own, and I think Westheimer west of that *mostly* does as well. 

 

*facepalms*

[Texasota]

Ok, I think you might have been right - we each read what we *thought* the other one was saying into what was basically a general agreement. 

 

What I really latched onto was your referencing Hawthorne - there's just no way to use that (or Missouri or any other parallel street, unless you *maybe* want to mess with Fairview, but I would rather that be used for bike infrastructure) for any kind of through connection without destroying the neighborhood. And just to clarify what I mean by "destroying the neighborhood"  - I actually mean less the buildings than the scale of the blocks and streets. Montrose, as a street grid, is built to an urban scale, and that's an irreplaceable feature. 

 

But even more fundamentally than that, I think we need to talk about replacing existing traffic lanes with transit lanes. And I do think pushing through a parallel street would be fundamentally destructive to the neighborhood. Lovett is a special case because it is already absurdly wide, but there's nothing remotely comparable to that west of its intersection with Westheimer.

 

For cars, I am fully in support of increasing connectivity (as in, transforming Lovett into useable street), but I am actually completely opposed to increasing capacity. Capacity should be addressed by replacing low-efficiency infrastructure (car lanes) with higher efficency (bus lanes)>

[TheSirDingle]

Transit Plans for west Houston corridor

 

 

 

 

PDF: https://metronext.org/assets/pdfs/METRONext_West_Houston_Corridor_presentation_0917_v9_FINAL.pdf

[Texasota]

...why not both?

(obviously the answer is money)

 

But seriously, with both you would essentially have an express and a local. 

As defined here they really serve different people. 

 

It will be interesting to see how much variation there is between different BOOST corridors. Maybe Gessner, given its enormous ROW, can get a few more MetroRapid/BRT features.

[X.R.]

On 3/3/2020 at 12:45 PM, samagon said:

 

let the richie riches in River Oaks feel some of the through traffic love for once.

 

 

 

I cut through there coming back from work sometimes, and as much as I would love this, I think they contract with the sheriff or constable offices because they have these officers just sitting at the most inopportune (for people like myself) places just watching traffic for speed and other violations. *Shakes fist at sky*

[cspwal]

Looks like the Metro Next rollout will have to wait a month

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/Eyeing-COVID-fallout-Metro-moves-slowly-on-next-15154639.php?utm_campaign=CMS Sharing Tools (Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

Quote

Houston-area transit officials will wait out a little more of the coronavirus crisis before soliciting bids on five of the first projects in their $7 billion construction bonanza for bus and rail upgrades.

“Moving this by a month does not hurt anything at all,” said Sanjay Ramabhadran, a Metropolitan Transit Authority board member.

Board members on Tuesday delayed approval of the procedure for selecting engineering, architecture and design firms for what could be more than $1 billion in bus and rail projects along key routes.

 

[zaphod]

Apparently in China they have created battery powered buses which have the same form as trams. To charge themselves they have pantographs and there are small sections of overhead power conduit along the route or at stations, but for the most part all they need is a conventional street to drive one.They use markings on the pavement to drive themselves.

 

Wouldn't this be cool as hell to upgrade our BRT corridors with? Not really much of a difference between light rail and bus. However with fixed service I think steel rail may offer superior ride quality and not wear out as quick as pavement and tires, especially if these vehicles still operate along the same route in the same position on the street.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Rail_Rapid_Transit

 

Photo Credit: N509FZ. wikimedia photo page.

[paul2834]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRobrIlwrr0

^ For those who want to see it in action, here's 40 minutes of it. I keep thinking of it as a train that's how good it looks on the outside and inside. Our BRT still just looks like a bus unfortunately.

 

EDIT: BTW, they even call it rail over there. The translation is Smart Rail.

Edited April 7, 2020 by paul2834

[samagon]

very neat, but the paint would need to be re-applied every few years. not that this isn't easy to do, it would be a thing though.

[cspwal]

The biggest thing is keeping dedicated ROW.  That's also the hardest part

[Houston19514]

15 hours ago, zaphod said:

Apparently in China they have created battery powered buses which have the same form as trams. To charge themselves they have pantographs and there are small sections of overhead power conduit along the route or at stations, but for the most part all they need is a conventional street to drive one.They use markings on the pavement to drive themselves.

 

Wouldn't this be cool as hell to upgrade our BRT corridors with? Not really much of a difference between light rail and bus. However with fixed service I think steel rail may offer superior ride quality and not wear out as quick as pavement and tires, especially if these vehicles still operate along the same route in the same position on the street.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Rail_Rapid_Transit

 

Photo Credit: N509FZ. wikimedia photo page.

 

It's BRT with electric vehicles, but apparently without even having level boarding.  IMO, the quick-charge battery powering is the coolest part about it. 

While it is theoretically "autonomous" (self-driving).  It appears they do not operate them without drivers.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Houston19514

[samagon]

pretty sure the level boarding is a simple fix with higher platforms.

[Houston19514]

17 hours ago, samagon said:

pretty sure the level boarding is a simple fix with higher platforms.

 

It appears they built the thing with platforms that do not provide level boarding.  Once built, building higher platforms is hardly a "simple fix".

Edited April 8, 2020 by Houston19514

[Texasota]

What are you basing that on? There appears to be a single, consistent floor level inside the bus and the doors are about as low as they could be - they look like a reasonable boarding platform height. 

[cspwal]

From the linked wikipedia page:

Quote

The entire train has a low-floor design^[8] from a space frame with bolted-on panels to support the weight of passengers.

 

Following one of the source links, they have some pictures

https://www.engineersgarage.com/egblog/china-unwraps-worlds-first-driverless-rail-transit-system-with-autonomous-technology/

 

Also this explains why there's room for a driver - it's semi-autonmous, more like a Tesla than the little autonomous bus Metro is running around TSU

Quote

Just like any other autonomous vehicle, this transit features advanced functionality which, in turn, reduces manual efforts on the part of the driver.

 

The doors look about the same height as your typical light rail, and the "tracks" should allow it to align close enough to a platform to allow for level boarding

[Houston19514]

3 hours ago, Texasota said:

What are you basing that on? There appears to be a single, consistent floor level inside the bus and the doors are about as low as they could be - they look like a reasonable boarding platform height. 

 

3 hours ago, cspwal said:

From the linked wikipedia page:

 

Following one of the source links, they have some pictures

https://www.engineersgarage.com/egblog/china-unwraps-worlds-first-driverless-rail-transit-system-with-autonomous-technology/

 

Also this explains why there's room for a driver - it's semi-autonmous, more like a Tesla than the little autonomous bus Metro is running around TSU

 

The doors look about the same height as your typical light rail, and the "tracks" should allow it to align close enough to a platform to allow for level boarding

 

I'm basing it on what I see in the video.  Carefully watch the portions of the video where they show passengers boarding.  The floor level of the vehicle is higher than the level of the station platform.   That wouldn't be ADA compliant and is not what would we call level boarding. Pretty difficult to board in a wheel chair.

[Texasota]

Sure, but that's not a technical limitation. It's just a failure of implementation. Metro could use these exact buses and fix that with platforms a few inches higher. It doesn't even look like the platforms would need to be much if any higher than those built for the LRT or uptown lines.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Texasota

[samagon]

21 hours ago, Houston19514 said:

 

It appears they built the thing with platforms that do not provide level boarding.  Once built, building higher platforms is hardly a "simple fix".

 

sorry, I wasn't talking about the current China solution, frankly, I don't care how they implemented it there, or whether they could fix it easily.

 

if it were implemented here, it would be a 'simple fix' to build the platform 3" higher to accommodate the height of the floor in the ride vehicle.

 

hell, a kneeling ride vehicle could fix it too. ultimately, it doesn't matter. in a new build, designing the platform height to be the same as the floor of the ride vehicle is not that hard.

 

I agree that going in after everything is built and adding 3" of height to the platform so it is level with the ride vehicle isn't easy, but as it relates to Houston, how could this matter?

Edited April 9, 2020 by samagon

[zaphod]

I don't think METRO would even consider buying that exact vehicle. I'm just saying, maybe someone else could make a similar design for the US market. It's the idea that's neat, IMO, take what is good about trams and apply them to electrically powered buses. With self driving technology you could have a long articulated vehicle intelligently steer around corners and have cameras to show an operator what would be in their blind spots. It could be double ended so it wouldn't have to turn around, and could instead reverse like tram.

[Sunstar]

Metro hints at a future light rail extension along 90a, but the only substantive thing I can find on the MetroNext plan is two way HOV. Missouri City is part of Metro’s service area and voted in the bond referendum, but light rail is unlikely unless Sugarland and other Fort Bend towns are willing to chip in. This feels like a big miss to me, but I’m not sure what the projected ridership for such a line would be even with full participation from Fort Bend county.

 

I’m also curious If Metro could purchase their own ROW inside the existing Union Pacific ROW when the time came. 

[TheSirDingle]

article: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/metro-bus-red-light-upgrade-BOOST-houston-15093723.php#photo-19105394

 

The digital signs are going to be pretty cool, and the other improvements add so much to the service.

Quote

The 54 Scott and the 56 Montrose/Airline routes will be the first put to the test of as part of Metro’s “Bus Operations Optimized System Treatments” — aka BOOST. The corridors will be decked out with spruced-up bus stops and shelters, bike racks and better sidewalk and trail access where practical. Digital signs at bus stops will give real-time information about when the next bus is coming.

Image of some of the improvements provided:

Quote

 

About the new change lights ability:

Quote

Some of the most striking improvements, however, will be less about what riders can see and more about the technology that will provide buses an advantage by communicating with traffic signals. That could in some locations give the bus extra time to make a changing green light, or hurry through the red-light cycle to decrease the time the bus spends at an intersection...
 

Metro hopes to make trips faster by putting GPS devices or beacons on buses that communicate directly with traffic lights along the route.

 

“It allows us to take full advantage of what we can do,” said Andrew Skabowski, Metro’s chief operations officer. “It gives you a lot more freedom and a lot more ability.”

 

The beacons, also used by fire trucks and ambulances, alert so-called smart traffic signals as they approach. The traffic signal recognizes the beacon on the bus and knows which direction it is traveling and how far away it is.

 

If the light is green and the bus is on pace to arrive, the signal could keep the green active a few seconds longer to allow the bus to pass through.

 

In the event a bus arrives at a red light, the signal could quicken the cycle so the bus gets a green light a little sooner.

 

“Both ways, it gets you a little extra green,” Skabowski said.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by TheSirDingle

[Triton]

Very cool!

[skooljunkie]

https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/METRO-BOOST-Network.aspx

 

These improvements will be stunning--as long as the infrastructure is kept up.

 

Looks like the first test is Studewood between White Oak and Cavalcade...I like that they are moving and REMOVING stops. Between major roads, stops are often too frequent and way too close to stop lights. 

Edited June 10, 2020 by skooljunkie
spelling

[j_cuevas713]

9 hours ago, TheSirDingle said:

article: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/metro-bus-red-light-upgrade-BOOST-houston-15093723.php#photo-19105394

 

The digital signs is going to be pretty cool, and the other improvements add so much to the service.

Image of some of the improvements provided:

 

About the new change lights ability:

 

I noticed a digital sign at West Cavalcade and N Main. They’re solar powered and placed high. Not huge screens but large enough to see basic info.