Lightrail/BRT Discussion

[Double L]

The central issue is money. Are you willing to give METRO the money to improve this situation?

[TheNiche]

The central issue is money. Are you willing to give METRO the money to improve this situation?

I'd rather that they just put off BRT along Harrisburg entirely (and everything else regarding rapid transit) for a few more years, but if it has to go in, then yes, they should absolutely spend the money to at least make it effective.

[Montrose1100]

The central issue is money. Are you willing to give METRO the money to improve this situation?

No, because even if they ended up with the money, they'd still end up with a piss poor idea/design.

[Ethanra]

Looks like Metro is taking another step forward with the BRT part of Phase II - Phase II Update

I beleive the chosen LRT University Route will be announced in March.

Here is some renderings of the Intermodal Terminal - Impressive Renderings

[houstonfella]

Houston, do we have liftoff? Those renderings are awesome!

Metro

[musicman]

should be interesting. you have culberson saying no to richmond route. you have sheila jackson lee saying no to BRT.

which legislators DO like METRO's plans?

[Guest danax]

Here is some renderings of the Intermodal Terminal - Impressive Renderings

Looks like skateboarders will like it too.

[lockmat]

should be interesting. you have culberson saying no to richmond route. you have sheila jackson lee saying no to BRT.

which legislators DO like METRO's plans?

Where do you get this information? Do you get it from the paper, speeches, interviews, inside sources, their website?

I'd just like to know so I can keep myself informed.

Thanks

[Montrose1100]

It looks good. Maybe (just this once) METRO will do great with plans.

[tierwestah]

Those renderings of the Intermodal Station are awesome. Let's hope it becomes reality

I'm surprised no one has posted this article! Looks like Metro ain't foolin' around no more!

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headli...ro/4501157.html

[713 To 214]

It'll never happen!

[Guest danax]

I'm surprised no one has posted this article! Looks like Metro ain't foolin' around no more!

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headli...ro/4501157.html

Maybe Culberson, after derailing Richmond, will toss Lee and Green a bone and give us rail instead of busses.

[tierwestah]

It'll never happen!

You might be right but don't you live in Dallas?

Are you talking about the intermodal station or the light rail not happening? I know that site prep and some construction for these lines is scheduled to begin this summer and all the lines are expected to be running by 2012.

Maybe Culberson, after derailing Richmond, will toss Lee and Green a bone and give us rail instead of busses.

I guess that shows that some light will be at the end of the tunnel after this whole mess is over.

[Double L]

Good thing Sheila's on the appropriations committee. However, I think it's better to go Elevated than LRT. Congressional funding should be centered on making our light rail elevated. It's been done in most cities in the country that have chosen rail transit.

[ricco67]

Good thing Sheila's on the appropriations committee. However, I think it's better to go Elevated than LRT. Congressional funding should be centered on making our light rail elevated. It's been done in most cities in the country that have chosen rail transit.

You mean, you want the Light rail to be elevated, right?

I'm inclined to agree with you, but I think it should depend on the neighborhood and the situation. I don't think there is anything wrong with having street level. Ideally it would have it's own ROW, but they'd have to take a few homes and that would cost some serious political capital.

[musicman]

I'm inclined to agree with you, but I think it should depend on the neighborhood and the situation. I don't think there is anything wrong with having street level. Ideally it would have it's own ROW, but they'd have to take a few homes and that would cost some serious political capital.

We have not yet been introduced to rail in a REAL neighborhood yet. When you start talking street level, as NASA would say Houston, we have a problem.

[The Voice of University Oaks]

It will be interesting to see how Jackson-Lee and Al Green fare in their effort to get extra money so these four bus rapid transit corridors can actually be built as light rail, which is what we voted for in 2003. I imagine it would have to be directly through the means of earmarks - the Federal Transit Administration has already decided that at least two of these corridors (north and southeast) weren't going to be competitive as New Starts projects through their rating criteria, which is apparently the reason METRO went from light rail to BRT to begin with (and, to be fair to METRO, the FTA changed their criteria after the 2003 referendum).

It would be nice if they were successful in getting more money for thi system, because if these lines are constructed as currently planned (so-called "guided rapid transit" consisting of BRT that can one day be converted to light rail), we're going to stuck with a substandard system for years, if not decades, to come. This is because 1) the "GRT" corridors as they are currently being designed are going to be substandard transportation facilities in many respects, and 2) I honestly don't think the BRT-to-LRT conversion is going to take place anytime within the near future. Not five years, not ten years, maybe not twenty years. I'll expand on both of these points:

1. The GRT corridors as they are currently being designed are going to be substandard simply because METRO is indeed, as theNiche reported above, "cheaping out" on their design. I've seen the conceptual engineering drawings. It's as if they came up with construction budgets for these lines that turned out to be low, and now they're having to cut corners everywhere.

Case in point: grade separations. I think the North GRT line will be elevated over the BNSF tracks that run parallel to Crosstimbers. But of the four corridors, that, to my knowledge, is going to be the only significant grade separation. There will not be separations over any busy streets or intersections. The East End line won't even be separated over the UP tracks that run across Harrisburg! Apparently, METRO doesn't think that there is enough train traffic along that line to warrant a grade separation, a notion which strikes me as odd because a ) even a couple of mile-long freight trains per day are going to severely disrupt their planned six-minute-headway service schedule, and b ) there's no guarantee that the number of trains on that line won't increase in the future. It strikes me as odd that METRO wants to spend all this money to create an exclusive guideway, but can't put in an extra $20 million or so to grade-separate over this railroad so that the system will actually work reliably.

Another case in point: the diamond lanes downtown. The conceptual engineering drawings for the Southeast GRT line are here. Notice that the "line" consists of nothing more than diamond lanes along Capitol and Rusk Streets, which then meander down Delano and Paige Streets to McKinney Street, which then turn down York and Sampson Streets until those two streets merge to form Scott Street. The actual guideway portion of the line doesn't begin until the intersection of Scott Street and Polk Street - a good mile outside of downtown! They didn't want to buy up any of those vacant plots of land or industrial buildings between Capitol/Rusk and Scott to make a more direct line through that part of town, so they ended up with dog-legs on existing streets. This means that the buses will have to operate in mixed traffic (the diamond lanes are supposed to be reserved for right turns and buses, but we all know how well that law is observed downtown), with turns, traffic signals and all, all the way from Polk Street into downtown. And that impacts reliability; it takes the "rapid" right out of "guided rapid transit". Christof Speiler has a more detailed analysis of the diamond lane design. Yet they're still going to spend money to knock down everything along Scott Street and buy out all of the homes on the south side of Wheeler so that there will be enough right-of-way for a guideway from Polk to Palm Center. It's like they're only building half of a line!

2.There is some logic to building a "convertible" system: start with buses, but install the duct vaults for OCS and comm wiring underneath the guideway and embed railroad tracks in the pavement, so that conversion from BRT to LRT will be relatively easy to do once the time comes. But when will the time come? I honestly do not believe that it's going to happen anytime soon, regardless of how well these BRT corridors perform in terms of ridership.

To my knowledge, upgrades to these four corridors aren't included in METRO's near-term budget projections; they're just going to build them now as BRT and let somebody else handle the upgrade process later on, after the current mayor, city council and METRO administration are gone and new people have taken their place. What will their priorities be with regards to upgrading these facilities? What will the city's economic outlook be like in the future? What will the Federal Transit Administration's matching funds criteria be like in the future? There are, quite frankly, *no* guarantees that any of these corridors will be upgraded from bus rapid transit to light rail transit at all!

Here's a hint: when METRO finally purchases the sleek, "train-like" buses for these corridors, pay close attention to the expected operational life of those vehicles: that will give you an indication of how long we're going to have to wait, at a MINIMUM, for these four lines to become light rail.

Part of the problem is that METRO's decision to "cheap out" on these lines now will make conversion of these lines from bus to rail that much more difficult in the future. Like I said, initially buses are going to travel downtown in "diamond lanes" along the sides of Capitol and Rusk. That's fine for buses. Light rail, not so much; ideally, some sort of facility similar to the Main Street Line would need to be constructed (or, better yet, a subway, which would eliminate all the problems of at-grade operation but which would cost something like $300 million for 1.5 miles between Dowling and Bagby - METRO, to their credit, undertook a very detailed analysis of such a subway a couple of years ago and yes, subways can be built in Houston). Again, METRO is leaving the issue of an east-west rail line through downtown as something that somebody else is going to have to resolve (and fund) in the future.

Given all this, I firmly believe that if BRT is what gets built, its what we're going to be stuck with for a long, long time. And that doesn't even address the issue of the University corridor, which I'm increasingly becoming convinced is not going to be built anytime soon, or at least not as long as Culberson is in office. I cannot fathom that the Southwest Freeway - to - Westpark option that was included on the short list at Culberson's request will be rated as a competitive project by the FTA because it costs too much and generates too little ridership. But as long as Culberson is steadfast in his opposition to anything going down Richmond, I think the chances of anything getting built are somewhere between slim and none. Just because his party's no longer in power in Congress doesn't mean he no longer holds any influence over the funding decision; he's still the area's rep, and he still sits on the House Appropriations Committee. (I don't, however, think he is going to stand in the way of Jackson-Lee and Green's quest to get more money for the other lines.)

And there's no use in building the Uptown line if the University Line doesn't get built. It won't connect to anything.

Bottom line: If you're going to build transit, for cryin' out loud at least build good transit. METRO's not doing that right now. We'll see if Jackson-Lee, Green and KBH can find a way to help us out, lest we get stuck with a system that disappoints everyone.

[musicman]

It would be nice if they were successful in getting more money for thi system, because if these lines are constructed as currently planned (so-called "guided rapid transit" consisting of BRT that can one day be converted to light rail), we're going to stuck with a substandard system for years, if not decades, to come. This is because 1) the "GRT" corridors as they are currently being designed are going to be substandard transportation facilities in many respects, and 2) I honestly don't think the BRT-to-LRT conversion is going to take place anytime within the near future. Not five years, not ten years, maybe not twenty years. I'll expand on both of these points:

1. The GRT corridors as they are currently being designed are going to be substandard simply because METRO is indeed, as theNiche reported above, "cheaping out" on their design. I've seen the conceptual engineering drawings. It's as if they came up with construction budgets for these lines that turned out to be low, and now they're having to cut corners everywhere.

Not sure if they've even cut budgets. nothing progressive was ever planned.

Case in point: grade separations. I think the North GRT line will be elevated over the BNSF tracks that run parallel to Crosstimbers. But of the four corridors, that, to my knowledge, is going to be the only significant grade separation. There will not be separations over any busy streets or intersections. The East End line won't even be separated over the UP tracks that run across Harrisburg! Apparently, METRO doesn't think that there is enough train traffic along that line to warrant a grade separation, a notion which strikes me as odd because a ) even a couple of mile-long freight trains per day are going to severely disrupt their planned six-minute-headway service schedule, and b ) there's no guarantee that the number of trains on that line won't increase in the future. It strikes me as odd that METRO wants to spend all this money to create an exclusive guideway, but can't put in an extra $20 million or so to grade-separate over this railroad so that the system will actually work reliably.

Bingo

Another case in point: the diamond lanes downtown. The conceptual engineering drawings for the Southeast GRT line are here. Notice that the "line" consists of nothing more than diamond lanes along Capitol and Rusk Streets, which then meander down Delano and Paige Streets to McKinney Street, which then turn down York and Sampson Streets until those two streets merge to form Scott Street. The actual guideway portion of the line doesn't begin until the intersection of Scott Street and Polk Street - a good mile outside of downtown! They didn't want to buy up any of those vacant plots of land or industrial buildings between Capitol/Rusk and Scott to make a more direct line through that part of town, so they ended up with dog-legs on existing streets. This means that the buses will have to operate in mixed traffic (the diamond lanes are supposed to be reserved for right turns and buses, but we all know how well that law is observed downtown), with turns, traffic signals and all, all the way from Polk Street into downtown. And that impacts reliability; it takes the "rapid" right out of "guided rapid transit". Christof Speiler has a more detailed analysis of the diamond lane design. Yet they're still going to spend money to knock down everything along Scott Street and buy out all of the homes on the south side of Wheeler so that there will be enough right-of-way for a guideway from Polk to Palm Center. It's like they're only building half of a line!

Yet they continue to say Richmond will NOT be affected!

2.There is some logic to building a "convertible" system: start with buses, but install the duct vaults for OCS and comm wiring underneath the guideway and embed railroad tracks in the pavement, so that conversion from BRT to LRT will be relatively easy to do once the time comes. But when will the time come? I honestly do not believe that it's going to happen anytime soon, regardless of how well these BRT corridors perform in terms of ridership.

It wont be as easy to force ridership in "neighborhood" areas as it will be through downtown and the med center.

To my knowledge, upgrades to these four corridors aren't included in METRO's near-term budget projections; they're just going to build them now as BRT and let somebody else handle the upgrade process later on. What will their priorities be with regards to upgrading these facilities? What will the city's economic outlook be like in the future? What will the Federal Transit Administration's matching funds criteria be like in the future? There are, quite frankly, *no* guarantees that any of these corridors will be upgraded from bus rapid transit to light rail transit at all!

again, METRO's budget is being "stretched" out by doing the BRT instead of LRT. METRO is dong a poor job to meet even minimum criteria.

Here's a hint: when METRO finally purchases the sleek, "train-like" buses for these corridors, pay close attention to the expected operational life of those vehicles: that will give you an indication of how long we're going to have to wait, at a MINIMUM, for these four lines to become light rail.

Part of the problem is that METRO's decision to "cheap out" on these lines now will make conversion of these lines from bus to rail that much more difficult in the future. Like I said, initially buses are going to travel downtown in "diamond lanes" along the sides of Capitol and Rusk. That's fine for buses. Light rail, not so much; ideally, some sort of facility similar to the Main Street Line would need to be constructed (or, better yet, a subway, which would eliminate all the problems of at-grade operation but which would cost something like $300 million for 1.5 miles between Dowling and Bagby - METRO, to their credit, undertook a very detailed analysis of such a subway a couple of years ago and yes, subways can be built in Houston). Again, METRO is leaving the issue of an east-west rail line through downtown as something that somebody else is going to have to resolve (and fund) in the future.

Given all this, I firmly believe that if BRT is what gets built, its what we're going to be stuck with for a long, long time. And that doesn't even address the issue of the University corridor, which I'm increasingly becoming convinced is not going to be built anytime soon, or at least not as long as Culberson is in office. I cannot fathom that the Southwest Freeway - to - Westpark option that was included on the short list at Culberson's request will be rated as a competitive project by the FTA because it costs too much and generates too little ridership. But as long as Culberson is steadfast in his opposition to anything going down Richmond, I think the chances of anything getting built are somewhere between slim and none. Just because his party's no longer in power in Congress doesn't mean he no longer holds any influence over the funding decision; he's still the area's rep, and he still sits on the House Appropriations Committee. (I don't, however, think he is going to stand in the way of Jackson-Lee and Green's quest to get more money for the other lines.)

And there's no use in building the Uptown line if the University Line doesn't get built. It won't connect to anything.

Bottom line: If you're going to build transit, for cryin' out loud at least build good transit. METRO's not doing that right now. We'll see if Jackson-Lee, Green and KBH can find a way to help us out, lest we get stuck with a system that disappoints everyone.

[houstonfella]

It'll never happen!

If you think you can fly, then I believe this project can fly as well.

[IHB2]

We have not yet been introduced to rail in a REAL neighborhood yet. When you start talking street level, as NASA would say Houston, we have a problem.

that is absolutely true. the Red Line has provided no predictive data to analyze for the NE,SE, U Lines regarding traffic mobility, residential and/or business density vs. potential ridership b/c the Red Line exists in a 1 of a kind Houston space-Main St. all other lines passing through neighborhoods will have some problems, currently unknown, in common. it's obvious that grade separation would solve many of the problems, but only elevated is feasible on cost/mile, and elevating a rail through neighborhoods is a very serious environmental/quality of life issue that opens a new and more serious threat to the timely completion of the proposed routes.

I still believe METRO could accomplish whatever it wants to do if it were willing to eminent domain sufficient property along the lines to create a space wide enough for a fixed guideway (el or at grade) and same # or increased traffic lanes.

the key would be "an offer you can't refuse" - enough over market to entice every owner to sell. buying even hundreds of properties at inflated prices would still be more economical than adding miles or elevation to construction b/c of physical and/or political restraints.

[WesternGulf]

Congress members push light-rail funding

[tierwestah]

Congress members push light-rail funding

See my previous post. Post # 40. Article already posted.

[WesternGulf]

That's funny. I'm wondering why do they have it marked the 28th.

[tierwestah]

I was wondering the same thang!

[Scharpe St Guy]

Any word on Metro going with the Eastwood Transit Center route??? This past weekend a ton of work was done to the 45/Elgin underpass, would this be part of it?

Thanks,

Scharpe St Guy

[TheNiche]

Any word on Metro going with the Eastwood Transit Center route??? This past weekend a ton of work was done to the 45/Elgin underpass, would this be part of it?

Thanks,

Scharpe St Guy

Although interesting, the construction couldn't have been part of it just yet. The final decision won't even be released until March, and construction won't begin until August 2008.

[RedScare]

Eastwood TC is still in the running as one of 3 possible routes for the eastern portion of the U Line. As Niche said, the decision is due in March.

[Highway6]

Were the uptown route alternatives ever brought forth for public discussion? I don't think they were, but I don't remember.

I was browsing through the Uptown Alternatives Analysis Report from Feb 2004 and there were all kinds of numerous options thought up.

That alignment has always it seems just sorrta been off to the side set in stone while everyone discusses the other 4 line alignments.

How come that line was so much less public in the choosing of alignment ?

[musicman]

Were the uptown route alternatives ever brought forth for public discussion? I don't think they were, but I don't remember.

I was browsing through the Uptown Alternatives Analysis Report from Feb 2004 and there were all kinds of numerous options thought up.

That alignment has always it seems just sorrta been off to the side set in stone while everyone discusses the other 4 line alignments.

How come that line was so much less public in the choosing of alignment ?

there really aren't alternatives that would serve uptown

[Highway6]

there really aren't alternatives that would serve uptown

The Uptown Line... in the 2004 alignment assessment, they started out with over a dozen differnent ways to get from NWTC to Hilcroft TC before in the same document deciding what we currently see on the map would be the preferred alignment.

Some of the alignments suggestions:

South on Sage

West on 10 to cimney Rock, south from there.

In Old Katy to the RR track, down to post oak.

Staying on the Southbound feeder instead of elevating above 610 for a mile.

When was the Metro Solutions phase II plan voted on ?

It seems this one line's route was decided long before the other 4 lines and without all the hoopla and public scrutiny.