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All of you talking about public transit, riddle me this:
I live near Kirkwood and Briar Forest. My office is located at the Beltway and 290.
How would you design a public transportation system to get me to and from work?
My next-door neighbor works on Wayside between IH 10 and IH 610. How would you get him to and from work?
My neighbors across the street (good friends) work at IH 10 and Barker-Cypress, and Greenspoint, respectively. Oh, and their daughter attends school in River Oaks (divorce decree from prior marriage mandates that particular school). So the man (who works at IH10 and Barker-Cypress) gets up, gets his daughter ready, drives her to River Oaks, then BACK to Katy Fwy/Barker Cypress.
How would you arrange that on public transportation?
In all of these cases, we bought the houses when we had other arrangements; my house is about 5 minutes from my first place of employment in Houston (gee, wonder why I did that?), the couple across the street were married to other people, divorced, and married; her old office was about where mine was when she bought the house here (same deal, wonder why she did that) but her company moved to Greenspoint last year; he was married and they were "inside the loop", but divorce happened so now he's out here. His company also moved, from Beltway/Richmond (about 15 minutes from here) to Katy/Barker Cypress. Next door neighbor, same deal; his old employment was at Richmond/Wilcrest (10 minute drive), new job is all the way east. This is LIFE. Things happen. It's not like, in a crappy economy, we can all just sell the houses and move because our offices changed locations, or got bought out and consolidated, or (like me and next door neighbor) we managed to get newer, better jobs whose location was less convenient.
NOT EVERYBODY LIVES AND/OR WORKS INSIDE THE LOOP.
Houston is not built for public transportation. NYC is, as is Boston, Philadelphia, DC, etc. HOWEVER, if you get into the burbs in ANY of those cities, it's just like Houston---you've got people living in one area and working in another, and the freeways in those areas are completely jammed.
Big public mass transit only really works in a true-downtown situation, where everybody works downtown.
(Oh, by the way, it takes me about 20-25 minutes tops in the car. I'm unwilling--yes, that's what I said, unwilling--to spend hours on public transport. When I lived in NYC, I could go to the subway stop, change trains once, and arrive within a block of my destination--and it took 20 minutes portal to portal.)
While I would love to have usable public transport, it's got a lot of issues. How do you build enough light rail lines (cheapest method) to cover a metro area that is, per wikipedia, slightly larger than the State of New Jersey, and slightly smaller than the State of Massachusetts?
Oh, and one more thing: The toll roads here are GREAT!!! Do I enjoy my paying my EZ Tag account? Um, no. Do I enjoy having the roads? YES.
I lived in Arkansas for 15 years. If you utter the words "Toll Road" there, they literally freak out. "That's the function of government, to provide us with roads!!!" Yes, it is---but you have a pay-as-you-go system, you refuse to raise taxes to pay for roads, your legislature (like Texas') raids the gasoline tax that is SUPPOSED to be paying for roads to pay for unfunded mandates, and so it takes DECADES for any new roads to be built. And again, there is no public transportation because it is impractical (and would cost billions WHICH you don't have because the state budget is bad enough---again like Texas'---that you're cutting schools and prisons and police to try to stay in budget.).
So, the roads there are crap.
I'd rather just pay the damn toll and let HCTRA build more of them. Put in the Hempstead Toll Road and the Telephone Toll Road. Extend the ones we have. Keep the Beltway up, and add lanes if necessary. The toll roads are GREAT.
You lose more money driving on toll roads because of the cost of fuel and the additional cost of wear and tear on your vehicle--both of which would be covered by the very low public transit fare.
Except the "very low public transit fare" doesn't cover even 20% of the actual cost of public transit operating expenses.
All of you talking about public transit, riddle me this:
I live near Kirkwood and Briar Forest. My office is located at the Beltway and 290.
How would you design a public transportation system to get me to and from work?
Well, it would be not entirely like designing a highway system. There might be a shuttle bus involved though.
I'd like to clarify that I don't ever see EVERYONE using public transit and that some will still drive. But if the people who worked downtown or in some other central area took it, (I figure a transit system here should be focused around a "triangle" of sorts with the points being downtown, TMC and the Energy Corridor, with some routes branching off from there) then maybe we won't be needing to rebuild the Katy Freeway every 10-15 years for billions of dollars each round.
The "NYC is built for transit, Houston isn't" argument is a red herring. They had a lot of challenges there too. Technically the NYC metro covers a significant portion of three states, and the five boroughs are technically on four different land masses (the Bronx on the mainland, Manhattan on its own island, Staten on another, Queens/Brooklyn on Long Island). Here it's really a matter of what you want to truly call "the metro" when any boundary you put is truly arbitrary. We don't need a commuter line from Houston to Sweeny, way down in far southern Brazoria County, but one to Sugar Land surely seems logical. Hope that makes at least a bit of sense.
Anyway, shifting to this topic wasn't really my intent, but someone picked it up and ran with it and asked a question. I answered.
Well, it would be not entirely like designing a highway system. There might be a shuttle bus involved though.
I'd like to clarify that I don't ever see EVERYONE using public transit and that some will still drive. But if the people who worked downtown or in some other central area took it, (I figure a transit system here should be focused around a "triangle" of sorts with the points being downtown, TMC and the Energy Corridor, with some routes branching off from there) then maybe we won't be needing to rebuild the Katy Freeway every 10-15 years for billions of dollars each round.
The "NYC is built for transit, Houston isn't" argument is a red herring. They had a lot of challenges there too. Technically the NYC metro covers a significant portion of three states, and the five boroughs are technically on four different land masses (the Bronx on the mainland, Manhattan on its own island, Staten on another, Queens/Brooklyn on Long Island). Here it's really a matter of what you want to truly call "the metro" when any boundary you put is truly arbitrary. We don't need a commuter line from Houston to Sweeny, way down in far southern Brazoria County, but one to Sugar Land surely seems logical. Hope that makes at least a bit of sense.
Anyway, shifting to this topic wasn't really my intent, but someone picked it up and ran with it and asked a question. I answered.
Wasn't my intention to hijack the thread, either, I just got carried away.
I do think rail is the answer; you need commuter rail going to Katy, Sugar Land, The Woodlands, Kingswood, and Galveston (with stops and shuttles along the way); also agree with your triangle approach, with high-speed "express' trains between those three points (like the Shuttle between Times Square and Grand Central).
But you're still going to have to rebuild the freeways every few years. There are a LOT of people who are not going to be able to use public transportation, and I don't really think that'll change any decade soon (even if gas goes to $7 a gallon, although if it does, I'm going to argue with my boss that I can work from home).
The "NYC is built for transit, Houston isn't" argument is a red herring. They had a lot of challenges there too. Technically the NYC metro covers a significant portion of three states, and the five boroughs are technically on four different land masses (the Bronx on the mainland, Manhattan on its own island, Staten on another, Queens/Brooklyn on Long Island).
The first borough to get subway lines - in the mid-19th century - was Manhattan. Population density then? 35,000/sq mile. Houston's current population density? About 4,000/sq mile. The city of Houston's population density is actually lower than most of the suburbs outside New York City. Given that mass transit economics (i.e. the amount of government subsidy) depends on high population densities (passengers per route mile - the lower the density, the higher the subsidy, for a given fare rate per mile), it's hard to see how mass transit makes any kind of sense, given that Houston now has a population density 1/10 of Queens and Brooklyn, and 1/20 that of Manhattan.
There are a LOT of people who are not going to be able to use public transportation, and I don't really think that'll change any decade soon (even if gas goes to $7 a gallon, although if it does, I'm going to argue with my boss that I can work from home).
If gas goes to $7 a gallon, you're merely going to see a lot more sub-compacts on the roads, not significantly fewer cars. Mass transit is extremely time-inefficient, even in densely populated Europe and Asia. This survey highlights the inefficiency:
Quote:
The Japanese spend more time commuting than either other East Asians, Europeans and especially North Americans. Americans and Canadians seem to live closest [in a temporal rather than geographical sense] to their working place or school: One out of four North Americans commutes as little as ten minutes or less in one way, and for two thirds it takes less than 30 minutes. Only 24% of North American commuters are underway for more than 30 minutes and only 8% for more than one hour. Also a majority of Europeans lives within 30 minutes of their working space or school. The number of commuters traveling between 30 and 60 minutes, however, is with 33% higher than in North America. On the other hand, very few Europeans (6%) are commuting for more than one hour. Also, the percentage of people walking to work or school is much lower in Japan (7%) than in either East Asia (18%), North America (17%) and Europe (15%).
This is why Houstonians have shorter commute times than New Yorkers, despite being far more spread out geographically than New Yorkers.
^Those statistics sound like bunk to me, at least as far as major metropolitan areas go. Japan is highly urbanized while there is much more wide open space with small towns in the middle of nowhere.
Anyway, since we're talking about public subsidy, riddle me this - before the interstates were built, the streetcar systems in America were mostly private enterprises that operated like any business would. This is unsustainable now because of government subsidies, direct or indirect (this could go as far as including wars fought overseas in bids to preserve access to the cheap oil on which our whole infrastructure depends). Now we are saying we oppose mass transit because it has to be subsidized? I hope I'm not the only person who spots the irony of this.
I've got an idea here: how about we sell the rights to all the highways to private interests, use the proceeds to build inter-city high speed rail and local rail infrastructure, then privatize it. You pay tolls on all the highways and fares on the rail systems. Nothing's subsidized anymore. Let's say regular unleaded costs $7/gallon then, and that density around major employment centers has increased fourfold. (The last two scenarios are not that theoretical; the former is guaranteed sooner or later and the latter is a logical progression from the first.) Now, which one wins out? There are people who will give up convenience to save a buck, whether out of will or necessity. Not everyone can afford what they want.
DiverTodd62, it's not just major rebuilds. The freeway system is constantly under reconstruction. The Gulf Freeway has had construction on one stretch or another since it opened ~60 years ago. Is this to mean you support using that much money just to shave a few minutes off some people's commutes? Or is it because you benefit from it?
We've gone completely off the reservation, but the OP amounted to a consumer complaint anyway. What are we supposed to say?
I've got an idea here: how about we sell the rights to all the highways to private interests, use the proceeds to build inter-city high speed rail and local rail infrastructure, then privatize it. You pay tolls on all the highways and fares on the rail systems. Nothing's subsidized anymore. Let's say regular unleaded costs $7/gallon then, and that density around major employment centers has increased fourfold. (The last two scenarios are not that theoretical; the former is guaranteed sooner or later and the latter is a logical progression from the first.) Now, which one wins out? There are people who will give up convenience to save a buck, whether out of will or necessity. Not everyone can afford what they want.
DiverTodd62, it's not just major rebuilds. The freeway system is constantly under reconstruction. The Gulf Freeway has had construction on one stretch or another since it opened ~60 years ago. Is this to mean you support using that much money just to shave a few minutes off some people's commutes? Or is it because you benefit from it?
Hey, you're the one who said "every 10-15 years for billions of dollars each round". Maintenance and resurfacing doesn't take billions of dollars so clearly you were referring to major rebuilds. Fact is, the Katy was built in the 60's and the major rebuild last decade was the one and only project approaching billions of dollars. Stop fear mongering. We won't be rebuilding the Katy 10 or 15 years from now.
Are you jumping to the Gulf Freeway now because you painted yourself into a corner on the Katy Freeway? If I blow your argument on the Gulf out of the water will you just shift to the Southwest Freeway? No thanks.
As for privatizing the highways, we better get back the full cost it took to build them. And if we're gonna pay highway tolls then I want the 50 cent a gallon gasoline tax rescinded. And remember if the rails are privatized then that fare is gonna be 5 to 10 times higher than it is now. Not that you can even build extensive rail coverage for what you would get from the highways. Now do the cost comparison.
Didn't they do a bunch of work on the Katy ca. 1995 or so or am I just imagining that? I do know more about the Gulf Freeway because that's going to where I grew up. And yes, it's basically getting the Katy treatment from around Bay Area Boulevard to League City, and sooner or later they're going to have to fix that bottleneck around Dixie Farm Road. Highways are constantly being rebuilt because they generally get built to handle current capacity, when more will be required since shaving a few minutes off a commute in one direction leads to more development that way and eventually more traffic.
Before you start your victory dance in the endzone because you scored a point on me, try to think about how much maintenance goes into the freeways. Are you happy with the fact that $3 billion was spent to rebuild a freeway that had nothing wrong with it other than being a little slow?
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