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As far as transportation...Houston will never catch up to Atlanta with LRT lines. Even Dallas, with all of it's new lines, has about 1/4 of Atlanta's daily ridership. LRT is fine, but it just usually doesn't have the capacity of heavy rail.
Especially considering that Houston has a much larger sq mileage then at Atlanta. I think the city has the resource and interest to eventually raise METRO to the level of Atlanta's LRT, but it will be a long time before that happens.
As far as transportation...Houston will never catch up to Atlanta with LRT lines. Even Dallas, with all of it's new lines, has about 1/4 of Atlanta's daily ridership. LRT is fine, but it just usually doesn't have the capacity of heavy rail.
But Houston's Metro has a higher daily ridership than Atlanta's MARTA, unless you were just specifically talking about rail being transportation.
Especially considering that Houston has a much larger sq mileage then at Atlanta. I think the city has the resource and interest to eventually raise METRO to the level of Atlanta's LRT, but it will be a long time before that happens.
That's the thing...Atlanta doesn't have LRT at the moment, but has heavy rail - MARTA. It carries many more passengers than the standard LRT systems.
I'm sure that Houston will expand it's system and it will eventually be a very nice addition to the city, and LRT is better than no rail transit...of course. Atlanta is planning LRT with the Beltline Project that will circle the city. It will be a nice alternative and will connect with MARTA, but I doubt that it will carry anywhere near the number of passenger that MARTA carries.
Especially considering that Houston has a much larger sq mileage then at Atlanta. I think the city has the resource and interest to eventually raise METRO to the level of Atlanta's LRT, but it will be a long time before that happens.
I read about Metro studying the feasibility of heavy rail from somewhere inside 610 to somewhere possibly in Ft. Bend, Pearland or Katy. Don't remember the specifics or whatever happened to the idea.
But there is no way that the Metro Rail alone can compete with the Marta train simply because it's Light rail vs. Heavy.
The Light Rail is the correct system to run inside the loop. However, it's the wrong system if you want to run it from Katy to Downtown. Heavy Rail will come to Houston but it is decades down the road.
I read about Metro studying the feasibility of heavy rail from somewhere inside 610 to somewhere possibly in Ft. Bend, Pearland or Katy. Don't remember the specifics or whatever happened to the idea.
But there is no way that the Metro Rail alone can compete with the Marta train simply because it's Light rail vs. Heavy.
Commuter rail. The city is really only using LRT for the city limits; heavy rail will most likely be used for the suburbs.
Is public transportation the only thing Atlanta is clearly better than Houston in?
Who are you asking...me? It's the only thing being discussed at the moment. We aren't ALL about constantly trying to make sure our city is in first place.
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