How can anybody in Houston not support expanding metro rail to the whole city? (Missouri City: hotels, neighborhoods)

[marksmu]

The problem with mass transit in a spread out city like Houston is summed up succinctly in this quote from a metro poll: "that most people support transit because they hope someone else will take it and relieve the congestion they experience"

Hopefully someone else will use it so I don't have too. Problem is - nobody will, so we flush good money down the sewer...money that could have been used on flood mitigation, the badly needed police officer shortage, some of our pension under-funding, etc, etc, etc.

[Vicman]

I doubt that everyone has that mindset; I want the mass transit because I want to use it.

• I want to be less dependent on my cars
• I want to be able to exercise and have a healthier existence
• I want rail to both airports so I don't have to park or take a limo
• I want to make my fellow citizens happier
• I want to reduce DWIs; allowing public transport for drunks makes it safer for drivers

Originally Posted by marksmu

The problem with mass transit in a spread out city like Houston is summed up succinctly in this quote from a metro poll: "that most people support transit because they hope someone else will take it and relieve the congestion they experience"

Hopefully someone else will use it so I don't have too. Problem is - nobody will, so we flush good money down the sewer...money that could have been used on flood mitigation, the badly needed police officer shortage, some of our pension under-funding, etc, etc, etc.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by marksmu

The problem with mass transit in a spread out city like Houston is summed up succinctly in this quote from a metro poll: "that most people support transit because they hope someone else will take it and relieve the congestion they experience"

Makes sense to me,
a lot of people would gladly move close a rail so they don't have to have car payments, insurance, registration, etc, etc.

[Clothahump]

Originally Posted by Texyn

Bwahahahahahaha, you anti-rail people don't have a clue.

We native Houstonians have all the clues, bro. For example, we understand that rail doesn't work here because we don't have the population density to support it. We also understand that grade level rail in this city is moronic - we've got years of it screwing up traffic as a result.

[Augiec]

I think the biggest issue with rail in this town is the fact we've kinda painted ourselves into a corner with the urban & suburban sprawl problem here. Having lived in Boston, I know their rail system, as imperfect as it is, worked reasonably well because they were covering a small amount of land. Trying to make one that addresses Houston's needs would be daunting, to say the least.

[madrone2k]

I wish we had started off with grade-separated rail mass transit back in the 80s, when it would have been cheaper to implement it. But, stop! I'm not saying this from a car-transit vs. mass-transit perspective. What I mean is that I fear that our grade-level light rail may be the worst of all possible solutions. We should have paid to do it right, or not at all. I hope that at-grade light rail will eventually work out, but it doesn't seem to so far.

[Texyn]

Originally Posted by Clothahump

We native Houstonians have all the clues, bro. For example, we understand that rail doesn't work here because we don't have the population density to support it. We also understand that grade level rail in this city is moronic - we've got years of it screwing up traffic as a result.

Bwahahahahaha, you still don't have a clue, sweetheart. The points in bold have been debunked, handedly. Just do a simple Google search, and you'll see.

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by Texyn

Bwahahahahaha, you still don't have a clue, sweetheart. The points in bold have been debunked, handedly. Just do a simple Google search, and you'll see.

Well, the new rail lines all went to low-density areas (only UH could be considered a high-density origin/destination) and they have consequently low ridership. Was it right for METRO to spend so much money essentially betting on a higher-density future in these corridors, when funds could have been spent providing other kinds of needed transit improvements and in larger quantities, to address needs the city has right now?

[Vicman]

Originally Posted by LocalPlanner

Well, the new rail lines all went to low-density areas (only UH could be considered a high-density origin/destination) and they have consequently low ridership. Was it right for METRO to spend so much money essentially betting on a higher-density future in these corridors, when funds could have been spent providing other kinds of needed transit improvements and in larger quantities, to address needs the city has right now?

While I doubt the Northside has the population density of Gulfton, the mostly Hispanic areas to the north have a fair number of people. East End should have a healthy number of people too. The density around Palm Center is lower, though.

Part of the issue is that the feds aren't giving what they should to METRORail partly because of the actions of our own politicians (Culberson).

[memph]

I'm pretty familiar with Canadian rail transit systems which are generally well used. A Canadian govt/transit agency would probably only seriously consider building heavy rail or light rail from Downtown Houston to Medical Centre and from Downtown Houston to Uptown Houston and maybe a bit beyond to Gulfton or Westchase.

Despite most of Calgary's light rail transit users living in places that look like this, Calgary's light rail transit system is more efficient than any in US system

image from: Calgary Will Continue to Sprawl | Calgary Herald

IMO the biggest reason for this is that Calgary's downtown is the same size as Houston's, despite Houston having 5x more people in its metro area. So that means that a typical Houston neighbourhood would have to be 5x denser than a typical Calgary neighbourhood to have the same amount of residents working downtown.

With so much of the workforce headed to the same place, Calgary is able to get great stats with just 5 light rail lines. Having that high density of downtown workers also allows you to house your downtown workers in a pretty small area so it doesn't take too long to transport them downtown, about 30 min to travel 10 miles from the outer suburbs. But Houston's outer suburbs are 20-30 miles out so that means 60-90 minutes with the same rail technology.

With Houston, you have much more decentralized employment which means travel patterns are spread out pretty evenly across hundreds of arterials and highways. If Houston's busy bus routes have 4,000 users per day, and light rail can handle 50,000, but the increase in service quality will only increase transit usage along that corridor to 6,000-7,000, it would be better to just do various less expensive upgrades to dozens of bus routes that will boost usage by 10-20%.

Houston is a bit more like the Toronto suburb of Mississauga which is now starting to move ahead with a light rail line along a suburban arterial, but only after having built hundreds of highrises along it (ie much denser than suburban Calgary). Because most Mississauga residents work in scattered suburban office parks, industrial parks and malls.

Commuter rail might work sorta ok if you have conveniently located rights of way that allow you to build it at low cost. Toronto is more comparable for that - most Toronto suburbanites drive to work in the suburbs, but out of those that work downtown, about 75% take commuter rail. Because Toronto's suburbs aren't as dense as the city, and only a small chunk of the residents work downtown, each commuter rail station needs to be able to pull in users from a large geographic area. Hence the 2000+ car parking lots around each station. The plus side is that the trains don't need to stop too often and have a chance to gain speed, so they'll travel double the distance in the same time as the Calgary light rail.

So yeah, for the time being I think a lot of the progress will have to be just encourage growth, not just residential but employment too in the loop and beefing up bus service to accommodate that.

Most Canadian light rail projects aren't taking a build-it-and-they-will come approach (Calgary's an exception). Ottawa, Mississauga, Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal... those are all upgrading very busy bus corridors that have 20,000+ passengers per day and buses every 5 minutes during peak hours and every 10 minutes off peak. They've been building ridership over time, increasing density, connectivity to the rest of the network, adding express buses, etc before upgrading to light rail.