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For those asking for urban transit in the I-45 corridor, there is a light rail line literally walking distance from it to the east. METRO plans to extend that line a little bit to the north.
High-speed heavy rail transit going out to far suburban areas, a la BART (as opposed to light rail or commuter rail), is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN nor should it.
There is a vast swath of Houston that lies between the realm of "urban transit" and the "far out suburban areas" that we need to discuss. If it's still necessary to commute by car from Friendswood or the Woodlands, it probably shouldn't be from Spring Branch, Briar Forest, Pearland and the like.
Beyond even the close-in areas, why would at BART system not be a good idea? Houston already has a much larger metro area than San Francisco if I'm not mistaken. I like driving my car, but I would switch to a bus or rail in a heartbeat if the route was regular and reliable. No traffic jams, no risky maneuvers, more time to read and to listen to podcasts. I can save gas money, lower my car insurance premium and maybe even buy myself a nicer car with all that money saved, for when I DO need to drive. What's not to like about that?
No traffic jams, no risky maneuvers, more time to read and to listen to podcasts. I can save gas money, lower my car insurance premium and maybe even buy myself a nicer car with all that money saved, for when I DO need to drive. What's not to like about that?
You can do all that even better by working from home.
There is a vast swath of Houston that lies between the realm of "urban transit" and the "far out suburban areas" that we need to discuss. If it's still necessary to commute by car from Friendswood or the Woodlands, it probably shouldn't be from Spring Branch, Briar Forest, Pearland and the like.
Beyond even the close-in areas, why would at BART system not be a good idea? Houston already has a much larger metro area than San Francisco if I'm not mistaken. I like driving my car, but I would switch to a bus or rail in a heartbeat if the route was regular and reliable. No traffic jams, no risky maneuvers, more time to read and to listen to podcasts. I can save gas money, lower my car insurance premium and maybe even buy myself a nicer car with all that money saved, for when I DO need to drive. What's not to like about that?
For the kinds of service you describe, why couldn't that be provided by expansion and refinement of the P&R system (via MAX lanes), BRT, or a rubber-tired solution in between those? And if well done, the service could be comparable in quality with a BART or MARTA type of system. And would be much much cheaper. Even extending the existing LRT, expensive as it is, is generally much cheaper than a BART/MARTA heavy rail systems. Those systems had the luxury of being started when their development costs were relatively lower and when the feds were handing out big sums for local transportation (which shouldn't be happening at all for most any mode, but that's a whole 'nother issue).
You have to understand how insanely high the cost of constructing heavy rail is. To even consider it, you have to really, really need the incremental benefits of service it provides over other modes - and the magnitude of those increments may not really be that much - and also realize that due to the cost, you will get a lot less of it compared to equivalent spending on the other options.
Frankly, while I do think the region should be investing in certain types of transit options (BRT! Networked P&R!), the topmost priority should be on making our general environment more friendly to walking, biking, transit, etc. This means modifying streets to improve pedestrian safety, including in many instances slowing down vehicle traffic, adding / widening / fixing sidewalks, creating more safe crossings of streets, improving overall connectivity (ending the stupid practice of creating insanely long paths to destinations that are just short distances apart by not requiring public through connectors), not allowing excessive driveway cuts, allowing buildings to be constructed closer to the curb/sidewalk, revisiting and hopefully eliminating on-site parking requirements, etc. The lack of these things always limited the effectiveness of even BART and MARTA. And things like slowing down traffic and changing parking requirements are already politically controversial.
For the kinds of service you describe, why couldn't that be provided by expansion and refinement of the P&R system (via MAX lanes), BRT, or a rubber-tired solution in between those? And if well done, the service could be comparable in quality with a BART or MARTA type of system. And would be much much cheaper. Even extending the existing LRT, expensive as it is, is generally much cheaper than a BART/MARTA heavy rail systems. Those systems had the luxury of being started when their development costs were relatively lower and when the feds were handing out big sums for local transportation (which shouldn't be happening at all for most any mode, but that's a whole 'nother issue).
You have to understand how insanely high the cost of constructing heavy rail is. To even consider it, you have to really, really need the incremental benefits of service it provides over other modes - and the magnitude of those increments may not really be that much - and also realize that due to the cost, you will get a lot less of it compared to equivalent spending on the other options.
Frankly, while I do think the region should be investing in certain types of transit options (BRT! Networked P&R!), the topmost priority should be on making our general environment more friendly to walking, biking, transit, etc. This means modifying streets to improve pedestrian safety, including in many instances slowing down vehicle traffic, adding / widening / fixing sidewalks, creating more safe crossings of streets, improving overall connectivity (ending the stupid practice of creating insanely long paths to destinations that are just short distances apart by not requiring public through connectors), not allowing excessive driveway cuts, allowing buildings to be constructed closer to the curb/sidewalk, revisiting and hopefully eliminating on-site parking requirements, etc. The lack of these things always limited the effectiveness of even BART and MARTA. And things like slowing down traffic and changing parking requirements are already politically controversial.
I don't know enough about cost to say what would be most economical. I can't imagine that there are so many things we just "can't" do, given all of the industrial inventions and changes in the 20th century--most of them between 1920 and 1980. That's 60 years and we basically modernized the whole nation's infrastructure many times over. To think that now, in this century, we can do little more than add one lane to what was already built ages ago is troubling, at least as it applies to the idea of the scale of human progress. We all know that more public transit is going to be the way of the future, especially rail.
High-speed heavy rail transit going out to far suburban areas, a la BART (as opposed to light rail or commuter rail), is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN nor should it.
I prefer Chicago's Metra (which uses normal passenger rails and train stock) to the largely underground and subway-based BART. Much more economical and easier to build and expand using existing rail lines.
Condemning high-speed heavy commuter rail transit is pretty short-sighted! DeWitt Greer will always be infamous for believing that Houston would never expand beyond the 610 Loop, and then creating that 6-lane highway of Hell that created countless suffering for 3 decades.
The Astros victory parade was the test if Downtown Houston could handle 1,000,000 commuters/day. (Chicago's transportation system moves that same amount during both rush hours every weekday.) It's obvious that the infrastructure of parking garages and park-and-ride/light rail failed as only 100,000 were able to attend the parade.
The big secret: A train has more capacity than a single bus because each car is a bus that is hitched together to make a train. Also each train track is grade separated from road traffic, which ensures reliability.
I prefer Chicago's Metra (which uses normal passenger rails and train stock) to the largely underground and subway-based BART. Much more economical and easier to build and expand using existing rail lines.
Condemning high-speed heavy commuter rail transit is pretty short-sighted! DeWitt Greer will always be infamous for believing that Houston would never expand beyond the 610 Loop, and then creating that 6-lane highway of Hell that created countless suffering for 3 decades.
The Astros victory parade was the test if Downtown Houston could handle 1,000,000 commuters/day. (Chicago's transportation system moves that same amount during both rush hours every weekday.) It's obvious that the infrastructure of parking garages and park-and-ride/light rail failed as only 100,000 were able to attend the parade.
The big secret: A train has more capacity than a single bus because each car is a bus that is hitched together to make a train. Also each train track is grade separated from road traffic, which ensures reliability.
Commuter rail, while less expensive than BART-style heavy rail, is still pretty expensive to implement. But more to the point, given that it can't go into the center of the walkable destination areas without tunneling or elevated tracks, and that it normally doesn't offer more than 3 departures per hour (at least I'm not aware of any that do), how would that be an improvement over P&R? The station in say, Downtown would be quite far from most destinations, farther than people want to walk. Then you have the problem of getting everyone on buses or LRT to transfer them. And the busier P&R lines, pre-COVID, had departures every 5-10 minutes so you didn't have to time your schedule during peak hours.
I prefer Chicago's Metra (which uses normal passenger rails and train stock) to the largely underground and subway-based BART. Much more economical and easier to build and expand using existing rail lines.
Condemning high-speed heavy commuter rail transit is pretty short-sighted! DeWitt Greer will always be infamous for believing that Houston would never expand beyond the 610 Loop, and then creating that 6-lane highway of Hell that created countless suffering for 3 decades.
The Astros victory parade was the test if Downtown Houston could handle 1,000,000 commuters/day. (Chicago's transportation system moves that same amount during both rush hours every weekday.) It's obvious that the infrastructure of parking garages and park-and-ride/light rail failed as only 100,000 were able to attend the parade.
The big secret: A train has more capacity than a single bus because each car is a bus that is hitched together to make a train. Also each train track is grade separated from road traffic, which ensures reliability.
The rail companies that own the standard rail lines around, across, and through Houston will not share them. Any heavy rail will require new tracks, new right of way, etc.
There are many heavy rail grade crossings in Houston.
Commuter rail, while less expensive than BART-style heavy rail, is still pretty expensive to implement. But more to the point, given that it can't go into the center of the walkable destination areas without tunneling or elevated tracks, and that it normally doesn't offer more than 3 departures per hour (at least I'm not aware of any that do), how would that be an improvement over P&R? The station in say, Downtown would be quite far from most destinations, farther than people want to walk. Then you have the problem of getting everyone on buses or LRT to transfer them. And the busier P&R lines, pre-COVID, had departures every 5-10 minutes so you didn't have to time your schedule during peak hours.
There's still the "ick factor of buses" bias in most rider's minds. P&R and BRT doesn't have a clear path the entire way; it has to contend with shared facilities with other road traffic--mostly private cars and traffic lights--which creates delays and makes the timetable less reliable over the rest of the day.
Apparently Chicagoans don't complain about having to walk long distances from the train stations to their offices. They would also know which CTA bus to transfer if the destination is on the opposite side of The Loop or Near North Side. The eL is only a few blocks away and circles around Downtown Chicago.
Space is at a premium now with COVID's social distancing guidelines. The P&R service is still on a limited, peak rush-hour only schedule a year into COVID. It would be impossible to fit the same number of passengers pre-COVID into the limited bus departures while enforcing social distancing. Apparently P&R is running smoothly because many have given up on the bus and patronize the parking garages. With social distancing enforced, 5-car trains still carry more people than a single P&R bus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WRM20
The rail companies that own the standard rail lines around, across, and through Houston will not share them. Any heavy rail will require new tracks, new right of way, etc.
There are many heavy rail grade crossings in Houston.
Texas may have the most railroad miles in the U.S. but with the advent of post-war suburban sprawl and the Energy industry presence, the state has been largely anti-rail. (Also the reason LocalPlanner is partial to the rubber-tire, auto manufacturer, and petrol lobby.)
Illinois has made it public policy to make Amtrak and Metra service accessible, so the agencies have negotiated sharing tracks with the rail lines. Removing the railroad from the Westpark corridor to build the tollway was a big mistake since METRO was able to buy the tracks and could have shared the line to make revenue.
I don't know enough about cost to say what would be most economical. I can't imagine that there are so many things we just "can't" do, given all of the industrial inventions and changes in the 20th century--most of them between 1920 and 1980. That's 60 years and we basically modernized the whole nation's infrastructure many times over. To think that now, in this century, we can do little more than add one lane to what was already built ages ago is troubling, at least as it applies to the idea of the scale of human progress. We all know that more public transit is going to be the way of the future, especially rail.
The cost is pretty much the only factor I agree with on why it won’t happen. Outside of that, for efficiency, heavy rail is superior to light rail as it pertains to moving more people across the city and metro in increasingly dense areas.
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