Houston's long-term future is bleak without serious mass transit and efforts to lure young professionals (West: neighborhoods, school)

[coog78]

Originally Posted by Zhang Fei

It's backwards and conservative to oppose your reaching into my wallet via the political process? That's a head scratcher. You don't see me going around proposing things that benefit me at your expense. I guess theft is your definition of forward-thinking and liberal.

I don't have kids and pay school district tax. What's your point Moderator cut: personal attack ?

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by wazmoot

DiverTodd62, you make excellent points and I commend you for that. I'm not here to get into a flaming match. Admittedly, I am a bit biased because I absolutely love rail! I've been on the light rail systems in Portland and the heavy rail systems in NYC and loved both. It stimulates my right brain or something.

Regarding your "thought experiment": The answer is no, most infrastructure will not quadruple if the population quadruples...that's the inherent advantage of densification. The same can't be said for outward growth (aka, urban sprawl). Am I going to pull web links, attach graphs or spreadsheets? Nope. Not for a freakin' message board. I'll leave that to you.

But I seem to remember you referencing TAMU in some previous post. TAMU has a great organization called TTI (texas transportation institute) that do plenty of these types of studies. I believe their findings show both the bad economics of Houston's light rail as well as the need for alternative modes of transportation.

I'm not sure how you can say infrastructure, regardless of density, wouldn't have to keep pace with population. If the number of kids quadruples, the number of classroom seats must quadruple. We don't operate schools in shifts. If x amount of megawatts electricity must be generated, then when population quadruples 4x megawatts must be generated.

You're not going to pull facts and references because they don't support your rhetoric. And I linked to the TAMU site that provides those TTI studies.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by jfre81

Well, sure - that is, if every city in America had the same population and the same percentages of transportation methods (car, train, bus, bike, jetpack, what-have-you), the same amount of non-transportation-related pollution sources (like, say, oil refineries) and the same socioeconomic structure that would create a common baseline for the ability of people to pay for the expensive gas. So if every city was identical to Houston, then yes, I'd expect the same effect everywhere. But no, Houston would be compared with cities like NYC, DC or San Francisco where the use of public transit was as widespread before $4/gal gas as after and aren't adjacent to the largest petrochemical complex in the country.

Few cities have the amount of refining pollution as we have so reductions in driving would result in a sharper decrease in their pollution. The point is not that everyone would have the exact same percentage reduction but the trend would be across the board. Do you have any data to support that? Do you have any data for anything at all, or are you just winging it?

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by Angel713

What's the Main Street Light Rail Line? Don't you mean Red Line?

(I'm just tired of people calling it the Main St. Rail Line, when it is really called the Red Line; Metro opponents like to say "its called the Main St. Line but it doesn't even run on Main Street!!")

Main Street is how Metro themselves originally referred to it during planning and construction. Red Line didn't come into widespread usage until later in order to make people think it was just one segment of a large system rather than the only segment. (If there is a Red Line then there must be a Blue Line and a Green Line, right?)

I refer to it as Main Street for the purposes of communication and understanding. Only those familiar with the issue or Metro would know where the Red Line is. Most everyone, even if they have never boarded a bus or train, know where Main Street is. Even you knew exactly what I was talking about.

Metro opponents like to refer to it as the Toy Train or the Choo Choo.

[oceangaia]

Well it's pretty apparent that none of you rail advocates care to debate the issue based on hard facts and references. The sad truth is you couldn't care less about the facts, you have simple been smitten with a Desire Named Streetcar.

[wazmoot]

DiverTodd62, Moderator cut: personal attack need hard facts and references? Refer to DiverTodd62's threads on the city-data forum titled "Houston's long-term future is bleak without serious mass transit and efforts to lure young professionals".

If it were as obvious as you make it sound, why does every major city of any repute thoughout the world create mass transit systems and plan their cities with a dense central core? The anecdotal evidence is there.

[oceangaia]

Here's another drawback of reliance on public transit.

It's day three of a strike by about 2,200 public transit employees in Ottawa, with no talks planned to end the walkout.

[Spade]

So Divertodd, what should Houston do to address the infrastructure of Houston? How should Houston handle what will be a mobility problem in the near future by just focusing on what aspect of transportation. You asked if Houston is increasing in density. Well the proof is in the pudding. The loop is 97 sq miles with a population of 530,000 and increasing each year. With the population increasing, the density increases.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by Spade

So Divertodd, what should Houston do to address the infrastructure of Houston? How should Houston handle what will be a mobility problem in the near future by just focusing on what aspect of transportation. You asked if Houston is increasing in density. Well the proof is in the pudding. The loop is 97 sq miles with a population of 530,000 and increasing each year. With the population increasing, the density increases.

So you're confining the discussion to "inside the loop"? I thought the preferred concept was "regional" planning.

The area of growth is constantly expanding and even city limits expand with annexation so a rising population does not necessarily indicate a rising density. Back to Metro's 2007 Annual Report, near the end is a chart of Demographic Statistics for the last 10 years, showing regional population rising from 3.9 million in 1998 to 4.8 million in 2007. (Don't like the numbers, argue with Metro.) That's a 2% growth rate. At that rate it'll take 70 years to reach 20 million, 40 years to reach 10 million.

Also of interest in that report is a table at the end showing Operating Statistics over the last 5 years. In 2003 they had 1447 buses, in 2007 they had 1211.

[jfre81]

Originally Posted by DiverTodd62

Do you have any data to support that? Do you have any data for anything at all, or are you just winging it?

Well, I did say it could very well be a coincidence, or not. Maybe an interesting thing for A&M to research?