Houston’s $7 billion solution to gridlock is more highways

[Northern Light]

May I add here, I just went on the Houston Metro (transit) website, and I can see why ridership is low........

Service is mediocre at best, even on the trains.

18-minutes between trains at 9pm at night?

By contrast, Kitchener, Ontario, an area maybe 1/7 the the size of Houston, just opened an LRT, and it runs every 15m at 9pm at night.

While in Houston, 2 out of 3 lines run peak service at every 12M.

Kitchener's LRT is 10M peak and midday service.

You can't run service that spaced out and draw ridership.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

May I add here, I just went on the Houston Metro (transit) website, and I can see why ridership is low........

Service is mediocre at best, even on the trains.

18-minutes between trains at 9pm at night?.

No one is surprised man. There are no forces such as age and geography to make Houston a traditionally urban city by default. Basically you're arguing with yourself.

By the way, those times in Ontario will probably become more spaced apart if warranted just as Houston's has. This stuff isn't rocket science.

[TowerSpotter]

I love Houston the way it is, its a hot mess and a lot of us are in love with it. Sure there are a few things that we should do better. If anything I would love to have a commuter train between Galveston, Houston, and Conroe. Where traffic can be pretty bad, hopefully we can get something like that before we take the spot for the 3rd largest city in the US. Here we come baby!

Pictures by Brijonmang on thehaif.

Houston Sunrise by brijonmang, on Flickr

Spring Sunset by brijonmang, on Flickr0

Pictures by Raul Cano

Main Street Square by Raul Cano, on Flickr

Texas Medical Center by Raul Cano, on Flickr

Houston Pano by Raul Cano, on Flickr

Main Street by Raul Cano, on Flickr

Pictures by John Stephen on flickr

waking up on katy freeway by John Stephen Chandler, on Flickr

I-10 freeway as sun goes down by John Stephen Chandler, on Flickr

blood red sunset over the Galleria by John Stephen Chandler, on Flickr

Sunrise over the Galleria pano by John Stephen Chandler, on Flickr

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by JManc

2) True for most places. I am here for economics. My wife's mother and my mother live here otherwise we'd consider our options. This is not unique to Houston or Texas. People that seek out a place and then move there are far and few between...because life gets in the way.

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

Problem is, a lot of the sentiment on this forum is basically "fuck you for having a life that doesn't fit into whatever reality I have set for myself and expect others to live up to"

Very true. Once you start making decisions based off of 'WE' things change. You can no longer be selfish once a spouse and children enter the picture.

Or how about once your parents begin to age and need some assistance? Or perhaps once you get to a ripe age, you decide to move closer to the grandkids?

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

You can't run service that spaced out and draw ridership.

You also can't create people out of thin air to board those trains running at 5 minute intervals.

You could run a train every single minute, the problem is there aren't any people at the platform to ride it.

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

You also can't create people out of thin air to board those trains running at 5 minute intervals.

You could run a train every single minute, the problem is there aren't any people at the platform to ride it.

The LRT just launched in Kitchener, and the service is attracting significant ridership.

Good service induces people to try; and to stay.

Crappy service keeps people from trying and turns people off when they do.

The entire point of having an LRT, or HRT is to move large volumes of people per hour. More than you could with buses in most cases.

If you're running service at an 18M headway, you could easily meet that demand with buses.

Chicken-Egg thing. If you want the service to attract ridership and be successful you have to make it desirable. Among other things, that means frequent.

[DePaul Bunyan]

Originally Posted by plutonicpanda

I agree with the job hours. I've long thought there could also be ways of reducing congestion without expansion that haven't been done.

Change job hours to let employees pick their own hours and off peak job hours where feasible. Encourage companies to allow more telecommuting. Things of that nature.

That's fine for some white collar/cubicle corporate jobs but the bulk of us have generally fixed hours for clients/customers/patients.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

The LRT just launched in Kitchener, and the service is attracting significant ridership.

Good service induces people to try; and to stay.

Crappy service keeps people from trying and turns people off when they do.

The entire point of having an LRT, or HRT is to move large volumes of people per hour. More than you could with buses in most cases.

If you're running service at an 18M headway, you could easily meet that demand with buses.

Chicken-Egg thing. If you want the service to attract ridership and be successful you have to make it desirable. Among other things, that means frequent.

This isn't Ontario. Stop bringing it up.

As for my homeless/ vagrant comment. I stand by it. When my wife is riding the train and the bum facing her is rubbing is crotch looking at her, that doesn't bode well folks wanting to continuing riding the LRT here. We've ridden subways/ transit systems all over the world and Houston's is one of the worst. We have a serious homeless problem along the main LRT route along downtown and midtown.

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by JManc

This isn't Ontario. Stop bringing it up.

As for my homeless/ vagrant comment. I stand by it. When my wife is riding the train and the bum facing her is rubbing is crotch looking at her, that doesn't bode well folks wanting to continuing riding the LRT here. We've ridden subways/ transit systems all over the world and Houston's is one of the worst. We have a serious homeless problem along the main LRT route along downtown and midtown.

I will bring up comparisons between Houston and other cities around the world .

This is SSP, a CANADIAN forum, based in British Columbia, discussing cities and their development around the world.

The idea that your city is immune from comparison is completely bizarre.

My remarks have been polite and on point.

I would appreciate if yours were the same.

****

Your view of the less fortunate is profoundly offensive and immoral.

If you wanted to have fewer folks down on their luck, maybe you should see to housing them, giving them healthcare and other supports.

You might also consider pushing for good transit, at closer to market pricing which would naturally shift the on-board demographic w/o the need to make yourself seem indifferent to the plight of your fellow human beings.

[JManc]

This THREAD is about Houston.

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by JManc

This THREAD is about Houston.

No, its not!

Its about a policy proposal for Houston to expand its freeway system, resulting n greater urban sprawl, greater poverty, and more pollution.

The presumption implicit in the proposal is that Houston's modal share for transit cannot be materially improved.

You have argued in favour of that position.

I have offered evidence that the necessary steps to achieve greater modal share for transit have not been taken, and therefore there is no basis on which to conclude that a transit-first approach to addressing Houston's traffic congestion would not be at least as effective if not more effective than the proposal now on the table.

I have not wandered away from transportation and related landuse as the focus of the discussion; and have brought up other cities only to illustrate what is possible and effective.

I don't know on what basis you would evaluate a proposal's utility or desirability in Houston (or any other City) without examining alternative options.

In the course of proposing specific solutions for Houston, which I did, I have encountered resistance from certain posters, yourself included, who argue 'x' can't be done.

I have countered by showing that yes it can, and has.

You are reduced to ' but its not Houston', 'but its not Houston' etc etc. as if this somehow established that the laws of physics and finance don't apply in Houston.

I'm content to go back to discussing specifics in Houston alone, so long as you agree that everything I'm saying is entirely possible and can be done; that you simply don't want to it to be done.

Which is fine. That's a preference. You can prefer the colour pink or the music of NSYNC or highway expansion in Houston if you wish, and you needn't have a good reason either.

Just don't belittle the rest of us that have faith that Houston can do better and achieve more by not complacently going back to the same old solutions which have never worked before, and won't this time either.

[dc_denizen]

I would think a modest expansion of lrt and even heavy rail would be something that Houston could easily afford. Say a galleria to downtown express line. See for example what Los Angeles has been able to build over the past twenty years

But as far as density goes, it’s immaterial really whether they build mass transit or not. Houston is densifying like crazy...I bet that the city could hit 7000 per square mile and still do fine without more rail.

[JManc]

Kitchener is such a different example in many ways; demographics, built environment and politics. Not too mention inertia. When it comes to transport and development, we are not a progressive city at all. I wish we were but it is what it is. At least for the near term. I've been here 20 years and Houston has dramatically changed just in the time I've been here but it's still going to take more time and it's still Texas we're talking about.

[mhays]

Adding frequency should be a relatively low cost vs. construction of a new line...staff, rolling stock, a larger home base, etc. There's no doubt that service let's say half again as often would help attract riders. It should also dilute the bum issue a little.

Attracting riders can happen through a great many actions, mostly incremental. Yes it's important to look at other cities and compare. Not just frequency...encouraging density near transit, reducing/eliminating parking requirements, enlisting (or requiring) large employers to encourage non-SOV trips, good bus service perpendicular to rail stations, not allowing new surface parking in urban neighborhoods...and not expanding roads. These are all done in other cities, and resultingly many have several time Houston's commute share.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

The LRT just launched in Kitchener, and the service is attracting significant ridership.

Good service induces people to try; and to stay.

It's brand new so it's not necessarily surprising that K-W is running it at high service levels, but we don't know yet if the long-term ridership is high enough to cover the expected fare recovery levels.

Calgary has one of the more successful light rail systems in North America (especially considering population) but recent economic pressures on tax revenue and stagnant ridership means that it has been forced to cut some non-peak service levels. 8PM+ and week-end frequencies will be reduced from 10 minutes to 15 or 16 minutes starting next month.

http://www.calgarytransit.com/news/fall-service-changes

[Cory]

Give me a break about Houston's rail frequency. When most people catch the rail, from sunrise to sunset, the rail runs about every 5-6 minutes on Monday through Friday. It drops drastically around 8:30 PM for obvious reasons. To act like this is abnormal is just fishing for a debate.

[Trae]

Originally Posted by Chicago3rd

Totally agree. First point, expense, I don't think we are measuring total cost of how things are actually have been costing us. But over all 100% agree.


P.S. Katy Freeway the widest freeway in the world was obsolete by the time they completed its improvements.

Yeah the Katy Freeway was a wreck during all daylight hours, 7 days a week before its expansion. Even during construction, they were saying it'll still be bad during rush hour but will at least flow during other times of the day. This has remained true 10+ years after its completion and all the growth that's happened in the west side of the metro. The Katy Freeway is an example of a freeway expansion done right, outside of a few things hear and there (rail should have been there instead of the tollway, more combined exits, etc.).

A lot of the Downtown freeway loop currently exists. There's removal and in the one place it'll expand greatly, there will be greenspace placed on top. The areas of Downtown and Midtown that are growing the most will now be connected. The elevated portions of 69 will be eliminated and connect the east side and other areas. Overall there will be better street improvements, more lighting, wider sidewalks, etc.

[JAYNYC]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

May I add here, I just went on the Houston Metro (transit) website, and I can see why ridership is low........

Service is mediocre at best, even on the trains.

18-minutes between trains at 9pm at night?

By contrast, Kitchener, Ontario, an area maybe 1/7 the the size of Houston, just opened an LRT, and it runs every 15m at 9pm at night.

While in Houston, 2 out of 3 lines run peak service at every 12M.

Kitchener's LRT is 10M peak and midday service.

You can't run service that spaced out and draw ridership.

It took you logging on to the Houston Metro website to figure out Houston's train service runs infrequently at night? Seriously??

IT'S HOUSTON.

It's a metro of 7 million people spread out over 10,000 square miles, circled by 3-4 major freeway loops and who knows how many freeways, interstates and major thoroughfares running throughout.

Aside from Los Angeles, no other U.S. city defines "car culture" than Houston. The majority of the city's residents drive. Few, if any, have ever used any form of mass transit, and few, if any, ever will. Not saying this is a good (or bad) thing. But, it's Houston - it is what it is!

Applying a bit of real world common sense might do you well.

[JAYNYC]

Originally Posted by Cory

Give me a break about Houston's rail frequency. When most people catch the rail, from sunrise to sunset, the rail runs about every 5-6 minutes on Monday through Friday. It drops drastically around 8:30 PM for obvious reasons. To act like this is abnormal is just fishing for a debate.

I lived there, and agree 100%. Houston - and Texas in general (Austin aside) - is a place people love to hate. Generally it's because of their own ignorance, or refusing to become properly informed, or because they view the city (and state) as an economic threat to their own.

[mhays]

It peaks at six minute frequencies. That's better than I thought. More is better, but six isn't bad.