https://www.click2houston.com/news/...y-ellis-others-to-address-txdot-i-45-lawsuit/ As opposed to really progressing on alternative modes of transportation. Harris County is suing TxDot over plans to expand 145 through housing projects Clayton Homes. A couple of things. Lina Hidalgo looks much better with her hair being longer. The residents of the housing projects are lucky they aren't in private homes. That area would be gentrified by now. So I don't think that's a good reason for the lawsuit I do think Houston needs to look at other ways of addressing its traffic issues. We need more investment in public transportation
From the perspective of a Canadian, I think Harris County does invest in public transport but very few people use them. Looking at the Metro budget, even pre-pandemic the fare recovery to transit operating expense ratio is <10%. A reasonably successful Canadian transit service is more in the 40-45% range. Until Houston (and many other cities in the US) get that ratio higher, you'll just be throwing good money after bad.
Yeah, there's a combination of factors here, an obvious one is the summer heat, standing out for 15 minutes for a bus, walking 5-10 minutes to your destination is just a hard no unless you want to show up looking like you just finished a marathon. Then there's the poor American city planning/designs, the vast vast majority of this country was built for cars, not for people.
Houston is very spread out making public transportation difficult. Inner city/older Houston is very well planned and public transportation is convenient. Houston's oil field economy makes public transportation difficult for those jobs. You can't catch a bus to a refinery and the businesses that build the parts for the oil field and refineries are all in remote areas. One thing Houston and Metro could try to do is try to get in areas like Katy in Sugarland. The problem is a lot of those residents don't want public transportation bringing in people they feel will bring those areas down
This is a major problem with not just Houston but many cities. Transit problems cannot be solved by just widening or building more roads. As urban areas get more valuable it get's prohibitively more expensive to add another lane. Also as I said in the "Infrastructure" thread. The amount of hard surface in Houston is a huge problem and why Houston is seeing so many flooding problems. Stormwater remediation in terms of detention ponds, drainage and underground storage can only do so much and like the roads themselves those cost money and take up space.
You've been lurking here for many years. Your post here and the in the thread about the power grid are very informative. Glad to have you providing your input. Have you been to Houston? If you haven't, it huge, not just population. Its the epitome of urban sprawl. Dallas is also very big but it has much better planning which is very ironic because it has much more suburban areas that are not Dallas but surrounding municipalities. Houston is improving on this front, a positive result of gentrification. However in the 70s and 80s vast swaths of inner city areas were underdeveloped as people moved far away from downtown Houston
Pipelines and modern rail are expensive. I don't think you can build something with the kind of steel you need for mass transit projects for less than $2 - 3 million per mile. Separately it's obviously changed now, but when I was at undergrad with no car in the late '90s, even young people were just racist about riding the local Metro.
NYC maybe the only city where public transportation isn't stigmatized. Public transportation in Houston may always practically be an additional method of transportation to having a car The rail is great for medical center employees as parking is expensive. Other than the nurses living near the area most of those people drive to an area to catch the train The traffic through downtown in rush hours are people driving through downtown. They really need their car. Public transportation in Houston can be used more but it takes effort
You men the busses and the downtown tour rail ride? People who work in the oil fields (most of which aren't even around here) don't live in Houston. They live close to the oil field. People who work in the refineries for the most part live by them....in areas that aren't 'Houston'. We need public transit. No one in Katy or Sugarland or Clear Lake would give two Fs about rifraff coming in on a train. They come in via car anyway. I disagree that inner city Houston is well planned for mass transit. We need an elevated train system, period.
I'm not talking about guys on rigs, I'm talking about oil field manufacturing jobs and refineries There is also an explosion of warehouse jobs related to the port in places like Katy and Baytown. Katy in particular actively solicits these companies to locate there. There needs to be some kind of public transit connection to these areas
Katy is growing so big it needs its own mass transit authority but that will probably never happen. Spring is the same way and so is CyFair, pretty much every Houston suburb. CyFair is the third largest Texas school district
Is it frustrating for you watching the freeways receive endless funding when you can't even get the money for a decent bike lane?
Back when I was working on the issues of transit and land use planning one of the biggest things emphasize for good public transit was regional planning. I don't know if the Houston Area has a regional planning authority or even some sort of organization that would allow cities and counties to work together on addressing transit development.
