METRO meeting June 18 regarding halting of transit expansion

Houston is far behind the rest of the world in terms of transit infrastructure.

San Francisco
Chicago
Vancouver
Barcelona
Paris
etc...

...all have trains that connect the airport to downtown.

 

trollololololololo

not even good trolling, either

 

This thread seems like as good a place as any to talk about my Metro commute in this morning...

Today, Metro implemented a bunch of updated schedules for many of their routes. A lot of stop times are slightly altered. Kingwood buses leave every 8 minutes instead of every 7 minutes for instance.

In typical Metro fashion, they decided to rotate drivers on the same day as these changes took effect which, predictably, equals a complete cluster-****.

I got downtown and missed my local bus transfer because my PnR bus whizzed by my stop without so much as slowing down even though there were 20 people frantically hitting the 'stop' button.

So when I get on my local bus (after a 25 minute wait downtown thanks to the PnR driver), the guy goes down Walker like every other morning. Then he tries to go straight past Bagby and get onto I-45 north instead of turning left and catching Dallas.

We all jump up and tell the guy to turn left on Bagby before we end up on the freeway and he says "We're supposed to go down Dallas, right?" We say yes and he points to the sign for the 45 north ramp and says with a straight face "that sign says Dallas."

Uh....we're supposed to go down Dallas the STREET, not to Dallas the CITY...

He then proceeded to miss the entrance to our building complex and we have to jump up and correct him again. He ends up turning right on Waugh and taking the other entrance into our complex. Problem is, by doing that he is now driving his northbound route instead of his southbound route. He even picked up a guy waiting for the northbound bus.

I'm glad I got off when I did because that dude is probably still driving aimlessly around Houston as we speak.

True story.

 

I definitely wish Houston had gone more a long the lines of Atlanta's MARTA with the first phase of the rail, instead of the bus line replacement job they did to "showcase" the city for Super Bowl/Olympic bids.

True high speed transit (vs surface street 30 mph transit) from
IAH - Downtown (2 stops) - Walker - Museum District - Hermann/Rice/Med Center (1 stop) - South end of Medical Center - Reliant - Hobby
would be nice, or going for commuter rail lines (45 N, 45 S, 90/Fort Bend).

Everything they've done so far inside the loop is a service that was already taken care of by bus. Awfully expensive upgrade. They could have done so much more with "Express" buses getting into the mix like they've done on Bellaire.

I hope you Copy/Paste this post and send it in to Metro, if you haven't already.

 

Wow. Public transportation is a joke in Houston smh.

Agree with the above poster in that Atlanta's MARTA system is far superior to METRO's light rail. Not only that, but because they built that heavy rail line, they have roughly double the transit ridership Houston has.

Too bad they don't fund MARTA for ****, smh.

And too bad Houston voters were too shortsighted to approve a similar system in the early 80s.

 

Holy f***. That is hilarious.

 

Believe me, I have their complaint email address saved in my bookmarks. I report it every time there's a problem. And I'm not even the complaining type.

Every time they rotate drivers, we have to tell the local driver where to go. Should passengers really have to guide drivers through their own routes? "Okay, take a left here.....now here comes a stop." How can you not just laugh at that?

Metro has also been saying they're going to have a phone app with GPS so you can track your bus while you're waiting on it, etc. According to the chronicle, it was supposed to be rolled out in December 2011. Obviously still waiting on that to happen and/or the chronicle to call them out on it. Of course, that hasn't happened either.

Metro is seriously run by a bunch of idiots.

 

ridership wouldn't be there for a line to bush

waste of money

 

Care to backup that baseless comment with figures?

 

read Tory Gattis' Houston Strategies blog. He breaks it down for you

 

never heard of him

 

With limited stops there would be plenty of ridership.

Atlanta's MARTA has plenty of ridership to it's airport. In fact, MARTA as a public transportation agency has double the ridership METRO has, and that is solely due to the fact that they have a decent, if incomplete, heavy rail system.

The problem is that if there were lots of stops travel time to IAH would be high. But extending the North Line to IAH (with limited stops of course) would generate ridership for sure.

METRO knows this, and that's why extending the North Line to IAH (and the Southwest line to HOU) is in their long range plans.

 

lol I used to live in Atlanta

ask a local how much they like MARTA's rail...

nevermind their airport handles 3x the flights IAH does

your arguments are not compelling, but rather based on your puppy love for a train

 

I believe Metro cancelled their downtown/IAH service for lack of ridership.

 

exactly.

 

The first line wasn't built for a showcase. That was just a common thing rail haters would say about it. Blame Houston residents for voting down heavy rail back in the 70s and 80s. That's when Atlanta built their own. Heavy rail is expensive now and its not easy to start up a new system in America. Houston had and missed its chance for that (unless the Feds want to fund it). Blame politicians for blocking funding for Metro Rail, and stupid NIMBYs in Afton Oaks.

 

Atlanta has a busier airport, but most of that is connecting, so that wouldn't be shown on the rail. Curbside at ATL is a lot less busy than say, LAX.

Bad argument.

 

lol no connecting pax at IAH? Sounds like you've never traveled before

show me the O&D numbers for both airports. TIA