I don't understand this paragraph. I guess they're saying adding more buses to the fleet isn't even a possibility?
I ride the bus downtown Monday thru Friday, for $3.75 one way from my P&R. I love the P&R system for the amount of time it saves me from traffic, gas saved, wear and tear on my car, and $0 for parking. Theres also a bus every 5 minutes during peak time Very thankful that I have the luxury of having this system.
I never stepped foot on a Metro bus for the first 13 years I lived in Houston. Recently, my job moved from Westchase to downtown, and I love taking the bus every day. Doesn't take much more time and I can just read or think or nap. I can see how it definitely favors downtown though since previously I've worked in Greenway and Westchase and have really only had the option to drive. So yeah, ridership would decrease as jobs popup in other places. Also, I think the Metro website is not all that easy to use. The Trip Planner feature doesn't work very well so getting started was a bit difficult. If you have security concerns, Park & Ride buses are a lot nicer though more expensive. The $1.25 for city buses is super-cheap, but I've seen an oddball or two; nothing that bad though.
The interesting thing is that the entire P&R system only gets about 38,000 riders a day. That's why some say that a commuter rail system wouldn't really be cost efficient simply based upon the riders against the cost ($3 billion). Whereas the 7.5 mile line which cost $900 million gets about 40,000 riders a day. I think if greenway and the galleria actually connect to the system that should boost ridership quite a bit as well, since those are employment centers as well. Ideally, we'd have connections after that to IAH (via Greenspoint), Hobby, Westchase, and Energy Corridor. With that, 7 employment centers would be covered and that is opens up a huge new possible ridership, with rail to the employment centers + P&R to the suburbs.
As more business districts (i.e. Energy Corridor, Westchase) pop up, the tougher it is to keep the current bus style P&R system running as it is with Downtown as the central transit hub. There r other hubs (i.e. NW Transit Center on 610 / I-10) , but they re not efficient. The best solution would be rail, but this definently will not be the best cost solution And yeah, the local bus is sketchy
If the commuter rail were to intersect with every major business district in Greater Houston, and there were several intersecting hubs/stations, then there will be plenty of ridership. But geez, for them to start now it would take years. Houston has the economy to support this NOW. but who knows about the future
