Texas highways more clogged, more costly

You know, every large city in American has rush hour in the morning and evening no matter how much mass transit they have. I think some mass transit proponents really think a better system would eliminate that and it's just not true.

I'm ALL FOR a better system than what we have. Hell, I HATE driving. But I have yet to hear a real solution. More light rail isn't going to help me get to work any faster.

Like I said earlier, I rode Metro for 4+ years but I've recently started driving again because a 2-hour trip from Allen Parkway to Kingwood every afternoon is just unacceptable when I can drive and be home in 40 minutes.

 

Maybe something similar to the DC area....Trains connecting the satellite cities / suburbs (Katy, Sugarland, Pearland, Woodlands, etc…) to a central location inside the loop and light rail for shorter trips inside the loop.

It will happen eventually with better technology. Just hope I’m around to see it.

 

Ok tell that to the med center, energy corridor, downtown, and galleria. They can all demolish and build suburb annexes

 

Still entirely downtown centric. While downtown is the largest business center, it is by far not the only one.

 

What I do not understand is why the government does not provide tax breaks for companies that allow X% of their employees to work remotely. While not all employees could do this, I think a significant number of people could. Hell, I don't understand why more businesses do not do it regardless of tax breaks because it will save them a crap load of money.

The technology exists today and is very, very functional.

 

I'm a big fan of building light rails connecting the following areas Galleria, Downtown, Med Center and Greenway. Then commuter trains going out to the burbs that drop off at the light rails. Then essentially you will have energy corridor, woodlands, etc. connected to the light rail system. Now the only problem is funding.

Living in Cypress and Working in the Galleria area really leaves me no options right now. I would gladly take a commuter train if it dropped off at light rail.

 

Service industry in the business centers would be very unhappy with you.

 

So what? If I am running a corporation, it is about the bottom line for my investors. Not the service industry.

If I'm in the government, you obviously have a delicate balance of who gets what. When a decision is made some win and some lose. Personally, I believe that incentivizing a remote working environment is better for the greater good than the negative that it will have on the service industry. Less cars on the street means less pollution and less maintenance. Less people in offices means less energy is being consumed. Etc. etc.

While the service industry may see a decline in the business centers there will most likely be new opportunities for the same working class closer to the remote user's homes.

 

All funneled through downtown.

 

I think da1 is borderline nuts on this topic but do you have a better idea of where to funnel a mass transit system other than downtown?

 

This article should come as no surprise to anyone who has studied US urban development. We have been in a spiral where cities develop and more people drive so we build more freeways. More freeways spreads the cities out so more people start driving from farther and then we build more freeways to meet that demand. Building freeways take a lot of land, much more than any other transit type, and as cities grow the land to build freeways gets more costly along with the construction costs. We have long since reached a point where it is virtually impossible to address the amount of congestion on the roads by building more freeways.

There isn't a single transit solution but a variety of solutions. Putting in rail helps but that is a limited solution as for rail to address congestion requires a major change in development. Mixing in bus rapid transit on existing freeway corridors is a cheaper way to provide transit but still has some drawbacks. Encouraging biking and walking also helps but with a city like Houston not much of the development supports that and in much of Houston it isn't safe or feasible to bike and walk much. The key is to find look at several different solutions while also focusing on long term changes in development.

 

For light rail, no, but that's kind of the point. If you have a bus based transit system you can easily reconfigure/repurpose them to serve wherever the business or population base needs.

 

You need a hub. Downtown is here to stay as a central location of business. If your concern is the eventual downfall of downtown as a business center than i can assure you that is not a good enough reason to not use downtown as a central hub.

 

That's not my concern. I guess I'm trying to figure out how building these really expensive rail lines that only go to downtown is going to help traffic to these other business and residential centers. Downtown has 150k workers according to the Wiki. Let's assume Houston has 1.5m workers. That's just 10%. How is it going to help if I live in Kingwood and work in the Woodlands?

 

Agreed. Commuter rails would only be part of the solution. Metro would then need re-allocate the majority of its resources to serve the intermediate and short routes. The rails would be for the purpose of longer commuting.

 

Then why not just implement a bus rapid transit system or something to go to downtown. You can even dedicate a lane to it since you would have to use up a lane for rail anyway. Wouldn't that be cheaper? You could easily ramp up and down the amount of buses through the day and repurpose them for different areas of town.

 

I'm not against dedicated lanes for rapid bus transit but Riding the bus for long commutes and still dealing with traffic is not a solution. We need to do something. The problem will only get worse not better.

 

If there are dedicated lanes going to downtown for it, you're not dealing with traffic. And for the other segments between outlying business/residential areas, if you use a bus then you're not dealing with traffic anymore than if you had a rail line that only went to downtown.