Metro has apparently lost hope that Houston drivers will stop hitting their trains without changes: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/071504_local_railsafe.html
Houston DOES have the dumbest drivers... plain and simple. This thing is serving as a weed-out process to expose all the drivers who probably have no clue about traffic signs, rules, yielding, signal turns, etc. Its honestly amazing how many people who own a car, and a license, and do not possess the responsible instincts neccssary to operate a vehicle. But, on a brighter note, the rate of accidents has decreased dramatically... and I doubt this has anything to do with Metro's new safety initiatives... its just that people are now aware of this train and are deciding to FOLLOW THE LAW. Wow... what an amazing concept to help stop accidents... follow the law.
I have always said putting a train in the middle of street traffic was a bad idea, but for the life of me I didn't forsee the absolute comedy of mishaps we are having. There are probably 1000 cities in the world with trolleys and I don't think any of them have 50 traffic accidents a year. Houston Proud baby! My point was, if you are going to start from scratch, not from a system that has evolved up from the 19th century like the existing older cities, why would you use a surface train. Hell I rode a monorail at the Texas State Fair in 1963.
The way Houston’s rail is laid out is stupid. I’m surprised that we have only had 50 accidents. If you drive downtown a lot you know what to look for, but if you’re a first time visitor, there are times when your on the rail and you don’t realize it. Most cites do a better job separating the motorists from the rails. There are some cities that transport a very high volume of passengers by rail, while traveling through high density areas. In these cities you know exactly where the rails are, and even if you wanted to hit the train you couldn’t. What these cities have done is to place the rails either on the edge of a popular areas, or arrived at the high traffic areas by going under or over most of the traffic. Obviously, we can’t go under the ground, but why didn’t we go over like Chicago has done? Why didn’t we fence both sides of the rail once we got close to the terminals? I think we are going to have a lot more accidents until the rail comity makes some serious changes. One of the changes that they are going to have to make is to place more short fences on both sides of the rail. They are also going to have to add color to the fences, which will make them less aesthetically appealing, but will grab the motorist attention. They will also have to put up more signs.
It's not something that exists in isolation, dickey, it's a (highly, highly imperfect) first step towards a comprehensive, rail-intensive mass transit system that, hopefully, generations hence will use to get around. Could a better first step have been taken? Sure, twenty years ago. Existing rail lines along 45 N and S, Westpark, what's now the Hardy Toll Road, etc. could have been used for mass transit. Many, many arguments against such schemes were sumbitted at the time, and I fervently hope each such argument is reviewed carefully by every motorist who finds him or herself with time to spare whilst parked on the West Loop or the Katy Freeway during any given day.
