I do not know too much about Houston. But doesn't projects like these take years to get the full benefit of the system? Isn't one year too short a time frame to evaluate if the system is working or not?
I live in Washington, DC, and my tax money is going to fund Metro in Houston. Transit projects get huge amounts of federal funding (in the billions each year) while they fail to provide commensurate benefits to those costs in terms of consumer welfare (with the exception of New York City, and potentially BART and SF Muni, although they need to be scaled back immensely to provide net benefits). Lots of folks from San Antonio are paying for your Houston metro as well, since state taxes are another huge piece of the funding pie. Hopefully those suckers are all spurs fans. Look at some of the agency profiles in the national transit database (run by the FTA) and you'll be shocked at how much little money is recovered at the farebox, and how much funding comes from federal and state sources.
look at the city of Boston for the last 50 years. They've had rail transit for ~110 years now. Any sober evaluation of the net welfare generated by the T will leave you with huge losses in overall welfare. I hope you like inefficiently subsidizing Bostonians, because you are, and have been since the 60s.
Come back when your done spewing your misleading rhetoric. Sounds dramatic when you say it but too bad its a meaningless statement. The funds to run light rail came from the general operating fund and subsidized by selling land that Metro wasn't using. No taxes were raised and not one cent extra came out of your pocket. So no Mercedes for me, unfortunately. How much would you get if we never built Katy Freeway much less expanded it? We'd save how many billions? How many cars can that buy? What senseless argument!
I can't back it up, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying that more money is flowing from Houston to Washington than visa versa. But yes, transit projects, including the Katy Freeway expansion, gets federal funds. So what's your point? That money is budgeted to go towards rail transportation. If it didn't go to Houston Metro, in this case, it would have gone to another city...for rail. It wouldn't have been diverted to defense or even towards the Katy Freeway expansion. It was pegged for rail.
Regardless of where the money came from, these funds could have been used on the 99.4% of the Houston area that does not use Metrorail. Wouldn't it make sense to use money on the broader group? Future projects could have been financed by the proceeds from the land sales. These projects will likely need tax-payer financing, thereby nullifying your argument entirely. The game is zero-sum. BUT IT LOOKS COOL!
As opposed to all that Fed. money going to build things like the 610 loop that never leaves the Houston Metro area? I wonder why they call a freeway that goes around central Houston an Interstate? Federal funds get spent on all sorts of things and I myself wouldn't be that bothered it it was left up to the local municipalities to develop their own infrastructure I bet you would find transit and development patterns much different. What most people don't realize is that sprawl has been heavily subsidized by state, local and federal government. Where do you think the money came from to build the highway system to allow for auto transit? Not only that where did the money come up to expand the infrastructure grid out so far and so efficiently and even where the money came up to subsidize mortgages allowing people to move into suburbs. So whether its too build freeways, expand MUSA lines or build LRT its all being subsidized by taxpayer dollars.
Again, the meaningless rhetoric. But actually, the next rail segments will serve 99.4% of the population since the voter approved plan covers the entire Houston region. But you can conveniently overlook that if you like. But now lets put your rhetoric into context. Katy Freeway costs are now up to $2.67 BILLION. That only serves west Houston. So what's that? Maybe 30% of the population lives out there? The 2024 Transit plan we voted on costs 7.5 Billion. That serves ALL OF HOUSTON. (Mind you that this cost is not purely light rail. It also includes expanding HOV, buses, all of it.)
First off, let me start off by saying the expansion and/or challenges to an expansion of the light rail system have nothing to do with your political stances or views. Simply because someone thinks it's a waste of money doesn't make them a Republican and simply because someone is for it doesn't make them a Democrat, so stop trying to politicize something that really has nothing to do with politics. From the INDEPENDENT research that I've done on light rail systems it was easy for me to come to the conclusion that the costs outweight the benefits by ten-fold... but don't take my word for it, do your own research. I love how you call out "rhetoric" with rhetoric of your own. The Katy freeway expansion doesn't help JUST west Houston. Once completed it will be an avenue that allows more travelers to travel on it which will help ease traffic on all other avenues that also lead east and west such as 290, I-10, 610, Beltway 8, Highway 6, 1960, Westpark and others. Comparing the construction of an interstate with a light rail system is laughable because an interstate effects other states. While we do get some federal funding for light rail wouldn't the federal funding be bettered served in improvements that HELP non-Houstonians? Houston is a major avenue for southern travel and a huge shipping port that feeds all of America in some form or another. A light rail system plays no role in the delivery of goods from one part of the country to another, but our interstates are the backbone of our supply lines. The current light rail system is a joke when compared in a cost per citizen effected ratio. Like it or not Houston IS a suburb city and always has been and always will be. We could have built UP like other major cities but our citizens move here because they can have decent schools, good neighborhoods and buy a nice place to live at prices that rival anywhere else in America. Our city isn't going to change, people will continue to move outward as our population grows, and Houston will continue to annex the suburbs like they have Clear Lake and Kingwood in the past decade. The money spent on light rail would be utilized more if it helped improve our current roadways, because then we'd be maximizing the amount of people that are directly effected by the changes. The majority of the city funding for the light rail system comes from tax payers that will never step foot on it... meanwhile just about every Houstonian who can drive will access a freeway or road that will be effected by lessened traffic from the I-10 expansion. The success of the Hardy Toll Way, Beltway 8 and Westpark have shown that it is a system that works and the fact that they are tolled helps ease the costs of future expansions.
You have a very static view of Houston. When I grew up in the 80's in Houston I lived well within the 610 loop not too far from the Med Center. Then there were several large parcels of land undeveloped. When I last visited Houston two years ago all of those parcels were filled and there was a significant amount of new development within the 610 loop. So yes Houston does have a large suburban population but it also has and is growing a large urban population within the central city. Houston like Minneapolis I suspect is facing a situation where its getting prohibitively expensive to widen freeways and add the infrastructure needed for them within the central city. In places like that you can't build your way out and the only way to increase transit capacity is through transit. This is why LRT has gained so many adherents in even cities with medium and low densities like Minneapolis, Denver, Dallas and even Houston. As for the argument that we need to have freeways for shipping noone is proposing we tear down existing freeways and the central city isn't the right route to be shipping cargo through. Besides traffic congestion will slow down cargo shipments. What building more transit options will do though is shift people from roads to other transit freeing up roads for cargo shipping. As for looking at costs I agree that its not costs effective yet. The start of any major infrastructure system isn't going to be cost effective until it fully develops. Heck the first postwar suburbs weren't cost effective at all until infrastructure and cheap mortgages got enough population out there that they could sustain themselves. The LRT line is only the first step of a long process.
Just felt like quoting this. Yeah, the rail doesn't solve all of the sprawl problems like some are expecting, but it lays the groundwork to grow property values and to revitalize the central business district.
You cannot think of a better percentage than the one that you calculated? I doubt that anyone expected a lot of 1 year-olds to be jumping on the train. Or the rest of the population that generally stays home, or at leat in the neighborhood ... during the day. Or the people who don't work downtown and don't have that intense rush hour experience. BTW, how many people work downtown? 150,000? 180,000?
around 200,000 the last time I heard that stat, which was around 2000 when the new ballpark opened. see how it all comes back to baseball? and there's a train at the ballpark...and the ballpark is connected to an old train station...the ballpark is good...baseball is good...thus, metrorail is good.
The city of Houston has built something like 300,000 low density single family homes worth something like 3 trillion dollars. To think that any amount of mass transit could significantly change that pattern is ludicrous at this point. If the city didn't subsidize your silly little choo choo with tax dollars from the the homeowners you are trying to relocate, from the tax base you would devalue, your train ride would cost you about the cost of a new car every year. That being said, I'm fine with a mass transit system that serves the urban core, downtown and the Med Center where about 80,000 people work and travel back and forth each day and it should have some type of high speed connection to both airports; but you will never convince me that a 20 mph. surface trolly down the middle of the street was a good choice.
One other thing... Remember that just because Houston has light rail doesn't mean that our implimentation is a good one or the best possible one (even for the money). So, you could be for light rail in general but still against the way light rail has been implimented here. It's not a black and white issue.
Personal preferences aside, can anybody tell me what the true economic costs of sprawl are? Or if there are even unambiguously costs to it on net (and not benefits)? Because there are a lot of really really smart economists, urban planners, geographers and sociologists that have tried to answer this question, but nobody can unambiguously say that sprawl costs the average person in a city X dollars. So complaining about policies that subsidize sprawl is silly if you don't even know it's unambiguously costly (and we do know that there are some benefits associated with it) If you're worried about combatting sprawl, do it a smart way. What's the problem that transit is trying to solve? Is it to alleviate congestion? Because it hasn't been shown to do that very much, and there are more efficient ways to do that. Is it to reduce air pollution? In some cities, transit produces more pollution than it takes off the road. Besides, there are more efficient ways to do that. Is it to concentrate urban growth? Because there are more efficient ways to do that (if that's even a socially desireably outcome, which is unclear). Is it to give a transfer payment from wealthier citizens to poorer citizens? Because there are more efficient ways to do that. Give me a well developed subway system in New York City. Give me a few rail lines in San Francisco. And take the rest of the rail transit in this country that has cost far more than the consumer surplus it has generated, and forget about it. Let's help poorer people (which is all rail transit really does in most cities except the ones above) by cutting them a check or investing in early childhood education or something like that. Let's not transfer money to them in some weird tangential way that, frankly, sucks.
