Houston: METRO wants your help reimagining your transit system!

Great post, but I feel like this is unrealistic. METRO needs to demonstrate that it isn't just shiny new toys for the city folk.

Extending the red line from Fannin South station down 90 into Missouri City would serve a current need and most certainly cut down on traffic. There was some genuine interest when this idea was proposed a couple of years ago.

You guys are right that Dallas did not develop their downtown transit and jumped the gun with the suburbs. They now face the issue of four lines converging into Downtown on a single track. They recognized this major issue back in 2007 and STILL have not been able to come up with a consensus.

We will not have the same issues as Dallas as we will have two unique rail corridors going through downtown, once the new lines are finished.

 

I love minorities. hate -- ain't nobody got time for that!

 

I agree that we are growing rapidly. But in order to have a good discussion I think we need to use the best information we have available to us. When someone like da1 starts pulling figures out of his ass it just causes confusion. He said the population of Houston may double in 10-15 which is something he clearly fabricated. The blog he provided a link to didn't even say that. If we are going to have a discussion let's use some legitimate figures. I did my best to provide some legitimate estimates.

 

Nothing you can build inside the loop will approach the influence of Beltway 8.
I'm not against encouraging higher density building in the urban core but the facts are the most jobs other than The Medical Center and the CBD are retail, warehouse/shipping and light manufacturing. There is a massive building boom for these growing along the Beltway.

Keep your little inner loop streetcar, but the reality of Houston is highway based. We are 550 square miles, headed to 1000. If you want to influence the quality of life here you should invest in electric cars, gas powered trucks, staggered work days and efficient highways.

 

I disagree entirely. The way to make this work is to put a slowdown on the sprawl. We DO NOT have the money for highways. Our government in Austin is primarily represented by people who aren't from cities. They dont give a damn about highways. Its evidenced by the fact that TxDOT is underfunded by five billion dollars. You will not get the money you need to build highways and even if you did, you're encouraging a never ending growth pattern that will not hold up.

You can't effectively provide city services to a city that spread out. You are paying out the ass for extra transportation networks in the form of roads in hgihways in order to quench our desire for cheap land and housing. You're billing the state for billions all because people in Houston want endless amounts of cheap land and housing.

That's not how you run a city or a state. Combine that with the fact that you have a Republican government in Texas that refuses to spend a dime on anything and you can see where this will go wrong. Your municipal governments are all running deficits on top of this to pay for all the excess infrastructure that this is producing.

Electric cars and changing work days wont do anything. You will run into problems and it will come soon thanks to our piss poor state government.

The choice is attempting to try and slow the suburban sprawl and increase density in the city or allow it to continue forever. Houston has to make a decision and letting the status quo continue is, in my opinion, the wrong decision. There is no successful world-class city that has ever followed Houston's growth pattern. In the long run it doesnt work. Hell look at Detroit today. Detroit is an extreme example but they too built a city solely on highways and suburban sprawl. Hell look at the tv ads for Detroit in the 60s and 70s. They literally bragged about their highway system and how it allowed commuters to come in and out of Downtown. Now Detroit's density has collapsed so much that the city can't even fund basic services anymore.

I dont think houston will ever become Detroit but I also don't think that Houston will have endless population growth and immigration. At a certain point, the city will hit a wall. And since we dont have zoning laws, re-orienting transportation priorities is all we have.