METRO meeting June 18 regarding halting of transit expansion

Houston is Houston, it's not Chicago or New York. It's flat, wide open, unrestrained by geography or land costs. It sprawls in low density, it's fueled by high income energy jobs that revel in energy consumption and remain unaffected by other's recession. You might add another million people in and around the high density job nodes of downtown and the Med Center but that is still dwarfed by the decentralized nature of most of the jobs and housing.

 

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You'll have to forgive me for choosing personal comfort over saving money. I could save money by eating macaroni and cheese everyday, but I don't consider that living, nor do I consider public transportation worth the aggravation no matter how much money I would save.

 

Excuse me if I jump in but yes, even today single family homes are being torn down in favor of denser housing. All of those communities have publicly subsidized highways, but hey, who's keeping score?

It works both ways, Chicago has plenty of good public transportation, but it's cold as **** there. So, according to you, personal climate controlled transportation should make more sense up there too, right? Not a good argument.

Alrightie, agreed. But keep in mind that highways are social engineering as well, so you contradict yourself there by being in favor of highways as opposed to rail.

Well if you spend any time inside the loop you'll notice that Houston is changing, and traffic is getting worse. As we grow as a city we are going to need options, and even right now, buses aren't cutting it. Buses are important in a transportation system, but they are most effective on lower density routes, or feeding in to a core rail system.

We can't keep widening streets forever, streets like upper Westheimer, Shepard, Kirby, West Alabama, Richmond, etc. inside the loop are as wide as they are going to get. Houston is growing fast and it would be wise to invest in other transportation options.

 

Yeah that Ashby Highrise is going great guns. Meanwhile there are 100,000 acres of single family homes under active development.

You can always put on more clothes and generate heat by walking. But walk 1500 feet in a business suit tomorrow and see how comfortable you are in wet clothes all day.

I do but I actually find it easier now than back in the 80's. Why are you promoting higher densities in the loop again?

When I said social engineering I meant a mandated subsidized system intended to change the natural development pattern; not always a bad idea but in this case we are just talking about the distribution tax revenues.

 

For the record I am completely in favor of the Ashby Highrise and think it's a great development, but that's another discussion.

Having lived in Boston, I can tell you from experience that walking in a Boston winter isn't any better than walking in a Houston summer (just my opinion though).

I promote higher densities because I prefer to not have to get in a car and sit in traffic everywhere I go. I like to have options, and healthy, sustainable cities have a dense core to go along with good suburbs. I like both.

Well then highways fit that category exactly. You don't think car and oil companies had anything to do with tearing up rail lines and building highways all over the place? The primary reason Houston is the way it is is because entire neighborhoods were leveled to build subsidized highways all over the place.

 

Blah Blah.......................

 

I have interned in Houston and drove to work and now I am interning in NYC and take public transportation.

To me, hands down public transportation takes the cake. While yes, NY is adept to public transportation and Houston is not, no one can deny that if we want Houston to be considered a world-class city we need public transportation and it needs to be efficient. It will help clear some of the congestion that we see on the freeways, it will help bring more tourists to the city because they don't need to drive to get places, and will make us a better candidate in the future for world cup and olympic games. And many more reasons.

 

As has been stated.

Houston is DOING light rail. Folks like Dubius and Bigtexxx can argue the same tired arguments from last decade ...but the rail argument has already been had, been voted on and decided.

The outstanding question is how to fund it and put the finishing touches on some of the routes.

As an aside, Metro is moving forward in the planning stages for commuter rail to Sugarland.
http://transportationnation.org/2012/06/07/plans-move-ahead-for-houstons-new-commuter-rail-line/

 

Any improvement in public transportation in Houston is a good thing but...

it's a damn shame it has not been done right. Houston is a commuter city like almost nothing else. The system has to be designed for that reality to make any sort of tangible improvement IMHO.

Still, like I said...it's a start at least.

 

You can't start by builder commuter lines cause those only have a few stops. So it drops you off, say, downtown but you work in Greenway Plaza about 2 miles away. How do you get to other places since you don't have a car?

To that end, As I just stated in my previous post, Metro is now planning a commuter line towards Sugarland. They could have planned one towards Katy but Culbertson refused to accommodate Metro while expanding I10.

Build roads inside out.
Build rail inside out.

It doesn't make sense to start with commuter lines and leave people stranded at the train station.

 

The question in this thread is the distribution of the tax money, whether the supporting communities get their share or whether more goes to the street car.

I am all for a smart, efficient system that serves the high density nodes with high speeds and high volumes. But the tax is applied across the whole low density majority of the city. The people who pay the taxes need infrastructure that actually serves them too.

The street car is a slow, traffic conflicting, low volume, small impact alternative pushed on us by Mayor Bob and his real estate cronies. So that does make it painful to pay for.

 

Just thought I'd mention that today was the 3rd day in a row we had to guide our driver (Bus 18) through his route turn-by-turn.

That is all.

 

METRO's 1 cent sales tax was approved by voters. Therefore, they should get that 1 cent sales tax in its entirety. End of story. Was the General Mobility tax approved by voters?

All of the cities that pay METRO's tax have METRO service, so I'm not sure what you're trying to get at.

Huh? What street car? We are building light rail, which is faster than a bus, much much higher volume than a bus, and has a much larger impact and ridership than any bus route.

 

If your light rail has collisions with cars, you have a street car.

 

Why is a third loop being built out in nowhere instead of putting the money into fixing the bottleneck problems.
My opinion and many others... Rail >>> bus
Not what the original thread is about but turned into.

 

Uhhh so if a freight train has a collision with a car, it's called a street train?

You should enlighten yourself and look up the difference between light rail and a street car.

 

Scared American Caucasian?

 

having more trains is going to draw tourists, a world cup and the Olympic games? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Houston isn't NYC and shouldn't try to be it.