Wow these accidents just never stop... In other news I was astounded as I was filling my vehicle up with gas on Sunday afternoon at the corner of Main and McGowen. The MetroRail was moving down Main street, and a bus was driving down Travis. The bus must have been going 10-15 miles per hour faster than the train and easily passed the train. Put a stop light overrider on the bus and you have a more efficient rapid transit system for a tiny fraction of the cost of rail... Houston appears on track for 40 crashes in first year Rail collisions worrisome By LUCAS WALL Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Take a tour: Explore Houston's new light rail system. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Metro police said Quyen Lu was northbound on Main Street when he attempted an illegal left turn onto McGowen Street about 2:35 p.m. Tuesday. His Toyota Previa was broadsided by a southbound train carrying about 50 passengers. Kristine Nguyen, left, who was riding the train for the first time, saw the collision and stayed to translate for the van's driver, Quyen Lu, right. Lu said he saw a green light and didn't notice two "no left turn" signs at the intersection or the approaching train. Lu received a citation for making an illegal turn, which has a fine of $205 when a collision is involved. A minivan turned head-on into a MetroRail train Tuesday in Midtown in the 10th collision since the city's light rail line began test runs in late October. Metropolitan Transit Authority police said Quyen Lu was northbound on Main Street when he attempted an illegal left turn onto McGowen Street about 2:35 p.m. His Toyota Previa was broadsided by a southbound train carrying about 50 passengers. Lu and his sister, a passenger in the minivan, were shaken but not injured. Lu, through a translator, said he saw a green light and didn't notice the two "no left turn" signs posted at the intersection nor the 98,000-pound train that was traveling about 20 mph as it approached McGowen Station. Thorne Dobbins was sitting in the train's front seat immediately behind the driver's compartment. Dobbins said he heard the driver scream "Oh no!" as Lu turned across the railroad tracks. "He put on the brakes," Dobbins said of the train's driver. Lu "just stopped in the middle of the track." Velmarine Szabo, waiting on the platform for the train to pull into McGowen Station, said it appeared Lu panicked and braked on the track instead of continuing to accelerate through his turn. Metro police Capt. Tim Kelly said Lu received a citation for making an illegal turn, which carries a fine of $205 when a collision is involved. His minivan was crunched on the passenger side and had to be towed from the scene. The train suffered some scrapes to its front cover. It continued on its journey about 20 minutes after the impact. No one on the train was hurt.
When you guys come up with a story about someone crashing into a train that DIDN'T break the law in order to do it, maybe we'll listen. In the meantime, I'm grateful to light rail for exposing these people for the idiots they are.
I wish I could remeber where I read it, but I read a Super Bowl article written by some New England journalist, and he was amused by Houston's light-rail accidents like he would be amused by the reaction giving all ancient Romans a car would generate. People here just aren't used to dealing with having a train share the road with them. It is second nature to people who are used to living with mass-trainsit systems like those in the Northeast.
Do they share the roads with the rail in the Northeast? Even here in Dallas, we don't have the same number of car/train accidents as Houston. But we don't so much share the roads with the trains. The trains have their own space, not even close to the road for the bulk of the line. I just know that, in New York, I would think it would be difficult to hit a train with your car.
I am in favor of rail and will continue to support it as a viable option for mass transportation, but, something has got to change. There has to be some way to make turning left over the tracks virtually impossible. The only problem is that this would hinder any intersecting traffic from crossing the tracks. If only people could read the damn street signs. I think anyone with a thought process can figure out that a crossed out arrow pointing left would mean that you can't turn left. Maybe it's just me. One rule of thumb, though, would be always look before you cross a train track.
I was kind of neutral on the Metrorail, but lately I kinda like the way it looks and I'm going to try and ride it sometime. Otherwise - so people in Houston drive poorly, and if there's a new object near the road then chances are good that some genius will figure out a way to hit, or be hit, by it. Doesn't seem like a big deal. But I'm not intimate with all the arguments for and against it. I just like the way it looks, I can't say whether it's practical or not - and I don't care to have an opinion on it otherwise.
I wonder how many accidents it will save in a year, accidents by people who rode the LRT who would have otherwise been driving? I bet it’s more than 40. Calgary has a population of 1 million and Calgary Transit has an annual ridership of about 80 million, a significant percentage of whom commute to work downtown daily and ride the LRT. I bet that the LRT prevents significantly more than 40 accidents per year in Calgary, never mind Houston which is 4 times the size. http://www.calgarytransit.com/html/annual_ridership.html (Note on the stats: there was a strike in 2001 which had a significant effect on ridership that year.)
Will someone, ANYONE, please tell me why it is more advantageous for a train to go down Main street rather than a far cheaper bus which does the very same thing? Can anyone do this? The "it looks cool" answer is unacceptable.
Busses, not alcohol and spicy foods, cause acid reflux and GERD. Light rail is safer for your gastro-intestinal system.
two words: rail bias. people who won't ride buses will ride rail. if the idea is to move MORE people...MORE people will ride rail. it's been shown time and time again.
Pathetic and ridiculous. MORE people...MORE people could move if we had a bus in that lane and more transportation dollars that could go towards improving the congestion which the other 99% of Houston transportation faces. It has been shown time and time again.
call it whatever you want...but if people won't ride the buses, but will ride the rail, i think that speaks for itself. and, again, that is just a social truth. it's very hard to get affluent people to ride buses...but they will ride rail. and that's evidenced, at least in part, by the growth of retail centers along rail lines in other cities like dallas. i don't disagree with you that it's a disproportionate amount of money being spent on one area...but that wasn't the question you posed.
why did we build this thing again? thats what i was thinking as i was sitting there at a stoplight watching it make a test run, blazing down the street at well...a whopping 15 mph?
You have abandoned your orginal point. Now you are just arguing to try to save face. "I think that speaks for itself" is your way of saying "I have lost this argument and can provide no useful facts, so I must camouflage my lack of information by trying to make a false claim and hoping it won't be attacked." You have moved away from your original point, which I have proven to be false. Just so you remember, your original point was that MORE people could move with rail in that center lane than with bus. Obviously this could not be further from the truth. Less than 1% of Houstonians utilize this rail. Darn near 100% of Houstonians utilize roads. More people can move if we invest money in optimizing roads. This is a very very simple concept. Remind me again, who is more likely to use public transportation? The affluent people you cite, or inner city dwellers with limited access to automobiles? Again you are off target. Remind me again... do retail centers not develop alongside roads? Saying that they will develop alongside rail lines and citing that as evidence implies that these same centers will not develop along side roads. I don't know about you, but I seen an *abundance* of retail centers that have developed alongside roads. Darn near 100% of them have. Again you are wrong. Put bluntly, there are simply no reasons why a train makes sense in Houston. None. What the program represents is a massive income redistribution to the less than 1% of Houstonians who will step on these trains. The rest of us foot the bill for something we will never use *regularly*, if at all.
The first few tentative steps toward reliable public transportation are the most difficult, but public transportation is *essential* to Houston's future. If you can't see that, then you haven't driven on Houston freeways, seen demographic forecasts or considered how disgusting the air will become when another few million cars are sitting in traffic.
The main criteria for a city is to have personality. I would say Houston lacks one altogether. There are no traits that are uniquely Houstonian. Instead of creating their own identity, they are falling into the trap of borrowing bits and pieces from other cities. The entire downtown rennovation is a good idea, but Houston will never have a thriving city center. You cannot create an epicenter after the fact. Another fallacy is the ridiculous light rail system. One of the fundamental tenets of light rail is that it must connect the people to transportation hubs, such as airports. Instead of building high-speed track out to the airports (which is a little unrealistic given the massive sprawl), they built a toy train that runs from the Astrodome to the Med Center while hitting cars in between. Personally, I think the better route for Houston is to develop more Rice Village style communities throughout the city. This will alleviate the need for everyone to commute downtown in order to eat, go out, etc. Not only does this reduce traffic, but it gives the different locales a chance to be unique. Back to the main topic, light rail is good if you live in the Astrodome and work in the Medical Center. Otherwise the folks outside the loop (3/4 of the population) will have no use for it, and will still pack the freeways in the mornings. Hopefully in the future, we can have some kind of elevated rail that links the suburbs with downtown, Med Center, Greenway, and the airport. Ideally it would be similar to the Beltway.
A bus is a form of public transportation. I agree that public transportation is essential to Houston's future (and also it's present). If we were to create more bus lanes and allow them to override traffic lights at times, this would be a far better solution than spending BILLIONS on these trains. We need to overcome the rail bias by somehow making the Metro's bus service more attractive or by jazzing up the busstops or something. Maybe just a marketing campaign would do it. And I also found it interesting that Metro abandoned it's pitch that the Main street line would create a reduction of emissions along the corridor. Their research proved otherwise.
for being a guy in finance and banking, you sure are supremely short-sighted We already have massive amounts of roads and the bus lines are being expanded as well, building more roads and putting more buses on these same roads isn't a solution as the last 100 years of Houston's history clearly can attest to!!!! how do you think we got into this mess in the first place? by short-sight people like you who thought building more roads is the answer. I find it midly amusing that you b**** about this mythical 1% (but never site a source) that are draining the rest of our resources when a different 1% recieved unfair tax cuts over the rest of Americans and you are fine with that....class-warfare indeed
