Good plan...but the problem is that nobody will ride it that way. Very few people are going to drive to a park and ride...board a rail car...travel to somewhere they're not even going...and then board a bus. Most would rather sit in their car for an hour than transfer between modes of transport for an hour. We need a plan that is comprehensive and convenient to a good many people...otherwise it will prove to be a waste of money because nobody will ride it.
Be honest. Since it's been pointed out in this thread that politicians will totally contradict themselves with no shame, how many of you are starting to 'see the light' about light rail, especially since you had to sit in traffic last weekend for a few hours? Refman, I totally agree with you. Houston has needed a comprehensive rail system for years, i.e. similar to the 'El' trains in Chicago. As for how to pay for it, simple: - Stop expanding freeways - Ear-mark that money for rail - Propose a plan to use existing railroad tracks, if necessary - The only money that should be spent on existing freeways is for maintainence
I had always advocated rail in Houston, but what really opened my eyes was when I visited Chicago. Of course far more commuters go to Chicago's downtown than to Houston's---we seem to have a few "downtowns" (downtown proper, Galleria area, medical center, the corridor along 59)---but something can be worked out. I hate to say it, but riding Chicago's Metra from Arlington Park to downtown, I was thinking, So this is how a real city organizes itself. Not that Chicago doesn't have traffic, but it also has nearly twice Houston's metropolitan population.
I think that it would be good to put Monorails in those idiotic HOV lanes. They already on all the free ways. Rocket River
To everyone: Thanks, but no thanks on politics. I'd end up divorced and more hated than I am already. Pass. This, to me, was one of my big concerns as a taxpayer. The football stadium was part of the baseball stadium referendum in 1996 that passed by only one percent. Without that 1 percent, the Astros would be gone and we'd have never even heard of the Texans, so, on one hand, I'm glad it passed. However, unlike the ballpark and the arena, there were NO cost caps put on the football stadium because the referendum gave the newly-created Sports Authority discretion to bargain however it needed to with any potential NFL owner. As a result, McNair said he needed every ounce of flexibility possible to win the bid from the NFL. The funny thing is that, I used the new football stadium as one of my most effective arguments for the arena. I often told people that Bud Adams offered to pay $80 million towards a $180 million "retractible-roof stadium" (yup, it was Bud's idea) across 59 from where Minute Maid is now. He even suggested the Rockets could share the facility like the Alamodome. The Rockets wisely passed. However, Bob Lanier and others at the time laughed at Adams (this was 1994) and said he was nuts calling it the Bud Dome in a very mocking way. Even Drayton McLane said, "We don't need a new stadium." The county today is still paying off the $90 million renovation to the Astrodome! Of course, Bud left and Drayton whined that, yeah, in fact they DID need a new stadium and, oh, by the way, it needed to be downtown and, oh, could they have a retractible roof? What a novel concept everyone said. A retractible roof BASEBALL stadium? Now, that's interesting. So, we passed the referendum in 1996 and the ballpark had guaranteed cost limits and all because the Sports Authority, which was formed with passage of the referendum, was required to put limits on the ballpark. Not so of the football stadium, mainly because I don't think anyone thought we'd get another team. My argument for the arena was: would you rather do like we did with Bud and reject Les Alexander's portion of the new arena or take it and deal with it. The new football stadium is going to cost $450 million. McNair and the rodeo are covering something like $40 million of that. So, instead of $100 million for a stadium, the county and city are on the hook for $410 million. Bad deal. Refman: I understand it is a buttload of cash, but the expansion of 59 and I-10 are estimated at $6 BILLION. That is 2 roads, no rail. Putting in rail lines will reduce congestion. The argument has always been that no one would ride it. That was proven wrong in Dallas and I believe it will be proven wrong in Houston. One of the biggest arguments against Minute Maid Park was that "no one would go to downtown to see a ball game." Again, wrong. Times have changed. The light rail referendum in 2000 passed with 75 percent of the vote. This is the same voting public that rejected it 10 years earlier. Same thing with the arena except it was only a one-year turnaround - from 56 percent against to 65 percent for. Fact is, our community is changing. More people are moving in town. The pollution issue has become a significant one. We have gone from a primarily blue collar industrial town to a white collar technology town in under 20 years, so the people moving here are very different. I don't think there is any question we are going to need continued road improvements, but as one Ft. Bend County mayor told Tom DeLay when arguing for light rail, "you can only pour so much concrete before you run out of room."
Of course, we'll all be flying around on personal jetpacks before a comprehensive rail system could be built. Metro areas like Houston and Dallas are just so spread out that it's going to be a lot harder and more expensive to get a good rail system in place that people can use. I've got light rail coming to my city before the end of the year, but the nearest place I can get on will be over 8 miles away, and it will only take me as close as about 10 miles from where I need to be (and that city doesn't have bus service, so I would have to walk that final distance). For me, that's a completely unusable system. Now the trains will take me downtown and along the North Central Corridor (though apparently not on weekends or at night, so if I were working along that corridor and had to work late, I might be stranded downtown), so there's coverage to some major business districts (and the Trinity Railway Express connects downtown Dallas to downtown Fort Worth on traditional rail lines), but a significant portion of the Metroplex is simply outside the scope of the rail service and will be for some time. Does that mean that we shouldn't do it? I don't have the answer to that. So far, DART rail appears to be somewhat of a disappointment, but I don't think you can judge it yet since it's just now getting to the areas where it could make the biggest difference (because it's just now getting to the suburbs, which I think has the greatest promise for increasing overall ridership - at least from people giving up their cars - for people who work downtown or on North Central and live in Plano and don't want to brave the North Central or Tollway traffic (and having the LBJ/North Central interchange under construction and creating significant bottlenecks at the time the Plano rail stations will open may get people who wouldn't normally try rail to try it). We'll see how it all works out. I support the concept of light rail. It's the execution that we may be questioning.
