Intermodality

In my last post, I mentioned that METRO has settled on a Downtown alignment for the East End and Southeast Lines. Here’s what I learned from a recent meeting with METRO staff.

This is one of the most important segments of the whole system. It will be a major transfer location between those two lines and the Main Street Line, serving, for exmaple, riders headed from the East End to the Medical Center. It will also be a major transfer area for local buses. And it will serve parts of Downtown that are currently a fairly long walk from rail.

But this is also one of the trickiest parts of the system. Downtown has a complicated traffic flow pattern, frequent loading docks and garage entrances, and unhappy memories of METRO street and rail construction 5 years ago.

And thus this alignment is a compromise in many ways. I doubt anyone is really happy with it. But it seems to be something that the relevant interests — downtown businesses and landowners, the METRO operations department, Houston Public Works, and, last but not least, riders — can live with.

The first major compromise is the alignment itself. The most important destination downtown is jobs. The purple on the map above is major office towers. They’re centered around Lamar and Travis, near the Main Street Square station. That would be the ideal place for the new line. But the streets thereabouts all dead end at the convention center, so there’s no way to get the tracks there. The chosen alignment on Capitol and Rusk is further north, but it’s still fairly close to a lot of jobs, and it does serve the Theatre District and the Discovery Green / convention center / ballpark area well (see the orange and green above.)

Even the fact that the line will be on two streets is a compromise. It increases the cost, and it confuses riders slightly, since the station they use coming is a block away from the station they use going. But putting both lines one one street — making that street two-way and reducing capacity — would have unbalanced traffic capacity. So the trains will run on Capitol and Rusk as they do on Fannin and San Jacinto in the Museum District, on one side of the street in the direction of traffic.

One good thing about this alignment is that it works well for westward expansion. The tracks will join over Buffalo Bayou, at I-45 between the Hobby Center and Bayou Place. For now, this is where trains will change direction. But these tracks will point directly towards the city courts and Houston Avenue, where the future Inner Katy Line (also authorized by voters in 2003) could head towards Washington Avenue and/or the Heights on its way to the Northwest Transit Center.

Another compromise: the Main Street line is relatively fast and very reliable because the trains have their own lanes and have traffic signal priority. That won’t be true for this line. Like buses do now, the trains will share the curb lanes with cars, both turns and through traffic. [update, prompted by a question from Highway6 in the forums: the track will be on the south side of each street, that is, in the left lane of Capitol and the right lane of Rusk] And the signals will be operated as they are on Capitol and Rusk today: trains will find the lights are sometimes green and sometimes red, and they will stop or go accordingly. There is no doubt that this will slow trains down and throw off schedules: for example, a line of stopped cars in the left lane on one block would force the train to hold in the previous block until the cars moved. It might also be a safety issue, but that’s not as clear. In theory, the trains would act like buses, obeying traffic laws and mixing with cars. That avoids accidents that occur because motorists don’t expect a train that moves differently than they do, and it does not require unusual turn restrictions. But motorists not used to the area — like suburbanites going a ballgame or festival — could get unnerved and drive unexpectedly.

The biggest safety issue on this alignment could be that odd squiggle at the right. It’s how the tracks transition northwards to get around the future soccer stadium. It involves a lot of places where the trains crosses a street mid-block or goes diagonally through an intersection. That’s the kind of geometry that has made the Wheeler/Main/Fannin/San Jacinto/Blodgett area a mess. But this compromise is not inevitable. It could be fixed if the city and METRO work together to come up with a better street layout that not only deals with the trains but deal with the awkward traffic flow that would result from the stadium.

Finally, the transfer between light rail lines in the center of Downtown is a compromise. In earlier plans, this had been a disaster, involving three different stations (Main Street Square, Main Street, and Preston) and walks of up to 5 blocks. That’s largely fixed now by adding a station on the Main Street Line. This means there are 4 platforms — north- and southbound Main Street and east- and westbound East End/ Southeast — that can share one station name, making the system easy to understand. But the east-west platforms are a block away from Main Street, so some transfers will still involve a three block walk, with 3 pedestrian lights, from the center of one platform to the center of another. This is caused by two things. The first is that platforms will be at the sidewalk, so they can’t be in a block that has garage entrances or loading docks. The second is that there will be curved tracks connecting the two lines. These are required because some of the trains that run on the Main Street Line will be stored at a new rail operations center on Harrisburg. Those curves can’t share a block with a rail station that serves the same track. One solution might be to build another rail operations center at Northline, eliminating the need for this connection. But METRO doesn’t want to purchase additional land for that purpose.

METRO plans to use the same connection that’s required to put trains in service to send all East End Line trains northwards to the Intermodal Center on the same tracks that the Main Street line runs on (left). Their computer models indicate that this will result in more ridership, perhaps because of easier transfer to buses on the North Side or perhaps because of better access to the county courts complex. But this routing reduces the new line’s value as a Downtown circulator. If both the East End and Southeast Lines ran across the full width of Downtown on the same tracks (right), there would be a train every three minutes connecting the convention center, the ballpark, and Discovery Green with the Main Street Line, the Downtown office core and the Theater District. That would be useful for riders coming off the Main Street line headed to a game or a show; it would also be useful for people traveling from one part of Downtown to another. With the East End line swinging northwards, there’s only a train every six minutes, and there’s the added risk for visitors of getting on the wrong train and ending up at the wrong place.

In other words, this alignment leave a lot of room to be unhappy. But it does do some things pretty well, and it’s far superior to the previous alternatives with their awkward and confusing transfer, or other previously considered options like having both lines bypass Downtown to the north. There is another option that was considered: a subway via Main Street Square. That would be better on all counts but one: the price tag. There’s no way METRO could afford it and no way the feds could fund it.

So what we have now may the best we can do, but it deserves scrutiny. Since this exact alignment wasn’t included in the previous Draft or Final Environment Impact Statements, it will be included in an upcoming Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, with a public hearing to follow. In other words, there’s still time to have a say, and you can start in our forums.

This map is a snapshot of an ever changing picture: as METRO’s lines get close to construction stations shift slightly, junctions get figured out, and line routings are clarified. Meanwhile, the HOV bus system expands, too.

Click on the map above for a large version, or click here to download pdfs: 8.5×11 of the urban core, 11×17 of the whole system.

What’s new this time:

• I’ve seen multiple METRO documents showing through-running betwen the Uptown and University lines, so that’s on the map now.
• METRO has finally settled on an alignment for the Downtown section of the East End and Southeast lines. It swings around the future soccer stadium on Texas, then squiggles onto Capitol (the westbound track) and Rusk (the eastbound track), passing Discovery Green, Minute Maid Park, and the Convention Center. At Main Street, a new station on the Main Street line allows for fairly easy transfers between the lines (unlike the old plan). At the same location, connection tracks allow East End Line trains to swing north onto the Main Street track, serving Preston and UH Downtown before terminating at the Intermodal Center. Southeast Line trains don’t make this turn; they continue on to the Theater District.
• There are new and changed stations all over the system: there’s a new station on the Uptown Line north of Memorial Drive, but no Memorial Park station; there’s a station added in the Uptown area; there are new stations on the University Line in Gulfton and at Eastside; and the North Line has two more stations, shown in the new SEIS, just released by METRO.
• The METROExpress system just opened a new park-and-ride at the Grand Parkway in Katy.
• Express bus service from Downtown Transit Center to Intercontinental Airport starts in August. Looking at this map, I hope that it will have a few stops added in 2012 — perhaps at Wheeler and Discovery Green — so that it connects to more of the light rail lines.

One thing isn’t changed: I’m still showing the East End Line going to the Magnolia Transit Center, not stopping short of the railroad tracks. That’s definitely the long-term plan, and it looks like the city, METRO, and the Freight Rail District will figure it out for 2012. But it bears watching, as does the University Line between UH and Eastwood: METRO’s under continual pressure to cut costs, and the map could change again. Then again, maybe you want it to change. Tell us in the forums.

KUHF reports that the city, the Gulf Coast Freight Rail District, and METRO have reached an agreement on a grade separation on Harrisburg to allow the East End Line to reach Magnolia Transit Center. City Councilman James Rodriguez:

“This whole Metro Solutions works if you’re able to connect to a major transit center, so going to the Magnolia Transit Center is key for the mobility in the area. We were able to get together and stress that the city does have some funds to commit to this. We’d like Metro to commit some funding and also the Freight Rail District. The Freight Rail District agreed to take the lead in organizing all the governmental agencies.”

No details yet, but this sounds like a solution that could not only bring better transit but also re-connect a neighborhood. Hopefully it sets a precedent for different agencies actually working together.

Thanks to Gulf Coast Institute for the heads-up.

Note: this is an April Fool’s blog post. The outcome described occurred only in an alternate universe where transportation agencies coordinate their planning. The problems are real; the solutions — for now — are not.

In October of 2007, METRO realized they had a problem. The Federal Railroad Administration has long permitted light rail tracks to intersect freight rail lines at grade only if the freight rail track is out of service while light rail is operating. But the East End Line alignment on Harrisburg crosses the East Belt freight rail line, and both the street and the railroad are at grade in this location. That was already an issue with BRT, since freight trains could delay transit service. It became a pressing problem, though, when the board voted to build the line as light rail. Now an over- or under- pass was absolutely required, and it would raise the cost of the line.

However, METRO wasn’t the only agency looking at this railroad crossing. The City of Houston had identified it as a problem as far back as the 1950s. Whenever a train passes, Harrisburg and the streets north of it are completely blocked, making people late for work, keeping kids from walking to Tijerina Elementary, and stranding fire trucks and ambulances. Harris County and Texas Department of Transportation studies identified a need for a grade crossing, and the newly formed Gulf Coast Freight Rail District named (pdf) it a recommended project.

The problem: black lines are freight rail; the East Belt, by far the busiest line on this map, runs from lower left to top right. Red “X”s are grade crossings. Green circles are grade separations where a road goes under or over the tracks.

The transit project provided the needed impetus to get things moving. A new underpass with two lanes, two tracks, sidewalks, and bike lanes would be built. METRO would pay a little less than half the cost, the county would cover most of the rest, the city would fund new sidewalks and bike paths leading to the bridge, and the Union Pacific Railroad would make contribute in recognition of its reduced maintenance costs. The problem was solved, and the entire neighborhood would benefit.

But then political leaders had a realization: Harrisburg wasn’t the only problem around here. Canal Street crossed the tracks at grade, too. So did the neighborhood streets north of Harrisburg, and closing them wasn’t feasible since that would split the neighborhood. The East Belt was a bottleneck for the railroad; getting rid of all those road crossings would make operations more flexible and eliminate car-train accidents that shut the line down. Also, just south of Harrisburg, the East Belt crosses another railroad line, the Galveston Sub, at grade. That limits the capacity of both lines, and it prevents the use of the Galveston Sub for commuter rail to Galveston.

So a new solution was proposed: more expensive at first, but cheaper in the long run, and much more comprehensive. The East Belt rail line would be placed in a trench (much like the Almeda Corridor) from I-45 to Navigation, replacing a dozen at-grade road crossings and one railroad crossing with bridges over the track. Because the tracks would be below grade, those bridges would not require ramps, minimizing impacts on the neighborhood. In fact, the sides of the trench would reduce noise. The neighborhood would be reconnected, street traffic would move better, emergency services would respond quicker, transit would be improved not just along Harrisburg but along the Gulf Freeway, and the railroad system would operate more efficiently, helping the port and local industries and thus the regional economy. And it would all be safer than before.

The solution: the green line is the new trench. The red line is light rail; the purple line is commuter rail.

Obviously, this was a more expensive project. But its benefits per dollar spent, to the local neighborhoods (which haven’t received their share of transportation funding for a long time) and to the entire region, far outweighed those of other projects like the Grand Parkway or the Trans-Texas Corridor. So, with political leadership from the mayor, city council, county judge, county commissioners, and local members of the legislature, funding was shifted. METRO, the Texas Department of Transportation, the city, the county, the port, and the railroad all participated, using the Freight Rail District as an umbrella implementing agency. And, in the end, solving multiple problems with one project proved to be far less expensive than solving them individually.

In the alternate universe, everyone posts their thoughts in our forums.

The Chronicle reports this morning that METRO’s plan to stop the East End Line 6 blocks short of the Magnolia Transit Center — rumored for months — now seems to be official. Essentially, METRO wants to save the cost of an overpass over a freight rail line (the East Belt Subdivision) by stopping the line just east of the tracks and putting in a bus shuttle from there to the Magnolia Transit Center. (The article says that METRO looked at putting the light rail line at grade across the railroad tracks; that has never been done on a modern US light rail system, and it’s doubtful federal safety regulations would permit it. Those same regulations, of course, permit buses to cross rail lines with no concerns. What the difference is, I don’t know.)

This is obviously a major inconvenience to passengers. The transit center is a major hub for local buses; it is also surrounded by a local shopping area that’s a destination in itself. The proposed bus shuttle would make a lot of transit trips longer and less reliable. The Magnolia Transit Center is the right place for this line to go; anything short is just an expedient compromise.

Fundamentally, this is a failure of local coordination. The overpass isn’t just needed for trains; it’s needed for cars and pedestrians. Harrisburg grids to a halt whenever a freight train passes; commuters end up late to work, children can’t make it to school, fire trucks are delayed. An overpass has been needed here for at least half a century; through all that time, neither the city nor the county has done anything about it.

“Temporary” terminal stations have a way of becoming permanent. The county the city, the freight rail district, the railroad, and METRO have an opportunity to get together and improve not just transit service but traffic and public safety. That’s not the way things usually work around here. But with political leadership, it could be.

There’s no roadblock between here and our forums.

In the forums, David Crossley asks if there is an alternate stadium site:

Putting it directly behind GRB or the Ballpark or the Toyota Center wouldn’t be a problem, I presume. Those streets are already gone.

That sounds familiar. Here’s the Chronicle from October:

The Dynamo first set sights on land owned by the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority just east of Minute Maid Park and U.S. 59, but have since decided against the property, which the Astros lease for stadium parking.

Let’s compare:

• The currently proposed site is 6 contiguous blocks. The parking lot site is exactly the same size.
• The currently proposed site blocks two east-west streets, making it harder for people who live on the East Side get to work. The parking lot site blocks no east-west streets.
• The currently proposed site requires the light rail line to jog around it, making tens of thousands of daily transit trips a bit longer. The parking lot site does not affect any light rail options.
• The currently proposed site would displace at least one business. The parking lot site would not.
• The currently proposed site is privately owned. The parking lot site is owned by a government agency whose purpose is building sports stadiums.

However:

• The parking lot site would require some spectators at Astros games to walk further to get to their cars.

And that, apparently, is unacceptable.

UPDATE: BlogHouston has an excellent primer on the weird property dealings behind all of this.

Last week, City Council delayed a vote on buying six blocks of land just East of Downtown for a soccer stadium. They will vote again this week. I’m glad that the stadium’s impact on METRO’s Southeast and East End light rail lines has been part of that discussion. And it seems that METRO is looking at a rail option that would go around the stadium.

But the rail line was never my biggest concern to begin with. It’s the traffic impacts that worry me.

Let’s start with a bit of history. In 1984, there were 9 streets that connected Downtown to the East End between Bell and Congress (the building of Union Station in 1911 had closed one street; Highway 59 blocked another and rerouted Bell in 1966).

Then, in 1987, the city opened the George R. Brown Convention Center, closing 2 of those streets.

In 2000, the opening of Minute Maid Park closed another street.

In 2003, the convention center was expanded at both ends, and Toyota Center was opened. That took out two more streets. So where there were 9 streets, there are only 4 today.

If the soccer stadium occupies all 6 blocks, closing the streets that run through that area, that would take out 2 more streets.

So here’s the bottom line: 9 streets in 1984 would become 2 streets. That may have been acceptable when the area just east of Downtown was largely warehouses. But now it’s sprouting townhouses, condos, and apartments. New residents will surely generate more traffic. And so will soccer games. Is this the time to cut the East End off of Downtown even more and add a traffic bottleneck that doesn’t need to exist?

A complete street grid is the most effective way to carry traffic and the easiest way for pedestrians and bicyclist to get around. In place where we don’t have a good grid, like Uptown, we’re regretting it. Why are we destroying the grid where we do have it? We can’t undo the damage the convention center did, or the damage the ballpark did, or the damage the basketball area did. But we can avoid doing even more damage.

Like I said before, this isn’t a stadium; it’s a moat. What do you say?

(updated with more history, 2/24)

Everybody know that the Web has given us all access to personalized information: directions, book recommendations, news. Transit agencies have started taking advantage of that with trip planners and schedule alerts. And transit (at least somewhat) easier to use.

But technology has changed paper, too. Once, printing meant large production runs. Now, it’s possible to print things one at a time. But transit still works in a world where documents — bus schedules, system maps, and brochures — are printed in large, one-size-fits-all, runs.

Consider an office building: several hundred people, all of whom need to get to work and get home every day. They should know what their transit options are. But a system map posted in the lobby won’t do the trick: it shows too much information, and that’s intimidating. But a custom map (click for pdf), showing just the routes that stop nearby, would.

The technology is not difficult. The time involved is not prohibitive. And, once the map exists, it’s easy to convert for posting on a web site, printing in an employee manual, and otherwise making it available to people whom it would help. It would be entirely possible to put one of these in every large office building lobby, in every hospital and in every university in Houston.

It’s not good enough to simply provide transit. One has to make people aware it exists. And transit agencies ought to be using every tool they can to do that.

Customizer your thoughts in our forums.

One cannot run for office in Houston or Harris County without addressing transit. That’s good. But when transit becomes political, it becomes a simplistic caricature. Politicians are pro-rail or anti-METRO or pro-monorail. But it’s rare to see anyone lay out a real transit plan, one that addresses all modes of transit in the entire region.

This election season, I challenge all the candidates: tell us your transit plan: not just an applause line or two, but a plan.

Here’s what such a plan might look like. This is my idea; I’m happy to argue the points, and I know that many would disagree with a bullet point (or maybe eight). But simply having a plan advances the discussion.

1. Complete the METRO Solutions light rail system. The urban light rail lines create a faster, more reliable, more frequent and convenient transit service to connect major activity centers and dense urban neighborhoods. We need to get the five 2012 lines built, and then we need to figure out what areas need to be served next.

2. Expand commuter service. We have one of the best and most successful commuter bus systems in the United States. The HOV lanes and flyovers that makes the system fast and reliable need to be expanded outward to match the region’s growth, and needs to be added in corridors — like 288 — that don’t have them now. It does not make sense to replace the current commuter bus service with new commuter rail. But regional rail makes sense for longer trips, and to connect to regional destinations like Galveston and College Station. Both commuter bus and regional rail need to be serve all major employment centers by connecting the suburban commuter systems to the urban light rail system.

3. Reengineer the local bus system. In a city with multiple centers, our local bus system radiates from Downtown. And even though routes serve a variety of areas with varying levels of demand, there’s one basic kind of service: a white bus that stops every 2 blocks. The system needs to be restructured with more crosstown bus routes to serve employment centers outside of Downtown and to better connect to the new rail lines. In the system’s busiest corridors, we need “Quickline” limited stop express service. And in dense areas, we need branded frequent circulator service.

4. Expand transit service to unserved areas. Suburbs have transit needs, too: the poor, the elderly, the disabled. To meet those needs, we need to add local bus service in parts of the METRO service area that don’t have it now. We also need to figure out how to add local bus service in places that aren’t in METRO, like Sugar Land and Pasadena. That may involve expanding METRO or creating new transit agencies.

5. Improve the trip. The difference between a pleasant transit trip and a horrible one is in details. So let’s get the details right. Every stop needs a bench; busy stops need shelters. It should be easy to find out, by looking at a display or calling a cell phone number, when the next bus will come, and there should be a map to show where that bus will go. On commuter service, there should be free wi-fi so the trip will be productive. And all buses and trains should be easy to use for the elderly, the disabled, parents with strollers, and bicyclists.

6. Build safe walking routes to transit. Every transit rider is a pedestrian on at least one end of their trip. They need level, paved, and shaded sidewalks and safe crosswalks connecting to transit stops, and we need to build that infrastructure. And when we do, we’ll also benefit people who aren’t riding transit.

7. Create a single information source for all regional transit. We already have half a dozen transit agencies in the Houston region. But riders shouldn’t have to care which agency is providing their transit. There needs to be one web page, one online trip planner, and one information phone number that covers all that service. Likewise, one fare card should be valid for all those trips.

8. Create a fare system that encourages ridership. METRO has a smart new fare technology but an overly simple fare system. Targeted fare policies are a good way to get people on transit. We should encourage employers to provide free transit just like they provide free parking. We should work with universities to give students free transit. And we should bring back the day pass by capping daily Q card charges so that anyone who takes METRO to and from work will get any other trips they want to take that day for free.

You’ll note that much (but definitely not all) of what’s in this plan is in the works at METRO. But it’s not enough for the transit agency to have a plan. The public — the voters, the taxpayers, the riders — needs to buy into that plan. And that’s where elected officials can provide leadership that agency staff cannot. A plan is not simply a list of things to do; it’s a way to have a discussion.

What’s your plan? Tell us in the forums.

Charles Bacarisse, candidate for Harris County Judge, has had a lot to say about light rail recently. Or, rather, he’s said one thing over and over.

From his platform:

As county judge, I pledge to use every tool at my disposal to demand that METRO either (1) adhere to the clear terms of the 2003 Referendum, or (2) take a revised plan to the voters for their consent.

In an email to Off the Kuff on February 5:

Long story short: since METRO went back to the drawing board, they must go back to the voters.

From the Chronicle on February 7 (Does the Chronicle read Off the Kuff, perhaps?):

“The word ‘Richmond’ is never mentioned in the ballot language,” Bacarisse added, “and if they want to change it they should just go back to the voters and ask for permission.”

From a debate last Friday sponsored by the Intown Chamber and the Houston Association of Realtors:

“They also are not adhering to the language of the 2003 METRO Solutions ballot that was passed by our community.”

I’ve talked before about the ballot language (and about the fake documentation, too). Short story: no law requires METRO to ask approval to put light rail on a particular street, and the proposed University Line west of Main fits the ballot description as well as, say, the Main Street Line fits its name.

But here’s the interesting part: in all of these statements, Bacarisse is talking about legalities, not transportation. He likely thinks that the University Line is not a worthwhile project, but he’s not saying that. He’s talking about the ballot. And that’s probably a very astute political move. Attacking METRO as an undemocratic bureaucracy plays well with his anti-big-government Republican base. But it still keeps his options open to run as a pro-transit candidate in November by putting out his own plan.

Ed Emmett, Bacarisse’s opponent in the Republican Primary, is taking a different approach. He’s not attacking METRO, but he’s also not putting forth the kind of extravagant pro-rail rhetoric we heard from, say, Lee Brown. Here’s his take on the University Line:

I think the logical place to put it is down Richmond,” said incumbent Ed Emmett, a transportation consultant. “That’s where the people are, that’s where the businesses are.

…

Emmett countered that the voice of the public has been expressed by neighborhood associations along the transit route, which he said support the light rail line as a bloc.

“If these people don’t speak for the people, then I don’t know who does,” the county government chief said.

It’s a fairly straightforward analysis. Emmett seems to be trying to come off more as a competent technocrat than as a politician, a formula that’s worked very well for Bill White. He may be losing some primary votes in the process, but he’s hoping to pick up votes in November.

Luckily for Emmett, his transportation background helps him out. At Friday’s debate, both candidates were asked about commuter rail.

Bacarisse went first:

“I do favor heavy commuter rail on the 290 corridor and also we need to look at at out the I-10 corridor as well as 288 south. What I’m concerned about is that METRO has insisted on moving forward with a light rail plan that really does not address areas of congestion in our community, and that’s a problem.”

…

“We need heavy rail, we need it where people are traveling back and forth, and we need it to serve the most riders it can possible serve.”

Emmett responded:

“Commuter rail is something I’ve been talking about for a long time, even before I became county judge, because it has to be part of the overall regional transportation system. The first corridor really should be 290. Unfortunately, I-10 is not an option because they took the railroad up so you can’t build commuter rail out I-10. Likewise, there’s no railroad track out 288, so you can’t do that either. The second option would be 90A down Main Street, and that is a viable option, as is 45 coming in from the south from Galveston. All those need to be done.”

Bacarisse’s answer is a political one: it sounds good, but it doesn’t make much sense (is the Galleria area, where METRO is proposing light rail, not congested? And how do the riders get from commuter rail, which can enter neither Downtown not Uptown nor Greenway nor the Texas Medical Center, to work?) and it’s factually inaccurate. Emmett’s answer is a technical analysis: a bit boring, but accurate.

Transit plays an interesting role in Houston area politics. Most other kinds of transportation projects — freeway widenings, toll roads, container terminals, airport expansions — tend to receive broad bipartisan support from elected officials and little attention from the media or the public. Where they do get controversial, the controversy tends to be local. But transit projects are, from the moment they are proposed, vigorously opposed by some and almost automatically supported by others. And transit projects involve the kinds of issues people get excited about: big government, emminent domain, suburbs vs. the city, even race. No other form of transportation offers as much room for politicians to play politics.

The irony is that transit projects are actually more subject to public input than any other kind of transportation projects. We’ve never voted on a freeway, a toll road, or a road widening. Highway projects are changed dramatically after environmental impact statements are completed and hearings are held, toll roads don’t involve any sort of hearings or published reports at all, and road widenings — which routinely take private property — are approved as line items in pages of lists. Even port projects — which do need voter approval if bonds are involved– don’t get the constant attention from the media that transit does.

Transit is a political proxy; it stands for much more than just tracks. It’s an issue, that, played well, can win elections. We’ll see soon whether Bacarisse or Emmett is playing it best. Early voting (pdf) begins on next Tuesday the 19th. Election day is March 4. Meanwhile, discuss in the forums.

Last July, CTC organized a bus tour of freight rail in Houston. We saw junctions, yards (that’s the Englewood hump above), industries, and neighborhoods — places that many Houstonians never see. Tom Kornegay of the Port of Houston, Joe Adams of Union Pacific, Houston City Councilmember Adrian Garcia, and myself explained what we saw. And no, this was no railfan trip: it’s about urban growth, economics, transportation policy, and how all of that affects ordinary people who live by the tracks.

Last time, we filled the bus. So we’re going again with a similar itinerary and speakers, this Saturday, Feb 16.

The details:

The tour runs from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm Sat Feb 16, 2008 . We will meet outside Ninfa’s on Navigation (2704 Navigation Blvd, Houston, 77003) and board a chartered bus to visit significant rail sites in Houston’s Near North Side, the East End, and the Port of Houston. The tour is $10 for current CTC members and $30 for nonmembers (which includes a CTC membership for 2008). Seating is limited and will be offered first come, first served. To reserve your seat(s), please send your name(s) and phone number in an email to railtour@ctchouston.org. We will send you a response confirming your reservation that includes payment instructions. CTC must receive payment by Monday, Feb 11, 2008 to secure your seat on the tour.

Not all bus lines are the same. On a METRO map, the 25 Richmond and the 34 Montrose are represented by the same kind of line. But the 25 comes every 15 minutes on weekdays and 20 on weekends; the 34 comes only every 45 minutes on a weekday and not at all on the weekends. The buses, stops, and signs look the same, but the two are really different grades of service because the routes have different levels of demand.

Last week, the METRO board went forward with another new grade of service. A “Quickline,” like a local bus route, will share traffic lanes with cars. But it will stop less often than a local bus, it will run more frequently, its stops will be better, and it will sometimes be able to “jump the queue” at traffic lights to gain time. And, perhaps equally importantly, it will be branded: a rabbit logo on buses and stops, a distinctive shelter design, and special silver buses. It will be immediately obvious that this is a different kind of bus service.

Quicklines will serve METRO’s busiest bus routes. But they won’t replace local service on those routes. The Quickline will serve the major stops; the regular bus will stop every few blocks as it does now. That makes the Quickline faster, so most riders will take it, even if they have to walk a bit further. But the local service will still be there, albeit less frequently.

The first Quickline route, which will start operating this year (probably August, according (pdf) to Frank Wilson), will serve the 2 Bellaire, from the rail connection at TMC Transit Center through Bellaire and out to Beltway 8, a total of 9 miles. It will run every 15 minutes and stop, on average, about once a mile, cutting 10 minutes off a trip that takes about 50 minutes by local bus. Metro plans similar service in other corridors, possibly from TMC to Palm Center, along Westheimer and along Gessner.

There is a well-known model for this service. LA’s much touted Rapid service is often called Bus Rapid Transit, but it is really improved bus service much like the Quicklines. It’s been enormously successful; the improved service is drawing riders from less frequent parallel routes and attracting new riders to transit. But the buses are still stuck in traffic, so they aren’t as fast or reliable as rail. LA has been building out its Rapid network at the same time it’s building rail, and the two have worked well together.

Incidentally, METRO is starting another new service (pdf) this week, opening a new park-and-ride in a movie theater parking lot off I-10 near Katy. It’s the westernmost park-and-ride in the METRO system. METRO’s easternmost park-and-ride, at San Jacinto Mall in Baytown, is also new; it opened in October as a joint venture between METRO and Harris County. And the outermost park-and-ride on 290, at Cypress, opened in September. Unfortunately, none of those service expansions were matched by expansions in HOV lanes, so the buses share traffic lanes with cars on the outer parts of their routes (and on the entire route to Baytown).

There’s been some concern that METRO’s focus on expanding rail might cause the bus system to be neglected. Until recently, METRO’s silence about the bus improvements promised in the 2003 referendum justified that concern. These announcements indicate otherwise, but they’re only a start.

The discussion starts in the forums. (Both images, by the way, are from METRO)

2008 started with a new development in an old Houston debate. Former mayor Bob Lanier and several real estate developers have organized a PAC to fight increased building regulations, speaking to city council and bringing in anti-planning speakers. It might seem as if old battle lines have been re-drawn, and we’re in for another zoning fight. But things are not nearly that simple. Here are some ways in which the usual assumptions are wrong:

There are more than two sides to this debate. In fact, I count four. Bob Lanier is pro-growth and anti-planning. The people fighting the Ashby highrise are anti-growth and pro-planning; they want new regulations to prevent new development in their neighborhoods. But many of the people talking about planning are actually pro-growth and pro-planning; they see Houston is growing and they want that growth to happen intelligently. And if you look hard enough you’ll find people who are anti-growth and anti-planning; they probably think that the problem is illegal immigration or maybe public subsidies for sports stadiums. It’s the anti-growth/ pro-planning people who are setting the agenda right now; a backlash against unplanned growth in established neighborhoods is leading many to want to stop growth altogether. That worries the pro-growth, anti-planning developers. But it also worries the pro-growth, pro-planning crowd. The thing to watch is who allies with whom.

Houston already has building regulations. Houston’s development regulations regulate how far buildings have to be from the street, how much parking has to be provided, how much green space there needs to be around buildings, and much more. The net effect is to limit density, increase the cost of urban development, and encourage suburban-style development. And while the city doesn’t implement use-based zoning, deed restrictions in most Houston neighborhoods do. Deed restrictions are actually more draconian than government zoning since they are so hard to change.

The Houston region has some of the strictest zoning in the country. Planned communities are called that for a reason. Every large suburban development in Houston has an extensive set of restrictions that govern the shape, appearance, and use of buildings. These are as strict as anything a government agency ever dreamed of. And suburban cities like Sugar Land has extensive government-imposed zoning as well.

Planning doesn’t imply zoning. Government agencies spend a lot of money on building things: roads, sewers, drainage, water lines, parks, transit, fire stations, libraries. These things are the infrastructure of growth, so where and how they are built helps determine where growth will happen. Harris County, the City of Houston, and the Texas Department of Transportation are routinely predicting and encouraging development by building new roads and new highways. They’re also trying to keep up with growth. But the agencies that build these things often don’t talk to each other. Simply coordinating the efforts of multiple agencies to avoid costly duplication and to cost-effectively support growth could go a long way.

Zoning doesn’t imply planning. In the perfect world of a textbooks, planners divide a city into zones based on some broad vision. In reality, zoning has to be tailored to existing conditions, and then it’s repeatedly changed based on the desires of neighborhoods and developers. The result is a mess, dictated not by a coherent plan but by whoever has the most political clout. These random and oddly specific rules often have strange results: there’s a new condo development in New York where owners can’t stay more than 120 days a year and no more than 39 days in a row since it’s zoned as a hotel.

Developers dislike uncertainty more than they dislike rules. Buying land and developing a building is a risky business: you’re making a bet that you can building on time and on budget and that the market is on your side. Regulations that are unclear, or regulations that require the developer to get political approvals, add to that risk. Neighborhoods often push for such regulations. But the irony is that neighborhoods benefit for unambiguous rules, too, since they mean it’s not necessary to mobilize and fight each new development proposal.

There is an intriguing possibility here. Conventional zoning is clearly imperfect, and so is Houston’s current regulatory system. Could we come up with something that’s better than either? Or will we simply re-fight old fights based on incorrect assumptions?

The discussion continues in our forums.

It’s not enough to put a rail line in the right street; it has to be done right, too. That involves a lot of “little” decisions that add up to a big deal: station designs, crosswalk locations, left turn lanes, sidewalk widths, street trees. If you do that right, you end up with a street that works well for drivers, transit riders, pedestrians, bicyclists, businesses, and residents:

If you don’t, you have to live with the results for a long time:

That’s the idea behind the Richmond Avenue Workshop, organized by Richmondrail.org and co-sponsored by Neartown Association, Museum District Business Alliance, The Menil Collection, The University of St. Thomas, Friends of Mandell Park, and the Gulf Coast Institute as well as CTC. It’s a chance for you to learn about those decisions, to learn which agencies are making those decisions (it’s not just METRO) and to learn how to have input in those decisions.

At the streetscape table David Crossley can tell you the difference between walking on a 3 foot sidewalk and a 5 foot sidewalk, at the traffic table Joe Webb will be able to explain how left turn lanes can work with the tracks, and at the trains and stations table I’ll explain why you might want a staggered side platform station instead of a split center platform station. Then, when you walk into the city’s University Line Urban Corridor Planning Workshop at the end of this month (pdf), or a METRO open house later this year, you’ll know what to ask, and what to ask for.

I hope to see you there.

• This Saturday, January 19, 2008, 10am to noon
• University of St. Thomas
• Crooker Building
• http://www.richmondrail.org/workshop/

This is the Texas Department of Transportation’s brand new Houston District Headquarters on Washington Avenue. Where’s the sidewalk? There’s a nice paved path from the parking lot to the building, but there’s no path at all along the street. In fact, there’s a bus stop in front of the building, but the only way to get there is walk across the grass or on the shoulder. The private company next door has a sidewalk. But TxDOT — the agency in charge of transportation — doesn’t.

The message from our state government, loud and clear: Pedestrians don’t matter. Transit riders don’t matter. Bike riders don’t matter. Only people in cars matter. Shouldn’t all taxpayers have access to this building?

You all have access to our forums.

The Chronicle reports on plans for an new soccer stadium just east of Downtown.

A soccer field is 300 feet long. That’s bigger than a Downtown block. Add stands, and you have a 3-block-long structure. Unless you elevate the stadium — and that’s an expensive proposition — you have to close streets to fit it. The streets that would be closed by the proposed site are Capitol and Rusk, two important routes in and out of Downtown to the east. They’re all the more important because sports venues and the convention center have already blocked 7 streets in a 13 block stretch. And Capitol and Rusk also happen to be two of the streets that METRO is considering putting the Harrisburg and Southeast lines on. Would all those trains and all that traffic be compressed onto Texas, taking 12 traffic lanes to 4 or even 2? Or will the Dynamo pay a lot extra to raise the stadium over the streets?

So this plan isn’t just a plan for a soccer stadium; it’s also a plan for a moat.

(see also: Off the Kuff. And leave your comments in our forums.)

At the corner of Church and Market (above), you have transit choices. To get to Downtown San Francisco, you can take the J Church light rail line (the silver train), which ducks into a tunnel 2 blocks later and runs in a subway under Market Street. You could also take the F Market and Wharves streetcar (the orange train), which runs down Market on the surface. The J will get you to the heart of the financial district in 11 minutes. The F will get you to the same spot in 20 minutes.

There’s another set of transit choices at Balboa Park, 6 miles south. This is the end of the line for the J, 35 minutes from Downtown. But noone would make that whole trip on the J, because the BART heavy rail trains that stop here make the same trip in 15 minutes.

The BART line, in turn, ends at Milbrae, 13 stations south of Downtown It shares that station with Caltrain, the commuter train that comes in from San Jose and Gilroy. When its downtown extension is complete, Catrain will makes it from Milbrae to San Francisco in less than 20 minutes with only one stop; BART takes 33 minutes.

This might seem like a gratuitous duplication of transit. Market Street is the only street in the United States with three different rail transit systems along it — fast, slow, and medium. One might think that, given a faster and a slower transit line on the same street, people would ride the faster one. But ridership proves otherwise. All four run standing room only during rush hour: the F carries 19,000 trips a day, the J carries 18,000, BART carries 59,000 within San Francisco, and Caltrain carries 33,000.

What we’re seeing here is a common pattern in mature transit systems. I’ll call it hop, skip, and jump. For local trips, you need to provide a system with a lot of stops. But for longer trips, that gets too slow. So you need to provide another system with fewer stops, and probably another system with even fewer. Then you connect the systems.

Here’s how it works on Market Street: The F stops 15 times between Church and Embarcadero; the J in its subway stops only 4 times. If you want to get from one spot in Downtown San Francisco to another, the shorter walk to the F makes up for a trip that’s maybe 5 minutes slower. But if you’re riding the J in from Noe Valley, a trip that’s ten minutes slower each way makes a big difference.

There’s no way a “one service fits all” system would serve all these needs. If you were to replace the J with BART, a lot of people in the gaps between stations wouldn’t be within walking distance of transit anymore. If you replace BART with the J, then nobody would want to put up with the slow ride all the way from the airport.

It’s important that all these systems make it to Downtown San Francisco, the most important employment center hereabouts. It would be possible to stop Caltrain at Milbrae and ask everyone to transfer to BART. But that means a longer, less convenient trip, and fewer people would chose transit.

But it’s also important to connect the systems at their outer ends: if you live at Balboa Park and work in San Jose, at the other end of the Caltrain line, you shouldn’t need to travel north to Downtown in order to travel south. What looks like duplication is actually a series of different transit service serving different needs.

So, if you’re going to build multiple systems, which comes first?

There will always be political pressure to build the express system first, because fast is sexy. But doing that means only a few people will be able to walk to a station, and a system that’s completely dependent on local bus feeders likely won’t attract more people than the bus system it replaced. One could, of course, rely entirely on park-and-rides. But that still serves only the jobs that are right next to the few stations, and it tends to encourage more low-density development, the most expensive kind of urban form to serve with transit.

So you build the local transit first. You put high quality transit within walking distance of as many people as possible. That builds ridership, and that ridership then justifies the express service. And the local service makes that express service more useful to everyone who uses the system. An asphalt analogy: we have local streets, we have frontage roads, and we have freeways. All are useful; together they make the complete system. We build the local streets first, then the frontage roads, then the freeways.

Look at any mature transit system in the world, and you’ll see hop-skip-jump. In Boston and London, commuter rail and heavy rail run parallel to each other, with the heavy rail stopping more often. In Chicago and New York, you have heavy rail express lines running alongside heavy rail local lines. In Frankfurt and Toronto, streetcars run parallel to subways. Cities that have tried to do everything with one system — a popular idea in the 1970s and 1980s — are finding the limitations of that approach. That’s why Atlanta is considering a streetcar directly above the MATRA subway, and why Oakland is putting BRT alongside BART heavy rail. In transit, one size does not fit all. Am effective transit system is really multiple systems, serving multiple roles, all linked together: hop. skip. jump.

Hop, skip, and jump into the forums with your comments.

It’s the beginning of a new year, so it’s a good time to look into the future. But here’s a caution for transit planners: don’t look too hard.

As a society, we like to believe in the power of technology to change things. Transit has not escaped that, and we regularly see new technologies touted as the solution to our transportation problems. A great, albeit somewhat dated, example above, from the excellent blog Paleo-Future: not only is it a monorail (a technology that’s still considered futuristic today, 106 years after the first urban monorail entered service) but it transforms into a ferryboat to cross rivers!

Here’s the truth: new technologies that truly transform transportation are rare. In urban rail transit, the last was in the 1880s and 1890s, when Frank Sprague perfected electric propulsion. If I spot you one non-transit technology — air conditioning — you could create an effective rail transit system using only pre-1900 technology. But don’t leap to the conclusion that transit is outdated: a freeway would be no less efficient using 1927 Ford Model As, and Southwest Airline could operate the same schedules using 1958 Boeing 707s.

But merely the fact that existing technologies work just fine has not stopped politicians and transit planners from trying to do better. The results have often been ugly. The most famous example is San Francisco’s BART. It was to be the subway of the future. It introduced a new computerized control system, a new computerized ticketing system, and even a new track gauge. The system had a cost overrun of 50%, and the new innovations never lived up to expectations. The ticket machines were temperamental, and the bugs in the control system took several years to work off. Even after service had begun, a train (luckily without passengers) ran off the end of the track and landed in a station parking lot. More remarkably, the computer technology didn’t actually improve on older technology. It turns out that it’s not the control system that determines BART’s capacity; it’s the track layout. Every San Francisco-bound BART train under the bay has to stop at a single platform in Embarcadero Station, and thus the time it takes for passengers to get off the train determines the spacing between trains. The Key System — which operated in the same corridor from 1939 to 1958, with the same number of tracks crossing the bay — had multiple San Francisco platforms, and it could actually operate more trains with a much more primitive signal system. BART is a useful system; it is hard to imagine San Francisco without it. But it could have been equally useful and been built in less time for less money had it used off-the-shelf technology,

BART’s experience is not unique. The Las Vegas Monorail was shut down when parts started falling off. The French GLT guided bus system, intended as a more economical alternative to light rail, has had repeated problems with vehicles swerving off the guideway, and it turned out to cost more than rail. Toronto’s Scarborough RT was initially buggy, forces a tranfer because of incompatible equipment, and is now proving enormously expensive to renovate because of its proprietary technology. The common theme is that these systems were chosen for the perception of modernity, not because of technical analysis. And the operators paid the costs of finding the flaws in previously untested systems. Buses and light rail may be boring, but we’ve built so many that we know what works and what doesn’t.

But while new technologies have not revolutionized transit as promised, new ideas have. Light rail was not a technological innovation; it was simply the idea of using streetcar technology but running the train in reserved right of way rather than in lanes shared with car traffic. The result is faster, more reliable, and more efficient services than streetcars or buses at a much lower cost than a subway. We can dismiss it as just a new way to use technology that already existed, but that’s true for Southwest’s frequent short-haul flights with fast turnarounds, or FedEx’s overnight service, or the unit trains that have made freight railroads so much more efficient. And the result of this idea has been better transit in dozens of cities.

There are surely innovations in transit’s future, perhaps in the use of computers to provide passengers with more up-to-date and more customized information, perhaps in new, fast faster construction techniques. But I suspect they will come with vehicles and guideways that seem quite familiar. There’s a real benefit to sticking with well-tested technology: more predictable budgets and schedules. In any project, public or private, that matters. And, by not focusing on technology, we can focus on what really matters: building transportation systems that go where people want to go and are easy to use.

Your low-tech thoughts go in our high-tech forums.

This is the beautiful Hudson River Valley, and on the left is Dia Beacon, one of the most amazing museums I have ever been to. And, yes, there’s a Metro-North train. But the train is not what’s important; it’s just a way to get here to go home or go to the museum or enjoy the landscape. Transportation is about getting us where we want to go.

So, whereever you are going this Christmas Eve, I hope you get there well. And I hope that in the new year, you will find all your destinations, and all your trips, worthwhile.

Rep. John Culberson had an opinion piece in this Sunday’s Chronicle laying out his vision of Houston transit. His basic point seems to be that urban light rail is ineffective, and that the answer is commuter rail. Culberson claims:

The most important lesson from the transit experiment is that light rail cannot survive without commuter rail, which cannot survive without buses.

That’s backwards. Sacramento, Denver, St. Louis, and Portland are among the 10 busiest light rail systems in the country, each carrying 50,000 or more trips per day. None connect to commuter rail. The busiest commuter rail system in the United States that does not connect to urban rail is New Haven’s, with less than 2,000 trips a day. Commuter rail costs much more to build and operate per rider than light rail does. It’s simply less cost effective. Of course, that may not bother Culberson, whose pet project is more than $1.5 billion over budget.

Maybe when Culberson says “light rail,” he doesn’t mean “commuter rail” but rather “rail that carries commuters.” But that doesn’t make sense either, since it would mean we have commuter rail already: well over half of the riders on the Main Street Line are going to or from work or school. There are more commuters riding on the Main Street Line than there are on half the commuter rail systems in the United States.

But I don’t have to contradict Culberson; I can simply let him contradict himself.

In 2001, the Chronicle reported:

Culberson, who made freeway congestion a campaign issue last fall, was lukewarm to a suggestion at the Katy meeting that rail transit be part of any mobility solution for the area’s far west side. Culberson said most suburbanites need their cars to get to their jobs and he decried heavy rail’s $40 million-per-mile construction costs.

Here’s Culberson’s version today:

The only piece missing from the new Katy Freeway is high speed commuter rail. I encouraged the Metropolitan Transit Authority to include a commuter rail line and Metro had plenty of chances to reserve space for it, but they couldn’t make up their minds and we couldn’t delay construction waiting for them.

Here’s Culberson in 2005, supporting METRO’s plan to substitute BRT for LRT:

In a 2003 referendum, voters in Metro’s service area approved expansion of rapid transit beyond the Main Street light rail then nearing completion.

That plan contemplated light rail for the new corridors.

The one unveiled Monday envisions use, at least in the short term, of a system called bus rapid transit in which rubber-tired vehicles run in dedicated guideways.

Culberson, R-Houston, said White “has recognized that the rail plan submitted to the voters had big problems, and he is trying to fix that.”

Here he is today:

Since voters approved the Metro Solutions plan in 2003, Metro has switched modes from light rail, to bus rapid transit, back to light rail. This frequent and sudden gear shifting has thoroughly confused the public, elected officials, and now the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), as evidenced by their recent response letter to Metro President Frank Wilson.

Here he is this September explaining his position on the 2003 referendum:

“Metro cannot build it anywhere other than where the voters approved it,” Culberson said.

But now thinks METRO should switch gears entirely:

Houston is growing outward in all directions, and the time is right for Metro to rethink the outdated 2003 Metro Solutions plan and articulate a bold, but realistic plan that will help us reclaim some of the time we spend trapped in traffic.

So what best suits the will of the voters?

(a) Build the system described in the referendum, with the line described as the “Westpark Line, from the Hillcroft Transit Center to Wheeler station” located so that it runs from the Hillcroft Transit Center to Wheeler Station with over half of the line along Westpark.

(b) Build a completely different system.

Culberson’s answer: (b). Or maybe not. Here’s his prescription:

I see as an opportunity for Metro to work with FTA and local stakeholders to develop a new and improved, comprehensive transit system that includes a major expansion of local and regional bus service, and high-speed commuter rail to our airports and busiest suburbs, all tying directly into a light rail network inside the 610 Loop.

Oddly, that’s what METRO is doing. METRO’s plans (pdf) include an expansion of bus service, commuter rail lines to Cypress, Sugar Land, and Galveston, and a light rail system largely inside the 610 loop, with extensions to the airports in the next phase.

So what is Culberson trying to kill? Presumably, this system description means he supports extending the Main Street light rail line to the Intermodal Center to connect to commuter rail, building the Uptown Line to connect commuter rail to Uptown, and building some version of the University Line to connect commuter rail to Greenway Plaza and UH. So where does he not want light rail? Well, there are three light rail lines in the 2012 system that don’t link commuter rail to job centers: the North Line, the East End Line, and the Southeast Line. All serve predominantly poor and minority neighborhoods. Don’t poor people deserve good transit, too?

Or maybe Culberson’s not laying out a vision at all. Maybe he’s simply trying to confuse things, hoping to delay METRO and keep them planning, rather than building. What’s your theory? Tell us in the forums.

One thing, however, is clear. When Culberson leaves the House, he can find work as a copywriter for succesories:

Time is our most precious commodity. Whether we spend it with family and friends, at work, or just relaxing, time allows us to do the things that we enjoy. But unlike other commodities, time is finite and irreplaceable.