Intermodality

The Chronicle reported on Friday that the METRO board hired Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects to design the intermodal transportation center just north of Downtown.

The ITC is an important aspect of the revised METRO Solutions plan unveiled in June. This is where the Main Street light rail line, Bus Rapid Transit lines to the North Side, Harrisburg, and Southeast, and a commuter rail line to Cypress along US290 come together: probably the busiest transfer station in the new system.

The ITC is also the heir of a vision Downtown groups have been pushing since at least 2003: a new transit center where light rail, commuter rail, Amtrak, local buses, and long-distance buses come together. This would solve several problems:

• the Greyhound station, which Midtown interests feel discourages development, would be removed.
• the Amtrak station and its rail line, which stand in the way of redeveloping the Downtown post office and the Buffalo Bayou Partnership’s plan for a new bayou channel , could be removed.
• local buses could be rerouted from downtown streets.
• The Houston Airport System could address congestion at the airport by building a satellite terminal with parking, transit access, and baggage check-in counters, connected to the airport by shuttle bus.

The ITC is also a redevelopment opportunity. The adjacent Hardy Yards, once a major Southern Pacific Railroad locomotive maintenance facility, has been sold to private developers. So have the Missouri-Kansas-Texas yards on the other side of Main Street.

Last year, the Houston Downtown Management District lead a study (more details here) to determine the site and scope of an intermodal center, with funding provided by TXDOT, the City of Houston, METRO, the Downtown Management District, the Main Street Coalition, and the Midtown Management District. By a public meeting in August, that study had gotten as far as evaluating sites and recommending the north side of Downtown. At some point last year, though, the study seems to have been taken over by METRO. Meanwhile, last year’s federal transportation bill included a $500,000 earmark for the center, and METRO acquired $14.7 million of land near the site.

The real question remains: what will this center look like, and what functions will it serve? LRT, BRT, and commuter rail is a given. But those modes require no facilities beyond tracks, driveways, platforms, some shelters, benches, and ticket machines. That doesn’t explain the $150 million price tag mentioned in the Chronicle article. A bus station doesn’t add that much cost, either: McAllen built a new local and long-distance bus station with 14 bus bays, 14 ticket counters, and a 250-seat waiting room for $4.8 million (see this intermodal study pdf).

$150 million might be an appropriate price tag for a transportation facility combined with commercial development such as retail, restaurants, offices, and apartments. That could make a lot of sense in a location with excellent transit access, daily crowds of commuters passing through, and a strategic location near downtown and the Hardy Yards redevelopment. But, as with METRO’s joint development projects at the Texas Medical Center and the Cypress Park and Ride, that funding should come from private sources.

Regardless, the Grand Central Station comparison is off the mark. For one thing, Houston already had a Grand Central Station (picture below, from Steve Baron’s Houston Electric), on the site of today’s downtown post office and served by Southern Pacific trains and local streetcars. Beyond that, Houston will never have anything like New York’s Grand Central Terminal, a commuter rail terminal / subway station / shopping mall that serves 500,000 subway riders and commuter rail passengers daily in a grand historic landmark (and most of those passengers don’t even pass through the grand waiting room). What we need to make comparisons to is places like the intermodal center in Fort Worth, the commuter rail - light rail transfer at Mountain View, CA, and the transit-oriented development at Mockingbird Station in Dallas.

When it opens by 2012, the Intermodal Center will be an important link in Houston’s transit system. It may also be an architecturally impressive landmark. But we need to keep in mind that the former is what matters. The goal should be to build something that will be convenient for riders, useful for the city, and affordable.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 10:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Light Rail, Commuter Rail, busses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.