Drawing lines
The METRO Solutions LRT/BRT/commuter rail system will have several important transfer points: LRT to LRT at Wheeler, LRT to BRT near the Galleria, LRT to BRT at the University of Houston, LRT to BRT near 290 and 610, and LRT/BRT/Commuter rail Downtown. The latter is by far the most important, and also the trickiest. Downtown is Houston’s most important transit center, but it’s also a major destination in its own right.
In METRO Solutions phase 2, downtown will have 1 LRT line (Main Street), 3 BRT lines (North, Harrisburg, and Southeast) and 1 commuter rail line (290). It will also continue to be the destination of the majority of METROExpress commuter bus service and most of METRO’s local bus lines.
The immediate product of transportation planning is lines on paper. As planning progresses, those lines go from broad strokes across regional maps to lines on specific streets to the many lines of a schematic defining lanes, sidewalks, station platforms, and so forth. Right now, METRO is just beginning to work its way from the first step to the second. Downtown illustrates well the problems they face.
———————–
Metro’s schematic map (pdf here) implies a Downtown like this: [Important caveat: I am speculating here. This map doesn’t show any inside knowledge on my part. The base map I used is from HoustonDowntown.com — open it in a second browser window if you want to see street names, building locations, and so forth.]
This plan creates a major transfer center — the North Intermodal Center of my previous 3 posts — just north of Downtown, where all 5 lines come together. That makes for convenient transfers. But it’s also a detour for many riders. North line riders are forced to transfer to get Downtown or to connect to many bus lines. In fact, of the 5 lines, only 1 - the existing light rail — gets anywhere close to the Downtown employment core (shaded yellow here) or to the many bus lines that run through the west side of Downtown.
———————–
We might fix some of the transfer issues by taking the Harrisburg and Southeast lines east-west through Downtown. That gives them a better connection to Downtown jobs and to local and commuter bus lines. But it eliminates direct transfers to the North line or commuter rail. It also turns out to be tricky to go East-West. The public megaprojects on the East side of Downtown - the ballpark, the convention center, and the arena — block off most east-west streets. The most logical place to thread through that is on Capitol and Rusk. But it turns out those streets completely miss all of the stations on the light rail. Now we have BRT-LRT transfers that involve a 4 block walk — not exactly convenient.
———————–
The best place for an East-West line is further south, getting into the core of the business district. If we use McKinney and Lamar, we get an excellent transfer to light rail right at Main Street Square, where the “superstop” at 1000 Main offers tunnel access and a METRO Ridestore. The downside is a few turns and more congested streets — this option is more difficult from a transit operations standpoint, but better for riders. But we still have that disconnected North line.
———————–
In many ways, it makes no sense for the North line to get almost to Downtown, but not quite. Of course, if it were LRT instead of BRT, we wouldn’t have that problem, since the North line would simply be an extension of the Main Street service. But BRT does give us an advantage — downtown, where the streets are already repaved and sidewalks are wide enough to fit nice station shelters and ticket machines, it’s cheap to extend BRT:
Now 3 BRT lines and LRT go to the core of Downtown with easy transfers between them and to bus routes. Commuter rail passengers can transfer to BRT or LRT to go Downtown or LRT to the Texas Medical Center.
———————–
I’m not saying that we’ve found the way to fix the Downtown transfer issues — there are myriad issues of driveway locations, traffic counts, and signal timings that I have neither the expertise or the time for. The real conclusion is that the things that make a transit system rider-friendly or rider-unfriendly are often in the details. What’s efficient to operate isn’t necessarily what will be the most convenient. And to find the right answer we have to consider all the options.
Links:
- Discuss this in the forums.
- See my comments on transfers here.
- In San Francisco, they’re having some of the same issues, but they’ve have lot more money. After all, they have a House minority leader to get earmarks, and we had a House majority leader to, um, block us from getting money. Excellent coverage at San Francisco CITYSCAPE.