NIC: not quite Grand Central, but still intriguing
METRO’s proposed Northern Intermodal Center sparked a flurry of discussion (also this post, this post, Houston Strategies, and Off the Kuff) back in January, but that was based mainly on speculation. Thanks to the public meeting last week, we have better information now.
We still don’t have the answers to some big questions. What will be included? Light rail, BRT, and some local buses are part of this for sure, and so is commuter rail if METRO goes ahead with its plan to build it (no study has begun). Airport shuttle service is being talked about, but it may just be the same private van shuttles that serve Downtown hotels now. Greyhound is still a possibility, but it’s sounding less likely because the local neighborhoods fear it will attract unsavory characters. Commuter buses? I’d bet against it. How grand will the building be? I don’t know.
The price tag is also uncertain. The number may include major access infrastructure as well as transit (more below) and it’s likely that the building will have some sort of joint development. $150 million may be right, but that’s for more than a bus station.
But the meeting did make me think of the project in some new ways:
- This is a local project as well as a regional one.
We’ve talked about this as a regional transit hub. But it’s also a neighborhood transit station. It’s an interesting neighborhood, too.
At last month’s CTC yearly meeting, councilman Peter Brown spoke of areas of stability, areas of infill, and areas of change. The NIC site is right between an area of stability and an area of change. To the north, the Near Northside is one of those neighborhoods that has experienced neither blight nor gentrification. To to south and the east are industries and abandoned railyards, ripe for redevelopment. We don’t know the time frame – some of these industries will likely stick around as long as their current owners are in charge – but this area is too central (and too congested) to remain industrial forever. Change is coming; the question is what kind.
It would be possible to build a transit center here that sits aloof in the midst of parking lots, or it would be possible to address the new development and ignore the existing neighborhood. But METRO’s schematic charts show the NIC smack dab above Main Street, with one entrance facing north to the old neighborhood and another facing south to the new development.
- This is about more than transit infrastructure.
The old rail yards have always been a geographic barrier. Only two Downtown streets cross them — Main and Elysian – and they are a mile apart. To make things worse, Main is in a narrow tunnel, Elysian is elevated for almost a mile, and the Main Street light rail project created a bottleneck on Main just to the south. Ideas for fixing these issues – extending San Jacinto through the rail yards and widening Main Street – have been around for while. But now METRO is looking at how they fit into this project.
There is real potential here in terms of pedestrian and bike infrastructure as well. Main Street through this area is forbidding for pedestrians where it’s above ground; it’s positively scary in the tunnel under the tracks. This project could fix that. The site is alongside White Oak Bayou and the MKT right-of-way, slated to become a hike-and-bike trail. This project could link parkland along the bayou and the trail to neighborhoods and transit and to the UHD campus. - It’s all about a few key landowners.
On LRT or BRT projects, METRO deals with hundreds of individual landowners. Here, METRO already owns several key pieces of property. A few other organizations own the key parcels surrounding that: the Union Pacific Railroad, the University of Houston, and the development group that owns the Hardy Yards. UH (which is expanding at a furious pace) and the Hardy Yards could benefit from the new transit access. The final project may well involve land swaps and joint development that meets METRO’s needs and benefits those landowners. The Union Pacific doesn’t have the same motives, but then they have to be on board regardless; there will be no commuter rail without them.
There’s a lot of potential upside here. This project could become the core of a new urban place, embedded in retail and residential development, linked to its surroundings with pedestrian-friendly streets, and linked to the city with transit, bikeways, and parks.
An Intermodal Center isn’t an end unto itself. Bringing many modes together in one place doesn’t make sense when those transit lines would be more useful if they went elsewhere. The goal isn’t to maximize transfers; it’s to make things more convenient for riders. I get the sense that METRO gets that. They’re now talking about bringing the North, Southeast and Harrisburg lines into the center of Downtown. The NIC would still be an LRT/BRT transfer point, but riders headed Downtown wouldn’t be forced to transfer.
There are many decisions still to be made here. There will be another open house in July, by which time METRO will have figured out scope, cost, and layout and prepared a draft environmental impact study. Preliminary engineering is scheduled to start in late summer.
See more the METRO web site, where they’ve posted a PDF of the meeting presentation boards and a fact sheet. And be sure to visit our forums.