Process, and why it matters.
(Dan Havel and Dean Ruck’s Inversion, a temporary installation at Art League Houston last summer. It has nothing to do with rail, but it’s one of many reasons I love Neartown. And I do think it is about process.)
John Culberson’s town hall meeting at Rice University last night was a grueling affair that stretched out from 6:30 to 9:00. It made me sure I could never be a politician. And I have a lot of admiration for everyone who came — regardless of what side of the issue they are on — when they could have stayed home and enjoyed their evening instead.
We heard from a lot of people who were against rail on Richmond. We heard from a lot of people who were for rail on Richmond. And we heard Robin Holzer take the congressman to task for trying to short circuit the process. He was squirming a bit, and now he’s saying (at least in public) that he’ll give METRO some time to study the options before he tells them what to do. That’s good.
But, I’m sure some of you are asking, why should we get excited about process?
Good question. Here’s my answer.
A woman spoke last night who lives in Afton Oaks. She had several concerns. She was worried that METRO would reduce the number of traffic lanes on Richmond. She was worried that METRO would take 20 feet of her property. She was worried that METRO would leave her with a worthless property. She was worried about not being able to turn left from her driveway. And thus she opposed rail on Richmond.
Those are exactly the things I would worry about if a transportation project was planned in front of my house. And they’re exactly the kind of things the study process is intended to figure out before decisions get made.
Take the first three issues. In Afton Oaks, there would be several ways to find the land to put in rail. You could remove the median, you could remove a traffic lane, or you could widen the street by taking property. You might do a little of each: narrow the median a bit, reduce the shoulder, and take a little bit of lawn on both sides of the street. But there would never be a need to take 20 feet of property and two traffic lanes (at 10-14 feet apiece) to fit in a 27 foot wide rail line. How to do this is a decision that would need to be made with the community. And if taking property is the choice, there are legal protections for landowners. This woman will not be forced to default on her mortgage. And the worst case scenario she fears won’t happen.
Likewise for left turns. As it is, you can’t turn left from most driveways in Afton Oaks since there’s a median. Rail could reduce the number of gaps in the median. But it might not. Again, that’s a decision to be made with the community, and the study would quantify that.
In the bigger picture, the study would create a set of options for the entire line. There might be 5 alignments studied, and out of those only 1 might go through Afton Oaks. So if this woman didn’t like what rail meant to her neighborhood, she could say not “No rail on Richmond!” but “Don’t choose option #5.” That’s a lot more meaningful. That’s what the process is for.
But why not simply oppose any project that might harm any neighborhood in any away?
Because that will only do more harm to our neighborhoods.
The Houston area is projected to add 3.5 million people in the next 30 years. Those people will live and work somehere, and neighborhoods like those along Richmond will see growth. In the 13 years I’ve lived in Houston I’ve seen this area get visibly more congested as restaurants and art galleries sprung up and as, over and over again, 3 townhouses with 2 cars each replaced an old bungalow with a carless low-income family. I remember when Richmond was uncongested even at rush hour. No more. And it’s going to get worse. The alternative to rail isn’t the status quo. It’s even more cars. It’s widening the street for another lane of traffic.
Do we stop growth? I sure hope not. The reason that Houston has gone from a minor cotton market town to a global business center in a century is that we’ve always welcomed newcomers from every background and every level of income and skill. Once, we were competing with New Orleans and Beaumont and Galveston. Now we’re in a league with New York (another city that has always welcomed growth) and San Francisco. I grew up outside SF, and one of the things I still dislike about the place is its pervasive NIMBYism, its “now that I’m here don’t let anyone else in” attitude. There are no “I wasn’t born in California but I got here as fast as I could” bumper stickers.
As Mayor Bill White and Tory Gattis and many others have said, Houston is an open city. That’s our strength. It’s also what makes Neartown a wonderful place. If we try to stop growth then rents will go up, and all those wonderful ethnic restaurants will be replaced with more blue dog art galleries and yuppie bedlinen emporiums, and the neighborhood will be a less diverse and less interesting place.
And so doing nothing is not an option. We need to accommodate growth, and that means transportation projects. The question is what kind. If we don’t build transportation projects in the urban core — if we build only suburban highways like the Grand Parkway — jobs will migrate outwards, the center of the city will suffer, and places like Neartown will lose much of their vitality. But the same thing will happen if we widen all our streets. I like urban rail because it’s an alternative, a way to link neighborhoods and carry people that will not get congested 5 years (or in the case of the Southwest Freeway, a day) after construction is done.
More development is on its way to Richmond regardless of where rail goes. The land has been bought and the plans are being drawn. The question is whether the residents of the new apartments and condos will all be driving on Richmond, or whether they have another option for getting around to go to work, pick up their kids, run errands, and live their lives.
The process is about figuring out how to meet our needs with minimum impact. The process is about how to make this city a better place. And it will work only if we can have a reasoned and informed discussion about the future. The politics of fear and pandering and NIMBYism won’t really protect our neighborhoods. They will only, slowly but surely, make this city a worse place to live.
Comments? Art commentary? Visit the forums.
(Below: METRO’s process for the University Line. Original pdf here.)
