Intermodality

You’re on Winter Street, in the old First Ward, and a 1.5 mile long conundrum is rolling by. This is the most efficient form of land transport we have. It’s a train, 150 cars each filled with 120 tons of Wyoming coal, pulled by five 4,400 computer-controlled locomotives with a crew of 2. It carries [...]

UH Downtown is the end of the line — for now. By 2010 the trains should be continuing on another stop to the Northern Intermodal Center, where light rail will meet the BRT line to Northline Mall. Yesterday the METRO chose an alignment for this line that will follow North Main, jog east on Boundary, [...]

I posted yesterday about the politics of rail on Westpark. But what about the technical aspects? I’m going to confine this discussion to west of Shepherd. Of course, Westpark ends at Kirby, but METRO owns intact right-of-way as far as Shepherd. Past there, the old railroad right-of-way gets narrower and closer to the freeway and [...]

The design top speed of Houston’s light rail cars is 66 mph. Why? Because the top speed of Dallas’ is 65 mph. Houston is seemingly doomed to endless comparison with Dallas. So once Dallas started construction of a light rail system in 1990, it became inevitable that our rail transit efforts would be compared to [...]

The discussion about the western end of METRO’s Universities Line has always been about Richmond: it is technically feasible? is it politically feasible? There’s an implied assumption that Westpark, while it may have lower ridership, will be easier to fit into the city and less contraversial. I don’t buy either of those assumptions. I’ll explain [...]

The public realm: slices of life A Series of Civic Forums Sponsored by the Rice Design Alliance Part 02: The Built Environment Wednesday, August 9, 7 PM Martin Melosi, Panelist Christof Spieler, Panelist John S. Jacob Ph.D., Moderator Admission is free and open to the public Brown Auditorium, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 1001 [...]