Terminal Congestion
Houston’s sense of the city’s geography is shaped by freeways. We know them by heart. But there are kinds of traffic that flow along entirely different paths. This week in the Chronicle, Rad Sallee stumbles upon one.
Let me introduce you to the Terminal Subdivision.
In railroad geography, the only path into Houston from the west runs through Sugar Land, along US90A. Once close to the city, though, the trains take a more roundabout path: north parallel to Post Oak and 610 through Westbury, Bellaire, and Memorial Park to a spot near the intersection of 610 and the Katy Freeway, then east to Downtown parallel to Washington Avenue. This is the Terminal Sub, owned and operated by Union Pacific, and it’s a key part of our railroad system. Traffic: 24 freight trains a day and growing, plus 6 Amtrak trains a week.
The Terminal Sub is also the only connection to Downtown for the much less used rail line along 290. That’s the line on which METRO and the 290 passenger rail coalition want to run commuter trains. Fine, says Joe Adams of UP: the line along 290 has plenty of spare capacity. But there’s no room for commuter trains on the Terminal Sub. Without a connection to Downtown, that commuter rail line isn’t very useful.
Are we stuck? Not really. We’re seeing a public negotiation. Adams notes that enough money could solve the problem. He’s right. What he’s not saying is that money might be needed regardless.
The Terminal Sub isn’t always well suited to its task. There aren’t enough tracks, and there’s no room to add more. Important streets cross the line at grade (red “x”s on the map; green circles are streets crossing over or under.), creating traffic problems as trains move through. And two sections of the line run down the middle of residential streets. A few of the trouble spots:
- At grade crossings with Heights Boulevard, Shepherd, Durham, and TC Jester.
- A section along Allen Street where the two tracks entirely fill the right of way in the center of a residential street.
- West of Studemont, where the line splits into the “Passenger Main” and the “Freight Main”, both lines narrow down to a single track each.
- The Freight Main runs down Winter Street (above), only feet away from the front porches of shotgun houses. There’s hardly room for the one track there is here.
- The Passenger Main crosses seven streets at grade in a mile, tying up traffic headed into the courthouse area from the north.
There is a plan to solve some of these problems. The Texas Department of Transportation recently did a study to propose Houston freight rail improvements. The resulting proposal includes 3 new grade separations and closing 10 grade crossings (the gray “X”s below). It also includes a second track on the Freight Main.
This plan matters because, for the first time, a mechanism has been put in place to fund it: the new Gulf Coast Freight Rail District. It doesn’t have its own source of funding, but it could combine railroad money with city money, county money, state money, and federal money to put these kinds of improvements in place.
That plan isn’t based on commuter rail — it’s just a way to handle anticipated freight traffic growth, and to get trains off the Passenger Main to reduce impacts on street traffic. But it could easily fit in with METRO’s plans, because the proposed Intermodal Center is on the Freight Main. Adding another track on Winter Street would mean buying more land and closing cross streets; it wouldn’t be much harder to add two or three more tracks to handle the passenger trains as well.
But here’s the other part: there’s a community along the way. Widening the line on Winter means demolishing homes. That may make sense for the rest of the neighborhood: a grade separated line would be safer, quieter, and less disruptive. But the neighborhood needs to have a say in that. And given the lack of publicity for this plan — does Rad Sallee even know about it? — they probably haven’t had the chance.
Looking at the plan, I can see some obvious problems. The proposed grade separation at Houston Avenue is an overpass, and it’s big enough that it will restrict access to some cross streets, require some additional property, and loom above houses. Even with the plan, there are a few grade crossings left. Getting rid of those — grade separating the entire corridor — would means trains wouldn’t have to blow their horns between Memorial Park and Downtown, and it would give the railroad more flexiblity.
Congestion doesn’t happen only on freeways; it happens on tracks as well. Rail congestion leads to congestion on surface streets, and it means more trucks on the highways. The odds are something will be done about that on the Terminal Sub. The question is what. And the big question is whether whatever happens helps neighborhoods, helps freight rail move more efficiently, and works with other transportation projects. That’s why the public needs to be involved. You can start in our forums.