five questions about HGAC’s commuter rail plan
While I was in Boston, HGAC released a commuter rail study. It’s an extensive, in-depth document, the best look we’ve had at what a commuter rail system in the Houston region might be like and what it would take to implement. The proposed system is ambitious: 5 lines, to Hempstead, Tomball, Galveston, Alvin, and Fort Bend County.
But, despite the detail, this is not a plan that’s ready to implement. It would need a great deal more detailed analysis. Most importantly, it would need a financial and organizational structure. METRO’s service and taxation area covers only a portion of this system, and none of the other areas have transit agencies that are big enough to fund or operate a system of this magnitude. New funding sources, and likely a new regional agency, would be required. So this serves as the beginning of a regional political discussion.
I’ve written about commuter rail before, considering what makes a good commuter rail line and what such a line might look like. In that spirit, investigate this plan with five important questions:
What kind of trips would commuter rail serve?
Obviously, the majority of ridership would be suburban commuters headed to work or school. But to its credit, the study envisions some amount of service in both directions all day. For example, here’s the conceptual Galveston schedule:
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
That schedule could be improved by adding a late evening round trip, allowing Houstonians to spend the day in Galveston and head home after dinner, and allowing Galveston (or Clear Lake) residents to work late Downtown or go to an evening ballgame. It could be further improved by increasing midday frequencies. The equipment would be available for such trips, but more crews would be required. The same is obviously true for weekday trips.
Galveston and Sugar Land, unfortunately, is the only place on this system where we’d see much reverse commuting. Houston does have other suburban employment centers, like The Woodlands, but they wouldn’t be served by this system. And, since these areas developed fairly recently, they generally aren’t built in such a way that they are easily served by transit. And, as an HGAC study, this was limited to the counties that are part of HGAC, excluding Beaumont and College Station. I think a strong case could be made for extending a few trips to those regional destinations.
How do riders get to their destinations?
None of Houston’s major employment centers have a rail line running through them. Thus, nearly every commuter rail rider would have to transfer to some other form of transit to get to their final destination, be it an office, a university, or a special events location.
The proposed commuter rail system would link to the four major employment centers inside the 610 loop with a large terminal station near 610 and the Katy Freeway, a major station at the Intermodal Terminal site just north of Downtown, and smaller stations at the Eastwood Transit Center and on Almeda near Holcombe. Each of those stations is in a low density, light industrial area. They may see new development in the future, but for now they’ll be transfer hubs. Three will have light rail connections, which will link them not just to the nearest activity centers (Uptown, Downtown, and UH/TSU) but also to other activity centers (Greenway and the TMC). The Almeda station does not have a planned light rail line going to it, but the report notes that the TMC is considering an elevated people-mover system that could tie into the commuter rail station.
All of these connections involve a transfer, and sometimes more than one transfer — note that the proposed people-move system would require an additional transfer between the blue and red people-mover lines to get to the densest part of the TMC. To make things worse, not all of the commuter rail lines would serve the Eastwood and Almeda stations. Trains from Pearland and Galveston, for example, would not make it to the Almeda station, so those riders would need to transfer again. At some point, they’ll just give up and drive.
How does the service compare to existing transit?
Houston already has a very good suburban commuter transit system. Will commuter rail provide better service? The HGAC report has some “preliminary” schedules, so we can compare. Here’s the Galveston corridor, for a trip from the closest station to Beltway 8 to the center of Downtown.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
In this case, the bus leaves later and still gets you there earlier. And you’re going to be in the same seat for the whole trip. So bus is both faster and more convenient than rail. And the margin gets even bigger if you have a bad morning and miss your ride. The bus runs more than every 10 minutes today, but the train would run every 20:
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This result is no fluke. Commuter rail can’t go into employment centers without some really expensive construction, so a transfer to light rail or shuttle bus would be required for nearly every trip. And a 5-car commuter rail train carries many more people than a bus, so it has to run less frequently to fill its seats with the same volume of riders.
This plan does extend further outwards than the current HOV lanes, and it serves corridors that the HOV lanes don’t. A commuter rail train from Pearland is faster than a bus stuck on 288. So the answers here depend a lot on where you’re coming from.
How does this impact neighborhoods?
THe study concludes, as have others before it, that there is no spare capacity on freight rail tracks inside the 610 loop. That means building new tracks to get Downtown. In same cases, these would be alongside existing active freight rail tracks. But elsewhere the new tracks would follow abandoned freight rail lines which don’t have tracks in them now, or be on new elevated structures along freeways. In this map, the dashed tracks are on alignments that don’t have tracks today: through industrial land near 610 and 290, along the old MKT west of the Heights, alongside Yale, near the bayou northeast of Downtown, alongside I-45 and US 59, and in the median of 288. All of these would impact neighborhoods and commercial areas.
Even where the tracks follow existing rail lines there may be significant impacts. Here’s Winter Street in the First Ward today:
And here’s the plan for it:
Currently, this is a 50 foot right of way containing a public street and one track; the proposal is a a 165 foot wide right of way and it may involve closing the street. Presumably, the houses on both sides of the street would need to be taken.
What’s doubly problematic about all of this is that these trains would not stop in this neighborhood (or in most of the inner neighborhoods they would pass through) so the neighbors would get all of the impacts and none of the benefits.
Is it worth the money?
This is perhaps the most important question of all. The bottom line is this: s $2.9 billion dollar initial capital investment and a $34 million annual operating subsidy to carry 36,000 trips on an average weekday. The obvious comparison: the Main Street line cost $320 million to build, requires an annual subsidy of $6-$10 million, and carries 45,000 trips on an average. That’s a tenth of the capital cost and a quarter of the operating cost to carry more riders.
As freeway construction costs continue to increase and higher gas prices encourage more people to use transit, this may turn out to be a good deal. But it surely doesn’t justify diverting money from urban transit. Ultimately, commuter rail depends on identifying new sources of transit funding. And that may be the hardest part of all.
Got answers?
Well, that’s what the forums are for. A $3 billion dollar plan deserves a lot of discussion.