Visualizing the new light rail lines
Houston METRO Light Rail from NC3D.com on Vimeo.
The Overhead Wire has uncovered a video of visualizations of the new METRORail lines. The video shows, in order:
- The Third Ward on the University Line.
- Edloe Station (in Greenway Plaza) on the University Line.
- Moody Park Station on the North Line.
- MacGregor Park Station on the Southeast Line.
- Lockwood Station on the East End Line.
The Third Ward footage seems to be out-of-date; it shows the old alignment crossing Dowling on Wheeler, not the new route that switches to Alabama. But other details are correct: the stations shown are the new prototype station design (by Rey De LA Reza architects), minus artwork.
It’s nice to be able to visualize what these lines might look like. But it’s also a reminder that it’s important to get the details right. At Edloe, for example, the trees integrated into the canopy are nice, but there’s no crosswalk at the west end of the station platform, which means a 500-foot detour for some riders. The Moody Park and MacGregor stations do show that crosswalk, and the sidewalks look pretty good, too. But in all the images, the overhead wires are suspended from their own poles in the middle of the street, not from the streetlight poles on either side, as on Main Street. That makes for more poles and a more cluttered streetscape.
So this video is a good way of thinking about these kind of issues. We need more of that. the Metro Solutions website is, frankly, pathetic. Other agencies across the county are posting much more information. Dallas has renderings and maps of stations. Norfolk has a video simulation of every station. Portland has a photo gallery of construction and detailed information on station amenities and traffic signal operation. Seattle posts project schedules. Denver has some nice images (pdf) of station designs and diagrams (pdf) of how stations will be accessed.
The federal planning and environmental process requires METRO to share a lot of information with the public. But when that process is over and an FEIS is finalized, there are still a lot of design decisions to be made. The public needs to be part of those decisions, too.
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