This is a commuter rail line: San Jose’s Altamont Commuter Express (ACE). It connects nine stations, one of them sort of close to a medium-sized employment center, one with a light rail connection to a suburban employment center, and seven which are basically no more than parking lots. There are six trains a day: three towards San Jose in the morning, three away from San Jose in the afternoon. The last train leaves at 5:35 p.m., and there’s no weekend service.

This is also a commuter rail line: Tokyo’s Yamanote Line. It connects 29 stations. All of them are in walkable places, including several major employment centers; all but 2 have connections to other rail transit lines. Trains run every 2.5 minutes at rush hour, and nearly as frequently the rest of the day, from 4:30 am to 1:20 am, seven days a week.

Yes, these are both commuter rail lines. But “commuter rail” is a technology, and what matters in transit is not technology but level of service. There is no doubt that a train every 2.5 minutes is different than a train every half hour (or no train at all), that a station that’s within a 5 minute walk from thousands of jobs is different that a station in an open field, that a connection to a reliable transit service that runs every 5 minutes is different than a connection to an occasional shuttle bus that gets stuck in traffic.

These two lines are the same basic technology, but entirely different sorts of operations. And the numbers back that up: ACE carries 3,700 trips a day, while the Yamanote Line carries 3,500,000. It’s not technology that really matters, it’s service. And there’s a whole range of service: these are two ends of a spectrum with many other possibilities in between.

“We need commuter rail” is an incomplete statement. So is “we need commuter rail to Galveston.” “We need rail transit from Houston to Galveston that runs every 20 minutes all day every day, makes the trip in about an hour, and connects conveniently to UTMB, NASA, Downtown Houston, UH, the Texas Medical Center, and Uptown Houston” is the kind of statement you can design a line around.

The Houston-Galveston commuter rail study now underway (without the support of METRO, Harris County or the Gulf Coast Rail District) is considering four alternatives: no-build (AKA do nothing) and three technologies — express bus, BRT, and commuter rail. The commuter rail alternative is described as:

Commuter Rail Alternative provides service along the Galveston Houston & Henderson (GH&H) Railroad between Galveston and Houston. The GH&H is a freight rail line that runs parallel with SH 3 and IH 45 for almost the entire corridor. This Rail Alternative will be studied for its suitability to provide commuter rail service and efficiently address the corridor’s mobility problems. Current freight operations along the majority of this corridor are from six to eight trains per day. This alternative would include the exclusive use of this rail alignment for three hours in the AM peak and three hours in the PM peak, providing two-way commuter service from Downtown Houston to Galveston and the 11 cities along the corridor.

If that’s the only commuter rail option on offer, this isn’t a real alternatives analysis. We’re settling for a rather low level of service from the get-go, a level of service that will be useless to a lot of potential riders. What about an option that runs all day? How often should the trains run? These questions matter now because they factor into both cost and ridership: more frequent service means more riders, but it also requires more tracks. Now’s the time to analyze a few different options and compare, rather than beginning with a (rather limited) assumption of what “commuter rail” means.

What kind of service do you want? Do you want ACE? The Yamanote Line? Somewhere in between? Tell the study team at one of three public open houses:

Tuesday, January 12th, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

La Marque Community Meeting Room

1109-B Bayou Road

La Marque, TX, 77568

Wednesday, January 13th, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

University of Houston-Clear Lake,

Bayou Building, Atrium II

2700 Bay Area Blvd

Houston, TX 77058

Thursday, January 14th, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Cleveland-Ripley House Neighborhood Center

720 Fairmont Parkway

Pasadena, Texas 77504

And tell us in the forums.

The America 2050 initiative explains:

As metropolitan regions continued to expand throughout the second half of the 20th century their boundaries began to blur, creating a new scale of geography now known as the megaregion. Interlocking economic systems, shared natural resources and ecosystems, and common transportation systems link these population centers together.

Those economic links lead to travel. A megaregion needs a megaregional transportation network. We have megareigonal highways and megaregional airlines. We also need to be thinking about megaregional transit.

This is by now means a novel thought. A linked megaregional transit network is taken for granted in Britain, Japan, and most of the world’s industrialized countries. The German railway actually offers a trip planner for the entire country: any bus, light rail, subway, commuter rail, or regional rail stop in the country to any other.

We had this kind of network in the United States once, too. We let much of it disappear, and the rest has been divvied up by a confusing array of local, regional, statewide, and national agencies. The separation between Amtrak and commuter rail, for example, is arbitrary: commuters can ride Amtrak and intercity travelers can ride commuter rail. But federal law distinguishes between the two. The result is a fragmented network, one that can be hard to comprehend in its totality.

But now that we are talking about high speed rail, our existing networks become relevant. High speed rail wants feeders. Some riders will arrive by car and depart by taxi, but there’s no doubt that good local and regional transit connections make megareigonal high speed rail more relevant. And, make no mistake, high speed rail is an interregional mode. It’s cities less than 3 hours — 600 miles or so — apart where high speed rail is most effective. Houston to Dallas makes sense. Houston to Chicago doesn’t.

So let’s take inventory.

The closest the United States gets to megareigonal transit is in the Northeast. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, the fastest railroad in the Western Hemisphere, links Boston to New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington. The Amtrak station in each of those cities is also a commuter rail hub and is connected to an extensive urban rail system. This network befits a region that is still the densest in the United States and the most prosperous: 4 of the 10 largest metropilitan areas and 8 of the 10 states with the highest per capita GDP are in the the Northeast.

On this map, black lines are Amtrak routes and red lines are commuter rail routes. The thickness (and the little italic numbers) indicate trains per day. Orange dots are major cities with local rail transit systems; white dots are major cities served by regional rail without local rail. Of course, not all cities are created equal, so the grey circles indicate metropolitan area size: the area of each circle is proportional to population. All these maps are to the same scale.

Those dense red bundles are eight of the ten busiest commuter rail systems in the country. This is the heavy-duty infrastructure I talked about last time. Boston has two stations with 183 and 378 commuter trains a day, respectively; New York gets 529 commuter trains a day at Grand Central, 734 trains a day (and 150 Amtrak trains) at Penn Station, 286 trains a day at Hoboken, and 145 trains a day at Flatbush; Philadelphia gets 458 commuter trains a day through its downtown spine, Baltimore sees 95 trains a day at two stations, and Washington Union Station sees 115 commuter trains a day. Those systems carry 1.2 million people a day, 4 times as many as Amtrak does in the same region. But that’s nothing compared to the local transit: the New York Subway alone carries 7.6 million.

The coherent spine of this system is Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor: nearly 100 long-distance trains a day on up to 4 electrified tracks. It connects the old port cities that have been the economic engines of this area since colonial times. It has literally defined this region. But you don’t have to go far inland to find a completely different world. The struggling Rust Belt towns in the inland valleys see little or no rail service. There are frequent Amtrak routes to Hartford, Harrisburg, and Albany. But beyond there, frequency falls off, often to only one daily train in each direction. Cities like Scranton and Reading have no service at all.

The region that seems closest to new high speed rail service is California. Despite the state budget crisis, planning moves ahead to link San Francisco with Sacramento. California is not as populous as the Northeast, and the cities are further apart. But you have the 2nd and 6th largest metropolitan areas on each end and a string of cities in the Central Valley between Sacramento and Bakersfield — a ready-made corridor. Moreover, California’s been building a lot of local transit and laying the groundwork for high speed rail with regular speed rail: state-funded Amtrak corridors from the Bay Area to Sacramento, from the Bay Area to Bakersfield, and from San Luis Obispo through Los Angeles to San Diego are the busiest Amtrak routes outside the Northeast. Californians are getting used to thinking of train travel, and that makes high speed rail an easier sell.

We have left the land of first generation commuter rail behind, with the exception of San Francisco to San Jose’s Caltrain. Commuter rail service is much less frequent than it is in the Northeast, and these systems carry a lot fewer riders, too.

Up the Pacific Coast, Oregon and Washington, the 13th and 27th most populous states, seem unlikely high speed rail candidates. But much of that population is in a narrow strip along the coast, and in the 1990s the two states partnered to buy tilting Talgo trains that can make 80 mph (110 with track upgrades) on a curvy route. Portland and Vancouver have long had good local rail systems, and Seattle is getting its act together, too. The topography makes 250 mph high speed rail prohibitively expensive. But continued expansion of medium-speed rail service seems likely.

Chicago is the third largest metro area in the country, with arguably the second best rail transit network. But the rest of the Midwest pales by comparison: Detroit is #12 and sinking, Minneapolis is #15, St. Louis #19. A lot of the population is spread out across the prairie, in a series of 200,000 to 600,000 metro areas.

Chicago has been a railroad hub for 150 years; it’s no surprise it has a major commuter rail network and Amtrak routes in every direction. But overall, the Midwest rail network is poor. The rail lines were built across the prairie towards distant destinations, and they missed many of the smaller population centers. Illinois funds three Amtrak lines, but the third, fourth, and fifth largest metro in the state are unconnected. Indiana and Wisconsin, which don’t fund service, are even worse: the state capitol and college town of Madison, WI is an obvious candidate for a rail connection to Milwaukee and Chicago, but today you have to take a bus.

The Midwest has been planning 110 mph rail for over a decade. In a flat landscape crisscrossed with active and inactive rail rights of way, that’s not technically difficult. The problem is getting seven states to agree on anything. So far, the only fruits of that work have been some basic track upgrades. For a few miles across southern Michigan, Amtrak actually goes 110 mph already. But then it has to get in line behind freight trains again.

So where’s Texas? Our Amtrak network is pathetic, to put it mildly. The busy routes are two trains a day (one in each direction); Houston gets 0.9 (three trains a week in each direction.) The Texarkana-San Antonio and Beaumont-El Paso routes are long-distance trains, so they come through at odd hours and are likely to be late. Fort Worth-Oklahoma City is state-funded corridor service, so it’s better, but it’s still only one round trip daily. You can take a day trip from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth, but not vice-versa. The local transit picture is getting better: Dallas and Houston have successful local rail systems. But San Antonio doesn’t have a local rail system, and Austin is about to open a stupid one.

But here’s what we do have: the #7, #9, #29, and #39 metro areas within 300 miles of each other with a big flat plain in between. And it’s all in one state, so if that state government got behind rail, it could happen pretty easily.

Ultimately, high speed rail can’t been seen in isolation. Every country that’s built high speed rail added it to a system of urban rail transit, regional commuter rail, and regular-speed intercity rail. It’s going to be easiest to make high speed rail happen where some of that network already exists. But where that network doesn’t exist, this is the time to build it.

Comments in our forums.

In 1985, 7 U.S. cities had commuter rail systems. Today, 14 (including Salt Lake City, above) do. Those new starts differed in significant ways — especially in level of service — from the existing systems. But now we may be seeing a third generation of commuter rail. The good news is that it offers more frequent and more reliable service. The bad news is that it costs more.

The first generation systems — Boston, New York (below), Philadelphia, Baltimore-DC, Chicago, San Francisco — date from before the 1920s. Railroads never made money on commuters, but they made a lot of money as the dominant mode for freight transportation, so they could afford to spend money on passenger rail facilities. They also had an incentive to do so: the industrial executives who decided which railroad to ship their freight with were often commuter train riders, as were railroad executives’ friends and neighbors (it’s no accident that the cities with the best commuter rail systems were those with railroad headquarters.) This money bought excellent infrastructure: double, triple, and quadruple track, grade separations, flyovers at junctions, electrification, elaborate terminal stations reached through urban tunnels. That long-lived infrastructure still sustains those cities today.

The second generation systems were born in a different world. In the 1970s, the U.S. railroad system seemed on the brink of collapse. Some major railroads were in bankruptcy; others were weak. Industrial decline was taking traffic away from urban rail lines, trucks were taking much of what remained, and a series of mergers made many lines redundant. Railroad executives, having seen two decades of contraction, were in a cost control mindset. When transit agencies looking to build low-cost suburban transit looked for railroad lines, the railroads were glad to rent space on their tracks or sell lines outright. Sometimes, those sales were the only thing keeping weak railroads afloat.

Thus, second generation commuter rail was transit shaped by opportunity. The goal was minimal investment. This usually meant operating trains on single-track lines, using occasional sidings to pass other commuter and freight trains (as in Dallas, below). It meant simple stations (though many of the old downtown stations had survived to be reused), diesel power, and a lot of grade crossings. This was cheap. But, as usual, you got what you paid for. he old commuter rail lines in Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia operate between 50 and 90 trains a day on over 10 lines each; New York has multiple lines with 100 trains a day. The second generation commuter lines often run only at rush hour, and only in rush hour direction. 10 to 20 trains a day are typical; some lines have only 8.

But the era that created second generation commuter rail has passed, too. Freight traffic is increasing; the railroads are dealing with problems of growth, not the problems of decline. Surplus rail lines are few and far between, and active lines don’t have much spare capacity. Railroads now regret the opportunities they lost in the line sales of the 1980s and 1990s, and, since they have no problem getting money from investors, they don’t need to sell lines for cash.

But the demand for commuter rail hasn’t gone away. In fact, it’s greater than ever, and more political support for transit means more federal, state, and local funding. That assure we’ll see more commuter rail. But it’s going to look different.

For a hint of the future of commuter rail, go to Utah. Ignore the empty deserts: Utah is surprisingly urban. Most of the state’s population crowds in a narrow strip along the Wasatch Front. The resulting traffic congestion is nonpartisan, and thus conservative Utah has become a major transit supporter, with 69% of Salt Lake City metro area residents voting to tax themselves for transit. But it’s also at the core of the Western railroad system, with Union Pacific lines radiating out to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Omaha, and Denver, and the intermountain west’s biggest industrial cluster surrounds those rail lines.

Thus, there were no spare freight rail tracks to be had. So the Utah Transit Authority bought a strip of land alongside the freight rail line from Union Pacific and built 38 miles of new passenger-only railroad from Salt Lake City to Ogden. Previous commuter rail lines have upgraded signal systems or added a few sidings. But there hasn’t been a new line this long since before World War II.

So what does $611 million buy, besides new tracks, 7 stations, locomotives, cars, and a 2,000 foot bridge to separate commuter rail from freight rail on the approach to Ogden?

It buys a lot of service. FrontRunner every 30 minutes in each direction all day long, from 4:00 AM to midnight. That’s 74 trains a day. And, since they are the only traffic on the railroad, they’re fast (79 mph) and on time. 30 minutes isn’t quite “don’t need to look at the schedule” frequency, but it gives riders a lot of choices: what to work late? Go home early on a Friday? See a basketball game at night? Commuter from Salt Lake to Provo rather than the other way around? No problem. It also buys “futureproofing”: add more tracks and you could run every 15 minutes.

But here’s a caveat: commuter rail is only a good deal if it goes where people want to go. Fast, frequent service to nowhere is useless. In older cities, commuter is integrated into the urban fabric. Downtowns grew around stations like Grand Central in New York, so passengers are dropped off within walking distance from work. Front Runner’s station is a mile from Downtown; it’s a convenient transfer to light rail, but a transfer nonetheless. In older cities, commuter rail is also integrated into the suburban fabric: stations are in town centers, a short walk from stores and residential neighborhoods. In Salt Lake, the stations are parking lots off of the freeway. Salt Lake’s TRAX light rail line extends from the center of Downtown 5 miles south to Sandy. That line cost $300 million to build; it exceeded expectations with 20,000 average weekday riders. After a $118 million extension to the university, the system now carries 53,000. FrontRunner cost more to build but carries only 4,800.

Still, Frontrunner may be the face of the future. Other cities face the same freight rail challenge. Houston commuter rail, for example, will require new tracks to get inside 610. New Mexico and Maryland have built new rail lines to go to places that didn;t have tracks before.

Frontrunner is also a flashback: this is the kind of rail infrastructure we were building 100 years ago. With dedicated tracks, flyovers, and frequent service, third generation commuter rail looks a lot like first generation commuter rail.

Transfer to our forums for some discussion. And see more Salt Lake photos here.

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Today:
One METRORail line links Downtown and the Texas Medical Center. 7 METROExpress lines provide excellent service from suburban areas to Downtown. Of the 5 major activity centers in the urban core, though, 3 have no high-quality transit links at all.

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The beginning of an urban system:
METRO Solutions BRT service promises will begin to build an urban network, linking UH/TSU as well as several neighborhoods to Downtown. The Uptown line connects the Uptown area to 4 Westside METROExpress lines. New commuter rail lines augment METROExpress. But without an east-west line, there’s no service to Greenway Plaza and no link between Post Oak and the other activity centers.

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A key link:
The University Line provides a key east-west connection, connecting Uptown to the system, adding service to Greenway Plaza, and better linking UH/TSU. But this system involves a great many transfers – two between Downtown and Post Oak, for example – and it misses some potential connections.

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The “connected” University Line:
The connectivity of the University line is greatly enhanced with 4 key upgrades: through-running onto the Uptown line (for nonstop service to Uptown), track connections to the Main Street line (for nonstop service to Downtown and the TMC), an eastern extension (for connections to METROExpress, commuter rail, and the East End line), and a western extension (for future expansion and for better bus connections). These enable more convenient trips between activity centers (Downtown-Post Oak is now a 1-seat ride), better connections between lines (East End to Uptown, for example), more suburb-activity center commute possibilities (Gulf Freeway to UH or Greenway), and additional circulator service (within Uptown).

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An interim step:
It is possible that funding constrains will preclude construction or operation of the full “connected” University Line. But it is important not to let such constraints hobble the system permanently. By implementing the connections that give the “highest bang for the buck” and designing the system so as to allow future construction and operation of the others (by adding track connections even if they will not yet carry service, by designing terminal stations so as to allow expansion, and by planning and reserving right-of-way for extensions), we can make sure the system will be able to meet future demands.

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Decisions that are being made now and the concrete that will be poured shortly will shape the future of transit in Houston for decades. We are building a system, not a cluster of individual lines. Systems are measured by their connectivity. The University Line must be design to effectively connect to other transit corridors to enable the maximum number of trips, maximize the potential of other transit investments, and make service as convenient as possible for the public.

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I submitted a longer version (1.5 MB pdf) of the above to METRO today as part of the scoping process for the University Line.

And if you want that process to continue you might want to tell John Culberson, who seems to want to stop it right now. And be sure to attend METRO’s meetings next week where they will present drawings showing some of the options for the University Line. And you can always make unofficial comments in our forums.

The ITC is an important aspect of the revised METRO Solutions plan unveiled in June. This is where the Main Street light rail line, Bus Rapid Transit lines to the North Side, Harrisburg, and Southeast, and a commuter rail line to Cypress along US290 come together: probably the busiest transfer station in the new system.

The ITC is also the heir of a vision Downtown groups have been pushing since at least 2003: a new transit center where light rail, commuter rail, Amtrak, local buses, and long-distance buses come together. This would solve several problems:

• the Greyhound station, which Midtown interests feel discourages development, would be removed.
• the Amtrak station and its rail line, which stand in the way of redeveloping the Downtown post office and the Buffalo Bayou Partnership’s plan for a new bayou channel , could be removed.
• local buses could be rerouted from downtown streets.
• The Houston Airport System could address congestion at the airport by building a satellite terminal with parking, transit access, and baggage check-in counters, connected to the airport by shuttle bus.

The ITC is also a redevelopment opportunity. The adjacent Hardy Yards, once a major Southern Pacific Railroad locomotive maintenance facility, has been sold to private developers. So have the Missouri-Kansas-Texas yards on the other side of Main Street.

Last year, the Houston Downtown Management District lead a study (more details here) to determine the site and scope of an intermodal center, with funding provided by TXDOT, the City of Houston, METRO, the Downtown Management District, the Main Street Coalition, and the Midtown Management District. By a public meeting in August, that study had gotten as far as evaluating sites and recommending the north side of Downtown. At some point last year, though, the study seems to have been taken over by METRO. Meanwhile, last year’s federal transportation bill included a $500,000 earmark for the center, and METRO acquired $14.7 million of land near the site.

The real question remains: what will this center look like, and what functions will it serve? LRT, BRT, and commuter rail is a given. But those modes require no facilities beyond tracks, driveways, platforms, some shelters, benches, and ticket machines. That doesn’t explain the $150 million price tag mentioned in the Chronicle article. A bus station doesn’t add that much cost, either: McAllen built a new local and long-distance bus station with 14 bus bays, 14 ticket counters, and a 250-seat waiting room for $4.8 million (see this intermodal study pdf).

$150 million might be an appropriate price tag for a transportation facility combined with commercial development such as retail, restaurants, offices, and apartments. That could make a lot of sense in a location with excellent transit access, daily crowds of commuters passing through, and a strategic location near downtown and the Hardy Yards redevelopment. But, as with METRO’s joint development projects at the Texas Medical Center and the Cypress Park and Ride, that funding should come from private sources.

Regardless, the Grand Central Station comparison is off the mark. For one thing, Houston already had a Grand Central Station (picture below, from Steve Baron’s Houston Electric), on the site of today’s downtown post office and served by Southern Pacific trains and local streetcars. Beyond that, Houston will never have anything like New York’s Grand Central Terminal, a commuter rail terminal / subway station / shopping mall that serves 500,000 subway riders and commuter rail passengers daily in a grand historic landmark (and most of those passengers don’t even pass through the grand waiting room). What we need to make comparisons to is places like the intermodal center in Fort Worth, the commuter rail – light rail transfer at Mountain View, CA, and the transit-oriented development at Mockingbird Station in Dallas.

When it opens by 2012, the Intermodal Center will be an important link in Houston’s transit system. It may also be an architecturally impressive landmark. But we need to keep in mind that the former is what matters. The goal should be to build something that will be convenient for riders, useful for the city, and affordable.

Discuss this post in the CTC forums.

Imagine if Houston had a rapid transit system that connected the suburbs to downtown with fast, frequent, comfortable, non-stop service.

Actually, we have it. METRO has spent over a billion dollars over 20 years to build a system of HOV lanes and park-and-ride lots that’s unlike any other in the United States. Dedicated ramps and barrier-separated lanes let busses go from outside Beltway 8 to the streets of Downtown without ever encountering a stoplight or a traffic jam. The result: 40,000 daily transit trips in 5 major freeway corridors, helping transit get a remarkable 40% market share for Downtown commuters.

Yet somehow this system has been all but ignored in our transit debate. In part, that’s because the HOV lanes have never had a political constituency. Conservatives dislike them because they are nice pieces of concrete that not everyone is allowed to use; liberals, even those who don’t recall that this is what Bob Lanier built instead of the monorail, are loath to endorse something so suburban and, well, concrete.

But METRO is also to blame. I made the map above myself because METRO doesn’t have anything like it, and I’m forced to refer to this thing the “HOV lane commuter bus system” because METRO has never come up with a better name (the “METROExpress” tag on the map is also mine). Perception means a lot in transit, and the fact that METRO treats these routes as if they were just ordinary busses has a lot to do with the fact that the public sees them that way. We have a service that is more extensive, faster, and more convenient than many commuter rail systems, yet nobody knows that. A little marketing would go a long way here.

Regardless, when we debate transit options for Houston, we need to keep this map in mind. We have a great way to get from the suburbs to downtown; we don’t have anything comparable for the Texas Medical Center or Post Oak (the handful of routes you see get stuck in the same traffic jams as cars) , and we don’t have any way to get between those centers. In that light, METRO’s light rail and BRT plan — which concentrates investment in urban areas — makes sense. So does David Crossley’s “urban backbone” plan (http://www.gulfcoastinstitute.org). It only makes sense to build new transit along the HOV corridors if that new service will be better than what we already have. It makes a lot of sense to create new connections to that existing network so it can connect to more destinations.

Discuss this post in the ctc forums.