Intermodality

In Sunday’s Chronicle:

Put Houston on the right track: Build these projects to prepare the city for the future

Building these six projects would help the local economy in the short term, but it would also help us in the long term by building connections to research and education, improving access to job centers, reducing flooding, adding parks, cleaning the air and moving goods more efficiently. That’s stimulus we can believe in and that our grandchildren will thank us for.

Cast your vote for your favorite project in our forums. And you can drop in on Tory’s comment thread, too.

Last year, I discussed the prospects of high speed rail in Texas. At that time, there were 9 countries that had built new 300 km/h (180 mph) intercity city rail lines: France, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Spain, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Since then, a tenth — China — has joined the list.

This week, California voters decided to add the United States, approving a $10 billion bond measure to build a new 220 mph line from Downtown San Francisco to Downtown Los Angeles, expand connecting rail transit systems, and grade separate some adjacent freight rail lines. The route has been chosen and environmental reports are complete, but the project is still dependent on federal funding. The proposed trip time from SF to LA is 2 1/2 hours. That’s the same as Paris-London, Paris-Marseille, or New York-Washington today, and in those corridors rail carries more people than the airlines do. If we built high speed rail in Texas, Houston to Dallas, Austin, or San Antonio could be less than 2 hours.

Meanwhile, voters also approved light rail extensions in Seattle (after having defeated a light rail plus highway measure a year ago), a new commuter rail line north of San Francisco, a streetcar line in Sacramento, subway and light rail extensions in Los Angeles, more commuter rail funding in Albuquerque, and an elevated rail line in Honolulu.

Talk high speed rail in our forums.

Last night, the United States elected a president who lives within walking distance of rail transit (and a Vice President who commutes by Amtrak.) Obviously, this is a minor point in the scheme of things. But it’s not insignificant. Even after World War Two, long after the country had become urban, presidents have hailed from, or least identified themselves with, small towns: Independence, MO; Gettysburg, PA; Hyannisport, MA; Johnson City, TX; San Clemente, CA; Plains, GA; Kennebunkport, ME; Crawford, TX. Even Little Rock, AR isn’t that big. But Obama lives only four miles from the center of the third largest city of the United States, and his political roots are unquestionably urban. That should not be remarkable in a country where 80% of the population lives in metropolitan areas. But our politics has valued “small town values” and as a result the issues of cities — traffic congestion, for example — have not been a major part of the national dialog. But we can hope that’s changing. Many of the places that helped swing this election — the Philadelphia suburbs, Northern Virginia, Denver — are places that have rail transit, are building rail transit, or are demanding rail transit. Will that shape the policy debates to come?

Have your say in our forums.

LIVABLE HOUSTON INITIATIVE Another View on Regional Commuter Rail

Christof Spieler, Citizens’ Transportation Coalition

Tory Gattis, Houston Strategies

Christof Spieler and Tory Gattis recently got together to suggest a plan for the first step in pursuing regional commuter rail for the Houston region. They are reacting to several public statements made by Harris County Judge Ed Emmett that he will aggressively pursue putting in Commuter rail as quickly as possible and to the H-GAC Regional Commuter Rail Connectivity Study (pdf) which Sam Lott presented at our June Livable Houston / Smart Growth Initiative Meeting (includes video). They believe their plan would be a cost-effective short-term solution that would provide short-term connectivity to job centers via the 2012 Light Rail System and could still be part of a more comprehensive long-term solution.

At the same time, Christof and Tory have been raising questions that apply to any commuter rail plan:

Will commuter rail provide better service than the existing park-and-ride system? How can commuter rail connect to Houston’s multiple employment centers? Can commuter rail strengthen Houston’s economy by connecting to regional centers like College Station and Galveston? How do commuter rail and urban rail relate? What level of service does commuter rail have to provide to be a compelling alternative for commuters? They will present their ideas at the upcoming Livable Houston / Smart Growth Initiative meeting on Wednesday, July 23, 2008.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 Noon - 1:30pm at the H-GAC building 3555 Timmons, second floor

Free. Bring your own lunch For more information call 713-523-5757

The Gulf Coast Institute and the Houston-Galveston Area Council host Livable Houston/Smart Growth bring-your-own-lunch meetings that are open to the public on the fourth Wednesday of every month.

Tomorrow, the Harris County Commissioner’s Court is issuing contracts to proceed with design on Segment E of the Grand Parkway, the I-10 to 290 portion of a proposed 170-mile loop around the fringes of the Houston region.

And I mean fringes: there’s nobody out there. Only 80,000 people live within 3 miles of Segment E, and 66,000 of them live within 3 miles of 290 or I-10. And there are only 22,000 jobs in that same area. Here’s a density map from the Gulf Coast Institute:

Put that in perspective: The University Line, only 3/4 as long as Segment E, has 574,000 people living within 3 miles, and 714,000 jobs.

So why would we build a highway that serves so few people? It’s not to deal with congestion, since there is no congestion there. It’s not to provide an alternate to 290 — the way to do that is to build the Hempstead toll road, running along 290 rather than taking a 20 mile detour.

There’s only one reason to build Segment E: to encourage development. If the commissioners approve it, it’s because they want new subdivisions built in the open space of the Katy Prairie. We’re building a highway for people who don’t live here yet in hopes that developers will build houses for them and that they will want to live on a toll road 30 miles from Downtown in a world of $4 gas. This is, simply put, land use planning, Houston style. And the question for the commissioners is this: is this good planning?

What’s you plan? Tell us in the forums.

For 70 years, in a period where transit and railroads underwent massive change, one thing has remained constant: the propulsion of choice for any new American commuter rail line is diesel. But that was before $125 a barrel oil. If we build commuter rail in Houston, it’s worth asking how it ought to be powered.

The diesel locomotive has a lot going for it. Diesel is easily portable and packs a lot of power per pound. The external infrastructure is simple; trains can even be fueled directly from a tank truck. Diesel locomotives are off-the-shelf, they share most of their components with common freight locomotives, and it’s easy to find people who know how to maintain them.

But diesel pollutes, it produces greenhouse gases, and it’s gotten a lot more expensive. And there are alternatives.

The gold standard for railroad propulsion is electricity, as it has been since it was invented. Electric locomotives are quieter, more powerful, longer-lasting, lower-maintenance, and more energy-efficient than diesel. They emit no pollution from the vehicle itself, and if the electricity is provided from hydroelectricity, wind, solar, or nuclear, they do not pollute at all. In passenger use, electric trains lend themselves to powering every axle, which increases acceleration and reduces trip times. And the electric motors can be used to brake the train as well as accelerate it, returning energy to the system, saving 15% or more.

Electric propulsion has only two downsides. One is minor: the visual appearance of the wires. Modern systems are very simple, and it’s worth noting that the extremely appearance-conscious Swiss have no objection to errecting them in their treasured mountain landscapes. The second is more significant: perhaps $6 million a mile to install the wires. That immediate cost is what taxpayers and shareholders see. But on a heavily travelled route, the lower operating costs –and better service — can justify that. The world’s busiest railroad systems — Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, China, India, Russia — all have significant electric routes. In the United States, New York, Philadelphia, D.C./Baltimore, and Chicago have electric commuter rail, and San Francisco is preparing to electrify its line.

No other alternative to a standard diesel locomotive is as common as electricity. But there are other viable technologies. Hybrid locomotives are in use for freight trains, and they could easily be adapted to passenger use. Likewise, natural-gas powered locomotives are a proven technology. Both are still dependent on fossil fuels. But another proven alternative is not: in 1955 the West German railways introduced ETA 150 battery railcars, which could carry 86 passengers 180 miles at up to 60 mph on one battery charge. 232 were built, and they remained in everyday service for 40 years. Could 2008 technology do better?

In 1998, with oil at $20 a barrel, diesel propulsion might be an obvious choice for commuter rail. In 2008, with $125 a barrel, it seems foolish not to consider other options. Whatever the choice is, it will stick for while: commuter locomotives last for 20 years or more, and electric infrastructure is cheapest when it’s done at the same time as track upgrades.

Above, the worst of both worlds: MBTA’s Boston-Providence route is one of two U.S. commuter rail lines that runs entirely under electric wires but uses diesel locomotives. Here’s hoping we’re smarter.

The forums are powered by electricity.

Of all the commuter rail lines being considered for Houston, the one to Fort Bend is the most studied. It was one of two lines proposed as part of a 1993 plan that failed to get federal funding. It was the only commuter rail line included in the 2003 METRO referendum. And, in 2003-2004, it was the subject of 9-month study (1.7mb PDF) sponsored by HGAC.

The 2004 study concluded that a 15-mile commuter rail line along US90A from Fannin South to Rosenberg was feasible, but that it would need its own tracks alongside the existing freight rail tracks. It estimated 12,100 daily boardings for a capital cost of $380 million. (These are 2004 costs, and there has been a lot of construction inflation since.)

This year’s HGAC regionwide study looked at the same corridor as part of its “Principal Corridor” system, but, because the goal was to bring all lines into one central hub, modified it to run to the Intermodal Center instead of Fannin South. The study also extended all of its proposed lines to the edge of the HGAC 8-county region, which put the end of the line in Kendleton, TX (pop. 537) instead of Rosenberg (pop. 24,043). These changes resulted in a much longer 50-mile line which would also be considerably more expensive (over $600 million) due to the additional rural trackage and the cost of upgrading the busy Terminal Subdivision inside the Loop. However, the projected ridership — 7,500 — is much lower than the earlier study. That may be due to some differences in the models used, but it likely has more to do with the lower level of service in the newer study (8 trains a day each direction instead of 22) and with the fact that a lot of the people who live in Fort Bend work in the Medical Center.

In the final stage of the study, the system was modified based on railroad input. Because of the same freight rail congestion that lead the 2004 study to study separate freight rail tracks, the 90A corridor was dropped altogether from the modified “baseline” system, replaced by a new “Popp” corridor. This has the advantage of a good connection to the Medical Center. However, it requires creating an entirely new rail corridor inside 610, following 288. The study found a ridership of 8,406, better than the Principal Corridor plan but still much less than the 2004 study.

At the public meeting on the HGAC plan, Missouri City Mayor Leonard Scarcella reacted angrily, calling the revised plan the “Loop-De-Doop.” It’s not hard to tell where he’s coming from. In avoiding freight rail congestion, this option also avoids most of Fort Bend’s population. Overlay it on population density, and we see it’s a classic case of rail where the people aren’t:

So how did we get here?

The problem is not in the study itself, but in the basic parameters it was based on. The political leadership of HGAC wanted to study only a single mode (diesel locomotive-hauled trains sharing tracks with freight rail) with the lines running into the Intermodal Center and extending out to the edges of the HGAC region. No study was ever commissioned to see if those were the right assumptions.

So let’s question those assumptions. First of all, mode: with congested freight rail tracks and no good connection to Downtown, this might not be a corridor suited to commuter rail. In fact, the 2004 study considered light rail, running alongside the freight rail tracks as in the photo above. Because light rail trains are smaller, they are suited to more frequent operation: every 15 minutes at rush hour instead of every 30. That alone, they found, would increase ridership from 12,100 to 17,200. If those trains were run onto the Main Street line, eliminating a transfer, ridership would increase further to 21,800. Light rail would come at a higher capital cost: $756 million compared to $383 million. But the cost per rider would actually be lower.

Now let’s question another assumption: do we need rail to Rosenberg? Population density drops off dramatically once we get past Sugar Land. The line outside of there cost the same per mile, but it picks up many fewer people. So let’s determine the extent of the line based on where the people are, not on political boundaries:

With the outer end at Sugar Land, we have only a 12.6 mile line. Assuming the same cost per mile, that cuts the capital cost to $376 million, less than commuter rail to Rosenberg. But even if we assume that the people who would have boarded in Richmond and Rosenberg would not ride at all (when in reality many of them would simply drive a bit further and catch the train anyway) we still get a ridership of 13,900, higher than commuter rail to Rosenberg.

The bottom line: based on these studies, light rail to Sugar Land cost less, carries more people, and offers more convenient service that commuter rail to Rosenberg or Kendleton. And, of course, the light rail line could always be expanded outwards in the future.

But the most important point is this: we have a variety of transit modes to chose from — commuter rail, light rail, commuter bus. We can’t assume that one of these will be the right answer everywhere. We have to consider all of them in light of the demographics and existing conditions in each corridor. And, in the end, we’ll likely find different answers in different corridors. HGAC indicated two weeks ago that that was indeed the intent: studies will be done in each corridor, considering multiple modes. We need to make sure that political pressure to move fast, however well-intentioned, does not override that process.

The forums are the right mode for your comments.

A notice of a street being torn up is not usually considered good news. But this one was eagerly awaited by many:

Construction crews began utility work this week in the first segment of the East End Corridor.

On Monday (July 7) the shoulder lane on the north side of the street will be blocked from Everton to Drennan.

The Main Street line opened in January 2004. In the four and a half years since, not one bit of dirt has moved to expand rail transit in Houston. Had construction started shortly after voters approved more lines in 2003, we’d be riding trains on the North Line already. When speakers at last week’s East End groundbreaking talked about getting on with it, they were expressing a common frustration.

Of course, there’s more frustration to come. Construction will not be fun. And, even with everyone’s best effort, it will take time. The Main Street line took every bit of two years and nine months to build: the photo below was taken less than 12 hours before the first train. METRO has promised phased construction, and this first work delivers on that promise. The businesses and residents along the lines need all of us to hold METRO and the city accountable to make sure that continues.

But this is what all the studies and meetings are about. This is when they become concrete. May the result be worth the wait.

The forums are under construction, too, and you can help.

Tuesdays’ public meeting on commuter rail showed two approaches to implementing commuter rail. The first is contained in the report itself, which lays out a five-line, $3 billion system with totally new lines inside the 610 loop and terminal stations and maintenance facilities designed to support even more lines. The second approach came from Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who wants to get two lines – Galveston and Hempstead – up and running as soon as possible.

There’s a definite appeal to Emmet’s vision. The sooner trains are running, the sooner we begin to see benefits. But there are pitfalls as well. The most dangerous of these is political. If a quick commuter rail implementation is ineffective — if it results in long, inconvenient trips, if it carries low ridership – it might cause riders and voters to give up on commuter rail altogether. So while it’s nice to be quick, it’s equally important to be good. Whatever the first line is, it must be effective.

The easiest way to implement the Galveston and Hempstead lines would be to extend them no further inside 610 than their first intersection with any other freight rail lines. This would create two temporary commuter rail terminals: one somewhere near Northwest Mall, and one around Broadway and Lawndale in the outer East End, near Pasadena. Here, commuter rail riders would need to transfer to continue their trips to Downtown, the Medical Center, or Uptown. Unfortunately, neither of these places will have light rail by 2012. That would leave riders transferring to buses. Even if those buses use HOV lanes, that would not be an improvement on current service. It might be cheap, but it’s not useful.

So here’s the question: is there a way to get commuter rail to light rail – and closer to the major activity centers – without massive new infrastructure? For the Galveston line, I think there is.

The railroad line that runs to Galveston – the UPRR Galveston Subdivision – is suitable for a quick implementation of commuter rail because it’s not very busy. Outside 610, it carries fewer than 10 trains a day, while Houston’s busiest lines carry 40 or 50. This line actually extends inside the loop to within a mile of Downtown, and even there it carries fewer than 15 trains a day. The problem is that it intersects at grade with two much busier lines. The other problem is that it does not extend to the planned downtown commuter rail terminal at the Intermodal Center; in between the two is a mile and a half of extremely congested track called the West Belt. Those three bottlenecks – the two crossings and the West Belt – are keeping Galveston trains away from Downtown.

How do we fix those bottlenecks? The crossings are straight-forward: build new commuter rail overpasses. Commuter rail trains, unlike freight trains, can climb fairly steep grades, so this isn’t much different than a road overpass, and it could be built within the existing rail line right-of-way.

Solving the Downtown terminal problem requires rethinking an assumption that came from previous planning efforts. The Intermodal Terminal is not the only potential site for a Downtown station; in fact, there could be more than one Downtown station. Right at the end of the Galveston Subdivision is a fairly lightly used freight rail yard – Congress Yard – that happens to be alongside the Southeast Line light rail alignment. There’s room here to store and maintain the handful of trains that would be required to operate this one line, and there’s room for a passenger platform that could be linked with an overhead walkway to a new station on the Southeast Line, only two stops away from the Downtown office core.

These three improvements – along with a refurbishing of the track inside 610, and maybe an additional siding or two — would add to the cost of the line. But we’re talking tens of millions here, not hundreds. [As Mike notes in the forums, I’m referring to the costs of these individual improvements. The cost to get the entire line up and running would be hundreds.] And the result would be a line that would deliver high quality service from day one.

Unfortunately, there’s no similar solution for the 290 line. Between Northwest Mall and Downtown is the Terminal Subdivision, one of the most congested and disruptive sections of the Houston freight rail network. It needs to be fixed, and that fix will be a major project that needs to address freight rail, commuter rail, and light rail. It’s not something that can be done quickly.

But, as Tory points out, there’s another rail line parallel to 290: the BNSF line along 249. Because 249 doesn’t extend to the loop, commuters from this area have to choose between getting stuck on 290 or getting stuck on 45, and the commuter bus service doesn’t benefit from an HOV lane. And not only is this line not busy, but it also intersects with the light rail North Line just north of 610. A new station platform could be built on the overpass where the light rail line crosses the railroad, connected with stairs to a commuter rail platform below (this would have to be taken into account in the design of the light rail overpass, so there’s a limited window of time to make this decision.)

From here, it would be a 15-minute ride to Downtown; that could actually be cut to 10 minutes by running express service that would skip stops between here and UH Downtown, then run local along the rest of the Main Street Line. New Jersey’s Hudson-Bergen Light rail does this successfully. That same service could also benefit local riders coming from the transit center at Northline Mall. Once again, this line would improve on current transit service from day one.

Both of these solutions suit themselves to an incremental approach. They could be implemented relatively quickly, relatively affordably, but they would provide useful, convenient service. But they also do not preclude the larger terminal facilities or the additional lines contemplated in the HGAC plan. The places on the other lines in the HGAC plan — and places not included in that plan — want service, too. And a bigger system would require more infrastructure. Perhaps the most important part of the HGAC study is its recommendations to safeguard right of way now to build stations, tracks, and maintenance facilities later. Building commuter rail won’t get easier as the city gets denser — it will only get harder. And it’s not easy even now.

Where do you want to go in 2012? Tell us in the forums.

[map below: these two commuter rail lines is purple, HOV lanes in orange, 2012 light rail in blue]

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.

What do you get for $400 million in transit improvements?

In 1995, Boston opened a new $160 million basketball arena, now called TD Banknorth Garden, with a major commuter rail station, North Station, on the ground floor. In 2003, Boston’s MBTA spent $325 million to completely rebuild the subway station that serves the commuter rail station and the arena. And in 2007, MBTA enlarged and improved the commuter rail station’s waiting room.

So what is it like to transfer from the subway to commuter rail? You get off in a spacious, well-lit station. You follow signs to commuter rail, up an escalator and through a mezzanine. And then … you end up outdoors, puzzled. There’s a building to your left, 60 feet down the sidewalk. It’s labeled “TD Banknorth Garden.” There’s no mention of commuter rail. But it turns out that’s where you want to go. So, if you are in the know, you walk 60 feet down an unshaded concrete path alongside a loading dock driveway and then you’re at the entrance to the commuter rail station.

How much would it have cost to add a sign below the “Garden” sign saying “North Station MBTA commuter rail”? Perhaps several hundred dollars.

How much would it have cost to build a enclosed, air conditioned walkway from the subway to the arena? $100,000, $200,000 at most, increasing the project cost by 0.05%.

Boston is not a Mediterranean climate. It gets hot in the summer. It gets cold in the winter. It rains. That 60 foot walk is bearable, but it’s not necessarily pleasant. And that part of the experience colors everything else — it tends to cancel out the nice subway station, and the new waiting area, and as you’re walking that bit through the snow you think “maybe I should drive.” And if you’re not a regularly commuter, that minute — or ten minutes — of confusion looking for the train station is even worse.

Some transit planner sits in their office and thinks, “we rebuilt the subway station, and elimated the ugly El over Causeway Street, and created an easy cross-platform transfer between the Orange and Green lines.” And I say, “You did, and that’s great. But you forgot about the experience, and you got one detail wrong, and now 10,000 riders a day are living with it every day.”

Keep that in mind now that City Council has approved the consent agreement for Houston’s new light rail lines: it’s not enough to get the big picture right. The details matter every bit as much.

The forums are weatherproof.

This isn’t one of the longest posts I’ve written, or the most interesting. But it is one of the fastest. I’m on board Acela Express train 2165, headed south through Connecticut on my way from Boston to New York. Out the window I can see blue water and sailboats.

That’s my knee in the picture. Note the gap between it and the seat. I’m 6’3”, so that’s a novel experience. There is no gap between my knees and the seat on an airplane. My computer is actually in a comfortable position. There’s a power plug, located on the side wall where it’s easy to reach. Two cars behind me, there’s a café car selling food, whenever I want it. All of this stuff is available the moment I want it – there is no seatbelt light. And the aisle is wide enough to really walk in.

But the best part of the experience isn’t on the train. I boarded at Boston Back Bay, two blocks from Copley Square. No airport shuttle, no taxi, no airport rail link – just take my luggage and walk down the street from my hotel. I got to the station way too early – about 20 minutes before departure. One minute would have sufficed; trains can’t be hijacked, so the TSA isn’t around. And at the other end of the trip, I’ll get off the train right into Midtown Manhattan.

All of this is to say that there’s more than one way to measure traveling. Time is one thing. Comfort and convenience is another. Time-wise, this trip took about the same, door to door, by train as by plane. But rather than sitting comfortably in one place, working, I’d spend much of the plan trip waiting in lines, waiting at the gate, sitting in an airport shuttle, and waiting until we reach cruising attitude. I might arrive at the same time – but I’d have gotten less done, and I’d be much less relaxed.

Transportation planners design for things they can measure. Travelers make decisions based on how they feel. Sometimes the feelings match the planning metrics. But sometimes they don’t. Time waiting feels a lot longer than time moving. Time spent in a comfortable seat feels shorter than time in a cramped seat. Those perceptions are as real – perhaps more real – than the numbers the computer spits out.

Comment in the forums.

In my last post, I mentioned that METRO has settled on a Downtown alignment for the East End and Southeast Lines. Here’s what I learned from a recent meeting with METRO staff.

This is one of the most important segments of the whole system. It will be a major transfer location between those two lines and the Main Street Line, serving, for exmaple, riders headed from the East End to the Medical Center. It will also be a major transfer area for local buses. And it will serve parts of Downtown that are currently a fairly long walk from rail.

But this is also one of the trickiest parts of the system. Downtown has a complicated traffic flow pattern, frequent loading docks and garage entrances, and unhappy memories of METRO street and rail construction 5 years ago.

And thus this alignment is a compromise in many ways. I doubt anyone is really happy with it. But it seems to be something that the relevant interests — downtown businesses and landowners, the METRO operations department, Houston Public Works, and, last but not least, riders — can live with.

The first major compromise is the alignment itself. The most important destination downtown is jobs. The purple on the map above is major office towers. They’re centered around Lamar and Travis, near the Main Street Square station. That would be the ideal place for the new line. But the streets thereabouts all dead end at the convention center, so there’s no way to get the tracks there. The chosen alignment on Capitol and Rusk is further north, but it’s still fairly close to a lot of jobs, and it does serve the Theatre District and the Discovery Green / convention center / ballpark area well (see the orange and green above.)

Even the fact that the line will be on two streets is a compromise. It increases the cost, and it confuses riders slightly, since the station they use coming is a block away from the station they use going. But putting both lines one one street — making that street two-way and reducing capacity — would have unbalanced traffic capacity. So the trains will run on Capitol and Rusk as they do on Fannin and San Jacinto in the Museum District, on one side of the street in the direction of traffic.

One good thing about this alignment is that it works well for westward expansion. The tracks will join over Buffalo Bayou, at I-45 between the Hobby Center and Bayou Place. For now, this is where trains will change direction. But these tracks will point directly towards the city courts and Houston Avenue, where the future Inner Katy Line (also authorized by voters in 2003) could head towards Washington Avenue and/or the Heights on its way to the Northwest Transit Center.

Another compromise: the Main Street line is relatively fast and very reliable because the trains have their own lanes and have traffic signal priority. That won’t be true for this line. Like buses do now, the trains will share the curb lanes with cars, both turns and through traffic. [update, prompted by a question from Highway6 in the forums: the track will be on the south side of each street, that is, in the left lane of Capitol and the right lane of Rusk] And the signals will be operated as they are on Capitol and Rusk today: trains will find the lights are sometimes green and sometimes red, and they will stop or go accordingly. There is no doubt that this will slow trains down and throw off schedules: for example, a line of stopped cars in the left lane on one block would force the train to hold in the previous block until the cars moved. It might also be a safety issue, but that’s not as clear. In theory, the trains would act like buses, obeying traffic laws and mixing with cars. That avoids accidents that occur because motorists don’t expect a train that moves differently than they do, and it does not require unusual turn restrictions. But motorists not used to the area — like suburbanites going a ballgame or festival — could get unnerved and drive unexpectedly.

The biggest safety issue on this alignment could be that odd squiggle at the right. It’s how the tracks transition northwards to get around the future soccer stadium. It involves a lot of places where the trains crosses a street mid-block or goes diagonally through an intersection. That’s the kind of geometry that has made the Wheeler/Main/Fannin/San Jacinto/Blodgett area a mess. But this compromise is not inevitable. It could be fixed if the city and METRO work together to come up with a better street layout that not only deals with the trains but deal with the awkward traffic flow that would result from the stadium.

Finally, the transfer between light rail lines in the center of Downtown is a compromise. In earlier plans, this had been a disaster, involving three different stations (Main Street Square, Main Street, and Preston) and walks of up to 5 blocks. That’s largely fixed now by adding a station on the Main Street Line. This means there are 4 platforms — north- and southbound Main Street and east- and westbound East End/ Southeast — that can share one station name, making the system easy to understand. But the east-west platforms are a block away from Main Street, so some transfers will still involve a three block walk, with 3 pedestrian lights, from the center of one platform to the center of another. This is caused by two things. The first is that platforms will be at the sidewalk, so they can’t be in a block that has garage entrances or loading docks. The second is that there will be curved tracks connecting the two lines. These are required because some of the trains that run on the Main Street Line will be stored at a new rail operations center on Harrisburg. Those curves can’t share a block with a rail station that serves the same track. One solution might be to build another rail operations center at Northline, eliminating the need for this connection. But METRO doesn’t want to purchase additional land for that purpose.

METRO plans to use the same connection that’s required to put trains in service to send all East End Line trains northwards to the Intermodal Center on the same tracks that the Main Street line runs on (left). Their computer models indicate that this will result in more ridership, perhaps because of easier transfer to buses on the North Side or perhaps because of better access to the county courts complex. But this routing reduces the new line’s value as a Downtown circulator. If both the East End and Southeast Lines ran across the full width of Downtown on the same tracks (right), there would be a train every three minutes connecting the convention center, the ballpark, and Discovery Green with the Main Street Line, the Downtown office core and the Theater District. That would be useful for riders coming off the Main Street line headed to a game or a show; it would also be useful for people traveling from one part of Downtown to another. With the East End line swinging northwards, there’s only a train every six minutes, and there’s the added risk for visitors of getting on the wrong train and ending up at the wrong place.

In other words, this alignment leave a lot of room to be unhappy. But it does do some things pretty well, and it’s far superior to the previous alternatives with their awkward and confusing transfer, or other previously considered options like having both lines bypass Downtown to the north. There is another option that was considered: a subway via Main Street Square. That would be better on all counts but one: the price tag. There’s no way METRO could afford it and no way the feds could fund it.

So what we have now may the best we can do, but it deserves scrutiny. Since this exact alignment wasn’t included in the previous Draft or Final Environment Impact Statements, it will be included in an upcoming Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, with a public hearing to follow. In other words, there’s still time to have a say, and you can start in our forums.

This map is a snapshot of an ever changing picture: as METRO’s lines get close to construction stations shift slightly, junctions get figured out, and line routings are clarified. Meanwhile, the HOV bus system expands, too.

Click on the map above for a large version, or click here to download pdfs: 8.5×11 of the urban core, 11×17 of the whole system.

What’s new this time:

• I’ve seen multiple METRO documents showing through-running betwen the Uptown and University lines, so that’s on the map now.
• METRO has finally settled on an alignment for the Downtown section of the East End and Southeast lines. It swings around the future soccer stadium on Texas, then squiggles onto Capitol (the westbound track) and Rusk (the eastbound track), passing Discovery Green, Minute Maid Park, and the Convention Center. At Main Street, a new station on the Main Street line allows for fairly easy transfers between the lines (unlike the old plan). At the same location, connection tracks allow East End Line trains to swing north onto the Main Street track, serving Preston and UH Downtown before terminating at the Intermodal Center. Southeast Line trains don’t make this turn; they continue on to the Theater District.
• There are new and changed stations all over the system: there’s a new station on the Uptown Line north of Memorial Drive, but no Memorial Park station; there’s a station added in the Uptown area; there are new stations on the University Line in Gulfton and at Eastside; and the North Line has two more stations, shown in the new SEIS, just released by METRO.
• The METROExpress system just opened a new park-and-ride at the Grand Parkway in Katy.
• Express bus service from Downtown Transit Center to Intercontinental Airport starts in August. Looking at this map, I hope that it will have a few stops added in 2012 — perhaps at Wheeler and Discovery Green — so that it connects to more of the light rail lines.

One thing isn’t changed: I’m still showing the East End Line going to the Magnolia Transit Center, not stopping short of the railroad tracks. That’s definitely the long-term plan, and it looks like the city, METRO, and the Freight Rail District will figure it out for 2012. But it bears watching, as does the University Line between UH and Eastwood: METRO’s under continual pressure to cut costs, and the map could change again. Then again, maybe you want it to change. Tell us in the forums.

KUHF reports that the city, the Gulf Coast Freight Rail District, and METRO have reached an agreement on a grade separation on Harrisburg to allow the East End Line to reach Magnolia Transit Center. City Councilman James Rodriguez:

“This whole Metro Solutions works if you’re able to connect to a major transit center, so going to the Magnolia Transit Center is key for the mobility in the area. We were able to get together and stress that the city does have some funds to commit to this. We’d like Metro to commit some funding and also the Freight Rail District. The Freight Rail District agreed to take the lead in organizing all the governmental agencies.”

No details yet, but this sounds like a solution that could not only bring better transit but also re-connect a neighborhood. Hopefully it sets a precedent for different agencies actually working together.

Thanks to Gulf Coast Institute for the heads-up.

Note: this is an April Fool’s blog post. The outcome described occurred only in an alternate universe where transportation agencies coordinate their planning. The problems are real; the solutions — for now — are not.

In October of 2007, METRO realized they had a problem. The Federal Railroad Administration has long permitted light rail tracks to intersect freight rail lines at grade only if the freight rail track is out of service while light rail is operating. But the East End Line alignment on Harrisburg crosses the East Belt freight rail line, and both the street and the railroad are at grade in this location. That was already an issue with BRT, since freight trains could delay transit service. It became a pressing problem, though, when the board voted to build the line as light rail. Now an over- or under- pass was absolutely required, and it would raise the cost of the line.

However, METRO wasn’t the only agency looking at this railroad crossing. The City of Houston had identified it as a problem as far back as the 1950s. Whenever a train passes, Harrisburg and the streets north of it are completely blocked, making people late for work, keeping kids from walking to Tijerina Elementary, and stranding fire trucks and ambulances. Harris County and Texas Department of Transportation studies identified a need for a grade crossing, and the newly formed Gulf Coast Freight Rail District named (pdf) it a recommended project.

The problem: black lines are freight rail; the East Belt, by far the busiest line on this map, runs from lower left to top right. Red “X”s are grade crossings. Green circles are grade separations where a road goes under or over the tracks.

The transit project provided the needed impetus to get things moving. A new underpass with two lanes, two tracks, sidewalks, and bike lanes would be built. METRO would pay a little less than half the cost, the county would cover most of the rest, the city would fund new sidewalks and bike paths leading to the bridge, and the Union Pacific Railroad would make contribute in recognition of its reduced maintenance costs. The problem was solved, and the entire neighborhood would benefit.

But then political leaders had a realization: Harrisburg wasn’t the only problem around here. Canal Street crossed the tracks at grade, too. So did the neighborhood streets north of Harrisburg, and closing them wasn’t feasible since that would split the neighborhood. The East Belt was a bottleneck for the railroad; getting rid of all those road crossings would make operations more flexible and eliminate car-train accidents that shut the line down. Also, just south of Harrisburg, the East Belt crosses another railroad line, the Galveston Sub, at grade. That limits the capacity of both lines, and it prevents the use of the Galveston Sub for commuter rail to Galveston.

So a new solution was proposed: more expensive at first, but cheaper in the long run, and much more comprehensive. The East Belt rail line would be placed in a trench (much like the Almeda Corridor) from I-45 to Navigation, replacing a dozen at-grade road crossings and one railroad crossing with bridges over the track. Because the tracks would be below grade, those bridges would not require ramps, minimizing impacts on the neighborhood. In fact, the sides of the trench would reduce noise. The neighborhood would be reconnected, street traffic would move better, emergency services would respond quicker, transit would be improved not just along Harrisburg but along the Gulf Freeway, and the railroad system would operate more efficiently, helping the port and local industries and thus the regional economy. And it would all be safer than before.

The solution: the green line is the new trench. The red line is light rail; the purple line is commuter rail.

Obviously, this was a more expensive project. But its benefits per dollar spent, to the local neighborhoods (which haven’t received their share of transportation funding for a long time) and to the entire region, far outweighed those of other projects like the Grand Parkway or the Trans-Texas Corridor. So, with political leadership from the mayor, city council, county judge, county commissioners, and local members of the legislature, funding was shifted. METRO, the Texas Department of Transportation, the city, the county, the port, and the railroad all participated, using the Freight Rail District as an umbrella implementing agency. And, in the end, solving multiple problems with one project proved to be far less expensive than solving them individually.

In the alternate universe, everyone posts their thoughts in our forums.

The Chronicle reports this morning that METRO’s plan to stop the East End Line 6 blocks short of the Magnolia Transit Center — rumored for months — now seems to be official. Essentially, METRO wants to save the cost of an overpass over a freight rail line (the East Belt Subdivision) by stopping the line just east of the tracks and putting in a bus shuttle from there to the Magnolia Transit Center. (The article says that METRO looked at putting the light rail line at grade across the railroad tracks; that has never been done on a modern US light rail system, and it’s doubtful federal safety regulations would permit it. Those same regulations, of course, permit buses to cross rail lines with no concerns. What the difference is, I don’t know.)

This is obviously a major inconvenience to passengers. The transit center is a major hub for local buses; it is also surrounded by a local shopping area that’s a destination in itself. The proposed bus shuttle would make a lot of transit trips longer and less reliable. The Magnolia Transit Center is the right place for this line to go; anything short is just an expedient compromise.

Fundamentally, this is a failure of local coordination. The overpass isn’t just needed for trains; it’s needed for cars and pedestrians. Harrisburg grids to a halt whenever a freight train passes; commuters end up late to work, children can’t make it to school, fire trucks are delayed. An overpass has been needed here for at least half a century; through all that time, neither the city nor the county has done anything about it.

“Temporary” terminal stations have a way of becoming permanent. The county the city, the freight rail district, the railroad, and METRO have an opportunity to get together and improve not just transit service but traffic and public safety. That’s not the way things usually work around here. But with political leadership, it could be.

There’s no roadblock between here and our forums.

In the forums, David Crossley asks if there is an alternate stadium site:

Putting it directly behind GRB or the Ballpark or the Toyota Center wouldn’t be a problem, I presume. Those streets are already gone.

That sounds familiar. Here’s the Chronicle from October:

The Dynamo first set sights on land owned by the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority just east of Minute Maid Park and U.S. 59, but have since decided against the property, which the Astros lease for stadium parking.

Let’s compare:

• The currently proposed site is 6 contiguous blocks. The parking lot site is exactly the same size.
• The currently proposed site blocks two east-west streets, making it harder for people who live on the East Side get to work. The parking lot site blocks no east-west streets.
• The currently proposed site requires the light rail line to jog around it, making tens of thousands of daily transit trips a bit longer. The parking lot site does not affect any light rail options.
• The currently proposed site would displace at least one business. The parking lot site would not.
• The currently proposed site is privately owned. The parking lot site is owned by a government agency whose purpose is building sports stadiums.

However:

• The parking lot site would require some spectators at Astros games to walk further to get to their cars.

And that, apparently, is unacceptable.

UPDATE: BlogHouston has an excellent primer on the weird property dealings behind all of this.

Last week, City Council delayed a vote on buying six blocks of land just East of Downtown for a soccer stadium. They will vote again this week. I’m glad that the stadium’s impact on METRO’s Southeast and East End light rail lines has been part of that discussion. And it seems that METRO is looking at a rail option that would go around the stadium.

But the rail line was never my biggest concern to begin with. It’s the traffic impacts that worry me.

Let’s start with a bit of history. In 1984, there were 9 streets that connected Downtown to the East End between Bell and Congress (the building of Union Station in 1911 had closed one street; Highway 59 blocked another and rerouted Bell in 1966).

Then, in 1987, the city opened the George R. Brown Convention Center, closing 2 of those streets.

In 2000, the opening of Minute Maid Park closed another street.

In 2003, the convention center was expanded at both ends, and Toyota Center was opened. That took out two more streets. So where there were 9 streets, there are only 4 today.

If the soccer stadium occupies all 6 blocks, closing the streets that run through that area, that would take out 2 more streets.

So here’s the bottom line: 9 streets in 1984 would become 2 streets. That may have been acceptable when the area just east of Downtown was largely warehouses. But now it’s sprouting townhouses, condos, and apartments. New residents will surely generate more traffic. And so will soccer games. Is this the time to cut the East End off of Downtown even more and add a traffic bottleneck that doesn’t need to exist?

A complete street grid is the most effective way to carry traffic and the easiest way for pedestrians and bicyclist to get around. In place where we don’t have a good grid, like Uptown, we’re regretting it. Why are we destroying the grid where we do have it? We can’t undo the damage the convention center did, or the damage the ballpark did, or the damage the basketball area did. But we can avoid doing even more damage.

Like I said before, this isn’t a stadium; it’s a moat. What do you say?

(updated with more history, 2/24)

Everybody know that the Web has given us all access to personalized information: directions, book recommendations, news. Transit agencies have started taking advantage of that with trip planners and schedule alerts. And transit (at least somewhat) easier to use.

But technology has changed paper, too. Once, printing meant large production runs. Now, it’s possible to print things one at a time. But transit still works in a world where documents — bus schedules, system maps, and brochures — are printed in large, one-size-fits-all, runs.

Consider an office building: several hundred people, all of whom need to get to work and get home every day. They should know what their transit options are. But a system map posted in the lobby won’t do the trick: it shows too much information, and that’s intimidating. But a custom map (click for pdf), showing just the routes that stop nearby, would.

The technology is not difficult. The time involved is not prohibitive. And, once the map exists, it’s easy to convert for posting on a web site, printing in an employee manual, and otherwise making it available to people whom it would help. It would be entirely possible to put one of these in every large office building lobby, in every hospital and in every university in Houston.

It’s not good enough to simply provide transit. One has to make people aware it exists. And transit agencies ought to be using every tool they can to do that.

Customizer your thoughts in our forums.