Houston19514

Actually, Orlando's weather is remarkably similar to Houston's (except they get more rain in the summer months). Go to Weather.com and open up the monthly averages for each and they are almost indistinguishable.

And it certainly won't stop you from ignoring the facts and arguments that don't suit you. As I have demonstrated, Metro IS using some of that flexibility. NONE of which would be available in a commuter rail system. And still we wait for any reason, any reason at all, that we should prefer commuter rail over a P&R bus system. Anyone? I'm all eyes.

Quite right. And in that regard, IAH is beating the pants off DFW. Here are the international passenger numbers for the first 4 months of 2008: IAH: 2.7 Million, UP 7.2% from 2007 DFW: 1.7 Million, DOWN 0.8% from 2007 This topic nicely encapsulates what I believe is one of the biggest differences between Dallas and Houston. Dallas goes for the flash. Houston goes for the substance.

Well, to be precise, Williams does not now and never has owned a single square inch of the building. They are merely a tenant. My information regarding Williams' occupancy of 16% of the building is from an SEC filing made by Hines, so I think it's pretty accurate and reliable. Regarding the waterwall, I think someone has been pulling your leg. First, Cushman & Wakefield handled the transaction on behalf of the sellers. I think Hines handled their own end of the deal, so I'm not sure that CB Richard Ellis had anything to do with it. More to the point, the deal did not leave ownership of the waterwall in question. In the transaction, Hines bought a 47.8% interest in the waterwall. And another Hines entity already owned the other 52.2% interest. End result: It's 100% owned by Hines. Given that it is part of the package that makes Williams Tower one of the very best buildings in Houston, it's a little hard to imagine Hines tearing down the waterwall.

There is also at least one P&R route directly serving Uptown (with continuing same-bus service to Greenway Plaza). Apparently, when the demand is there, Metro is using the flexibility it has.

Take a look at Nos. 292, 297, 298. Three P&R routes that appear to directly serve the TMC. And the 170. Make that four P&R routes that appear to directly serve the TMC.

So, again, how would a commuter rail serve any of those areas better than a P&R system? And before spending untold hundreds of millions of dollars on commuter rail, it might be wise to stop and ask ourselves... if there is not sufficient demand to justify direct P&R bus service to these areas, why are we to believe that masses of passengers are going to jump aboard a commuter rail service that will provide less convenient service.

Downtown, TMC and Uptown are all served by Park & Ride buses. I just threw Greenway Plaza in there as an additional area to which service could easily be added, demonstrating the system's flexibility. Certainly, not every P&R lot has direct service to each of those areas. More to the point, if demand develops, service from individual P&R lots and Transit Centers could easily be added. Again, far more flexibility that could ever be achieved with a commuter rail system, it seems to me. And in the meantime, service is available to those areas through transfers, which is all a commuter rail system would ever provide.

Interesting thought. However, I think you will be confronted with stairs on most commuter rail cars (and relatively narrow entrances as well.) Take a look at the TRE rail cars. As for collecting fares, well the Q card pretty much makes that a non-issue.

Again, you have failed to provide us with ANY reason that commuter rail is better than a P&R bus system. Except that you're a fan of commuter rail "for many reasons". Can you share some of those reasons with us? I think you misunderstood my comments about point-to-point service. With a P&R system, people at a particular P&R lot can get on one bus that goes directly downtown, another bus that goes directly to Uptown, another that goes directly to TMC, perhaps another that goes directly to Greenway Plaza, and so on. That is a level of flexibility and convenience that is impossible for commuter rail to ever match. The only way a commuter rail system can serve such multiple locations is with a hub and spoke system requiring transfers (and perhaps multiple transfers). The commuter rail will always be a hub-and-spoke system where you get on at a station and you get off at the other end, or perhaps at an intervening station, and switch to another train or other mode of transportation. Perhaps there is not sufficient ridership to run buses to all places from all P&R lots, but I'm pretty sure there are lots with buses running to more than one place. And again, that is a flexibility we have and can use going forward with the P&R system that a commuter rail system will never be able to match. (and if there is not sufficient ridership for direct point-to-point P&R service, why would we think there will be sufficient ridership of a much more expensive commuter rail system offering less convenient service?) Also, your saying that the only 3 locations served by P&R buses will all be served by light rail misses the point, or perhaps makes my point. The P&R buses can (and do) make more than one stop in their destination areas. As you acknowledged, the P&R buses make several stops throughout downtown, matching the service of the red line. But the P&R riders don't have to transfer from a train to the red line to get to their destination. Anyone taking a commuter rail to downtown will have to transfer to the light rail to get to their final destination. Again, how does that provide better transit service? While we are establishing our bona fides, let me just say I am far from "anti-rail". I have been one of the staunchest supporters of Metro's light rail efforts on these boards and I am open minded about commuter rail. But so far, there has been a dearth of evidence that commuter rail would provide better transit than is already being provided by P&R buses.

We're talking about commuter rail vs P&R buses. If you want to have a discussion about inner-city rail, I'm sure there's another thread covering that. FWIW, I did try out taking the bus to work last week. It was clean, on-schedule, and comfortable.

Really? The popularity of the P&R buses suggests otherwise.

and of course, trains NEVER have accidents... ;-) You seem to have ignored the flexibility the P&R buses have at the end of the route. For example, the ease of adding additional stops in downtown if required. You also completely ignored the entire second paragraph of my post. One of the areas where rail loses flexibility is because it emphasizes the "Mass" part of "mass transit" more than the "transit" part. A P&R system can much more efficiently and easily provide point-to-point service to multiple locations, whereas commuter rail is stuck with the old-fashioned hub-and-spoke system. Even if your argument that rail is as flexible as a P&R system were true (and it pretty clearly is not), that would not lead to a conclusion that rail is better than a P&R system; it would merely provide an argument that rail might be as good as a P&R system. We're still waiting for any way in which a commuter rail system would be better than a P&R bus system. Anyone?

Ditto

You're posting a blog about the eastern seaboard Acela as an example of how commuter rail is better than a P&R bus? Nice try, but that is either dishonest or clueless. Most commuter rail trains in this country (and other countries for that matter) have more in common with a school bus than they do with Acela trains. And, FWIW, Metro's P&R buses are not your standard issue Metro local buses. They are pretty nice and are actually more similar to the Acela trains than are most commuter rail cars.

This has been discussed a number of times here. Surely you know better than your question suggests... It is obvious that a "22-lane freeway" is not flexible. But then, nobody is talking about building 22-lane freeways for P&R buses. More importantly, it's the P&R bus system that is more flexible than a commuter rail system, not the particular concrete it is driving on. In the medium to long run, P&R buses and their systems can easily adapt to changing circumstances, by going off the dedicated busway, adding and subtracting stops as demand dictates. Commuter rail, not so much. Furthermore, on a day-to-day basis, a P&R system can provide better service because of its flexibility by sending one bus with 50 passengers to the Northwest Transit Center while another bus with another 50 passengers can be routed directly downtown, where more than one stop can be made, avoiding further transfers, and another directly Uptown and another directly to the TMC. It is not really possible to do that with commuter rail. Commuter rail will have 200 passengers going to the northwest transit center, where 100 of them get off and transfer to another train or bus to get to Uptown or TMC and the other 100 wait for the train to proceed to its single stop downtown, where most of them will also have to transfer to another bus or light rail.

Yes, I suppose you can have both, but why? You still have not given us any reason why we should prefer commuter rail over the park & ride system. What will rail do that the P&R system doesn't or can't do? If so, then the map is completely inaccurate. Houston has dedicated busways all over the place, in the form of HOVs, that should be shown on that map.

Hi. Welcome to the forum. Just a couple of corrections. (1) Williams does not occupy more than half of Williams Tower. Far from it. Williams actually leases approximately 250,000 square feet of the building's 1.5 Million square feet of rentable area (16%). (2) There has been no announcement of plans to sell off or tear down the waterwall. If you have a source or evidence of such a plan, we'd all love to see it. (3) Galleria Tower II is on Westheimer. The building at 2700 Post Oak is Galleria Tower I.

... still waiting for someone to show us how commuter rail is an improvement over P&R buses with HOV lanes... (and getting to add pretty colored lines to the fun map on radicalcartography.com isn't good enough... we could make our own fun map showing routes and miles of efficient and flexible P&R bus systems and overshadow every other city in North America.)

US Census estimate as of July 1, 2006: 79,943. It's been growing in the neighborhood of 2,500 per year. So let's call it 85,000.

Cool. That's encouraging news. Especially since it fits in perfectly with the timeline the developers first announced. (Opening 1st quarter 2010)

Go stand in central Florida, endure almost exactly the same heat/humidity and swat a few mosquitoes while trying to explain the HUGE convention and tourist trade there...

+ Vic & Anthony's + the steakhouse in the Hilton Americas (I think it's name is Spencer's or something like that)

Just a thought, but if that is what you meant, maybe that's what you should have said, instead of telling us that it would have been a "big deal" as originally proposed, but is now puny, when, in fact, the only thing missing from the original proposal is a fairly small residential component. As for your amended "point", in our dreams, of course, downtown Houston will be far too dense for it to make sense to build anything as low-rise as three, or even two stories. But it should be fairly obvious to even the most casual observer, that that day is indeed a few years (decades?) in the future. In the meantime, we still have plenty of surface lots available for more high-rise development.

A quick search on the internet turned up this: What is Microplex?