METRORail University Line

[urban909]

I actually think the Houston rail cars are cool looking. Very futuristic for a train!

i did too, but when i went back to europe i saw, in my opinion, some better looking rail cars. i don't care too much for the boxy look, but these are some good examples (sorry it from wikipedia, but they have some good pics of different examples) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LYNX_Ca...montStation.jpg , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ireland...blin_-_Tram.jpg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Adelaide_Flexity.jpg

as ricco67 has pointed out, we are getting 70 new LRT cars. i wonder what company is designing/producing these.

Edited October 20, 2007 by urban909

[ricco67]

We're losing Chapultepec? That building was falling apart anyways, but I hope they move somwhere new because they made great quesadillas!

Not a big loss I think. While the building itself was falling apart, their food and service was lousy, in my opinion.

[Houston19514]

i did too, but when i went back to europe i saw, in my opinion, some better looking rail cars. i don't care too much for the boxy look, but these are some good examples (sorry it from wikipedia, but they have some good pics of different examples) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LYNX_Ca...montStation.jpg , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ireland...blin_-_Tram.jpg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Adelaide_Flexity.jpg

as ricco67 has pointed out, we are getting 70 new LRT cars. i wonder what company is designing/producing these.

Your first picture looked like a Metro rail car with a different paint scheme. The second was pretty cool looking. The third (the boxy one) looked like a rental car shuttle bus.

[Trae]

The Charlotte trains are made by Seimans, too.

[musicman]

Haha, look at this comment from the Chron article (directed at me):

i feel for him.

[Trae]

Why? Because you feel that if you ride buses and trains that you are the scum of the earth?

[musicman]

Why? Because you feel that if you ride buses and trains that you are the scum of the earth?

no, you frustrate people here like you do on the chron website.

Edited October 21, 2007 by musicman

[bachanon]

no, you frustrate people here like you do on the chron website.

play nice kiddos.

[urban909]

Your first picture looked like a Metro rail car with a different paint scheme. The second was pretty cool looking. The third (the boxy one) looked like a rental car shuttle bus.

yeah i was just giving some different examples, i like the second one the best...

[TheNiche]

If you weren't so wrong all the time, we might listen to you. You apparently know so little about Dallas rail that you do not know that it is just as slow as Houston's. The average speed of a train is dictated by how much distance is between the stations. A route with many stations, such as METRO downtown, will have a lower average than a more suburban route. The Uptown line will average about 21 mph.

The Red Line in Dallas only averages 21 mph, even though it runs into the northern suburbs. In town, it is even slower. The Blue Line in Dallas is even worse. It averages 19 mph. And these are supposedly "fast" trains, because they run in their own ROW. So, your "opinion that these trains are faster is a myth.

You are also wrong on capacity. Houston's trains hold 25% more people than Dallas'. Why would we want to copy a system that has LESS capacity?

Do your research citykid. You make yourself sound ignorant when you make up stuff that aint true.

Actually, Red, somewhere in the previous 3100+ posts on this thread, I took the time to calculate the average distance between light rail stations in Dallas, and found that they were over twice as far from one to the other, and grade-seperated in many sections, as compared to Houston's Red Line. If your speeds are accurate, then there is something other than distance between stations is acting to suppress Dallas speeds. I'm not sure exactly what that is.

I'm in Dallas right now and have been quizzing my contacts up here on the effectiveness and appeal of the DART system. It seems that Dallasites have some gripes about it, one of which is that the trains either aren't large enough or don't run frequently enough. Another is that they don't have sufficient parking capacity at DART Rail stations to accomodate demand. The locals see DART Rail as a victim of its own success, in a way, that could generate significantly higher ridership numbers if the rails were more extensively used and parking capacity were increased, but that is held back by mismanagement. Perhaps mismanagement is linked to the lower average speeds than would be expected; I'm not sure just yet.

In any case, it seems to me that transit agencies generally don't seem to be managed very well, and that Houston and Dallas may each have things that they can learn from one another. Dallas does a lot of things right that Houston doesn't, vice versa. And undoubtedly, there are things that both or neither does very well.

[Trae]

no, you frustrate people here like you do on the chron website.

____ you too.

[ricco67]

____ you too.

You have NO idea how many times I say that at the screen on this system.

[T 2 THA C]

You have NO idea how many times I say that at the screen on this system.

[sidegate]

just saw a report on Channel 11 news about federal funding for light rail. This is an excerpt from the online version of the report on the khou.com website

----------------------

"In that doomsday scenario you present [if federal money is not forthcoming], we would just build it. Starting with the Uptown and East End lines that we are already committed to 100 percent financing," Metro President Frank Wilson said.

Metro would then apply for a federal waiver to build its share of the University line with the agreement that it would continue to be evaluated for the 50 percent federal match.

Full story here: http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/kho....19e0e0c98.html

----------------------

My question for anyone who knows more about this than I do is: how likely is this "doomsday scenario". Was it just KHOU putting an angle on the story or is there real cause for concern that the University Line might be put off even onger than it already has been?

[Trae]

I think just Channel 11.

[musicman]

My question for anyone who knows more about this than I do is: how likely is this "doomsday scenario". Was it just KHOU putting an angle on the story or is there real cause for concern that the University Line might be put off even onger than it already has been?

from the story itself, the metro guy said they don't have funding for light rail on the north line and another one, only for brt. they have to go before the fed transit people next yr to give them an updated story i.e. ridership will warrant LRT funding.

[Trae]

Of course they don't have funding, they haven't applied for it yet. They did however apply for BRT funding, which they have, but they want to (great) upgrade to LRT for those lines.

[sidegate]

My only gripe with Houston's rail is that it stops at red lights sometimes and there are not too many rail-crossing guards stopping cars as the train goes by.

I agree. I drive to work in the Med Center every day and, at the junction of Fannin and McGregor, have lost count of the number of times when a car or two in the left turn lane has made a train sit through a full circuit of lights before the left turn arrow appears and the car(s), and the train, can move. Metro either needs to start ticketing aggressively (install traffic cameras to monitor left turn lanes?) or just allow the train driver to over-ride the rotation. The disadvantage of the latter is it would just encourage cars to duck into the left turn lane knowing they will get a quick green arrow with a train coming up behind them. Whatever the solution, I hope Metro learns from the mistakes of the Main St line. If you are going to have light rail, then do it right, and give the trains the right of way at every single junction. Otherwise you just end up up pissing off the rail riders as well as the motorists.

[Nate99]

I'll chime in with my $0.02.

I'm a Kingwood suburbanite, so I doubt that I'll ever get much use out of the rail, but my taxes do support Metro, so I'll bloviate with everyone else.

From a cost benefit standpoint, the street grade rail lines just don't make much sense, given how many busses and drivers you could buy for your money. I throw that out there knowing that federal funding won't pay for busses, but will for this, so Metro is taking what it can get to grow. There also seems to be a psychological component for riders that think (perhaps accurately) that if they get on a bus they might end up God knows where, whereas a train is going to go where they want it to.

Now filter all of this through bureaucratic inefficiency and city politics cronyism, and the best intentions will turn in to who knows what at the end of the day. I'll admit to libertarian leanings as full disclosure, but there is no denying the value of an effective public transportation system, and all of the governmental garbage that goes along with that is just part of the price we pay as a city to have something that can move people around.

All that said, intra-loop transit doesn't seem to be the biggest problem with traffic in Harris county. When I lived in the Greenway Plaza area, I could get anywhere I needed in town by car really easily, so the whole idea seemed flawed from the get go to me. Now, if we want to subsidize the transportation of those who do not want to or are not able to own and maintain a car, that's a whole other discussion to get people yelling at each other about.

In my own opinion, a commuter rail (ala Long Island/NYC or Chicago) could have done wonders for I-45 (both ways), 290 and Katy Freeway commuters where Houston traffic is the worst, but ROW issues seem to make that either impossible, or at least politically unworkable. Further, again in full admission of my jaundiced opinion of local politics, would not be attempted since suburbanites don't jive with the whole urban planning agenda.

[Jax]

I think the idea is to build up the inner loop infrastructure first, and then add commuter rail as the next phase. That way once the commuter trains arrive in the city, people will have a way to move between places of interest.

I also think the inner loop is going to densify quite a bit in the next few years, which will make the inner loop infrastructure more useful even before the commuter lines are built. The one line we have is already incredibly useful to those of us living in the inner loop and in walking distance of a station (such as Woolie and I).

[Nate99]

I think the idea is to build up the inner loop infrastructure first, and then add commuter rail as the next phase. That way once the commuter trains arrive in the city, people will have a way to move between places of interest.

I also think the inner loop is going to densify quite a bit in the next few years, which will make the inner loop infrastructure more useful even before the commuter lines are built. The one line we have is already incredibly useful to those of us living in the inner loop and in walking distance of a station (such as Woolie and I).

If the 2 million new residents number that gets thrown out turns out to be accurate, I expect that everywhere will be more densly packed, and with the decentralization, it would be useless without being able to get from the Galleria area to Downtown, so that does make some sense. I do wonder where any eventual commuter rail would physically run. Emminent domaining several hundred miles of right of way would be tough, but after seeing what they took out on the south side of the Katy between the loop and Beltway, I guess anything is possible. Without something large scale, Houston will be close to unlivable with that kind of growth in population.

In the meantime though, 290 has to be widened. Train or no train. It might be nice if they made provisions for both at the same time, as they might have been able to do with the Katy.

Edited October 26, 2007 by Nate99

[TheNiche]

Without something large scale, Houston will be close to unlivable with that kind of growth in population.

You might think so, but if you consider the difference in the rate between job growth in suburban and urban locations, it becomes immediately apparent that the really big problem is not so much suburb-to-city congestion--it is suburb-to-suburb.

I see the greater challenge not as widening freeways so much as it is widening dozens of major and secondary arterials throughout the region.

[Nate99]

You might think so, but if you consider the difference in the rate between job growth in suburban and urban locations, it becomes immediately apparent that the really big problem is not so much suburb-to-city congestion--it is suburb-to-suburb.

I see the greater challenge not as widening freeways so much as it is widening dozens of major and secondary arterials throughout the region.

Quite true, that would be part of my "something large scale". I fear that it might require solutions for both types of congestion. We already have rush hours going both ways on the Katy.

[C2H]

We already have rush hours going both ways on the Katy.

I still don't understand for the life of me why they're going to leave out rail on the Katy Freeway. If anyplace in the Houston metro could benefit from rail, it would be this area corridor.

Things just don't make sense to me in Houston!

[Trae]

Sure doesn't. If Westpark was at least a commuter rail, it wouldn't look so bad, but both corridors are tollways (the Katy has a tollway in the middle).

[TheNiche]

I still don't understand for the life of me why they're going to leave out rail on the Katy Freeway. If anyplace in the Houston metro could benefit from rail, it would be this area corridor.

Things just don't make sense to me in Houston!

...because P&R service is less expensive, more flexible, allows for more efficient use of outrageously-expensive ROW, and when implemented properly (and I don't think it is and that it should be vastly expanded), can significantly reduce total trip time of transit users relative to commuter rail.

The only effective counterpoint to the above is that rail bias supresses ridership. This is less true for P&R service because busses are larger and more comfortable.

Edited October 26, 2007 by TheNiche

[Trae]

^^More comfortable? You know this how?

[TheNiche]

^^More comfortable? You know this how?

They are more comfortable than busses on local routes. This is my understanding from speaking to several people, including at least one on this forum.

[Trae]

But how much more comfortable is a bus in an HOV from Katy to Downtown than a train on the same route?

[musicman]

The P&R buses are considerably more comfortable than the standard METRO buses and the current LRT vehicles. Ride em and you'll see why the P&R system is successful.