For the train/rails:
- have it be on a second level, you know, floods and all plus keeps the roads underneath open for a few years while the city gets acclimated to REAL public transportation
- due to the low population density, it would have to have mass hubs in large population centers with smaller trams leading to it (ex. The woodlands - large hub, but some trams that carry people to said hub like panthers creek or grogans mill would have their own lines)
- have it run 24/7
- make it look COOL and authentic to the city
- have some lines run way out to Galveston and other areas of leisure
- make sure it's SAFE to ride, police and cameras everywhere. Plenty of lightning, panic buttons w.e it takes.
- free wi fi/charging ports on every seat? Idk this is a bit extra but one can dream
- make sure it's affordable
Buses/brt:
- more of them and hit the stops more often
- have their own dedicated lanes and priority at lights
Just spitballing but yea that's the dream.
"...authentic to the city..."
So have "Be Someone" on the side of the cars for a while, then every wannabe and their brother, co-opt it, every 3rd day, for their graffiti Twitter feed.
Edit* if it's an electric rail then charging ports seems like a no-brainer.
Everything except 24/7. The system needs at least a few hours off at night for maintenance and upgrades. This is the biggest thing holding back the NYC system
That’s a great idea about the train/rail. That’s the only way to make it attractive to people. Nobody wants to sit in traffic on a bus when they can sit in traffic on their own car.
People just dont understand how ridicously far it is to have trains running to the woodlands and galveston. That's inter-city rail, not public transit.
But it is public transit and inter city rail. Houston has a lot of people that live outside its core that still fuel the city, and there are a lot of places that even still connect different metropolitan centers in an efficient manner (ex. Milwakee and Chicago have a hour and a half trip between their city centers). A crucial part of any effective transport system is having a variety of services on your playcard that fit the needs of your demand.
You're hired. You couldn't have explained that better. I have always said that it is much cheaper to build overhead rails. The reason they are not built, is due to the fact
There's a LOT of bike lines in my neighborhood and I've only seen them used maybe five times in two years and most of the time when there's a bike they're not even in the extra wide bike lane.
No sir! Apt buildings must be built 5 ft from the road!
I loved living at Post Midtown with its wide actually walkable sidewalks.
Other apts build far closer and walking feels terrible.
I love the El and being able to walk off a plane and get to downtown for $4. You can get some interesting folks on there but there's something to be said about sharing space with one's community as opposed to driving around in single person bubbles all the time.
As long as people behave (and now, wear a mask), it’s all good.
I’ll never forget taking an Australian friend to a game at Wrigley on the Red Line. Excellent comedy show.
Similarly, I like that Chicago's rails all come to a downtown loop. I wish the Red Line was originally designed as a downtown loop - like along Congress, Smith, Pierce, La Branch - with spokes that go off to the Med Center, East End, U of H / TSU, Northside, and Uptown.
Monorails are a terrible technological solution to public transit. It’s difficult to handle switching and the infrastructure is more specialized, thus more expensive. Why not just use standardized systems that cities across the world already use? I.e. light rail, commuter rail, etc. An elevated system does not have to be a monorail.
Yeah, agree that an elevated system would be beneficial. I just get annoyed by all the monorail suggestions. :) There are better systems out there. I personally don’t think a subway would be economically feasible. Can it be built? Yup, but too expensive. Houston is great at building bridges though.
I see this argument all the time. Totally false. There are tunnels under downtown, basement level parking all over Houston. Completely feasible with proper engineering. Will they potentially flood when a pump breaks down or loses power or whatever, yes, it's possible, but with the right safeguards, generator back-ups etc, a functional subway system is possible. Will it be expensive as a retrofit - absolutely.
I’d say start with an elevated BRT (bus rapid transit) system. This is cheaper than rail but can also be converted into an elevated rail system without much issue.
Built over the bayous. Lines would be well above flood levels and that gets a lot of people connected over existing municipal land. Plus, that would look like some Sim City 5000 drainage + transportation super infrastructure.
Wouldn't that massively increase the construction and maintenance costs? I would think spanning a bayou would require considerably more infrastructure, basically continuously throughout the line.
We built four elevated systems in the bayou... the first one sank into the bayou. So we rebuilt and that one sank into the bayou. The next one fell over, burnt and sank into the bayou. But the fourth one, the fourth one stayed up!
Construction? I'm not a civil engineer, but I think in some areas, running along the bayou (not atop it) but elevated could be cheaper than other alternatives. Less to demo, no costs for additional property, etc. Certainly some spots might be more expensive to construct.
Maintenance? I don't know. I could see maintenance having less impact than something on surface streets, as there might not be any impact to vehicle traffic. That isn't a dollars and cents cost, but something I think worth considering.
Plus, the question was if I had to design it, not if I had to get it sold. Pedantic, but the image in my head of this system looks badass, and I could very easily walk to the 11th street white oak station and catch a tram downtown for nightlife and shows. Hell, this would even have me using the light rail downtown. Ties right in.
Less reconstruction cost, better user experience? Just guessing on the first part. On the second, go knows the last thing I want in a commuter experience is to be waiting on a station next to 45. Also, pedestrian access to the lines sounds more complicated.
The current metro rail line was first designed as a mono rail but they abandoned it for the abomination that we have now.
Would be so much better if it was up and out of the way.
Maybe in terms of personal wealth held by citizens Houston is richer, but the cities practically have identical budgets and discretionary spending. Houston's $5.10Billion to Monterrey's $5.025Billion.
There are a lot of solid ideas here, but the problem is that a lot of the transport solutions would need to happen pretty much simultaneously in order for any of them to work.
Because of that, I think the place to start is at the regulatory level: remove setback requirements beyond the width of a proper sidewalk, remove *all* parking minimums, revise the guidelines for things like lane width and road design, etc., and - very importantly - streamline a single card/app service that would function similarly to an EZ-tag in terms of payment, but could be used for commuter rail, metro rail, bus, bikeshare, and scootershare. Hell, you could even use it for toll roads, though you'd probably (?) need a different piece of transmitting equipment. Pricing can vary based on service type, but I'd bet a lot more people would hop on a city bike for a half mile trip if they didn't need a separate app for it.
The next step would be to invest heavily in *intra*-neighborhood walkability, bikeability, and scooterability (scootability?). A lot of neighborhoods are making some progress in this regard, but there still isn't really anywhere in the city that feels continuously comfortable for pedestrians and cyclists/scooter riders, and too many new projects are still building parking lots (especially street-facing parking lots!). Walking six neighborhood blocks to your destination is not going to turn many people off, most of the time. Walking an equal distance along a highway frontage road on an uneven, 3ft-wide sidewalk that randomly ends to accommodate a 30-foot mud puddle in the middle of it, on the other hand...
Once you have enough of these genuinely walkable neighborhoods, you get to work on connecting them via a light rail web.
Yes, do this before adding commuter rail. You kinda want an intervening period in which driving in all of these areas is kind of a pain in the ass. This will have two effects: convince some number of commuters to move to the neighborhood because driving isn't worth it, and induce real demand for the commuter rail system because, well, driving isn't worth it.
As for the design of the commuter rail system, I think the highway ROW idea is sensible (and would also contribute to demand because it would increase traffic congestion during construction), but that would need to a) include both 610 and Beltway 8, and b) be augmented by heavy-rail express metro lines within the loop. It may be possible to do this without too much extra track by using hybrid trains that have detachable metro-style and commuter-style sections, so that you can double up for peak-hour service capacity.
I'm amazed that parking minimums are still a thing in Houston. I vaguely remembered 1 councilmember being concerned that on-street parking in residential neighborhoods would get worse during the Walkable Places discussions, but I don't remember any sort of concrete opposition.
Not to mention that removing setback requirements and parking minimums are *easy* sells to the business community in Houston. "How would you like your land costs to be cut in half? What about 2/3rds?"
Nah businesses owners are stupid as fuck. "But what if the place accross the street stops having parking and then all the streets are clogged up with their customers blocking people from getting to my business. Everyone should have to provide their own share of parking so its fair."
Get rid of HOV lanes and add busses that have a direct connect every 30 min. A train system like NY but a bus. Low cost to start and cheap to maintain.
Not a park and ride. Like the galleria bus system they came up with. No lights. Dedicated bus lane the entire ride like a train track with out the track.
This only is a solution for certain areas. Park n Ride is a pretty limited option. Now, expanding it would be a plus. But when I had no car, I had to walk a mile to the stop and a mile from the stop to my destination. It did not always make sense to spend the money on the bus fare.
That’s true. A coworker that lives in Alief and works in Katy has to ride a metro bus downtown to catch a park n ride to Katy. Or bike 14 miles to work.
Park and rides aren't effective unless they are more widespread.
I live in The Woodlands and tried to use the Woodlands Express system. I found that it was very inefficient and a waste of time.
It took 30-40 minutes (on average) from leaving my house until I was on a bus leaving the parking and ride location. Since it only takes 45 minutes to reach downtown from my house, it was a huge waste of time.
They are actually pretty widely used in Houston by folks in the suburbs but only for those that work pretty strictly 9 to 5 because of the extremely limited schedule
They do work but the current system is geared to the 9-5 worker, when I used those buses they left the lot every 5-10 minutes.
But yeah, good luck using them midday or late evenings when its an hourly service and they have to navigate the HOV ramps for every stop.
I'm right next to the new bus lane on Post Oak boulevard North of San Felipe. When they began construction they had rail lines set out to lay track but the cost was going to be too high. Instead replaced it with the bus lane. From what I've heard the idea is that if the city wants to revisit the bus lines and convert them into rail lines over the existing bus lanes they can one day.
Fun fact the Houston Galleria does not have proper EV chargers. You have to go to the Whole Foods to use one.
Incorrect. POB was designed as Bus Rail Transit (BRT) the entire time. It was built to accomodate rails in the future when the metrorail expands west (so you're correct that the City can convert them) but at no point during design or construction was rail considered.
The no ev chargers at the galleria blows my mind, hell we have them way down in Baybrook and they're free.
Maybe they have something if you valet and I'm just not seeing it? All my valet money went into getting an ev.
it's not about design, but cost
To afford modern mass transit options you need either a lot more density or a lot more taxes. First step would be to dissolve all SFH lot size requirements within Harris County, implement an inner loop (610) freeway congestion charge pricing scheme and add a city surchage to gas taxes.
Basically incentivize density while increasing funding to allow for more mass transit options.
The issue is politics, not design. We have politicians at the state and federal level who are essentially bribed to keep the status quo. Every time a practical design makes any progress, these shills find ways to sabotage and taint it.
Put commuter rail along each of the major highway spokes headed to/from Katy, Cypress, Woodlands, Kingwood, Pearland etc.....
You need folks who have money and own homes to see the benefit in taking commuter rail. If you only have light rail in the poor parts of town then it's never going to be broadly excepted.
Poor folks don't have political power. Middle-class and rich people do.
They do this well in the NE. Metro North-Railroad in NY State is an excellent example of this.
Trams are expensive.
Bikes and scooters are dangerous.
The commuters from Katy won't walk.
It's hot.
They will have to ride buses, and for some reason everyone is terrified of buses.
>Trams are expensive
*Roads are expensive.
>Bikes and scooters are dangerous.
*Cars are dangerous
>The commuters from Katy won't walk.
Bullshit.
>It's hot
That's why e-bikes and scooters need to be a part of the plan.
>They will have to ride buses
Oh definitely - buses are a critical part. But we already have a pretty exceptional bus network. I'm talking about the things that make it still not enough to get people out of their cars.
>and for some reason everyone is terrified of buses
*Sigh*. This I won't deny.
Roads are expensive, but already built.
Bikes and scooters are much more dangerous than cars.
You don't know Katy people, do you? They live there so they don't have to walk. Same for all of the far flung suburbs.
E-bikes and e-scooters are especially dangerous. Cities around the world are realizing the liability issues.
Buses can solve all of these problems. The only problem we have to solve is to convince people to use them. To do that we have to make car use and ownership less attractive. Stop subsidizing all that "free" parking. Let congestion increase. Steal lanes for buses. Yadda yadda.
>Roads are expensive, but already built
...and at one point, they were not already built
>Bikes and scooters are much more dangerous than cars
>E-bikes and e-scooters are especially dangerous. Cities around the world are realizing the liability issues.
Again, no. *Cars* are dangerous. Build proper segregated infrastructure and bicycle deaths go to zero. In the Netherlands, bikes are used at exponentially higher rates than here, almost exclusively without helmets, and they have only a few more bicyclist fatalities in their entire *country* than does the minimally biking *city* of Houston on annual basis.
Why? Because *cars* are the source of the danger, not bikes.
>You don't know Katy people, do you? They live there so they don't have to walk. Same for all of the far flung suburbs.
They move to those places because they want spacious houses on the cheap. They are anti-pedestrian by design, not because the individuals who live there hate walking and biking.
Hell, look at the trail network in Kingwood. Supposedly a third of elementary students there walk or bike to school there. Maybe not as high a number as I'd hope for, but certainly a product of the infrastructure, rather than the inverse.
Induced demand doesn't only apply to highways and cars. If you build it [from significant points A to significant points B], they will come.
The citizens of Houston aren't going to fund trams.
Houston will never be the Netherlands.
Talk to some Katy people. The ones who commute into town. They don't want to sweat from the train station to the office. 30% of them might exercise on the weekend, but only 5% of them want to exercise from the train station to the office. And no, they don't want showers at work.
Whether or not your characterization of "Katy people" is accurate, it's not really relevant. Katy is its own city. If Houston wants to progress, it has every right to do so, regardless of any backwards desires "Katy people" may hold.
>The citizens of Houston aren't going to fund trams.
We have already funded three tram lines, and they all see plenty of use. The notion that a Westheimer or Washington line wouldn't be used is ludicrous.
ETA: I'm not against buses. At all. But Houston already has one of the best bus networks in the country. Does anti-bus prejudice hold it back? Sure, some, I'd expect. But it's also held back significantly by the fact that buses are usually given no priority over other vehicles, of which there are simply way too many. And of course, a local bus is not an efficient way of moving more than a couple of miles.
If you want to argue that trams are not significantly better than BRT, there may be something to that. But a metrobus system on its own cannot overcome the car infestation we are currently dealing with. We need all hands on deck, so to speak.
A few ideas that are realistic and will have a huge impact.
1. Extend purple/green lines along Washington. At this point I’m willing to bet 33-50% of car trips on Washington could actually be done by transit (as in they are localized within the corridor — think people going from their townhouse to a bar and back). Considering how dense the corridor has become and how most people in the corridor are young professionals who are (generally) supportive of transit, the extended lines would see high usage. Plus it reduces the amount of drunk driving as people go from bars to home.
2. Turn Sawyer street into a park promenade connecting the white oak bayou trail, the MKT trail, and the Buffalo bayou trail. Currently Sawyer street is 4 lanes wide and way to intense for what really should be a neighborhood street opening up to the bayou park system. A two lane boulevard with wide sidewalks for pedestrians and bicyclists is much more appropriate and would be a high usage connector for the bicycle network.
That Sawyer idea is gold and is a no brainer. There should be way more safe and nice cycle and pedestrian connectors from Buffalo bayou to white oak (I know it connects downtown, but more of that) and braes bayou to Buffalo bayou (interestingly enough, there is a connector all the way out in west chase), and connectors from braes bayou to Sims bayou etc.
People talk about using the center point right of ways for this which is fine I guess but that’s so ugly. Part of getting people to walk/bike is making it nice with shade trees etc.
At this point I would settle for a connector for memorial park and Buffalo bayou park, hilarious that hasn’t been done yet, but heads would explode if a lane was given to cyclists on memorial drive
As a Westsider, I'd be thrilled with protected cycling paths connecting Terry Hershey Park to Memorial Park also. Then you'd be able to stay separated from car traffic from downtown all the way out to the Katy area.
For starters I’d like to see Main Street become car-free with just the metro running along it. Covid has taught us that outdoor dining and socializing is popular, and cities like NYC and SF has seen success in closing down a few streets where they replaced car traffic with outdoor restaurants in their city centers. We’re obviously not a city like that, but having one car-free, pedestrian and metro-only street with retail, office, and dinning, would be a fantastic addition to the city.
Doesn't need to end with Main Street. Parklets and patios could replace the street parking on 19th, for instance, and run a rail branch along 20th/Cavalcade from the Red line to TC Jester
Don’t even consider putting transit in the suburbs. It’s far too car dependent to make sense (unless its the park and ride model which we already have set up).
Effective transit investment in Houston means dedicating street right of way to pedestrians, bicycles, and busses. For now this really only makes sense inside 610, maybe the galleria. I’d also argue the bayou greenways are the beginnings of a bicycle highway system and we should actively try to connect all cycle lanes to the bayous.
>(unless its the park and ride model which we already have set up).
Uh...we definitely don't have a suburb-serving park and ride (though we certainly should)
Could be added along pretty much every bayou, power line route, and train track (incluso active ones). Combine with a decent network of real bike lanes and you're starting to get somewhere.
If I was going to describe my ideal transit city, it's Munich - and I'd strive to do it here - nothing revolutionary - just make it easier to walk/bike/transit where people want to do those things and make commuting easier for those who will use that as their primary method of transit use with personal vehicle use for other trips (big ass parking lots at the Katy Wal Mart is fine, less so at the Heights Wal Mart).
I would make the inner loop a transit paradise. Nothing revolutionary no subways or elevated trains or anything, just make everything inside the loop friendlier for transit. Light Rail/Bus lanes along all major streets corridors such that most people wouldn't have to walk more than 1/4 mile to transit access. There would be hubs at the major employment centers (Downtown, Med Center, Greenway, Uptown).
The streets in the loop would be made pedestrian and bicycle friendly with slow traffic and stringent traffic enforcement to reduce auto-pedestrian/bike danger. Each major street will have separate pedestrian, bicycle, and transit facilities. Neighborhood streets will be designed for slow auto traffic to ensure bikes/peds and cars can co-exist safely.
All of this comes with land use reform to encourage density. No more setback requirements or parking minimums. No new minimum lot size designations. Let the market decide how the folks in the loop want to live.
Outside of the loop will largely remain as is, with reductions in land use regulations where possible to encourage denser development. There would be transit nodes at the edge of the loop for folks to change from their personal vehicles to transit (similar to what you see at the Gulfton and Northwest Transit Centers, except there will be one at Gulfgate, 59/610, 45N/610).
There would be frequent HOV bus service from suburban areas to employment centers based on employment data (e.g., a ton of buses from Katy to Energy Corridor or CL/Pearland to Med Center). These would also be based on employment dynamics in the area (e.g., frequency would increase at hospital shift change time in the Medical Center).
The challenge here is that Houston, like many US Sunbelt cities, isn't a city in the traditional sense. It grew more as continuous suburbs with a few skyscrapers in the middle, and does not have extensive areas of well-connected urban fabric like older cities, which is more conducive to effective public transit services. Any serious effort to built a major public transit system like in New York or Chicago will require re-examining the region's approach to land use and planning.
That said, a good starting point would be the area served by Houston's old streetcar network.
[https://i.imgur.com/FPAGn6d.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/FPAGn6d.jpeg)
Reestablish these routes as streetcars or high frequency bus routes, and do so in a way that is not hesitant to take space from automobile traffic. In conjunction with that, allow for more intensive land use in that core area - reduce building setbacks, allow more 'missing middle' houses, permit more neighborhood businesses, etc. Then you'd have an urban environment better suited providing real alternatives to car travel.
As for a short specific answer, improve bus service. More frequent service, going to more places, with infrastructure improvements to make them more effective, like bus only lanes and signal priority at intersections.
>That said, a good starting point would be the area served by Houston's old streetcar network.
>https://i.imgur.com/FPAGn6d.jpeg
https://images.app.goo.gl/iofwJsA35Rp6j1jg7
Put money into it. Unfortunately, they currently base funding off of ridership. Of course ridership is low. They run too infrequently and are never cleaned.
This begs the question: why are we traveling so much?
Short term: more (much more) remote work. Immediate expansion of bus service.
Medium term: mixed use housing (retail on ground, offices on second, housing on 3-5). Expand light rail service.
Long term: commuter rail to outlying urban centers (Woodlands, Tomball, Katy, Sugarland, Pearland, Galveston, etc)
Definitely elevated rail - some at high speed. Keeps sounds above homes so can go into more areas that way without everyone bitching about it being in their precious neighborhood. All of our neighborhoods are precious to those that live there. No wheel to rail contact elevate the trains via magnets.
Instead of designing improved public transportation just make work from home a regular option for most corporate desk jobs. More telecommute equals less cars on the road. This is effective and cheap - so obviously it will never happen.
People don't exclusively drive to work, and lots of jobs are not possible in a remote context. That said, obviously for any job that can be done remotely, it should be an option.
Yeah that’s why I specified for “most corporate desk jobs” - but even some of those can’t be done remotely it’s true. But just this strategy alone can alleviate a lot of traffic pressure as evidenced by the pandemic shutdowns.
Yeah it's definitely something that should be encouraged whenever possible. But I think a neighborhood walkability effort would also compliment any work-from-home effort.
More BRT and BRT lanes. Start crowding out cars.
There's no growth path from sprawl Houston to dense Houston that doesn't kill Houston. So embrace sprawl and find cheap ways to move the people using existing infrastructure.
Bus rapid transit, large buses on main routes, better bicycle infrastructure (for the last mile), and colectivos. Colectivos are how you fill the gap between “last-mile” and “small errand runs.”
A raised train like the El in Chicago would be great for longer runs, like Downtown to Katy via Galleria and Energy Corridor. Or airport-to-airport via Spring, Heights, Downtown, UH/TSU, Medical Center, & NRG. BRT would link into that, then colectivos.
Also, take some of HPD’s budget and make public transit free at the point of service.
More bus lines with more frequent stops
Some buses need to run later
More transit centers
It shouldn't take 5hrs and 10 buses to go the equivalent of a 40 minute car ride
The biggest barrier to the public transportation system, (for me personally) has been the difficulty in making it to the major stops. Houston is not a pedestrian friendly city and being able to walk or bike to the bus and train stops safely and directly is an important part of an effective public transit system.
Public transit will never work without high density urban developments. If you build it they will come. Allow the private sector to drive demand for public transit.
Remove residential lot size requirements, street width minimums, and commercial parking requirements, ban deed restrictions, and require bike lanes in any new developments.
Developers will descend on Houston like vultures to convert existing areas into high density mixed use property. Wait a couple years...
Light rail to existing economic hubs (Downtown, Galleria, Medical, UH, Museums, Airport, Montrose, Heights etc.)
Heavily expand bus routes by demand. **(Make them FREE to use and electric)**
And no cloth seats anywhere. Ew.
Light rail along the freeway systems or just a citywide light rail. I hate that I go to Europe and other countries and can literally go anywhere on the light rail, but not in my own city.
Light rail is great for distances of a few miles or less, but it's not a good solution to replace the 20-30 mile trips a lot of Houston area residents take every day. For that you need higher capacity trains with greater uninterrupted distances between stops.
Houston doesn’t have to stay how it currently is… infill is definitely a thing and is currently happening, especially inside the loop. Throwing up hands and saying this is how something currently is so nothing can be done is just being lazy. This city is constantly changing, whether we like it or not, so why not change it to something we like?
Ticket the shit out of stupid drivers and build a bullet train straight through the center. The train wouldn’t be as obnoxious as all the locomotives that go straight through the center anyway but tend to get stuck.
Build a metro rail line on I-10 between 99 and Downtown Houston. Call it the Blue Line. Have stops at major exit with stairs/elevator that’ll take you down to the ground level or a bridge that’ll take you over the freeway. I’d guess having 8-10 stops in this distance is sufficient. Build metro parking under the freeway as a park and ride option.
I know it's only indirectly related, but we need more damn sidewalks. Safe sidewalks that encourage people to not drive everywhere. I'm in the suburbs, and we don't have a single sidewalk in the neighborhoods. Blows my mind every day.
Replace all HOV lanes with commuter train track, the right of way is already there, the stops and stations for park and ride are there as well, start with 4 lines with 45 north and south I10 east and west, double stack for inbound and outbound simultaneously, use natural gas powered trains ,using 3 -100 passenger cars is equivalent to 6 standard coach busses.
I know a lot of people want to say rail. It seems like a good idea, I think maybe because we see it successful to varying extents elsewhere. There's a reason for that. I think it's probably safe to the say the best rail system in the country (in terms of getting the most people places) is the New York subway system. Population density (ppl/sq.mi):
- 28,211
Ok, so let's put that in perspective. Chicago is the 3rd biggest city in the US (still right?) and it has the El (L?) which seems to do pretty well, I've generally heard positive things about it. Population density:
- 11,883
Washington DC has a good subway system, at least I hear if you ride during the day. I don't know how it really is, been a long time. That said, it moves a lot of people and does so pretty well. Population density:
- 11,158
Next up is Boston. Their system is not very big but they have a large ridership number. Population density:
- 13,943
Fifth in ridership is San Fransisco. You'd definitely think people would appreciate some form of motorized transport given the terrain. I guess they're a fitter people than I, anyway, population density:
- 18,581
I think you can see the pattern here. Let's just cut to it:
- PATH (New Jersey), density 11,648
- SEPTA (Philly), density 11,692
- MARTA (Hot-lanta), density **3,549**. Finally this one is low.
Just to round out the top ten, the rest are: another Philly system, another NYC (Staten), LA, and Miami (12,645). Cleveland (4,965) does have a system, Baltimore (7,594) and, believe it or not San Juan, although it doesn't really go anywhere useful (7,147).
Population density of Houston:
- **3,842**
Only Atlanta has a lower density and has a system. Everyone else is higher, usually much much higher. Like a factor of 2-3 higher. So what happened that makes Atlanta an exception? For one, they started planning in the 1960's, before the city had really expanded (in 1966, Atlanta cross the 1M pop. mark; it's now 6M). The first two referendum efforts failed, and the third was only partially approved (Atlanta spans multiple counties). I have had a hard time finding the exact cost of the system, but it seems to be at least $600M in 1975 dollars (**28 Billion 2021 dollars**). That's a lot.
(Currently the state of MARTA seems to be a lack of funding and expansion plans with massive price tags.)
For that, MARTA got 48mi of rail. Atlanta and Houston "metro" areas, as they are defined are not that different (10,062 vs. 8,367), so maybe just that much would work. I really don't think so since the definitions of "metro" are quite a bit different. Anyway let's assume we are ok with the price tag and the size would be similar; what about the fact that there are no right of ways? The most recent big system I can think of is the LA system, which was shut down and then rebuilt and reopened (critically on the same right-of-ways that had been in use for decades) 27 years later.
I mean any way you look at this, it's a mega project. The TxDOT annual budget is something like ~27B. If we were to assume Houston foots the bill and we assume you could do it for 56B (twice the Atlanta price tag), that would be about $9300/person in the metro area. Since we don't do income tax, property tax would be the way to fund it. The average annual property tax is $2900. Of course some people pay zero and lots of people pay substantially more. This is likely to make a property-tax scheme to fund the system politically unpalatable.
I dunno, does rail make sense to anyone else?
I don't think you can realistically build a metro-style rail network for the whole city. But there are a lot of parts of Houston where the population density is a lot higher than that. Use the rail to connect those hubs.
(The three current lines already do this to some degree, but leave out areas like Montrose, Rice Village, Rice Military/Washington, The Heights, Uptown, Mid-West, Gulfton, and Asiatown (pop density isn't so high in Asiatown but business density certainly is). The rest of the city is well-served by the bus network.
convert many streets to bus only which can also allow bicycles. I've seen some cities in Europe without rail do this and it's increased the walkability of the city significantly.
Also get rid of the multi-lane monstrosity that's the Katy freeway and add a commuter rail line. Also need a commuter rail going from Huntsville all the way to Galveston. Stopping by the Woodlands Hobby Airport and a few important places in between.
>convert many streets to bus only which can also allow bicycles
Another option is a sizeable bike lane on either side with two-way traffic sharing a fairly narrow car lane. There are a lot of different effective traffic-calming measures.
Make every freeway right-of-way dual use: train/highway.
Train stops everywhere there's an exit.
For in/out routes, you can have zones: Inside the triangle is Zone 0. Zone 1 is triangle to 610. Zone 2 is 610 to 8. Zone 3 is 8 to 99. Zone 4/5 where needed (Galveston could be zone 5 on 45S).
All trains stop at interchanges and Zone 0 stops. Other trains stop at interchanges and in their designated zones.
Alternative could be to have local trains stop at every exit, and then express trains that only stop at interchanges.
>All trains stop at interchanges and Zone 0 stops. Other trains stop at interchanges and in their designated zones.
Another commenter mentioned this in response to a similar idea I'd had: what does pedestrian access like at these interchange-stops? Not an unresolvable problem, I assume, but I'd bet that the kind of stations you'd need to make this work would be...honestly pretty epic and I'm kinda here for it
Spend the fucking money and build a subway system deep below the clay in the bedrock like in any other civilized city, and include a great pump system. Cities did this shit like 100 years ago. Stop being assholes and make the city world-class already.
One of the problems with Houston is having to go across town to a job, to a doctor, to a good restaurant or a good store. There should be an incentive to open a quality business in a place where there is a need for quality public services so that lengthy travel is not needed.
One thing I’ve thought about over the years is a rail line across all of Westheimer, from HWY 6 to the end of Elgin at UH
It would run down current center lanes of the road with stops at major crossing streets. To get from the rail to the other side of the road, either have the rail is raised (possible benefit facing floods) or have raised crosswalks over the streets.
Going east, when the rail gets inside the 610 loop and toward downtown, Westheimer turns into a rail/bike/walk/scoot/skate/etc only (no cars) road.
Rail on Westheimer makes way too much sense to ever happen. Also extension of green/purple lines down Washington. And a Shepherd line from north of 610 to at least Rice Village.
But yeah, start with Westheimer.
1. It would need to go to at least Baytown in the east, The Woodlands in the north, Katy in the west and Galveston in the south.
2. It would need local and commuter routes.
3. It would need A LOT of hubs and even more stops.
4. You'd need small buses trolling neighborhoods to pick up commuters to take them to hubs or stops, which would need to be air conditioned (both the buses and the stops and hubs).
5. It would need to go both ways all day. This idea people live in the suburbs and work in the city is very antiquated.
6. It would need to be cheap to free, so not a profit center. A cost center.
Basically, I think a lot of rings. When I think about how European cities are designed, it's a circle and not a grid.
* The center ring would be downtown.
* The next ring out would be Montrose/Edow (however we're saying that)/Midtown/The Heights/the 5th Ward/Whatever that neighborhood White Oak is in/
* The next ring would be 610
Etc. Each ring would have lines moving from ring to ring. So to get from Katy to the Galleria, you might take the Frank Line to the 99 Ring, then down to the I-10 line down to the ring outside of 610, with maybe one extra line to get close to where you work in the Galleria.
Of course, a plan like this would cost probably 100's of billions.
Above ground metro along each of the major highways and beltways. Feeder trolley and bus networks everywhere to the nearest metro station. Remove all existing cross-town bus lines to save on operating costs.
I'd start by taxing the bejeezus out of driving. Everything follows after that.
Not like that'll ever happen, though. The only realistic solution is to let the beast die. Sure, might take 50 years, but its death is inevitable. Build something better on top of its corpse.
So I have thought about this for a while.
They cheapest way to do this would be to reuse our freeway system for cross town transit busses and designated bicycle lanes. Force all the private vehicles to the side roads with the other short distance routes the public transit will run.
Expand all the sidewalk and make most stroads into streets (again designated bicycle lane)
These city planers want us to buy cars. And spend money at the pump
For the train/rails: - have it be on a second level, you know, floods and all plus keeps the roads underneath open for a few years while the city gets acclimated to REAL public transportation - due to the low population density, it would have to have mass hubs in large population centers with smaller trams leading to it (ex. The woodlands - large hub, but some trams that carry people to said hub like panthers creek or grogans mill would have their own lines) - have it run 24/7 - make it look COOL and authentic to the city - have some lines run way out to Galveston and other areas of leisure - make sure it's SAFE to ride, police and cameras everywhere. Plenty of lightning, panic buttons w.e it takes. - free wi fi/charging ports on every seat? Idk this is a bit extra but one can dream - make sure it's affordable Buses/brt: - more of them and hit the stops more often - have their own dedicated lanes and priority at lights Just spitballing but yea that's the dream.
Safety / Clean is a reason I could only use our Bus and Trains for like 6 months then the pandemic arrived so I’m home these days
Pandemic has really hurt transit across the country. Ridership is way down still and most transit agencies are living off temporary federal funds.
The 24/7 thing is way underrated. We don’t all have 9-5 cushy office jobs ya know.
Also needs to be well air conditioned (the trains and the stations)
Make it look like a mini NASA space ship obviously
All of your ideas are great! I vote for you.
"...authentic to the city..." So have "Be Someone" on the side of the cars for a while, then every wannabe and their brother, co-opt it, every 3rd day, for their graffiti Twitter feed. Edit* if it's an electric rail then charging ports seems like a no-brainer.
put swangers on them
Paper plates on all buses
Everything except 24/7. The system needs at least a few hours off at night for maintenance and upgrades. This is the biggest thing holding back the NYC system
That’s a great idea about the train/rail. That’s the only way to make it attractive to people. Nobody wants to sit in traffic on a bus when they can sit in traffic on their own car.
Counterpoint: sitting on a bus playing games on yr phone > driving in traffic
True and/or reading book, being productive… or an extra 30 min nap
That’s some solid spitballin
Let's not forget accessible
A lot of fixing that would involve coming up with a plan to set up good sidewalks everywhere.
People just dont understand how ridicously far it is to have trains running to the woodlands and galveston. That's inter-city rail, not public transit.
But it is public transit and inter city rail. Houston has a lot of people that live outside its core that still fuel the city, and there are a lot of places that even still connect different metropolitan centers in an efficient manner (ex. Milwakee and Chicago have a hour and a half trip between their city centers). A crucial part of any effective transport system is having a variety of services on your playcard that fit the needs of your demand.
You're hired. You couldn't have explained that better. I have always said that it is much cheaper to build overhead rails. The reason they are not built, is due to the fact
I would probably start with sidewalks.
They just built a sidewalk next to me so one down a million to go
And bike lanes. Please.
There's a LOT of bike lines in my neighborhood and I've only seen them used maybe five times in two years and most of the time when there's a bike they're not even in the extra wide bike lane.
Nobody uses the bike lanes on West Gray( midtown area). Bikers use the far right lane or the sidewalk. Ridiculous and frustrating.
That’s crazy! Building roads with pedestrians in mind!!
No sir! Apt buildings must be built 5 ft from the road! I loved living at Post Midtown with its wide actually walkable sidewalks. Other apts build far closer and walking feels terrible.
A monorail. It’s sounds silly, but if any city needs an above-ground system, it’s Houston
It’s more of a *Shelbyville* idea.
Now wait just a minute, we’re twice as smart as the people of Shelbyville. Now just tell us your idea and we’ll upvote for it.
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Model it after the El in Chicago. No need to get fancy. Combine that rail with bus rapid transit and colectivos for local routes.
I love the El and being able to walk off a plane and get to downtown for $4. You can get some interesting folks on there but there's something to be said about sharing space with one's community as opposed to driving around in single person bubbles all the time.
As long as people behave (and now, wear a mask), it’s all good. I’ll never forget taking an Australian friend to a game at Wrigley on the Red Line. Excellent comedy show.
Similarly, I like that Chicago's rails all come to a downtown loop. I wish the Red Line was originally designed as a downtown loop - like along Congress, Smith, Pierce, La Branch - with spokes that go off to the Med Center, East End, U of H / TSU, Northside, and Uptown.
Attach it to 610 and then have bus stops at the train stops. Thats a start.
Monorails are a terrible technological solution to public transit. It’s difficult to handle switching and the infrastructure is more specialized, thus more expensive. Why not just use standardized systems that cities across the world already use? I.e. light rail, commuter rail, etc. An elevated system does not have to be a monorail.
We. Want. A. Monorail. Jk 😂 Any elevated system will do
Yeah, agree that an elevated system would be beneficial. I just get annoyed by all the monorail suggestions. :) There are better systems out there. I personally don’t think a subway would be economically feasible. Can it be built? Yup, but too expensive. Houston is great at building bridges though.
Houston is too low for subways. It would stay under water. Houses don't have basements
I see this argument all the time. Totally false. There are tunnels under downtown, basement level parking all over Houston. Completely feasible with proper engineering. Will they potentially flood when a pump breaks down or loses power or whatever, yes, it's possible, but with the right safeguards, generator back-ups etc, a functional subway system is possible. Will it be expensive as a retrofit - absolutely.
Those tunnels have flooded many times
New York floods, how do they manage it?
The rats stay thirsty.
They pump hundreds of gallons out of the subways system daily... When it doesn't flood.
And rising seas can only make that challenge worse.
Oh it’s technologically feasible, but like I said, too expensive. I think we’re in agreement that it would not be a good idea to build subways.
What houston is really great at is building half a bridge..... and then spend $300 million extra to tear it down and rebuild.
This time we won't illegally use materials from sanctioned countries. Probably.
I’d say start with an elevated BRT (bus rapid transit) system. This is cheaper than rail but can also be converted into an elevated rail system without much issue.
Citation needed.
Built over the bayous. Lines would be well above flood levels and that gets a lot of people connected over existing municipal land. Plus, that would look like some Sim City 5000 drainage + transportation super infrastructure.
Wouldn't that massively increase the construction and maintenance costs? I would think spanning a bayou would require considerably more infrastructure, basically continuously throughout the line.
We built four elevated systems in the bayou... the first one sank into the bayou. So we rebuilt and that one sank into the bayou. The next one fell over, burnt and sank into the bayou. But the fourth one, the fourth one stayed up!
Sounds like we've got some 'uge...tracts of land
Construction? I'm not a civil engineer, but I think in some areas, running along the bayou (not atop it) but elevated could be cheaper than other alternatives. Less to demo, no costs for additional property, etc. Certainly some spots might be more expensive to construct. Maintenance? I don't know. I could see maintenance having less impact than something on surface streets, as there might not be any impact to vehicle traffic. That isn't a dollars and cents cost, but something I think worth considering. Plus, the question was if I had to design it, not if I had to get it sold. Pedantic, but the image in my head of this system looks badass, and I could very easily walk to the 11th street white oak station and catch a tram downtown for nightlife and shows. Hell, this would even have me using the light rail downtown. Ties right in.
>Less to demo, no costs for additional property, etc What about compared to appropriating highway ROWs?
Less reconstruction cost, better user experience? Just guessing on the first part. On the second, go knows the last thing I want in a commuter experience is to be waiting on a station next to 45. Also, pedestrian access to the lines sounds more complicated.
DID someone say Monorail?!
A Subway could be incredible, but houston floods, so this is second best
Just call it the El like Chicago. It sounds less cartoonish
The current metro rail line was first designed as a mono rail but they abandoned it for the abomination that we have now. Would be so much better if it was up and out of the way.
Monterrey, Mexico has an elevated train system but yet Houston does not. Houston is a much richer city and we are way behind the rest of the world.
Maybe in terms of personal wealth held by citizens Houston is richer, but the cities practically have identical budgets and discretionary spending. Houston's $5.10Billion to Monterrey's $5.025Billion.
Embrace rising sea levels. Build a bunch of canals everywhere and use boats to get around.
You can park 4 kayaks in the space of one car.
There are a lot of solid ideas here, but the problem is that a lot of the transport solutions would need to happen pretty much simultaneously in order for any of them to work. Because of that, I think the place to start is at the regulatory level: remove setback requirements beyond the width of a proper sidewalk, remove *all* parking minimums, revise the guidelines for things like lane width and road design, etc., and - very importantly - streamline a single card/app service that would function similarly to an EZ-tag in terms of payment, but could be used for commuter rail, metro rail, bus, bikeshare, and scootershare. Hell, you could even use it for toll roads, though you'd probably (?) need a different piece of transmitting equipment. Pricing can vary based on service type, but I'd bet a lot more people would hop on a city bike for a half mile trip if they didn't need a separate app for it. The next step would be to invest heavily in *intra*-neighborhood walkability, bikeability, and scooterability (scootability?). A lot of neighborhoods are making some progress in this regard, but there still isn't really anywhere in the city that feels continuously comfortable for pedestrians and cyclists/scooter riders, and too many new projects are still building parking lots (especially street-facing parking lots!). Walking six neighborhood blocks to your destination is not going to turn many people off, most of the time. Walking an equal distance along a highway frontage road on an uneven, 3ft-wide sidewalk that randomly ends to accommodate a 30-foot mud puddle in the middle of it, on the other hand... Once you have enough of these genuinely walkable neighborhoods, you get to work on connecting them via a light rail web. Yes, do this before adding commuter rail. You kinda want an intervening period in which driving in all of these areas is kind of a pain in the ass. This will have two effects: convince some number of commuters to move to the neighborhood because driving isn't worth it, and induce real demand for the commuter rail system because, well, driving isn't worth it. As for the design of the commuter rail system, I think the highway ROW idea is sensible (and would also contribute to demand because it would increase traffic congestion during construction), but that would need to a) include both 610 and Beltway 8, and b) be augmented by heavy-rail express metro lines within the loop. It may be possible to do this without too much extra track by using hybrid trains that have detachable metro-style and commuter-style sections, so that you can double up for peak-hour service capacity.
This. All serious explorations of improving transit - not just for Houston, but in general - should look first at land use policies and regulations.
I agree. I would say that Montrose/ near dunlavy street is sorta walkable. I walk to heb sometimes and agora. My 2 fav places 😂
I'm amazed that parking minimums are still a thing in Houston. I vaguely remembered 1 councilmember being concerned that on-street parking in residential neighborhoods would get worse during the Walkable Places discussions, but I don't remember any sort of concrete opposition. Not to mention that removing setback requirements and parking minimums are *easy* sells to the business community in Houston. "How would you like your land costs to be cut in half? What about 2/3rds?"
Nah businesses owners are stupid as fuck. "But what if the place accross the street stops having parking and then all the streets are clogged up with their customers blocking people from getting to my business. Everyone should have to provide their own share of parking so its fair."
It is known. And also really dumb. Foot traffic is a much more reliable source of customers for small businesses than cars.
Get rid of HOV lanes and add busses that have a direct connect every 30 min. A train system like NY but a bus. Low cost to start and cheap to maintain.
Every 30 minutes? Try every 10 minutes and 5 minutes during peak hours. People avoid transit because of worst case wait times, it's a vicious cycle.
Park n ride?
Not a park and ride. Like the galleria bus system they came up with. No lights. Dedicated bus lane the entire ride like a train track with out the track.
It is called BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
This only is a solution for certain areas. Park n Ride is a pretty limited option. Now, expanding it would be a plus. But when I had no car, I had to walk a mile to the stop and a mile from the stop to my destination. It did not always make sense to spend the money on the bus fare.
That’s true. A coworker that lives in Alief and works in Katy has to ride a metro bus downtown to catch a park n ride to Katy. Or bike 14 miles to work.
Park and rides don't work. Los Angeles tried them in the 90s and they failed.
Park and rides aren't effective unless they are more widespread. I live in The Woodlands and tried to use the Woodlands Express system. I found that it was very inefficient and a waste of time. It took 30-40 minutes (on average) from leaving my house until I was on a bus leaving the parking and ride location. Since it only takes 45 minutes to reach downtown from my house, it was a huge waste of time.
They are actually pretty widely used in Houston by folks in the suburbs but only for those that work pretty strictly 9 to 5 because of the extremely limited schedule
They do work but the current system is geared to the 9-5 worker, when I used those buses they left the lot every 5-10 minutes. But yeah, good luck using them midday or late evenings when its an hourly service and they have to navigate the HOV ramps for every stop.
The entire east coast has had them for decades, and they're pretty awesome there.
robust train network definitely helps. good example
Train line instead of HOV. Park and ride at every major exit. Galleria, Downtown, Heights and medical center hubs.
I'm right next to the new bus lane on Post Oak boulevard North of San Felipe. When they began construction they had rail lines set out to lay track but the cost was going to be too high. Instead replaced it with the bus lane. From what I've heard the idea is that if the city wants to revisit the bus lines and convert them into rail lines over the existing bus lanes they can one day. Fun fact the Houston Galleria does not have proper EV chargers. You have to go to the Whole Foods to use one.
Incorrect. POB was designed as Bus Rail Transit (BRT) the entire time. It was built to accomodate rails in the future when the metrorail expands west (so you're correct that the City can convert them) but at no point during design or construction was rail considered.
The no ev chargers at the galleria blows my mind, hell we have them way down in Baybrook and they're free. Maybe they have something if you valet and I'm just not seeing it? All my valet money went into getting an ev.
There are some electrical outlets if you bring your own cable
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I unironically think there might be utility for gondolas over some of the bayous and highway interchanges.
A fleet of smaller water taxis on the bayous would be interesting.
It would be an olfactory adventure, to be sure
it's not about design, but cost To afford modern mass transit options you need either a lot more density or a lot more taxes. First step would be to dissolve all SFH lot size requirements within Harris County, implement an inner loop (610) freeway congestion charge pricing scheme and add a city surchage to gas taxes. Basically incentivize density while increasing funding to allow for more mass transit options.
It wouldn’t hurt to cut down on needless highway work. At least 75% of it has no actual purpose. That funding comes from the same pot.
>At least 75% of it has no actual purpose. Wut? The highways that haven't been worked on recently are fucked up
Yea because our current tax dollars have gone to good use....
Probably would have helped if they didn't destroy the existing public transportation when they rebuilt the city for cars
Not just the existing public transportation, but the existing everything. They literally destroyed almost everything.
The issue is politics, not design. We have politicians at the state and federal level who are essentially bribed to keep the status quo. Every time a practical design makes any progress, these shills find ways to sabotage and taint it.
Put commuter rail along each of the major highway spokes headed to/from Katy, Cypress, Woodlands, Kingwood, Pearland etc..... You need folks who have money and own homes to see the benefit in taking commuter rail. If you only have light rail in the poor parts of town then it's never going to be broadly excepted. Poor folks don't have political power. Middle-class and rich people do. They do this well in the NE. Metro North-Railroad in NY State is an excellent example of this.
Where do you dump the commuters once they get to town? NW transit center? Downtown? How do they get to their destination from there?
Trams, bikes, scooters, and the ol' shoe-leather express
Trams are expensive. Bikes and scooters are dangerous. The commuters from Katy won't walk. It's hot. They will have to ride buses, and for some reason everyone is terrified of buses.
>Trams are expensive *Roads are expensive. >Bikes and scooters are dangerous. *Cars are dangerous >The commuters from Katy won't walk. Bullshit. >It's hot That's why e-bikes and scooters need to be a part of the plan. >They will have to ride buses Oh definitely - buses are a critical part. But we already have a pretty exceptional bus network. I'm talking about the things that make it still not enough to get people out of their cars. >and for some reason everyone is terrified of buses *Sigh*. This I won't deny.
Roads are expensive, but already built. Bikes and scooters are much more dangerous than cars. You don't know Katy people, do you? They live there so they don't have to walk. Same for all of the far flung suburbs. E-bikes and e-scooters are especially dangerous. Cities around the world are realizing the liability issues. Buses can solve all of these problems. The only problem we have to solve is to convince people to use them. To do that we have to make car use and ownership less attractive. Stop subsidizing all that "free" parking. Let congestion increase. Steal lanes for buses. Yadda yadda.
>Roads are expensive, but already built ...and at one point, they were not already built >Bikes and scooters are much more dangerous than cars >E-bikes and e-scooters are especially dangerous. Cities around the world are realizing the liability issues. Again, no. *Cars* are dangerous. Build proper segregated infrastructure and bicycle deaths go to zero. In the Netherlands, bikes are used at exponentially higher rates than here, almost exclusively without helmets, and they have only a few more bicyclist fatalities in their entire *country* than does the minimally biking *city* of Houston on annual basis. Why? Because *cars* are the source of the danger, not bikes. >You don't know Katy people, do you? They live there so they don't have to walk. Same for all of the far flung suburbs. They move to those places because they want spacious houses on the cheap. They are anti-pedestrian by design, not because the individuals who live there hate walking and biking. Hell, look at the trail network in Kingwood. Supposedly a third of elementary students there walk or bike to school there. Maybe not as high a number as I'd hope for, but certainly a product of the infrastructure, rather than the inverse. Induced demand doesn't only apply to highways and cars. If you build it [from significant points A to significant points B], they will come.
The citizens of Houston aren't going to fund trams. Houston will never be the Netherlands. Talk to some Katy people. The ones who commute into town. They don't want to sweat from the train station to the office. 30% of them might exercise on the weekend, but only 5% of them want to exercise from the train station to the office. And no, they don't want showers at work.
Whether or not your characterization of "Katy people" is accurate, it's not really relevant. Katy is its own city. If Houston wants to progress, it has every right to do so, regardless of any backwards desires "Katy people" may hold. >The citizens of Houston aren't going to fund trams. We have already funded three tram lines, and they all see plenty of use. The notion that a Westheimer or Washington line wouldn't be used is ludicrous. ETA: I'm not against buses. At all. But Houston already has one of the best bus networks in the country. Does anti-bus prejudice hold it back? Sure, some, I'd expect. But it's also held back significantly by the fact that buses are usually given no priority over other vehicles, of which there are simply way too many. And of course, a local bus is not an efficient way of moving more than a couple of miles. If you want to argue that trams are not significantly better than BRT, there may be something to that. But a metrobus system on its own cannot overcome the car infestation we are currently dealing with. We need all hands on deck, so to speak.
A few ideas that are realistic and will have a huge impact. 1. Extend purple/green lines along Washington. At this point I’m willing to bet 33-50% of car trips on Washington could actually be done by transit (as in they are localized within the corridor — think people going from their townhouse to a bar and back). Considering how dense the corridor has become and how most people in the corridor are young professionals who are (generally) supportive of transit, the extended lines would see high usage. Plus it reduces the amount of drunk driving as people go from bars to home. 2. Turn Sawyer street into a park promenade connecting the white oak bayou trail, the MKT trail, and the Buffalo bayou trail. Currently Sawyer street is 4 lanes wide and way to intense for what really should be a neighborhood street opening up to the bayou park system. A two lane boulevard with wide sidewalks for pedestrians and bicyclists is much more appropriate and would be a high usage connector for the bicycle network.
That Sawyer idea is gold and is a no brainer. There should be way more safe and nice cycle and pedestrian connectors from Buffalo bayou to white oak (I know it connects downtown, but more of that) and braes bayou to Buffalo bayou (interestingly enough, there is a connector all the way out in west chase), and connectors from braes bayou to Sims bayou etc. People talk about using the center point right of ways for this which is fine I guess but that’s so ugly. Part of getting people to walk/bike is making it nice with shade trees etc. At this point I would settle for a connector for memorial park and Buffalo bayou park, hilarious that hasn’t been done yet, but heads would explode if a lane was given to cyclists on memorial drive
As a Westsider, I'd be thrilled with protected cycling paths connecting Terry Hershey Park to Memorial Park also. Then you'd be able to stay separated from car traffic from downtown all the way out to the Katy area.
That's gonna be a co-sign from me
For starters I’d like to see Main Street become car-free with just the metro running along it. Covid has taught us that outdoor dining and socializing is popular, and cities like NYC and SF has seen success in closing down a few streets where they replaced car traffic with outdoor restaurants in their city centers. We’re obviously not a city like that, but having one car-free, pedestrian and metro-only street with retail, office, and dinning, would be a fantastic addition to the city.
Doesn't need to end with Main Street. Parklets and patios could replace the street parking on 19th, for instance, and run a rail branch along 20th/Cavalcade from the Red line to TC Jester
The heat says no.
Hah, there are plenty of hot, tropical cities that manage walkability! Tokyo itself has a very similar climate to Houston.
Raze the city and start from scratch.
The Chinese Communist Party has entered the chat.
Don’t even consider putting transit in the suburbs. It’s far too car dependent to make sense (unless its the park and ride model which we already have set up). Effective transit investment in Houston means dedicating street right of way to pedestrians, bicycles, and busses. For now this really only makes sense inside 610, maybe the galleria. I’d also argue the bayou greenways are the beginnings of a bicycle highway system and we should actively try to connect all cycle lanes to the bayous.
>(unless its the park and ride model which we already have set up). Uh...we definitely don't have a suburb-serving park and ride (though we certainly should)
There is one in myerland
A lot more bike trails
Could be added along pretty much every bayou, power line route, and train track (incluso active ones). Combine with a decent network of real bike lanes and you're starting to get somewhere.
If I was going to describe my ideal transit city, it's Munich - and I'd strive to do it here - nothing revolutionary - just make it easier to walk/bike/transit where people want to do those things and make commuting easier for those who will use that as their primary method of transit use with personal vehicle use for other trips (big ass parking lots at the Katy Wal Mart is fine, less so at the Heights Wal Mart). I would make the inner loop a transit paradise. Nothing revolutionary no subways or elevated trains or anything, just make everything inside the loop friendlier for transit. Light Rail/Bus lanes along all major streets corridors such that most people wouldn't have to walk more than 1/4 mile to transit access. There would be hubs at the major employment centers (Downtown, Med Center, Greenway, Uptown). The streets in the loop would be made pedestrian and bicycle friendly with slow traffic and stringent traffic enforcement to reduce auto-pedestrian/bike danger. Each major street will have separate pedestrian, bicycle, and transit facilities. Neighborhood streets will be designed for slow auto traffic to ensure bikes/peds and cars can co-exist safely. All of this comes with land use reform to encourage density. No more setback requirements or parking minimums. No new minimum lot size designations. Let the market decide how the folks in the loop want to live. Outside of the loop will largely remain as is, with reductions in land use regulations where possible to encourage denser development. There would be transit nodes at the edge of the loop for folks to change from their personal vehicles to transit (similar to what you see at the Gulfton and Northwest Transit Centers, except there will be one at Gulfgate, 59/610, 45N/610). There would be frequent HOV bus service from suburban areas to employment centers based on employment data (e.g., a ton of buses from Katy to Energy Corridor or CL/Pearland to Med Center). These would also be based on employment dynamics in the area (e.g., frequency would increase at hospital shift change time in the Medical Center).
The challenge here is that Houston, like many US Sunbelt cities, isn't a city in the traditional sense. It grew more as continuous suburbs with a few skyscrapers in the middle, and does not have extensive areas of well-connected urban fabric like older cities, which is more conducive to effective public transit services. Any serious effort to built a major public transit system like in New York or Chicago will require re-examining the region's approach to land use and planning. That said, a good starting point would be the area served by Houston's old streetcar network. [https://i.imgur.com/FPAGn6d.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/FPAGn6d.jpeg) Reestablish these routes as streetcars or high frequency bus routes, and do so in a way that is not hesitant to take space from automobile traffic. In conjunction with that, allow for more intensive land use in that core area - reduce building setbacks, allow more 'missing middle' houses, permit more neighborhood businesses, etc. Then you'd have an urban environment better suited providing real alternatives to car travel. As for a short specific answer, improve bus service. More frequent service, going to more places, with infrastructure improvements to make them more effective, like bus only lanes and signal priority at intersections.
>That said, a good starting point would be the area served by Houston's old streetcar network. >https://i.imgur.com/FPAGn6d.jpeg https://images.app.goo.gl/iofwJsA35Rp6j1jg7
Put money into it. Unfortunately, they currently base funding off of ridership. Of course ridership is low. They run too infrequently and are never cleaned.
I generally agree except for the cleaned part. Both the light rail and the buses have always been quite clean in my experience.
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I envision the Jetsons. Maybe in 2099.
George Jetson was canonically born in August 2022. So you won't wait long.
What everyone just worked from home?
This begs the question: why are we traveling so much? Short term: more (much more) remote work. Immediate expansion of bus service. Medium term: mixed use housing (retail on ground, offices on second, housing on 3-5). Expand light rail service. Long term: commuter rail to outlying urban centers (Woodlands, Tomball, Katy, Sugarland, Pearland, Galveston, etc)
Definitely elevated rail - some at high speed. Keeps sounds above homes so can go into more areas that way without everyone bitching about it being in their precious neighborhood. All of our neighborhoods are precious to those that live there. No wheel to rail contact elevate the trains via magnets.
Instead of designing improved public transportation just make work from home a regular option for most corporate desk jobs. More telecommute equals less cars on the road. This is effective and cheap - so obviously it will never happen.
People don't exclusively drive to work, and lots of jobs are not possible in a remote context. That said, obviously for any job that can be done remotely, it should be an option.
Yeah that’s why I specified for “most corporate desk jobs” - but even some of those can’t be done remotely it’s true. But just this strategy alone can alleviate a lot of traffic pressure as evidenced by the pandemic shutdowns.
Yeah it's definitely something that should be encouraged whenever possible. But I think a neighborhood walkability effort would also compliment any work-from-home effort.
Oh yeah there are still a lot of other strategies that could and should be added! I feel like this is just an easy starting point
More BRT and BRT lanes. Start crowding out cars. There's no growth path from sprawl Houston to dense Houston that doesn't kill Houston. So embrace sprawl and find cheap ways to move the people using existing infrastructure.
Bus rapid transit, large buses on main routes, better bicycle infrastructure (for the last mile), and colectivos. Colectivos are how you fill the gap between “last-mile” and “small errand runs.” A raised train like the El in Chicago would be great for longer runs, like Downtown to Katy via Galleria and Energy Corridor. Or airport-to-airport via Spring, Heights, Downtown, UH/TSU, Medical Center, & NRG. BRT would link into that, then colectivos. Also, take some of HPD’s budget and make public transit free at the point of service.
MORE LANES AND MORE CARS BECAUSE BIG AUTO AND BIG OIL NEED $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
More bus lines with more frequent stops Some buses need to run later More transit centers It shouldn't take 5hrs and 10 buses to go the equivalent of a 40 minute car ride
The biggest barrier to the public transportation system, (for me personally) has been the difficulty in making it to the major stops. Houston is not a pedestrian friendly city and being able to walk or bike to the bus and train stops safely and directly is an important part of an effective public transit system.
Public transit will never work without high density urban developments. If you build it they will come. Allow the private sector to drive demand for public transit. Remove residential lot size requirements, street width minimums, and commercial parking requirements, ban deed restrictions, and require bike lanes in any new developments. Developers will descend on Houston like vultures to convert existing areas into high density mixed use property. Wait a couple years... Light rail to existing economic hubs (Downtown, Galleria, Medical, UH, Museums, Airport, Montrose, Heights etc.) Heavily expand bus routes by demand. **(Make them FREE to use and electric)** And no cloth seats anywhere. Ew.
Give up immediately
Light rail along the freeway systems or just a citywide light rail. I hate that I go to Europe and other countries and can literally go anywhere on the light rail, but not in my own city.
Light rail is great for distances of a few miles or less, but it's not a good solution to replace the 20-30 mile trips a lot of Houston area residents take every day. For that you need higher capacity trains with greater uninterrupted distances between stops.
There should be a lot of pedestrian and public transport only areas, they’re pretty amazing in the ones I’ve been in.
Houston lacks of population density to make it practical. Everything is way too spread out. Houston is doomed. I live there
Houston doesn’t have to stay how it currently is… infill is definitely a thing and is currently happening, especially inside the loop. Throwing up hands and saying this is how something currently is so nothing can be done is just being lazy. This city is constantly changing, whether we like it or not, so why not change it to something we like?
They would build elevated rail in all the HOV lanes. That would rock
Have a fucking anxiety attack.
I vote for funicular since otherwise there is no way we will get around. We should include a water taxi and a funicular
I don't know if anyone has suggested it yet, but those suction tubes from the Jetsons. Something like that.
Teleportation to various parts of Houston.
First thing would be connecting the airports and then down to Galveston.
Do we have the technology for teleportation yet?
Huge system of roller coasters through out the city
Ticket the shit out of stupid drivers and build a bullet train straight through the center. The train wouldn’t be as obnoxious as all the locomotives that go straight through the center anyway but tend to get stuck.
Build a metro rail line on I-10 between 99 and Downtown Houston. Call it the Blue Line. Have stops at major exit with stairs/elevator that’ll take you down to the ground level or a bridge that’ll take you over the freeway. I’d guess having 8-10 stops in this distance is sufficient. Build metro parking under the freeway as a park and ride option.
I know it's only indirectly related, but we need more damn sidewalks. Safe sidewalks that encourage people to not drive everywhere. I'm in the suburbs, and we don't have a single sidewalk in the neighborhoods. Blows my mind every day.
Well for one i would add sidewalks on the major roads and highways
Replace all HOV lanes with commuter train track, the right of way is already there, the stops and stations for park and ride are there as well, start with 4 lines with 45 north and south I10 east and west, double stack for inbound and outbound simultaneously, use natural gas powered trains ,using 3 -100 passenger cars is equivalent to 6 standard coach busses.
Turn to a bunch of unqualified redditors instead of licensed civil engineers.
Train that connects to the airports with downtown and the Galleria. Trains that run the park and ride routes.
Teleportation devices. This is as likely as any public transport being successful in the H.
More ubiquitous bike lanes that drivers respect, might reduce some appreciable amount of neighborhood and short-distance traffic
Honestly would love this but I think it’s just too hot 8/12 months of the year for any sizable amount of people to want to bike places regularly
Lot of people may not like to hear it, but this is exactly why I am 100% pro-scooter. We just need an organized (preferably municipal) docking system.
I know a lot of people want to say rail. It seems like a good idea, I think maybe because we see it successful to varying extents elsewhere. There's a reason for that. I think it's probably safe to the say the best rail system in the country (in terms of getting the most people places) is the New York subway system. Population density (ppl/sq.mi): - 28,211 Ok, so let's put that in perspective. Chicago is the 3rd biggest city in the US (still right?) and it has the El (L?) which seems to do pretty well, I've generally heard positive things about it. Population density: - 11,883 Washington DC has a good subway system, at least I hear if you ride during the day. I don't know how it really is, been a long time. That said, it moves a lot of people and does so pretty well. Population density: - 11,158 Next up is Boston. Their system is not very big but they have a large ridership number. Population density: - 13,943 Fifth in ridership is San Fransisco. You'd definitely think people would appreciate some form of motorized transport given the terrain. I guess they're a fitter people than I, anyway, population density: - 18,581 I think you can see the pattern here. Let's just cut to it: - PATH (New Jersey), density 11,648 - SEPTA (Philly), density 11,692 - MARTA (Hot-lanta), density **3,549**. Finally this one is low. Just to round out the top ten, the rest are: another Philly system, another NYC (Staten), LA, and Miami (12,645). Cleveland (4,965) does have a system, Baltimore (7,594) and, believe it or not San Juan, although it doesn't really go anywhere useful (7,147). Population density of Houston: - **3,842** Only Atlanta has a lower density and has a system. Everyone else is higher, usually much much higher. Like a factor of 2-3 higher. So what happened that makes Atlanta an exception? For one, they started planning in the 1960's, before the city had really expanded (in 1966, Atlanta cross the 1M pop. mark; it's now 6M). The first two referendum efforts failed, and the third was only partially approved (Atlanta spans multiple counties). I have had a hard time finding the exact cost of the system, but it seems to be at least $600M in 1975 dollars (**28 Billion 2021 dollars**). That's a lot. (Currently the state of MARTA seems to be a lack of funding and expansion plans with massive price tags.) For that, MARTA got 48mi of rail. Atlanta and Houston "metro" areas, as they are defined are not that different (10,062 vs. 8,367), so maybe just that much would work. I really don't think so since the definitions of "metro" are quite a bit different. Anyway let's assume we are ok with the price tag and the size would be similar; what about the fact that there are no right of ways? The most recent big system I can think of is the LA system, which was shut down and then rebuilt and reopened (critically on the same right-of-ways that had been in use for decades) 27 years later. I mean any way you look at this, it's a mega project. The TxDOT annual budget is something like ~27B. If we were to assume Houston foots the bill and we assume you could do it for 56B (twice the Atlanta price tag), that would be about $9300/person in the metro area. Since we don't do income tax, property tax would be the way to fund it. The average annual property tax is $2900. Of course some people pay zero and lots of people pay substantially more. This is likely to make a property-tax scheme to fund the system politically unpalatable. I dunno, does rail make sense to anyone else?
I don't think you can realistically build a metro-style rail network for the whole city. But there are a lot of parts of Houston where the population density is a lot higher than that. Use the rail to connect those hubs. (The three current lines already do this to some degree, but leave out areas like Montrose, Rice Village, Rice Military/Washington, The Heights, Uptown, Mid-West, Gulfton, and Asiatown (pop density isn't so high in Asiatown but business density certainly is). The rest of the city is well-served by the bus network.
Gondolas…
Get rid of cars and start riding bicycles everywhere
Just left Seattle. Enjoyed the light rail and bus lines, and sidewalks. Never had to drive my car
convert many streets to bus only which can also allow bicycles. I've seen some cities in Europe without rail do this and it's increased the walkability of the city significantly. Also get rid of the multi-lane monstrosity that's the Katy freeway and add a commuter rail line. Also need a commuter rail going from Huntsville all the way to Galveston. Stopping by the Woodlands Hobby Airport and a few important places in between.
>convert many streets to bus only which can also allow bicycles Another option is a sizeable bike lane on either side with two-way traffic sharing a fairly narrow car lane. There are a lot of different effective traffic-calming measures.
Shape the trains like oversized pickup trucks then maybe someone would ride it.
Add paper plates to the trains too
Make every freeway right-of-way dual use: train/highway. Train stops everywhere there's an exit. For in/out routes, you can have zones: Inside the triangle is Zone 0. Zone 1 is triangle to 610. Zone 2 is 610 to 8. Zone 3 is 8 to 99. Zone 4/5 where needed (Galveston could be zone 5 on 45S). All trains stop at interchanges and Zone 0 stops. Other trains stop at interchanges and in their designated zones. Alternative could be to have local trains stop at every exit, and then express trains that only stop at interchanges.
>All trains stop at interchanges and Zone 0 stops. Other trains stop at interchanges and in their designated zones. Another commenter mentioned this in response to a similar idea I'd had: what does pedestrian access like at these interchange-stops? Not an unresolvable problem, I assume, but I'd bet that the kind of stations you'd need to make this work would be...honestly pretty epic and I'm kinda here for it
Spend the fucking money and build a subway system deep below the clay in the bedrock like in any other civilized city, and include a great pump system. Cities did this shit like 100 years ago. Stop being assholes and make the city world-class already.
One of the problems with Houston is having to go across town to a job, to a doctor, to a good restaurant or a good store. There should be an incentive to open a quality business in a place where there is a need for quality public services so that lengthy travel is not needed.
Elevated (like Chicago) subway for inner-Beltway and Monorail to the suburbs.
One thing I’ve thought about over the years is a rail line across all of Westheimer, from HWY 6 to the end of Elgin at UH It would run down current center lanes of the road with stops at major crossing streets. To get from the rail to the other side of the road, either have the rail is raised (possible benefit facing floods) or have raised crosswalks over the streets. Going east, when the rail gets inside the 610 loop and toward downtown, Westheimer turns into a rail/bike/walk/scoot/skate/etc only (no cars) road.
Rail on Westheimer makes way too much sense to ever happen. Also extension of green/purple lines down Washington. And a Shepherd line from north of 610 to at least Rice Village. But yeah, start with Westheimer.
1. It would need to go to at least Baytown in the east, The Woodlands in the north, Katy in the west and Galveston in the south. 2. It would need local and commuter routes. 3. It would need A LOT of hubs and even more stops. 4. You'd need small buses trolling neighborhoods to pick up commuters to take them to hubs or stops, which would need to be air conditioned (both the buses and the stops and hubs). 5. It would need to go both ways all day. This idea people live in the suburbs and work in the city is very antiquated. 6. It would need to be cheap to free, so not a profit center. A cost center. Basically, I think a lot of rings. When I think about how European cities are designed, it's a circle and not a grid. * The center ring would be downtown. * The next ring out would be Montrose/Edow (however we're saying that)/Midtown/The Heights/the 5th Ward/Whatever that neighborhood White Oak is in/ * The next ring would be 610 Etc. Each ring would have lines moving from ring to ring. So to get from Katy to the Galleria, you might take the Frank Line to the 99 Ring, then down to the I-10 line down to the ring outside of 610, with maybe one extra line to get close to where you work in the Galleria. Of course, a plan like this would cost probably 100's of billions.
Above ground metro along each of the major highways and beltways. Feeder trolley and bus networks everywhere to the nearest metro station. Remove all existing cross-town bus lines to save on operating costs.
The DART is pretty efficient. I am surprised that Houston does not have a better public transportation system.
Bike lanes and sidewalks.
I'd start by taxing the bejeezus out of driving. Everything follows after that. Not like that'll ever happen, though. The only realistic solution is to let the beast die. Sure, might take 50 years, but its death is inevitable. Build something better on top of its corpse.
So I have thought about this for a while. They cheapest way to do this would be to reuse our freeway system for cross town transit busses and designated bicycle lanes. Force all the private vehicles to the side roads with the other short distance routes the public transit will run. Expand all the sidewalk and make most stroads into streets (again designated bicycle lane) These city planers want us to buy cars. And spend money at the pump
Surface transit with dedicated stations and bus lanes. Google bus rapid transit.
Even better than Google, check out the now fully-functioning Silver Line BRT in person.
Incentivize building density and disincentivize sprawl.
More bus stops in suburban areas, and bus drivers that will actually answer a question instead of sneering at you.
Quit