18 August 2014 Strategic Planning Committee meeting Commentary

As Christof Spieler said, this particular meeting of this committee was to be the Big, Huge, Giant System Re-imagining Draft Plan with public comment once-over.  That bit of fun has been moved to the Regular Board Meeting to be held two days from now.  It will be a long and arduous meeting, to be sure.

The meeting video may be had at http://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/BoardVideoStreaming.aspx and its from this video the timestamps below come.

1:30  Kurt Lurhsen wishes the Board would approve the System Re-imagining Plan..right now!  haha

1:40  240 unique schedules - three for each of the eighty routes in the current plan: What an enormous job it will be to get these schedules together.  We can only hope they have revised and special schedules for Xmas-time-December-Galleria!

2:23  Amen, Christof!  However, I am still convinced bus-stop spacing will require a full-blown consolidation effort with public input.  This, however, I think will have to be a job for the 2016-20?? Board.

2:35  Oh, brother.  Few things in the system frustrate me more than drivers having to slow-drive through a route because they are ahead of the computer-clock.  Being early for a bus operator is a cardinal sin for so many reasons, and because of this, METRO has on every bus a clock-machine that lets a driver how much ahead or behind they are relative to the various timepoints they need to make.

If a driver is ahead of schedule, they must either drive the bus slower than molasses to get back in-sync with the timepoints or just stop the bus altogether.  If my trip is making really, really good time, it's a real pain in the neck to have to stop for three minutes at some intersection or wherever because of the seemingly-arbitrary nature of this system - a schedule and system that does not take into account Christimastime traffic and other traffic variables.

Here's an idea: we currently have three times of the year for service changes: June, August, and January.  Add another service change time: late-November to deal specifically with Christmas-time traffic in the Galleria.  It will take a year or two with the re-imagined system to fully come to grips on what a Christimastime schedule should be, but it can and must be done to deal with traffic in the Galleria.

3:25  Yeah, System Re-imagining implentation is going to be massive on a scale METRO has never before experienced and may not experience again for a half-century.

4:10  Heck, if METRO is looking for volunteers, I'll have to see if I can step in and help out.

5:19  The very moment the Board approves System Re-imagining is the moment the significant others of Jim, Kurt, etc. become METRO widows/widowers for the next ten months or so.

6:44  Earlier, Kurt mentioned field-testing of schedules being an element.  Lots of field-testing, we hope!

8:55  Yes, but we all know the Board will, whether anyone has concerns or not, will approve the Final Plan.  If Christof Spieler, whose blood, sweat, and tears have been spent on this much-needed project, has to make a pact with Mephisto and Baal to ensure Board approval, he will see it done.  I know that from now through the September Board Meeting there will be lots of preliminary things that could be done in this interim time.  Let's allow the agency to spend a little money to save a lot of time later on.

10:20  This is why we love Burt Ballanfant.  He asks the right questions.  And yes, it's for that reason we love Jim Robinson, too!

11:00  Jarrett Walker is a public-opinion and education guy as well as a philosophy guru.  Traffic Engineers, Inc. is nuts-and-bolts.  Not sure if this was made clear through the System Re-imagining process.

12:23  Hee, hee, hee...  You know it, Christof!  7 June 2015 = the Mother of All Service Changes!  LOLOL!!!  Hey, Christof!  More like "twenty magnitudes" of changes!

14:00  What will be involved with bus-stop changes?  A post of mine from a few months ago goes into great detail.

14:58  Yes, Kurt, but what is the protocol for bus-stop spacing?  Couldn't we go to wider bus-stop spacing outside of Downtown?  In Downtown, I've been made to understand ridership will not tolerate wider bus-stop spacing, unfortunately.

16:00  Oh, my Sweet Mother of Q-Card Terminals, I wish the Board could approve this thing NOW!!  The lead-time in ordering parts, but the biggest job will be the Board's: figuring out what needs to be on all the signs plus branding, etc.  17:50  Go, Diann, go!!

17:56  Mr. Ballanfant, the TripApp is in my mind still in a Beta-testing phase, especially with System Re-imagining coming up.  Is the fleet fully-equipped with the GPS thingies the TripApp needs to track all the buses?

19:10  Ye gods, all these details!!  Diann is absolutely right.  To have to go over all ten-thousand bus stops.. a second time ...to correct something done wrong would be horrible.

19:49  YES!!  Every bus stop needs its own number available to the general public!

21:23  Our current in-bus stop announcement system is pretty good, already, but it does get 'off' at-times.  After sunset, this can be a problem.

22:25  Many congratulations to METRO, and particularly to Kurt Lurhsen, for being able to retain such a staff through the years.  Bravo!

26:20  Succession planning - yes!!  Especially when the next Board comes on board in 2016...

I wonder if METRO is getting set for a wave of retirements at the Administration Building...

28:00  Methinks Kurt was not quite detailed enough in his initial talking to the Committee re staff request budgetary considerations

For a while, the meeting goes into mind-numbing (but necessary, I know) contract minutiae...  35:45  Good lord, even Dwight can't keep it all straight - haha.

38:00  The second presentation begins...with a request for a study that could ultimately lead to the Wonkatania, that Mystical Train to Galveston of surprise, whimsy, and fun!!

46:47  The problem is, Kurt, aside from UH and TSU, the Southeast Line doesn't really go anywhere.  The East Line goes to the middle of nowhere.  Not high-density of population and jobs.  And no great landmarks.  

48:00  The East and Southeast Lines were most-likely built for developers and not for the public at-large.  Had there been a real push from The Powers-that-Be in the late '90s and early 2000s, we could have had train service from airport to airport and to the Northwest Transit Center, Galleria, etc.  

The Powers-that-Be put the trains where they wanted them, and no amount of preaching, mediums, séances, etc. would have swayed them to build otherwise.

I have no faith this new study will go anywhere.  Until Galveston becomes a place where umpteen people will want to get to via train, a return of passenger train service between Houston and Galveston will never, ever come about.

The meeting lasted about fifty-two minutes and is a perfect prelude to Thursday's shin-dig with the full Board.