So many buses come up Louisiana via Spur 527 from U. S. 59. On the seldom occasion when they drop people off at Louisiana @ Tuam, they used to stop here.
Looking north on Louisiana, the cross-street here is Tuam. The decorative rectangle on the sidewalk at right along with the lonely metal pole? This is where the bus shelter and bus stop for Tuam used to be. I strongly expect very, very few people got on or off at this stop. METRO could have used the opportunity provided by sidewalk-obstructing construction on this city block to do away with this redundant stop once and for all.
But no. The agency opted instead to go with its normal bus stop protocol and temporarily move this stop for Tuam to the next block up. If you look carefully, you can see the new bus stop sign on a temporary base under the trees just past Tuam.
Here is the new stop (moved from the old location about a year ago) on its temporary base.
Click this image and view same on Google Maps. Pan around this image and look south toward Tuam and north again toward McGowen. Notice something? The difference in walk time from this present bus stop location to McGowen and from this present bus stop location to Tuam is so negligible as to not be worth mentioning.
This bus stop is an opportunity for bus operators' runs to be delayed all-the-more for that one random soul using this redundant bus stop. Same soul could walk from McGowen or Elgin easy-enough. Such is not only an exhibition of not only this bureaucratic foolishness, but a grave indictment on the political forces and walking intolerances that have forced METRO over the years to adopt a bus-stop spacing protocol and standard that is woefully inefficient and serves only to be the hardening of the arteries of METRO's local and Park & Ride bus service.
Westheimer @ Weslayan eastbound
I'm talking about the blue bus-icon on the southwest corner of the intersection of Westheimer @ Weslayan and just in front of the Wells Fargo Bank. This bus stop is needless.
This intersection serves the 73 W. Bellfort Galleria branch as well as the 81 Westheimer and 82 Westheimer. The 73 comes up Weslayan and turns west onto Westheimer. Southbound, the 73 comes east again on Westheimer and turns south onto Weslayan.
Ordinarily, this bus stop would be fine, but we already have the bus stop west of it serving the HEB Central Market. The bus stop at the Wells Fargo bank currently does serve as a destination point for people transferring from 81/82 westbound, but that transfer from those westbound buses to the 73 southbound could be made west of here at Drexel and at a location where the westbound bus stop is closer to the street crosswalk.
As for the eastbound Westheimer bus stop at Weslayan? Let's get rid of it.
Westheimer between Gessner & Fondren, inclusive
There may be in our entire bus system, no greater concentration of bus-stop nonesense than here in these few blocks.
Not including stops at Gessner and Fondren, the orange markers denote all the METRO bus stops between Gessner and Fondren.
Here are all these stops on Google Maps (You will have to zoom into see them in this frame). Use the zoom buttons at bottom right to zoom in and out. Drag the map to move it around. Of course, you can also click at top left to 'View on Google Maps' in a more-expansive frame than I can provide here.
Let's start at the intersection of Westheimer @ Gessner. This crossing of two of Houston's most-used non-freeway thoroughfares serves bus routes 46 Gessner, 53 Westheimer Ltd., and 82 Westheimer. The 53 Westheimer Ltd. on its way up to Briar Forest turns north onto Gessner from Westheimer. Coming south from Briar Forest, it turns off of Gessner and east onto Westheimer. Hence, the absolute need for the seemingly-redundant bus stop eastbound on Westheimer just east of the Shipley Do-Nuts.
Zoom out, and the fun begins. Let's go eastbound on Westheimer from Gessner. Look at the stop in front of Shipley's. Then head east and see the stop at Tanglewilde. Then head but 250 yards and you have a stop at Rockyridge. About 150 yards east of that is the stop at Westerland.
I promise you, the yardages I have quoted make the distances between all these stops seem longer than they already are. The fact we have stops at both Rockyridge and Westerland is ridiculous.
Solution: Between Gessner and Fondren inclusive, take out every bus stop save those at Gessner and Fondren as well as those at Westerland. I leave the Westerland stops in to accomodate the Treemont retirement home as well as the apartments all around there as it is legitimately too much to ask for people from that street to walk all the way from there to Gessner or Fondren to catch the bus.
Every bus stop in our system is an opportunity for a passenger to harden the arteries of METRO's system. Every time a bus has to stop for one person or fifty, there is braking, opening of doors, passengers entering and paying their fare by cash or Q-Card, closing the doors, watching for traffic, and accelerating only to have someone request the next stop 150 yards away.
Crazy! And METRO has let this go on and on for decades and decades.
Why??
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