Rail to the airport? Not any time soon and for good reason.

It was a beautiful bus.  It was a rocket bus to Bush Intercontinental Airport.

And no-one used it.

In 2008, METRO launched the 500 Airport Direct, a Downtown-IAH express bus that had few, if any stops between start and finish.  I rode this bus once, and found it to be marvelous.  The trip time was a full hour shorter than any other bus to IAH, but in 2011, it was discontinued.  Reading the comments to METRO's announcement to that effect are quite illuminating, but the stark reason was very simple: there was not enough ridership to justify continuing the service.

"Light / commuter rail to the airport"

This, I think, is the number two transit request from most people in the Houston area not well-acquainted with the intricacies of transit planning.  The number one request, of course, is an east-west light-rail corridor.

Are we going to get that mystical train to the airport?  Well...direct service to Bush Intercontinental was given a valiant try by means of the 500 Airport Direct from 2008-2011, and while this window of time may have been in the 'Great Recession', anyone at METRO will tell you that even accounting for the tough economic times, ridership was still bad.

Who, then, upon considering this can actually believe there is at this point in time enough durable demand for direct bus service from Downtown to Intercontinental, much less a commuter or light-rail service that would cost untold billions of dollars?

Besides, good airport transport is all about leaving the car behind, and since most people around here live anywhere other than Downtown, it stands to reason that if we were to have rail to the airport, it would have to come from multiple directions and locations with enough parking for all the cars left behind at Park & Rides or wherever METRO might have the service.

High population density is great for transit.  Hence, why so many cities in Europe and elsewhere have airport-train connections.  Houston does not have transit-friendly high-population density anywhere save perhaps in the Gulfton area.  And even with the gigantic slew of apartments being constructed ad-nauseum in the Downtown area, we still do not have, I think, the sort of density that would make even a direct bus connection to the airport viable, much less a train.

Of course (it seems to me, anyway) trains are clearly the culturally-superior choice for Houstonians.  Every year, I saw cowboys and cowgirls riding the rails to the rodeo, whereas in years before the Red Line went online, I would not have seen any of these hipsters so much as getting within ten yards of a 'bus'.

In order to make an airport direct connection with the sort of ridership to justify its existence, many things would have to happen in Houston.  Of course, the most-logical choice would be to have the connection run from Downtown.

Downtown population density would have to be greatly increased as would our convention traffic.  And the city would have to be far more culturally sensitive to mass-transit than it is now.  Cars are a wonderful thing, but it will take a great deal to, in airport terms, to get Houstonians with Houston's car-friendly layout to leave their cars behind.

However, even if the mystical airport bus or train is decades away (no earlier than 2040, by my estimation), the City of Houston has a wondrous opportunity to at least make preparations for such.  Recently, it approved plans for a new international terminal at Bush Intercontinental.

Do these plans include setting aside space for a future Bush Intercontinental Transit Center with space not only for buses, but also for trains?