Growing up during the Houston mayorship of Kathy Whitmire, the one word I can remember hearing from her was 'monorail'. An active proponent of that form of transport, 1992 would see her monorail dream die by the hand of her successor, Bob Lanier. Within a decade, Mayor Bob's immediate successor, Lee Brown, would see a street-grade light-rail system built in the Bayou City.
Street-grade... Train cars stopping for red lights. There was no elevated rail constructed because it would have been hideously-expensive, requiring federal funds to cover the expense, which congressman Tom DeLay succeeded in having blocked.
Well, we have our high-capacity rail transport for human passengers going right through Downtown and the Texas Medical Center as well as offering service to Reliant Stadium, the University of Houston - Downtown, and Northline Mall. But is our region paying for its lack of vision in regard to elevated rail and its lack of will in paying for same? Yes!
The jury is out with me still regarding the merits of a Disney-style monorail as opposed to what we have now, but with METRORail online and running for the next half-century, I can now only speak in hypothetical terms. But it is important, though, to still ask questions.
The election of Bob Lanier as Mayor of Houston in 1991 was a crucial event in Houston's mass-transit history. Depending on one's point of view, Lanier's election either halted the march of progress or saved our city and region from a horrible boondoggle. And again, I can't be sure of how well monorail would have done.
What is abundantly clear every time my train has to stop for a red light is Houstonians could have done better and should have. They could have spoken up for elevated rail in the Bayou City, as expensive as it would have been. In the person of Bob Lanier and with their ballots in November 1991 with a December 1991 runoff, they spoke loud and clear, putting in a Mayor who was more interested in highways than buses or trains.
Mayor Bob's election began eighteen years of mostly-substandard METRO leadership which, though it did see some bright spots here and there, also saw our present bus network stagnate and prevented from growing and changing with the Houston landscape, paving the way for the brute-force full-scale changes with System Reimagining.
And perhaps we should count ourselves lucky to have gotten light rail at all. If I understand things rightly, Mayor Brown had to put up a fight for even our at-grade system, choosing to compromise with our speed-slowing at-grade aspect instead of the stoplight-bypassing elevated system our city deserved.
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In the Ideal Realm, I would tear out most of our light-rail system, building elevated rail along the whole of Fannin and San Jacinto, though getting to UH-Downtown would have been a challenge. Only the area of the Texas Medical Center with its myriad skyways as well as the Pierce elevated would have seen at-grade service, though the presence of the Pierce Elevated may have made the resultant underpass with the rail impractical to build as it would have impeded a rail station or two from being built.
I would have nixed the East Line entirely, having the Southeast Line continue on to Gulfgate Mall and Hobby Airport. I would also think long and hard about building any new light rail anywhere. There is nothing worse than a billion-dollar mass-transit project with no ridership!
As for the Westpark Tollway, I would do one of three things: tear it out completely - replace with either a wider highway with two-way train tracks (two tracks each way, mind you), tear it out completely and replace with a rail-only system - extending through the Southwest Freeway, or make it bus-only with two-way HOV on the SW Freeway.
I'm not sure of the wisdom of any sort of rail along Richmond avenue, elevated or otherwise. So many stoplights and business-visual-killing elevated rail tracks!
The Uptown BRT would be put on steroids and built as a rail system or a BRT - not sure of the wisdom on either, really, but the dedicated right-of-way between the Northwest Transit Center and the Galleria, bypassing West Loop traffic cannot be denied.
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Our light-rail is great, but could have been so much better. Because it is at-grade, it is slow, and getting to Northline Mall is more of a chore than it needs to be. If it is possible to have the trains travel faster in spots devoid of streetlights, I really wish the agency could make this happen, though frequency of service really cannot be beat save with ridiculous three-minute headways, which may or may not be safe to implement ever.
In the end, it was not Mayor Brown, greedy developers along Main Street and Harrisburg, the Illuminati, or any cabal or secret society which dictated we put down the light-rail we have. It was We, the People, who did not speak out en-masse for elevated rail. It was We, the People, who stood by and did not question en-masse the wisdom of gumming our Main Street for all eternity with at-grade light rail.
It was We, the People, who in 1991 killed monorail, not Bob Lanier with his METRO Board majority. It was We, the People, who allowed Frank Wilson to become the METRO CEO and President he became under Bill White's mayorship. And it has been We, the People, who have rightly allowed the 'New METRO' to do its level-best to right the ship.
We voted for Mayor Bob. We voted for Mayor Brown. We voted for Mayor White. This is not North Korea or Soviet Russia. No-one put a gun to our head and said, "Vote for Mayor Bob!!" And thank heaven, we voted for Annise Parker as Mayor who will go down as perhaps the best Houston Mayor mass-transit has ever seen. What sort of individual will we put into the Mayor's office come 2016?
Granted, some people whom we elect to whatever may choose to wear different clothes once in office than they did on the campaign trail, but we keep them in office, anyway, right? In the end, everything right or wrong with Houston mass-transit is our fault, including light-rail.
Jeff Ragsdale's musings on all-things mass-transit in the greater Houston-Galveston area
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Thursday, February 12, 2015
System Reimagining...APPROVED IN-FULL!! HotG Episode 32 Thurs 12 Feb 2015
I've waited almost a year to be able to upload this podcast. :-)
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
One day away! Houston on the Go podcast Ep. 31 for 10 Feb 2015
Enjoy! The first one of these in a while...
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Partial Commentary: METRO Board Regular Meeting Thurs. 25 Sept. 2014
8 Feb. 2015 - I will never ever get the full commentary for this horrible METRO Board Meeting from 25 September 2015 done. Hence, I've decided to give you what I have so far.
As-always, METRO's Board Meeting videos are available at http://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/BoardVideoStreaming.aspx
I suggest you watch this meeting in-full. Bring some popcorn.
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25 September 3:33pm: I was unable to attend today's regular METRO Board Meeting, but while we wait anxiously for the video to be put online, I do know System Re-imagining was approved by the Board...but not really. We'll see how things went in full and lurid detail, but this I do know: the meeting video is four-and-a-half hours long, which by METRO standards probably has to be the longest Board or committee meeting in the past four or five years.
As always, Board meeting videos can be found at
http://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/BoardVideoStreaming.aspx
The agenda for today's meeting may be had directly at
http://ridemetro.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=5&clip_id=941 and while it does not have that much verbiage, budget and System Re-imagining told me a week ago when I looked at it this get-together was going to be a long one.
And let's add to that what I expect was a happy approval of the new procurement policy for small businesses. Perhaps Allen Watson owned the day? And let's not forget Terence Fontaine with the monthly update on the ongoing, but lessening, comedy that has been CAF.
Usually by 3:30pm, we have a Board meeting video ready for viewing, but not yet this time. The file is huge, I'm sure, and with the late meeting ending, I wonder if we will see anything today.
3:53pm: Well, I've found out there will be no Purple Line until at least April. This meeting just sounds better and better!
4:09pm: I'm giving up on there being a video posted today. We'll get our commentary tomorrow. :-)
4:42pm: Downloading video now. We'll see just how long it takes to put the commentary together - lol.
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And now, the meeting!
00:30 Looks like a good crowd. Equivalent of first five rows are in the room. Gilbert is having a little difficulty getting a quorum to take their seats. Lots of Board members present who need to get their boms in chairs!
1:41 Gilbert gets things going. A huge number of big things to get through today...
2:23 Judge Jefferson is out of town.
2:55 Chief of Staff of Rep. Harold Dutton shares her comments on Re-imagining. FLEX rears its ugly head right at the start of the meeting! Yeah, METRO has done nothing publicly really to educate the community on FLEX - or so I believe...
5:00 Christof Spieler does not want FLEX unless it will really work. In other words, this entire part of System Reimagining might as well be on square-one...because it really is!
7:35 Jim Robinson brings up the issue of reduced span of service. Good point! omg, there is waaay more to this project that still needs to be addressed.
9:00 Councilman (Houston) Dwight Boykins comes...to actually thank the Board for something: issues concerning the crossover at Beekman Street near the Palm Center.
12:35 Mayor Sue Speck (Multi-Cities) thanks this Board for its responsiveness to the community.
15:55 Joetta Stevenson does not like Reimagining at all. Joetta did not bring sugar to this meeting. She laments easy service to medical facilities. Lack of METRO marketing and giving out information to ridership. She cites less service to inner-city. She is on a rampage.
Is she justified? Well, she is speaking out in a big way for communities that will be affected by Reimagining in a way we have not seen before.
20:00 Umm... Mrs. Stevenson, there are hundreds of thousands of poor non-white people whose bus service will by reimagining be greatly improved. The motion to go 80/20 was made by a black guy: Board Member Dwight Jefferson, whose presence is now greatly missed. What a bad day to be out of town!
The LBJ connection deserves a further look, though.
I am very thankful to her for bringing up this perspective.
23:00 No, Gilbert, this process has been more than a year long. But yes, it's been a long time. Yes, Joetta is on a rampage, but yes, I love her being here and speaking!
23:45 Christof gives a very empassioned response. 'Ridership is about serving our customers.' He addresses directly the current 1 Hospital. METRO has been expecting this, and it has now occurred: the torches and pitchforks have arrived!
25:14 Calm down, kids...
25:30 Most of the 'west' part of town is non-white and non-rich and densely-populated. Christof addresses directly why Northeast Houston is getting less bus service under reimagining.
27:30 Preach it, Christof! Yes, there are trade-offs, but we can only do what we can do with our limited taxpayer money.
29:00 Dominic! Yes, get those FLEX zones going at least as a pilot project. But do it asap. Joetta has her posse with her. Good people all, I know, and they are not a happy bunch.
31:18 Dom gets around.
32:09 Bob Yuri (sp?) and Central Houston Downtown Management District's Board and membership looove System Reimagining.
36:55 Otis Robinson, METRO employee, represents his Settegast superneighborhood...and loves System Reimagining and cites Bob Lanier (1990) & Robert Miller (2004) as reimagining-killers of the past.
He does not care for the wholesale changes of numbers and routes, however. He cites the loss of the legacy of history in certain routes, especially the 44 Acres Homes.
He disputes low ridership figures on some routes. And he's worked at METRO 38 years.
48:00 Susan Young with the South Main Alliance loves System Reimagining, and so does her organization.
53:00 Dexter Handley of the Citizen's Transportation Coalition loves System Reimagining.
- Renumbering will be looked at again.
- Service to hospitals will be reassessed.
- Ridership in the Northeast will be looked at again.
- FLEX is an open variable. Period.
- span of service will be re-looked-at
There will never ever be a moment in which a mystical full-approval of System Re-imagining complete with finished routes, etc. will ever come. It is abundantly clear the tweaking and twerking of this project, especially regarding FLEX, will continue right up to 7 June 2015 and beyond.
As-always, METRO's Board Meeting videos are available at http://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/BoardVideoStreaming.aspx
I suggest you watch this meeting in-full. Bring some popcorn.
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25 September 3:33pm: I was unable to attend today's regular METRO Board Meeting, but while we wait anxiously for the video to be put online, I do know System Re-imagining was approved by the Board...but not really. We'll see how things went in full and lurid detail, but this I do know: the meeting video is four-and-a-half hours long, which by METRO standards probably has to be the longest Board or committee meeting in the past four or five years.
As always, Board meeting videos can be found at
http://www.ridemetro.org/AboutUs/BoardVideoStreaming.aspx
The agenda for today's meeting may be had directly at
http://ridemetro.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=5&clip_id=941 and while it does not have that much verbiage, budget and System Re-imagining told me a week ago when I looked at it this get-together was going to be a long one.
And let's add to that what I expect was a happy approval of the new procurement policy for small businesses. Perhaps Allen Watson owned the day? And let's not forget Terence Fontaine with the monthly update on the ongoing, but lessening, comedy that has been CAF.
Usually by 3:30pm, we have a Board meeting video ready for viewing, but not yet this time. The file is huge, I'm sure, and with the late meeting ending, I wonder if we will see anything today.
3:53pm: Well, I've found out there will be no Purple Line until at least April. This meeting just sounds better and better!
4:09pm: I'm giving up on there being a video posted today. We'll get our commentary tomorrow. :-)
4:42pm: Downloading video now. We'll see just how long it takes to put the commentary together - lol.
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And now, the meeting!
00:30 Looks like a good crowd. Equivalent of first five rows are in the room. Gilbert is having a little difficulty getting a quorum to take their seats. Lots of Board members present who need to get their boms in chairs!
1:41 Gilbert gets things going. A huge number of big things to get through today...
2:23 Judge Jefferson is out of town.
2:55 Chief of Staff of Rep. Harold Dutton shares her comments on Re-imagining. FLEX rears its ugly head right at the start of the meeting! Yeah, METRO has done nothing publicly really to educate the community on FLEX - or so I believe...
5:00 Christof Spieler does not want FLEX unless it will really work. In other words, this entire part of System Reimagining might as well be on square-one...because it really is!
7:35 Jim Robinson brings up the issue of reduced span of service. Good point! omg, there is waaay more to this project that still needs to be addressed.
9:00 Councilman (Houston) Dwight Boykins comes...to actually thank the Board for something: issues concerning the crossover at Beekman Street near the Palm Center.
12:35 Mayor Sue Speck (Multi-Cities) thanks this Board for its responsiveness to the community.
15:55 Joetta Stevenson does not like Reimagining at all. Joetta did not bring sugar to this meeting. She laments easy service to medical facilities. Lack of METRO marketing and giving out information to ridership. She cites less service to inner-city. She is on a rampage.
Is she justified? Well, she is speaking out in a big way for communities that will be affected by Reimagining in a way we have not seen before.
20:00 Umm... Mrs. Stevenson, there are hundreds of thousands of poor non-white people whose bus service will by reimagining be greatly improved. The motion to go 80/20 was made by a black guy: Board Member Dwight Jefferson, whose presence is now greatly missed. What a bad day to be out of town!
The LBJ connection deserves a further look, though.
I am very thankful to her for bringing up this perspective.
23:00 No, Gilbert, this process has been more than a year long. But yes, it's been a long time. Yes, Joetta is on a rampage, but yes, I love her being here and speaking!
23:45 Christof gives a very empassioned response. 'Ridership is about serving our customers.' He addresses directly the current 1 Hospital. METRO has been expecting this, and it has now occurred: the torches and pitchforks have arrived!
25:14 Calm down, kids...
25:30 Most of the 'west' part of town is non-white and non-rich and densely-populated. Christof addresses directly why Northeast Houston is getting less bus service under reimagining.
27:30 Preach it, Christof! Yes, there are trade-offs, but we can only do what we can do with our limited taxpayer money.
29:00 Dominic! Yes, get those FLEX zones going at least as a pilot project. But do it asap. Joetta has her posse with her. Good people all, I know, and they are not a happy bunch.
31:18 Dom gets around.
32:09 Bob Yuri (sp?) and Central Houston Downtown Management District's Board and membership looove System Reimagining.
36:55 Otis Robinson, METRO employee, represents his Settegast superneighborhood...and loves System Reimagining and cites Bob Lanier (1990) & Robert Miller (2004) as reimagining-killers of the past.
He does not care for the wholesale changes of numbers and routes, however. He cites the loss of the legacy of history in certain routes, especially the 44 Acres Homes.
He disputes low ridership figures on some routes. And he's worked at METRO 38 years.
48:00 Susan Young with the South Main Alliance loves System Reimagining, and so does her organization.
53:00 Dexter Handley of the Citizen's Transportation Coalition loves System Reimagining.
- Renumbering will be looked at again.
- Service to hospitals will be reassessed.
- Ridership in the Northeast will be looked at again.
- FLEX is an open variable. Period.
- span of service will be re-looked-at
There will never ever be a moment in which a mystical full-approval of System Re-imagining complete with finished routes, etc. will ever come. It is abundantly clear the tweaking and twerking of this project, especially regarding FLEX, will continue right up to 7 June 2015 and beyond.
A visual of where METRO's buses and trains are scheduled to be at the moment you are seeing same...
http://t.co/WVXXEp0uT5 is the link to the TRAVIC (Transit Visualization Client) for METRO. It shows a map of our complete service area with a complete visualization of, using schedule data, where a bus or train should be in our system at any given time.
Of course, it does not give information as to the actual location of any bus or train car - just where they should be located in an ideal world. However, if you have been wondering what a fully-functional mass-transit system looks like, here it is.
Thank you, METRO Board Member Christof Spieler, for this!
Of course, it does not give information as to the actual location of any bus or train car - just where they should be located in an ideal world. However, if you have been wondering what a fully-functional mass-transit system looks like, here it is.
Thank you, METRO Board Member Christof Spieler, for this!
System Reimagining... Is it going to ever happen?
I began this article last month or so and realize that while it is now a bit dated, it is still before the 11 February hopeful-approval of System Reimagining by METRO's Board of Directors. Ergo, what is below is still relevant and timely. Enjoy!|
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System Reimagining... Is it ever going to happen?
Yes, but METRO had better get a move-on.
I've been somewhat frank recently on Facebook about my misgivings concerning if the public will ever see System Reimagining implemented or whether it will remain forever quagmired in the throes of FLEX discussion.
In September 2014, an epic Board Meeting (video available here) resulted in an approval-in-priniciple of System Reimagining, METRO's attempt at revamping utterly our local bus network and integrating same with light rail and a Park & Ride system which, unlike the local bus network, has been continually iterated upon since its inception in the 1970s and allowed to evolve with our region.
This meeting was supposed to have featured an approval-in-full of the coming network plan, but an ambush by citizens and elected officials from low-population areas slated for a new FLEX service designed to de-rail the process at the last minute at that meeting succeeded in watering things down to where System Reimagining was approved...without really being approved, a move which, I'm sure frustrated METRO staffers hoping for a full-blown green light to start making schedules and what-not for what will hopefully be a 7 June 2015 implementation date.
It does not help that the only meeting of the Strategic Planning Committee since September's Board Meeting has been a fifteen-minute affair this month. Something is going on, and that something is FLEX: poring over details, field-testing, consulting with said public officials and citizens over how the call centers, etc. could work.
However, I have been assured today [back in January of this year] by a METRO Board member after the meeting all-things pertaining to System Reimagining are going smoothly. Speaking with this Board member made me feel better: he told me the Planning Department is very hard at work: schedules are being worked out, and yes, buses have been field-testing routes. The gritty grind of getting this network going is real and is happening!
I guess until FLEX is finalized, and with it, the network, as much as can be, METRO has to be coy. Hence, no Strategic Planning meetings of any substance for the time being.
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I have recently been in the throes of culling my paper files and reorganizing everything. To that end, the first part of this project was straightening my garage and organizing the vast collection of empty boxes, etc. I've kept for such an occasion. This cleaning-up was absolutely necessary to my cleaning up and organizing my storage unit, which has allowed me to consolidate archives, cull as needed, and give me the peace of mind good organization gives.
Some years ago, I temped at a loan servicing company, and one of my first tasks was to help clean up the file room and completely reorganize the thing. At the outset, the secretary overseeing our efforts walks into the room in question and says, "This room is a clusterf--k.". She was not criticizing us, but she did speak the truth.
Cleaning my garage and organzing my storage unit provided for me a logistical base on which to iterate on my new organization. Cleaning out and fixing that file room allowed the office to go from there and do its work far-better than ever before.
System Reimagining is the cleaning of our file room. It is the reworking of our garage. I have spoken ad-nauseum about this before, but I cannot emphasize that enough.
It will give us a clean slate on which to make future network changes and improvements. The grid of the Frequent Network and the adding (or removing) rungs from the grid quickly and easily will allow us to conceivably have a local bus network that could last indefinitely.
The throes of FLEX vex this METRO Board. It has vexed this Board so much that it gave in September only tacit approval in principle, but not in fact, to a system our local bus ridership desperately needs.
Enter the next Mayor of Houston. God only knows what this next Mayor will do. By way of the City of Houston's absolute Board majority, this new Mayor could torpedo System Reimagining outright. But if the network has by January 2016 been implemented, it will be far-more-difficult politically and logistically for s/he to do that.
METRO must cut this next Mayor (and God only knows who that will be) off at the pass. METRO must approve System Reimagining in-full while it still can.
All this being said, there is a temptation to opt for a vast compromise that would see a lot of the 'red' in the proposed Frequent Network sacrificed to assuage certain Board concerns about FLEX and span-of-service (a valid issue with the Reimagining as it turns out).
Why not, then, go with fixed-route service instead of FLEX? Happily, METRO has already thought these things through and come up with possible schemes for fixed-route service while keeping within our constrained bus budget. This would eliminate the vociferous objections of Northeast Houston and Acres Homes, and by itself allow the Board through METRO's Planning Department to easily fix the issues of span-of-service and push the entirety of System Reimagining to full approval.
This would eliminate the next few months of FLEX field testing, data collection, reporting-to-the-Board, and all that mess, while allowing the Planning Department to push foward full-force with the mind-numbing details of schedules and how routes and connections will fit together as well as allow the agency to focus fullly on span-of-service.
The problem with this is how much would fixed-route service in lieu of FLEX compromise the viability of the 'frequency' of the proposed Frequent Network? The entire motivation behind FLEX is not only the best service possible for affected populations, but also money. METRO's bus budget is limited, and Reimagining remains within current budgetary constraints, as it should, setting a wonderful precedent for how to optimize present resources without the knee-jerk spend-spend-more that plagues government everywhere when perhaps it would be best to use what one has already.
+ + +
System Reimagining... Is it ever going to happen?
Yes, but METRO had better get a move-on.
I've been somewhat frank recently on Facebook about my misgivings concerning if the public will ever see System Reimagining implemented or whether it will remain forever quagmired in the throes of FLEX discussion.
In September 2014, an epic Board Meeting (video available here) resulted in an approval-in-priniciple of System Reimagining, METRO's attempt at revamping utterly our local bus network and integrating same with light rail and a Park & Ride system which, unlike the local bus network, has been continually iterated upon since its inception in the 1970s and allowed to evolve with our region.
This meeting was supposed to have featured an approval-in-full of the coming network plan, but an ambush by citizens and elected officials from low-population areas slated for a new FLEX service designed to de-rail the process at the last minute at that meeting succeeded in watering things down to where System Reimagining was approved...without really being approved, a move which, I'm sure frustrated METRO staffers hoping for a full-blown green light to start making schedules and what-not for what will hopefully be a 7 June 2015 implementation date.
It does not help that the only meeting of the Strategic Planning Committee since September's Board Meeting has been a fifteen-minute affair this month. Something is going on, and that something is FLEX: poring over details, field-testing, consulting with said public officials and citizens over how the call centers, etc. could work.
However, I have been assured today [back in January of this year] by a METRO Board member after the meeting all-things pertaining to System Reimagining are going smoothly. Speaking with this Board member made me feel better: he told me the Planning Department is very hard at work: schedules are being worked out, and yes, buses have been field-testing routes. The gritty grind of getting this network going is real and is happening!
I guess until FLEX is finalized, and with it, the network, as much as can be, METRO has to be coy. Hence, no Strategic Planning meetings of any substance for the time being.
+ + +
I have recently been in the throes of culling my paper files and reorganizing everything. To that end, the first part of this project was straightening my garage and organizing the vast collection of empty boxes, etc. I've kept for such an occasion. This cleaning-up was absolutely necessary to my cleaning up and organizing my storage unit, which has allowed me to consolidate archives, cull as needed, and give me the peace of mind good organization gives.
Some years ago, I temped at a loan servicing company, and one of my first tasks was to help clean up the file room and completely reorganize the thing. At the outset, the secretary overseeing our efforts walks into the room in question and says, "This room is a clusterf--k.". She was not criticizing us, but she did speak the truth.
Cleaning my garage and organzing my storage unit provided for me a logistical base on which to iterate on my new organization. Cleaning out and fixing that file room allowed the office to go from there and do its work far-better than ever before.
System Reimagining is the cleaning of our file room. It is the reworking of our garage. I have spoken ad-nauseum about this before, but I cannot emphasize that enough.
It will give us a clean slate on which to make future network changes and improvements. The grid of the Frequent Network and the adding (or removing) rungs from the grid quickly and easily will allow us to conceivably have a local bus network that could last indefinitely.
The throes of FLEX vex this METRO Board. It has vexed this Board so much that it gave in September only tacit approval in principle, but not in fact, to a system our local bus ridership desperately needs.
Enter the next Mayor of Houston. God only knows what this next Mayor will do. By way of the City of Houston's absolute Board majority, this new Mayor could torpedo System Reimagining outright. But if the network has by January 2016 been implemented, it will be far-more-difficult politically and logistically for s/he to do that.
METRO must cut this next Mayor (and God only knows who that will be) off at the pass. METRO must approve System Reimagining in-full while it still can.
All this being said, there is a temptation to opt for a vast compromise that would see a lot of the 'red' in the proposed Frequent Network sacrificed to assuage certain Board concerns about FLEX and span-of-service (a valid issue with the Reimagining as it turns out).
Why not, then, go with fixed-route service instead of FLEX? Happily, METRO has already thought these things through and come up with possible schemes for fixed-route service while keeping within our constrained bus budget. This would eliminate the vociferous objections of Northeast Houston and Acres Homes, and by itself allow the Board through METRO's Planning Department to easily fix the issues of span-of-service and push the entirety of System Reimagining to full approval.
This would eliminate the next few months of FLEX field testing, data collection, reporting-to-the-Board, and all that mess, while allowing the Planning Department to push foward full-force with the mind-numbing details of schedules and how routes and connections will fit together as well as allow the agency to focus fullly on span-of-service.
The problem with this is how much would fixed-route service in lieu of FLEX compromise the viability of the 'frequency' of the proposed Frequent Network? The entire motivation behind FLEX is not only the best service possible for affected populations, but also money. METRO's bus budget is limited, and Reimagining remains within current budgetary constraints, as it should, setting a wonderful precedent for how to optimize present resources without the knee-jerk spend-spend-more that plagues government everywhere when perhaps it would be best to use what one has already.
Why under current System Reimagining plans the current 53 Westheimer Ltd. and its routing is doomed
It offers direct service from Briar Forest west of Gessner to Downtown by way of Westheimer between Gessner and Yorktown, the Galleria, Williams Tower, Rajin' Cajun on Richmond, Greenway Plaza, Lakewood Church, and takes the freeway from Buffalo Speedway into Downtown all the way to Main Street Square METRO Rail station and beyond to the George R. Brown Convention Center. For Lakewood Church folks, it is the route for getting to and from worship.
My friend, Mark Hogue, who for three decades has been an enormous advocate for mass-transit in Houston, faithfully attending METRO Board meetings for all this time with cogent public comments has been campaigning tirelessly for the retention under System Reimagining of this particular route and routing.
Under METRO's current plans for System Reiimagining, this Briar Forest - Westheimer - Galleria - Richmond - Highway 59 - Downtown non-transfer routing is to be scuttled completely. It is to be done away with completely because were it to be retained under System Reimagining as currently planned, it would violate almost every single underlying philosophy inherent in the coming new local bus network, set to go live in June 2015.
What follows is an edited portion of an email from Wednesday 27 November discussing a number of things I sent to the folks at METRO and who advocate for mass-transport who have given me the privilege to count them as contacts and as friends. I have left in my lengthy discussion of this said route.
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the current 53 Westheimer Ltd. http://www.ridemetro.org/SchedulesMaps/Pdfs/053-briar.pdf
Bear with me here as I give this a little analysis of my own...
The Richmond Strip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Strip
From my own recollections as well as the info in the above Wikipedia article, the Richmond Strip, which Mark Hogue seeks to avoid at all costs, extends from Chimney Rock westward to Gessner. The above Wikipedia article seems to imply it ending at Hillcroft, but rest assured of the presence of many a seedy joint all the way out to Tanglewilde. The Richmond bar/cantina/stripclub scene is by no means dead.
What does the current 53 do? It provides non-transfer service between Briar Forest west of Gessner, Westheimer & Gessner, Westheimer between Gessner and the western terminus of W. Alabama, the Galleria (though it should be located right under the skybridge to Galleria IV instead of near Post Oak), avoidance of the Richmond Strip entirely, the busy Richmond @ Weslayan intersection (which causes me to ride this bus from time to time when not travelling Downtown), Greenway Plaza, Lakewood Church, and Downtown to the Main Street Square Station via the Southwest Freeway starting from Buffalo Speedway, thereby providing an alternative to the Galleria/Westheimer traffic bottleneck.
The advent of Sunday service for this route made getting around on the Westheimer corridor on that day of the week a lot easier.
Let's consider ridership numbers...
http://www.ridemetro.org/News/Documents/pdfs/Ridership%20Reports/2014/0714_Ridership_Report_FY14.pdf
http://www.ridemetro.org/News/Documents/pdfs/Ridership%20Reports/2014/0814_Ridership_Report_FY14.pdf
http://www.ridemetro.org/News/Documents/pdfs/Ridership%20Reports/2014/0914_Ridership_Report_FY14.pdf
(most-recent available reports)
The current 53 may not be in the top ten in boardings at any day of the week, but it is one of our our twenty highest-performing weekday routes, and on weekends it's solidly in the middle of the pack.
This bus route does a lot of things well and carries a lot of people. In the paradigm of the current network, it is one of our shining stars. In the coming re-imagined grid-paradigm, it is easy to see it is an anomoly and I have to, with much reluctance, support its being a regrettable casualty. Getting from Westheimer to Greenway Plaza will become more of a chore, I'm afraid.
Serving the Briar Forest prtion of the current 53, we have the currently-proposed 153 Harwin Briar Forest Flyer, the intersection of which @ Richmond is west of the Strip. In getting to Lakewood Church, this bus' terminus at Hillcroft TC is no good as there are no routes that get one to Greenway Plaza.
As I look at the METRO Revised Draft Reimagined Network Plan Map (from whence the above-linked map to the proposed 153 comes, I am reminded this is a plan that is already budget-optimized. There is no budgetary wiggle-room for the 8 Westheimer to deviate south on Buffalo Speedway to Richmond and back up Edloe to Westheimer. Such a deviation would bog down the budget and add greatly to the time spent travelling the route, especially during rush-hour. Such a deviation is the only solution, impractical as it is to avoiding a second transfer from Westheimer to Richmond.
Unfortunately for Mr. Hogue and all the people (me included) who enjoy the anomolous ease and convenience of this singular 53 Westheimer Ltd., I see nothing on the horizon that can be done within the constraints or budget to make for a re-imagined route that can do what the current 53 does without taking budget from the Frequent Network. For there to be a replication of Mark's favorite bus route, at least two Frequent Network routes would have to be downgraded to blue. True, the proposed 153 could then be taken away, but that takes away frequency from Harwin, which forces METRO to futz with the 151 Westpark Express and the 152 Harwin Westwood Flyer.
The proposed Re-imagined network plan is designed around not only the geometric efficiency of a grid (I currently buy into this thinking of Jarrett Walker's, btw, wholeheartedly), but also the value gained every inch travelled by a bus.
A complete replication of the current 53 would duplicate service on Westheimer, Richmond, and in Downtown and would create a domino effect, forcing the agency to effectively go back to square one in redesigning the whole of west Houston, which in turn would force a redesign of the entire local bus system to accomodate this change.
Well, if we can't have our 53, why does the inner loop get its 48 Buffalo Speedway? As I look at this proposed route, it takes what is wonderful about the Galleria portion of the current 73 and injects it with steroids. The value of what this anomolous-to-the-grid route offers, even though it's only a blue route, is even more amazing than what a replication of the current 53 could offer.
The connection the proposed 48 offers between the Med Center and NWTC is unbelievable. Not to mention the direct connectivity between those places combined with Rice Village, Greenway Plaza, San Felipe, Highland Village, and West University. Like the current 73 Galleria branch, I will not use this route all the time, but when I do, it will come in incredibly-handy, particularly as it is the proposed route servicing Rice Village and the southern side of Rice University.
Well, what about this: a proposed route taking in Briar Forest with non-stop service on Westheimer save at the Galleria and ending in Greenway Plaza, avoiding the Strip. Make this route 'green' (the lowest grade of frequency in the coming system'. Perhaps make it only a weekend route like the five proposed peak-only routes operating only on weekdays?
To do this, again, we'd have to chuck the proposed 153 and replicate its contribution to the Harwin Frequent Segment in some way. This gets back to the utter re-design of some parts of the system I was talking about earlier. And again, this would take away from other routes, the Frequent Network perhaps, compromise the grid with not enough value in return, and create a dangerous precedent that would contribute to the accumulation of eventual route-garbage long outserving its initial usefulness, thereby contributing to another re-imagining a half-century down the road with Lakewood Church being re-located to who-knows-where-bigger-place-Astrodome-Lord-knows-what.
I see no easy solution. The limited bus budget does not allow it, if nothing else (thanks Mobility funds), and neither does our agency's drive to buck the hooks and snares of customer requests for not enough value in return (wiser and smarter people than I will doubtless correct me on this).
Well, let's think outside the box. The real issue is the getting from Westheimer to Richmond while avoiding the Strip, yes? What about this... A green route beginning at Westheimer at the Beltway with Westheimer stops at Gessner, Fondren, Hillcroft, Renwick/Fountainview, Galleria (W. Alabama), Post Oak, Buffalo Speedway, Edloe, and ending at Greenway Plaza?
Again, duplicate service, and what we have is another 402 Bellaire Quickline, the viability of which for Houston has yet to be proven as the current 402 and future 405 Quickline is/are a guinea pig for future limited-stop signature service.
Well, what about nonstop from Westheimer @ Beltway, taking in Gessner, Renwick (because the proposed 9 is so expansive), Galleria, Lakewood Church, and Greenway? From where for this service will the money come?
And in the end, this is not just about Lakewood Church, as peopled it may be, and when I say this, I run the risk of parroting my friends in METRO's planning department, it really is about setting a precedent not just for our mass-transit government going forward, but for government in general: not acquiesing to a few at the expense of the many or the whole in return for lesser value.
We have to make the most of our limited resources.
Good government is competence. Good government is putting the nuts and bolts in the right way to make the machine work smoothly not just for a few, but for everyone or as many people as possible. We stand at a rare moment when we have a Board who has proven to be one that actually cares about the community it serves and has a real interest in what mass-transit is and could be.
The coming probable-demise of the 53 Westheimer Ltd. is a facet of the switch-a-roo from one mass-transit universe (HouTran, Houston Electric, old METRO, mulecars) to a new one (starting from a clean slate). In the current network, the 53 works very well, remedying deficiencies in the current system and providing unusual connectivity between improbable places.
In the new network and with our limited funds (a HUGE factor driving everything with this project), something has to give. And as easy as it is for me to say it as one who will not be adversely affected, the agency has been forced by the dictates of logic, geometry, and finance (especially) to have to do away with something which has for a large group of people to make room to make the lives of a far-larger group of people so much better.
Gone will be the twisting of the current 163 Fondren through the Gulfton area. Gone will be the Picasso-exhibition that is the stair-stepping current 5 Southmore. Gone will be the puzzle that is the current 40 Telephone. Gone will be the 11 'Nance'.
To new existence will be stuff we have either never seen before or have not seen in a long time. Look at the proposed 48's connectivity between NWTC (which will be the biggest transit hub in alll of METRO) and TMC TC! Look at the Conan-the-Barbarian right angle of the 9 Renwick! Look at all that service on San Felipe! Look at the clean and sleek lines of east Houston and the 69 Broadway forging a mighty red track to Hobby airport. Yes, there should probably be a train doing what the 69 does currently, but who knows what the future might bring. The fewer trains we can get away with, the better.
8-minute headway on Westheimer! 8-minute headway on Westheimer! omgomgomg - all the people who will benefit from the tripling or quadrupling of service on this street! All we need now are bus lanes through the Galleria - lolz.
How 'bout that schnazzy western portion of the proposed 32 Eldridge! And the unbelievable connectivity at Mission Bend P&R (should be a Transit Center?)... And the rocket-buses from Memorial City Mall to Downtown and back!! And while it's blue, the 66 OST Wayside stands to provide a lot of direct connectivity to a lot of places... I could go on and on...
Yes, the current 53 will most-likely be no more, but we won't have service on Bingle at all, and the current Plan map screams for same.
As for avoiding the Richmond Strip, the new system will allow for that. It's just that it will now take two transfers, but without completely junking the whole west Houston part of the proposed map as well as take away from far-more people than would be served by same, I don't know a good solution to allow our Lakewood Church ridership from Briar Forest to be able to do anything other than 153-8-48.
Yeah, this situation is not great at all with that second transfer (or a hot walk down Edloe from Westheimer), and yes, our coming system is not perfect. In this process, I know METRO has had to make some hard, hard decisions, and within the constraints of budget, it has had to optimize things as best it can within those boundaries.
Of course, there is taking the 153 all the way to Richmond, thereby taking in the entirety of the Strip. Yeah, this is not fun, and in the wake of being attacked by some drunken fool, I would be a little afraid of that part of town, too. Without having to take half the map back to square one and compromising the underlying principles of what this transit system needs to be for the next half-century or more as well as staying within budget, I hope a way can be found to at least alleviate the second transfer (Westheimer to Richmond via the 48), which I think for our Lakewood friends the real spanner-in-the-works second to safety concerns about taking that Richmond bus and dealing with characters fresh from a night of partying on the Strip.
This coming Wednesday 11 February 2015 with the reveal of the final network map on which the METRO Board will vote to or not to approve will be quite interesting: will the direct Briar Forest-Westheimer-Greenway-freeway routing be retained in any way, shape or form?
My friend, Mark Hogue, who for three decades has been an enormous advocate for mass-transit in Houston, faithfully attending METRO Board meetings for all this time with cogent public comments has been campaigning tirelessly for the retention under System Reimagining of this particular route and routing.
Under METRO's current plans for System Reiimagining, this Briar Forest - Westheimer - Galleria - Richmond - Highway 59 - Downtown non-transfer routing is to be scuttled completely. It is to be done away with completely because were it to be retained under System Reimagining as currently planned, it would violate almost every single underlying philosophy inherent in the coming new local bus network, set to go live in June 2015.
What follows is an edited portion of an email from Wednesday 27 November discussing a number of things I sent to the folks at METRO and who advocate for mass-transport who have given me the privilege to count them as contacts and as friends. I have left in my lengthy discussion of this said route.
+ + +
the current 53 Westheimer Ltd. http://www.ridemetro.org/SchedulesMaps/Pdfs/053-briar.pdf
Bear with me here as I give this a little analysis of my own...
The Richmond Strip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Strip
From my own recollections as well as the info in the above Wikipedia article, the Richmond Strip, which Mark Hogue seeks to avoid at all costs, extends from Chimney Rock westward to Gessner. The above Wikipedia article seems to imply it ending at Hillcroft, but rest assured of the presence of many a seedy joint all the way out to Tanglewilde. The Richmond bar/cantina/stripclub scene is by no means dead.
What does the current 53 do? It provides non-transfer service between Briar Forest west of Gessner, Westheimer & Gessner, Westheimer between Gessner and the western terminus of W. Alabama, the Galleria (though it should be located right under the skybridge to Galleria IV instead of near Post Oak), avoidance of the Richmond Strip entirely, the busy Richmond @ Weslayan intersection (which causes me to ride this bus from time to time when not travelling Downtown), Greenway Plaza, Lakewood Church, and Downtown to the Main Street Square Station via the Southwest Freeway starting from Buffalo Speedway, thereby providing an alternative to the Galleria/Westheimer traffic bottleneck.
The advent of Sunday service for this route made getting around on the Westheimer corridor on that day of the week a lot easier.
Let's consider ridership numbers...
http://www.ridemetro.org/News/Documents/pdfs/Ridership%20Reports/2014/0714_Ridership_Report_FY14.pdf
http://www.ridemetro.org/News/Documents/pdfs/Ridership%20Reports/2014/0814_Ridership_Report_FY14.pdf
http://www.ridemetro.org/News/Documents/pdfs/Ridership%20Reports/2014/0914_Ridership_Report_FY14.pdf
(most-recent available reports)
The current 53 may not be in the top ten in boardings at any day of the week, but it is one of our our twenty highest-performing weekday routes, and on weekends it's solidly in the middle of the pack.
This bus route does a lot of things well and carries a lot of people. In the paradigm of the current network, it is one of our shining stars. In the coming re-imagined grid-paradigm, it is easy to see it is an anomoly and I have to, with much reluctance, support its being a regrettable casualty. Getting from Westheimer to Greenway Plaza will become more of a chore, I'm afraid.
Serving the Briar Forest prtion of the current 53, we have the currently-proposed 153 Harwin Briar Forest Flyer, the intersection of which @ Richmond is west of the Strip. In getting to Lakewood Church, this bus' terminus at Hillcroft TC is no good as there are no routes that get one to Greenway Plaza.
As I look at the METRO Revised Draft Reimagined Network Plan Map (from whence the above-linked map to the proposed 153 comes, I am reminded this is a plan that is already budget-optimized. There is no budgetary wiggle-room for the 8 Westheimer to deviate south on Buffalo Speedway to Richmond and back up Edloe to Westheimer. Such a deviation would bog down the budget and add greatly to the time spent travelling the route, especially during rush-hour. Such a deviation is the only solution, impractical as it is to avoiding a second transfer from Westheimer to Richmond.
Unfortunately for Mr. Hogue and all the people (me included) who enjoy the anomolous ease and convenience of this singular 53 Westheimer Ltd., I see nothing on the horizon that can be done within the constraints or budget to make for a re-imagined route that can do what the current 53 does without taking budget from the Frequent Network. For there to be a replication of Mark's favorite bus route, at least two Frequent Network routes would have to be downgraded to blue. True, the proposed 153 could then be taken away, but that takes away frequency from Harwin, which forces METRO to futz with the 151 Westpark Express and the 152 Harwin Westwood Flyer.
The proposed Re-imagined network plan is designed around not only the geometric efficiency of a grid (I currently buy into this thinking of Jarrett Walker's, btw, wholeheartedly), but also the value gained every inch travelled by a bus.
A complete replication of the current 53 would duplicate service on Westheimer, Richmond, and in Downtown and would create a domino effect, forcing the agency to effectively go back to square one in redesigning the whole of west Houston, which in turn would force a redesign of the entire local bus system to accomodate this change.
Well, if we can't have our 53, why does the inner loop get its 48 Buffalo Speedway? As I look at this proposed route, it takes what is wonderful about the Galleria portion of the current 73 and injects it with steroids. The value of what this anomolous-to-the-grid route offers, even though it's only a blue route, is even more amazing than what a replication of the current 53 could offer.
The connection the proposed 48 offers between the Med Center and NWTC is unbelievable. Not to mention the direct connectivity between those places combined with Rice Village, Greenway Plaza, San Felipe, Highland Village, and West University. Like the current 73 Galleria branch, I will not use this route all the time, but when I do, it will come in incredibly-handy, particularly as it is the proposed route servicing Rice Village and the southern side of Rice University.
Well, what about this: a proposed route taking in Briar Forest with non-stop service on Westheimer save at the Galleria and ending in Greenway Plaza, avoiding the Strip. Make this route 'green' (the lowest grade of frequency in the coming system'. Perhaps make it only a weekend route like the five proposed peak-only routes operating only on weekdays?
To do this, again, we'd have to chuck the proposed 153 and replicate its contribution to the Harwin Frequent Segment in some way. This gets back to the utter re-design of some parts of the system I was talking about earlier. And again, this would take away from other routes, the Frequent Network perhaps, compromise the grid with not enough value in return, and create a dangerous precedent that would contribute to the accumulation of eventual route-garbage long outserving its initial usefulness, thereby contributing to another re-imagining a half-century down the road with Lakewood Church being re-located to who-knows-where-bigger-place-Astrodome-Lord-knows-what.
I see no easy solution. The limited bus budget does not allow it, if nothing else (thanks Mobility funds), and neither does our agency's drive to buck the hooks and snares of customer requests for not enough value in return (wiser and smarter people than I will doubtless correct me on this).
Well, let's think outside the box. The real issue is the getting from Westheimer to Richmond while avoiding the Strip, yes? What about this... A green route beginning at Westheimer at the Beltway with Westheimer stops at Gessner, Fondren, Hillcroft, Renwick/Fountainview, Galleria (W. Alabama), Post Oak, Buffalo Speedway, Edloe, and ending at Greenway Plaza?
Again, duplicate service, and what we have is another 402 Bellaire Quickline, the viability of which for Houston has yet to be proven as the current 402 and future 405 Quickline is/are a guinea pig for future limited-stop signature service.
Well, what about nonstop from Westheimer @ Beltway, taking in Gessner, Renwick (because the proposed 9 is so expansive), Galleria, Lakewood Church, and Greenway? From where for this service will the money come?
And in the end, this is not just about Lakewood Church, as peopled it may be, and when I say this, I run the risk of parroting my friends in METRO's planning department, it really is about setting a precedent not just for our mass-transit government going forward, but for government in general: not acquiesing to a few at the expense of the many or the whole in return for lesser value.
We have to make the most of our limited resources.
Good government is competence. Good government is putting the nuts and bolts in the right way to make the machine work smoothly not just for a few, but for everyone or as many people as possible. We stand at a rare moment when we have a Board who has proven to be one that actually cares about the community it serves and has a real interest in what mass-transit is and could be.
The coming probable-demise of the 53 Westheimer Ltd. is a facet of the switch-a-roo from one mass-transit universe (HouTran, Houston Electric, old METRO, mulecars) to a new one (starting from a clean slate). In the current network, the 53 works very well, remedying deficiencies in the current system and providing unusual connectivity between improbable places.
In the new network and with our limited funds (a HUGE factor driving everything with this project), something has to give. And as easy as it is for me to say it as one who will not be adversely affected, the agency has been forced by the dictates of logic, geometry, and finance (especially) to have to do away with something which has for a large group of people to make room to make the lives of a far-larger group of people so much better.
Gone will be the twisting of the current 163 Fondren through the Gulfton area. Gone will be the Picasso-exhibition that is the stair-stepping current 5 Southmore. Gone will be the puzzle that is the current 40 Telephone. Gone will be the 11 'Nance'.
To new existence will be stuff we have either never seen before or have not seen in a long time. Look at the proposed 48's connectivity between NWTC (which will be the biggest transit hub in alll of METRO) and TMC TC! Look at the Conan-the-Barbarian right angle of the 9 Renwick! Look at all that service on San Felipe! Look at the clean and sleek lines of east Houston and the 69 Broadway forging a mighty red track to Hobby airport. Yes, there should probably be a train doing what the 69 does currently, but who knows what the future might bring. The fewer trains we can get away with, the better.
8-minute headway on Westheimer! 8-minute headway on Westheimer! omgomgomg - all the people who will benefit from the tripling or quadrupling of service on this street! All we need now are bus lanes through the Galleria - lolz.
How 'bout that schnazzy western portion of the proposed 32 Eldridge! And the unbelievable connectivity at Mission Bend P&R (should be a Transit Center?)... And the rocket-buses from Memorial City Mall to Downtown and back!! And while it's blue, the 66 OST Wayside stands to provide a lot of direct connectivity to a lot of places... I could go on and on...
Yes, the current 53 will most-likely be no more, but we won't have service on Bingle at all, and the current Plan map screams for same.
As for avoiding the Richmond Strip, the new system will allow for that. It's just that it will now take two transfers, but without completely junking the whole west Houston part of the proposed map as well as take away from far-more people than would be served by same, I don't know a good solution to allow our Lakewood Church ridership from Briar Forest to be able to do anything other than 153-8-48.
Yeah, this situation is not great at all with that second transfer (or a hot walk down Edloe from Westheimer), and yes, our coming system is not perfect. In this process, I know METRO has had to make some hard, hard decisions, and within the constraints of budget, it has had to optimize things as best it can within those boundaries.
Of course, there is taking the 153 all the way to Richmond, thereby taking in the entirety of the Strip. Yeah, this is not fun, and in the wake of being attacked by some drunken fool, I would be a little afraid of that part of town, too. Without having to take half the map back to square one and compromising the underlying principles of what this transit system needs to be for the next half-century or more as well as staying within budget, I hope a way can be found to at least alleviate the second transfer (Westheimer to Richmond via the 48), which I think for our Lakewood friends the real spanner-in-the-works second to safety concerns about taking that Richmond bus and dealing with characters fresh from a night of partying on the Strip.
This coming Wednesday 11 February 2015 with the reveal of the final network map on which the METRO Board will vote to or not to approve will be quite interesting: will the direct Briar Forest-Westheimer-Greenway-freeway routing be retained in any way, shape or form?
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