All of you people who think Owen Courreges and I are just being alarmists when we say that Houston’s bus services will be cut back in inconvenient ways to accommodate the rail mentality may want to read this:
At the first of METRO’s public hearings, Cristobol Patino was not too optimistic that his input with have any affect on what bus routes and trolley’s METRO will choose to cut out.
Laid out in the presentation are pages with maps of transit services that will be eliminated, or modified so that the routes feed into the METRO rail.
“The plan is designed to integrate the rail system with the overall transit system, to make the maximum use of both buses and rail,” said METRO spokesperson Ken Connaughton.
Part of the plan is to eliminate all of the routes of the downtown trolleys.
“In fact, the trolley sometimes do have a tendency to get there quicker than the actual rail,” said Patino.
How much time these changes will add to people’s travels was one of the biggest concerns. Another was the inconvenience of having fewer bus stops, which in some cases means having to take much longer walks. Representatives say that’s a problem for employees of the Texas Medical Center.
Douglas Able, government relations for the Texas Medical Center says, “We’re concerned that when you take one of these buses, there are only four direct buses into the Medical Center, one of those is going to go away. Another one is going to be merged into the rail. And the question is, what kind of impact is that going to have on transit ridership of TMC employees?”
Convenience is not what this is about. It’s about forcing people onto the pretty choo choo and cutting costs elsewhere (buses) to help pay for the boondoggle.
Being world class doesn’t come cheap, you see.
Might have been nice if METRO had been a bit more forthcoming early on though, eh?
12 comments On Major Transit Changes Planned For May 30
The only problem is…if the choo choo becomes too inconvenient, won’t that become counter-productive? Won’t people just start using their cars again if they have to go blocks/miles out of their way and/or wait for longer periods of time to oblige the choo choo? Won’t the gridlock be worse than before if the people who used the trolleys to get around downtown and the busses to get around the med center resort to using their cars again?
This just seems SO shortsighted.
News 24 is a fantastic media outlet. They are really on the ball with their omnipresence in the Houston news scene. I think they really get to the heart of the matter at the end of the story – people will abandon public transit in favor of their cars.
But the fact that Metro hosts public hearings where their desire is to ignore the public’s please for sanity. The money to continue the light rail expansion is not going to come from ridership or patronage of the Metro system – its going to come from our pocketbooks in a very painful fashion.
I’m envisioning a mass non-violent protest, or a sit-in, if you will. What are the odds of ten cars a day for a week experiencing engine trouble which unfortunately forces them to stop directly on the tracks? Tom Lambert might not be able to connect the dots, given his attitude towards Houston drivers.
Chris: Yep, we’re all going to pay for the choo choo, in real costs and with inconveniences (whether it’s 15 second red lights both ways that foul up traffic, or other ways time is wasted).
I hope Tom Lambert doesn’t decide WE’RE advocating any such thing. He might come confiscate my computer or something. 🙂
Dave,
The trolleys will now essentially just serve as shuttles to rail stations. Accordingly, all free north/south trolley service will be eliminated. This is the same language the Houston Chronicle used:
"The most controversial plan is to eliminate all free downtown/Midtown trolleys and replace them with new routes serving rail stations."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA…
News 24’s report was accurate. Metro is abolishing free trolley routes into downtown in order to puff up rail ridership, but the end result will actually hurt mobility since the trolleys are often quicker and more convenient. This is a terrible plan.
Thank the good city planners who came up with tunnels. Walking around downtown from May – October in a business suit is not an option. Trolleys are the greatest thing Metro has going for them, and yanking them won’t endear Metro to any patrons.
Chris, you almost gave me a heart attack. PLEASE don’t let METRO officials hear that we use the tunnel. Someone will get the bright idea that maybe we’d be better off without our great tunnel. I can just see the headlines now…city officials close tunnel to increase train ridership. : )
I don’t know how I’d get around downtown if it weren’t for the tunnel. : )
METRO is not discontinuing the Downtown trolleys. They are discontinuing the CURRENT TROLLEY ROUTES. The five existing routes are being re-combined into three, and moved around to better reach the rail stations.
Dave: Thanks for that correction. You may want to pass it on to News24, so they can correct their story.
I ride the train 5-6 days a week, and my personal experience has been that my slowest commute through downtown on the train is as fast (and far more comfortable) than my fastest commute on the trolley.
Good riddance to the trolleys, as far as I’m concerned.
Owen:
1. The Downtown train pass I use costs $25 for a year. $2 per month isn’t free, but it’s awfully close.
2. The trolleys wouldn’t be able to effectively use signal-changing devices because they have a stop at each intersection, and the drivers cannot tell in advance which stops they’ll have to make.
3. True, the buses are more comfortable than the train, but the trolleys are not. And it’s not even close. Trust me on this: I rode the C trolley twice a day, five days a week, for three years.
I don’t have an opinion about whether the train is "dumb" or about what it is akin to, but I can say that it has been a God-send for my daily commute.
Steve,
Three things:
1) The trolleys are free. This alone gives them a huge advantage over the trains.
and
2) The trolleys would be much faster if they were simply given MIRT devices like those of the trains.
and
3) I’ve ridden the rail. It isn’t more comfortable than buses. The seats aren’t well padded, and some don’t have any leg room to speak of.
Face it: The train is dumb. The trolleys were well-used, free, and very convenient for many people. Upgrading trolley service would have cost next to nothing. The rail is costing us a fortune.
Abolishing the trolleys in favor of rail is akin to abolishing cars in favor of horse-drawn carriages.
Steve,
You make some good points that I didn’t know about, but if you want to defend rail as a concept, you need to show more than that it’s covenient for you. Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to have been your intent.
Still, two other things:
1) The year pass is cheap, but it isn’t free, and it doesn’t cover a tenth the cost of your ride. Metro could eliminate the trolleys and add free north/south bus service, and it would be cheaper than building and maintaining rail.
2) MIRT can work effectively in any transit vehicle. If stops are placed badly, they can be easily changed. Even ignoring that, however, every vehicle faces some delay at red lights. MIRT devices eliminate this. No matter what, they make public transit go faster.
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