SEARCH RESULTS
18 January 2004
Better Keep The Bus Fleet In Good Shape
I hope Metro's not hoping to cut down on its bus maintenance budget any time soon:
For about an hour and half Saturday, a portion of the METRO rail line was shut down after a small fire at a power station.ABC-13 really needs someone to edit this copy. Ugh.The effected area was on Main Street from Franklin to Bell. Trains were only running from the Reliant Park area to the downtown transit center. Just a few passengers were affected.
Within 15 minutes, METRO put some extra busses in service to take those stranded riders back to the downtown transit center.
"Certainly when something like this happens, you learn how good your response is and you try to improve it the next time," said Ken Connaughton with METRO. "Certainly, we will learn from what happened today and hope to be able to react more quickly in the future."
METRO is trying to figure out what caused the fire. Nobody was hurt.
Nice that "just a few passengers were affected," eh? That's the positive spin, I suppose -- when the thing breaks down, hardly anybody is riding it anyway and so it's easy to put them on buses. The negative side, of course, is the exorbitant cost of the boondoggle, and the fact that mobility for downtown motorists is reduced by it.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ Bus Fleet In Good Shape"> 01/18/04 11:59 | Danger Train | Technorati | Comments (1)
07 February 2004
Buses Bail Out The Choo Choo Again
There's nothing like building a little choo choo/trolley at street level and not segregating it from regular traffic.
That way, you get a steady stream of traffic/train collisions.
Even better, regular vehicles sometimes take out miles of choo choo/trolley service:
METRORail came to a halt Friday morning after part of its electrical line was cut.Better keep the bus fleet well-maintained, eh?Investigators said the line was struck by a dump truck, causing it to snap around 9:40 a.m. About four feet of the line -- which carries 780 volts of direct current to the trains -- fell to the ground, causing METRO to shut down about 2 miles in the center of the 7-mile light-rail system.
The area shut down was between St. Joseph Parkway and Wheeler Avenue. METRO officials said the trains are operating again in that area, but repairs to the downed line may not be finished until Saturday.
METRO employed a combination of buses and trains to move commuters along the light-rail system during the shutdown.
"We are running the trains from the south end of the line to Rice Stadium. There we have a bus bridge, where the passengers are put on a bus, and bussed up to the downtown transit center at Main and St. Joseph. Trains are running again north of the downtown transit center," METRO spokesman Ken Cannaughton said.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ Buses Bail Out The Choo Choo Again"> 02/07/04 10:01 | Danger Train | Technorati | Comments (1)
11 April 2004
Cheerleading for Rail
The Comical's Lucas Wall (responsible for this piece of shoddy journalism that's been a hot topic lately) sat down with the new head of METRO (a real estate developer) for a Q&A session. Here's a snippet of how it went:
Question: Metro has a lot of opponents in the community -- 48 percent of voters cast their ballots against the expansion plan. What can you do to improve the agency's image and promote the benefits of mass transit?What a bunch of bull. The rail referendum would almost certainly lose today. That's the main reason "they couldn't afford to wait!" And I suspect the popularity of light rail will decline even more when METRO scales back its bus service around the Main corridor during the summer (hot!) in an effort to boost ridership numbers.Answer: It's unfortunate the referendum had to take place before the Main Street light rail commenced operating because people really had no idea what light rail was going to be like until they could see it with their own eyes. I think the margin of victory would have been greater if it had been a few months later, but they couldn't afford to wait.
The rail referendum is water under the bridge. But why does the city's only newspaper basically give the new METRO chief an outlet to be a cheerleader for rail? Rail opponents are simply dismissed, and their arguments are not even considered. It's a free platform for METRO's new chief -- who admits he's never ridden a Houston bus -- to engage in pro-rail cheerleading, unopposed.
Shoddy.
But not as shoddy as what I'll be posting about later tonight.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/11/04 14:53 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (0)
17 January 2004
Testing Transit Options
The Comical did a little test of transit options from a randomly chosen suburb. I'm surprised they printed the results:
Five Houston Chronicle reporters assembled in a randomly chosen subdivision one morning last week to conduct a race to the newspaper's main office on Texas Avenue downtown. One reporter drove alone from Quail Valley, two carpooled, a fourth rode an express bus and the other drove to the Fannin South Park & Ride and hopped on the train.That bolded paragraph would be more useful if the Comical told us the total times of the other transit options, or how much longer the train commute took than the other options.The solo driver and the carpool pair, each using U.S. 59, arrived in a parking garage near the newspaper within a minute of each other and rode the same elevator down, walking into the newspaper simultaneously. The bus rider arrived 15 minutes later, while the train passenger came in last, rolling in after a commute of 1 hour, 15 minutes.
The Chronicle calculated the expense of the commute by adding parking fees and transit fares and estimating a cost of 37.5 cents per mile driven. The bus was the least expensive. Still, the rail option seems to have fared poorly.
Transit trains in other cities are often successful because they serve a dense inner-city and far-out suburbs, where trip time can equal or beat driving alone, city-center parking is limited and therefore exorbitantly expensive, or good bus service is unavailable. None of those factors exists in the Houston area.
With such a short rail line, a $2 parking fee and plentiful downtown parking, MetroRail offers few incentives for most solo auto commuters to change their habit. During the first week of revenue service, according to Metro, an average of 313 cars per weekday parked at Fannin South, one-fifth of the lot's capacity.
Here's another surprising concession from the Comical:
For now, MetroRail appears mostly to attract commuters who live close to the tracks and riders on leisure excursions.Imagine that.
Metro gets its chance to spin, of course:
John Sedlak, a Metro vice president, said Chronicle reporters happened to pick a light traffic day to conduct their test. If it had been raining or there had been a wreck on the freeway, the transit riders would have beat the drivers, he said.Doubtful."Transit is trying to provide reliable trip times on a regular basis to our passengers," he said. As rail is built farther out, "absolutely it will compete with a private automobile trip."
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 01/17/04 23:31 | Danger Train | Technorati | Comments (3)
05 November 2003
Trimming Houston Bus Service (Already)
Isn't it interesting what comes out in the Houston Press only one day after voters narrowly approved the light rail proposal:
Downtowners may be delighted to have the Main Street light rail line finally operating in January -- but the price they pay could be more than the $1 train fare.It really comes as no surprise. And further cutbacks in bus service (it's not really a trolley -- the Main Street line is the glorified trolley, truth be told, whereas a bus decorated like a trolley is... still a bus) will almost certainly follow as METRO gets in over its head with rail expansion, as we know from the experience in Dallas.Metro confirmed last week that it will propose to eliminate most of the north-south free "trackless" trolley routes and will cut Midtown service entirely.
Under the draft plan, to be discussed in a public meeting next week, riders accustomed to taking the Milam/Travis, San Jacinto/Caroline and Midtown trolleys would have more complicated travel itineraries. Depending on the destination, they'll have to take an east-west trolley -- those routes are to be expanded -- over to Main Street, pay a dollar and use the train.
Metro spokesperson Maggi Stewart wouldn't weigh in over whether the proposal to curb the two north-south trolleys is a veiled move to boost train revenues. "I don't know about that," she said. "It's really just to serve the light rail route, because it's a direct route to Midtown and Reliant Park."
Here's a letter on the topic in the same issue:
Any light rail project is doomed to be an abject failure, and it does not matter the location or the proposal ["Trainspotting," by Richard Connelly, September 11]. The size of the failure will be proportional to the amount of its funding, and none of this is a revelation to the federal or state governments.That would be funny, if it weren't a multi-billion dollar joke.The Federal Transit Administration is receiving more and more grant requests for light rail projects from all over the country than it has money. Light rail projects have no hope of getting off the ground without federal funding.
No light rail system has ever turned a profit, let alone paid for itself, and light rail projects are being canceled across the United States.
Meanwhile, America's love affair with the automobile has facilitated and fueled expansion of the American free enterprise system by freely allowing more social interaction and economic transaction to take place than otherwise would have been possible.
Besides, Houston had a passenger rail system once before. Many Major League Baseball fans drive their cars to Union Station, which once handled rail passengers. The fact is, free-market forces have driven advancement in Space City, and most Houstonians have found their automobiles to be their best transportation choice.
Do you reckon the Houston Sports Authority has a "light rail failure contingency plan" involving visions of a "corporate name here" Formula 1/Grand Prix racetrack?
Shawn Christopher Phillips
Texas City
Posted by Kevin Whited @ Bus Service (Already)"> 11/05/03 20:25 | Danger Train | Technorati | Comments (0)
19 July 2004
Shocker: Rail Boondoggle May Skirt "Scary" Neighborhoods
There's only one media outlet in town that's generally behind the Comical at covering "news" and that's Comical partner KHOU-11.
They're finally getting around to the latest on the next phase of the world-class light-rail boondoggle:
The next line for the Metro rail was suppose [sic] to go north, eventually to Intercontinental Airport. Now that may not happen and a lot of people on the northside say they feel betrayed.
"The streets are already wide. All you need to do is run two rails, coming up the middle, one north, one south.," said Ed Reyes as he surveys Fulton Street just inside The Loop.
That is where Metro had planned to begin phase two of its light rail master plan. Only now, he's hearing that may not happen.
"To leave these neighborhoods out would be terrible at this point." Reyes says.
He’d hoped Metro's route going past Moody Park, up Fulton to the Northline Mall would revitalize the neighborhoods. But now Metro is considering moving it alongside the Hardy Toll Road.
At Festival Furniture, on Fulton, Eva Mendez says she was counting on rail. "More people come in, more people see the business. Something like that," said Mendez.
You were played for fools, you silly people. Did you ever really think that a promise to extend light rail through your low-income neighborhood would actually be honored after you turned out voters to get the dang thing passed? You served your purpose! Now be quiet and go away! Shoo!
You poor SOBs will be lucky to have bus service through your neighborhoods after the boondoggle invariably loses more money than anyone ever anticipated, and other city services will have to be pared to support it.
But hey, it's worth it so affluent downtown patrons can ride the tram instead of the bus! What part of "world-class" didn't you people understand when you helped the light-rail proponents win their little referendum?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 07/19/04 21:34 | Danger Train | Technorati | Comments (0)
04 September 2004
Catching Up
It's been a crazy week at work, what with a big industry-shaking acquisition and all, so I've neglected comment on a few local items during the week. If ya'll thought you were gonna get off THAT easy.... well, you should have known better.
Tom Bazan sent out an interesting email during the week, in which he reminded us that as part of the big campaign to win voter approval of light rail, METRO actually promised a 50% increase in bus service. Instead, METRO continues to cut bus service to try to balance its books. Hundreds of riders showed up to protest these changes at a recent METRO meeting [media criticism note: if Lucas Wall is going to post the per-rider subsidy for bus service, isn't he obliged to do the same for light rail service?]. Of course, we've pointed out for some time that such changes will be necessary to subsidize the light rail operation, and that poor people in Houston who rely on the bus will see their transportation options reduced in favor of the white-collar boondoogle known as the Main Street line.
Earlier in the week, City Council approved revisions to the municipal employees' pension plan that was the subject of great controversy earlier this year. The new agreement, hashed out by the Mayor's representatives and the pension board, reduces the city's unfunded liability of roughly $2 billion to approximately $850 million mainly by boosting the contributions of municipal workers. Ron Nissimov's article suggests that the remaining liability will be funded over the next thirty years, and that a re-mortgage of the city's Hilton America's Hotel could finance $300 million of that shortfall. Details seem notably lacking. Frankly, the size of the remaining liability still seems to be an issue, and one likely to come back around for some post-White Administration. There's another problem that still has not been addressed -- the unfairness of the Group C plan for city executives, including those very executives involved in negotiating these reduced benefits for rank-and-file workers who participate in the Group A and Group B plans. Interestingly the conservatives on Council seemed to be the only pols who wanted to tackle the issue up front. Mayor White promises to work on it later. We'll see.
Finally, Rich Connelly passes along a bit of political gossip that seems intended as a shot across the bow of Jordy Tollett:
When you get elected mayor of the country's fourth-largest city despite being charisma-free, you tend to be thankful to the guys who ran your ad campaign. And Houston Mayor Bill White certainly is.
So when those ad guys -- the company sports the precious name ttweak -- put together a pro-bono PR campaign to boost Houston's image, you would think most city bureaucrats would say it's just wonderful.
That's not, however, what Jordy Tollett did. Tollett, the head of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, has been giving a cold shoulder to ttweak's "Houston -- It's Worth It" campaign. He told the Houston Chronicle the campaign's point -- listing things like heat and traffic, then saying the city is still Worth It -- only highlights negative aspects of what he prefers to call Space City. He later refused to talk to a New York Times reporter for a story on it.
White is annoyed and is looking to oust Tollett, the rumor mill says.
Tollett has legendary survival skills -- he is to Houston mayoral administrations what cockroaches are to nuclear Armageddon -- but the mayor offered a noticeably tepid endorsement of him when given the chance to dispel the gossip at an August 25 meeting with the Houston Press.
Tollett is "colorful," the mayor said, not in a way that indicated he thought "colorful" was a key attribute for the job. "I want the [convention] bureau to book citywide conventions…and if they don't, there will be personnel changes. If they do, then that's results."
He expects at least ten such conventions a year. It's still too early to judge how the GHCVB (and Tollett) have leveraged the Super Bowl success and new convention center hotel, he said, but time is short.
"Within the next year we'll have a good sense of how our marketing is working," he said.
For a guy who ran as an accomplished businessman and political novice, Mayor White has shown that he can play political hardball when he thinks it necessary, and he's proven to be highly effective at moving his agenda. Tollett may have "legendary survival skills," but I'll be betting on our politically adept mayor if push comes to shove.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/04/04 11:01 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (1)
06 March 2004
An Hour From Downtown To Reliant?
Here's an interesting letter in the Comical:
I supported the Metropolitan Transit Authority's light-rail system. But after last night, I'll stick with the buses that average around 50 mph instead of the 13 mph that rail (sometimes) gets. I rode the train to the rodeo and it took nearly an hour to get from Reliant Stadium back downtown. I wished I had just taken the bus.I have a feeling quite a few people feel this way. Unfortunately, the vote was scheduled before there was a working (if that's not a stretch) system to evaluate. Pretty convenient, huh?Chris Davison, Jersey Village
Unfortunately, many of us believe that as paid ridership on the choo-choo turns out to have been wildly overestimated by METRO, the mass transit budget will suffer, and in particular bus service will suffer cutbacks. So the bolded part above may not even be an effective option at some point. But we'll have a "world-class" choo-choo!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/06/04 10:29 | Danger Train | Technorati | Comments (0)
18 August 2004
Chronically Inept
Last week, Rob Booth caught the Comical's Lucas Wall using old quotes from a Texans press release in his transportation column, which was noted here.
This week, Rich Connelly follows up with Mr. Wall:
The front of the local news section that day featured a story by transportation writer Lucas Wall saying that Metro was dumping its Park & Ride bus service to Houston Texans games; instead, everyone without a stadium parking pass would have to take the light rail and hunt for a parking space along the line. Which was kind of similar to a Hair Balls item that had been published five days earlier, but that's beside the point.
Wall's story looked like a press release, not because of its pollyannaish jump headline -- "Rail Can Save On Parking" -- but because...a lot of it came directly from a Texans press release. (A press release that by August 10 was two weeks old, but again, that's beside the point.)
The story highlighted two long -- and glowingly positive -- quotes from Texans executive Jamey Rootes and someone called Barry Mendel, the executive director of something called the Houston Downtown Alliance. Quotes that were taken directly from the Texans July 26 press release.
Wall said the "story had to be written in a very tight time frame" (guys, don't wait five days to pick up your copy of the Press) and the release "provided the information I needed from the team and the downtown alliance."
He said the story he filed included a reference to the press release, but the reference apparently was taken out for space reasons.
"I did not make a stink about the reference not appearing [in] the Texans rail story," he said by e-mail, "because I have a lot more important things to be concerned about."
Wall's claim that editors killed a reference to the press release isn't very convincing, because that would mean his columns are actually EDITED, and that's very difficult to believe.
Basically, that response to the best media critic in town amounts to, "I'm very important, Connelly, and you can just go eff yourself."
Nice.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 08/18/04 21:27 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (2)
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