‘Walkable centers’ should be key in planning city’s transportation
the transit corridors.
The Transit Corridors ordinance must become mandatory rather than voluntary, which would mean having another look at it to ensure its requirements are useful and fair. Transit streets are an important new street type and need appropriate development regulations. Transit-dedicated right of way
The most critical principle for successful transit service is freeing the transit vehicles from mingling with traffic, regardless of technologies chosen for future transit service.
Successful transit service is based largely on reliability: It will get you there when it says it will get you there. That is not possible in traffic comingled situations.
The city’s Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan is about reserving right of way for mobility purposes. Why not contain plans for dedicating lanes to transit where the most people live and work today?
Inclusion of those transit right of way designations in the plan will spur walkable urban development even before such service exists and will particularly do that around obvious places where light rail or Bus Rapid Transit stations should be located. Developers will build a variety of urban facilities at many different intensities. This will raise property values with no expenditure of money. Bus Rapid Transit
Bus Rapid Transit is a successful and economical innovation now in use in several countries and in a very few places in the United States. It is coming to Houston’s Uptown/Galleria area soon.
BRT uses high-design buses that operate exactly like light rail vehicles without the rails. They run in dedicated lanes (eventually without drivers), quickly pick up passengers who have already paid their fares and are waiting on a level platform with multiple doors in order to make very short station stops, and they control traffic signals.
BRT is less expensive in capital outlay than rail and requires no special foundation. It is also more flexible, allowing buses to exit the transit way at the ends and provide service in ordinary streets and highways. In the end, they’re just buses, even though the level of design may be high. Regional express transit framework
We already have a highquality commuter transit system — the HOV Park and Ride buses — that is arguably the best in the nation. It is now focused on the Central Business District, but it could relatively easily be expanded to every major job center and freeway in the region as a regional Bus Rapid Transit system operating in the existing highways. This could begin to happen very fast, beginning with I-10 Energy Corridor District to Memorial City to the Uptown/Galleria line. A streetbased connection from the Westchase District to Uptown/ Galleria would complete a westside express transit system.
Unfortunately, it would not be connected to the three other very big centers: downtown, the Medical Center and Greenway Plaza, which would be connected to nothing. The east-west connection must be made, and BRT would be fine. The transportation czar
Mayor Turner has said he will create a “transportation czar” position in the mayor’s office, which is an exciting prospect.
I hope the mayor will choose someone who understands the importance of planning land use and transportation in concert. That person is going to be more of a planner than an engineer, and it is important to understand that distinction. Planners plan based on citizen needs and desire, engineers design and direct implementation.
Mayor Turner will presumably be in office long enough — eight years — to guide the decisions that determine whether the city of Houston has the highest quality of life in the United States on its 200th birthday, in 2036. The key concept is Complete Communities, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of them are needed at all sizes. Crossley is founder and senior fellow of Houston Tomorrow, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality of life for all the people of the Houston region.