Turner’s mobility plan, from point A to point B

The “paradigm shift” in transportation patterns that Mayor Sylvester Turner told state officials the city needs to remain competitive came a bit more into focus Tuesday, though its major points are more concept than concrete projects.

Essentially, Turner opened the toolbox and threw all the tools on the table, laying out a case for Houston to add rail where it’s wanted, buses where they’re needed and offer people more viable choices to getting around. Getting there, the mayor concedes, will be costly and timeconsuming.

It also will mean forming consensus in a region that’s been starkly divided at times between the suburbs and the city, middleclass mobility needs and transit-dependent vocal communities and greenfield development versus urban job and housing cores.

Here are five statements from Turner’s speech to business and elected leaders this week that aren’t the last word on what happens but likely the starting point of an ever-changing conversation in terms of commuting and transportation in Houston.

“We will have to make choices on how to use limited space on streets to move people faster.”

All large cities face a conundrum of peak auto use in their urban core, and Houston is no different.

“Widening streets can make the streets less appealing.”

Adding lanes to streets might make cars flow out of the area faster, just as a larger pipe moves more water. More lanes also mean higher speeds, typically, and more lanes for pedestrians and cyclists — not to mention turning cars — to contend with.

“The solution is not to put a bike lane on every street”

Turner, in what might have been a swipe at the recent infatuation with the phrase “complete streets,” said his goal is complete communities. For Alabama, that might mean wide bike lanes. For Richmond, parallel six blocks south, that might mean light rail or dedicated bus lanes. That way the area gets both, but not both in the same place.

“The bus system will be the backbone for moving more people on limited roadways.”

Metro’s redesign of its bus network continues to draw kudos from officials, even as some complain it left them with less transit service.

“We need two-way HOV lanes on all freeways.”

HOV lanes are a huge part of the way Metro operates the second-largest commuter bus system in the U.S. and third-largest vanpool system in the country.

With the exception of the managed lanes along Interstate 10, however, HOV lanes in Houston don’t run both ways. In the mornings they operate inbound and in the evening outbound.

“Traffic in Houston doesn’t go one way,” local blogger Tory Gattis said after Turner’s speech.