Metro plan nods to range of needs
Priorities, ideas for transit will rely on support from residents
Transit officials have a starting point for $7.5 billion in investments to Houston’s roads, bus systems and rail lines meant to move the region in a new direction — with the stated goal of moving some of those future commuters out of private automobiles.
What they ask voters to approve as a first step to smoother trips, however, is going to rely on how residents react to some of the specifics. Which projects get built first, or even listed, could depend on how support solidifies in many communities.
“What we get back from the community governs what we will ask for,” said Metro Chairwoman Carrin Patman.
Public meetings on the plan unveiled in December start on Jan. 26.
Metropolitan Transit Authority developed the plan, dubbed Metro Moving Forward, over the past two years, drawing from more than 100 public meetings and comment sessions. The result was a regional transportation plan that outlined major projects ranging from light rail extensions to two-way HOV lanes on area freeways to making commuter bus service more efficient.
“I think this will funda-
mentally change how we move around the region,” Metro board member Sanjay Ramabhadran said.
That change, however, comes with hundreds of millions of dollars in costs for many of the projects. A planned 110 miles of two-way HOV along major freeways with eight new park and ride stations is expected to cost $1.37 billion, with another $383 million in improvements to operate 25 percent more bus trips across the region.
‘Very exciting plan’
The projects promote new services within Metro’s core area and on the fringes of its sprawling 1,200square-mile territory. Inside the Sam Houston Tollway where buses travel most major streets and are more commonly used by residents, officials want to increase how often those buses come. Outside the Beltway where more than 2 million of Harris County’s residents live, park and ride lots will be expanded and commuter buses will go to more places more often.
“This is a very exciting plan, and it meets many of the needs that the unserved parts of Harris County have had,” Metro board member Jim Robinson said. “Where growth is so rapid.”
Still, the latest plan does not deliver every route that residents listed as priorities during those earlier community meetings. Critics and supporters alike have said Metro has not adjusted to the ongoing shift of jobs to areas where the transit agency’s offerings are minimal.
For example, no service is planned from the increasingly residential areas in and around Katy along Interstate 10 to the sprawling Exxon Mobil campus in Spring. Both are along segments of the Grand Parkway that have opened since 2013.
“That is something that needs to be done,” said Dominic Mazoch, a bus rider and frequent commenter at Metro board meetings who often encourages agency officials to address rider concerns.
Others are more interested in beefing up buses where they are used now and less concerned with increasing bus service to suburban communities where car ownership is more likely.
“You build it from the inside out,” said Greg Peters, who lives in Midtown and rides the bus and rail frequently. “Better service inside Loop 610 is going to get a lot more people on board.”
Funding in flux
Patman said about half of the plan’s $7.5 billion price tag likely would come from federal sources, leaving Metro looking for another $3.5 billion to $4 billion. Most of that would come from selling bonds based on Metro’s future sales tax revenues. One percent of the 8.25 percent sales tax charged in Houston, Harris County and 14 smaller municipalities goes to Metro. About a quarter of that is returned to the county and cities for transportation projects, such as improving roads.
“There is no tax increase whatsoever that would be associated with anything we would do,” Robinson said.
Projects also would not move forward without much more study and certainty, Patman said.
“We would not issue bonds no matter how much authority we were granted unless we could afford to do so,” she said.
Nevertheless, Patman said her expectation is to put a large, comprehensive plan in front of voters in November, along with the mayoral election. That way, she said, residents can make a decision on the direction of mobility in the region, from suburban commuters to transit-dependent voters within Loop 610.
Big-ticket items in the plan are directed at faster commutes and more frequent service in transit heavy parts of Metro’s area. As officials prepare for eight new or expanded park and ride lots and two-way service even farther out on most freeways, 14 core local bus routes are primed for development into so-called BOOST corridors aimed at making bus trips along city streets faster by sequencing traffic lights to give approaching buses priority and increasing the frequency of buses.
“From the outset, we are very pleased with where they are putting the investment,” said Oni Blair, executive director of LINK Houston, which advocates for equity in transportation planning.
Still, Blair said the agency is hoping for more specifics on how Metro prioritizes projects, in terms of funding and the timing with which initiatives are tackled.
“People want to know what they are getting and when,” she said.
Another aspect of the plan will be about getting to bus stops. Officials say they will coordinate with city planners and developers to make sure sidewalks lead to accessible and comfortable stops, something many riders say is transit’s biggest obstacle in Houston.
“Who wants to wait 15 minutes in Houston heat, or the rain, where there isn’t a shelter and you have to walk through the mud to get there?” said Regina Bash, 46, as she waited on a bus at the Wheeler Transit Center.
Low ridership
Though officials stress that the next round of projects encompasses multiple modes of travel and theories for moving people, a third of the costs in the preliminary plan are associated with light rail lines.
Two of the most expensive projects planned in the region are extending two rail lines to William P. Hobby Airport, at a combined cost of roughly $1.8 billion, or nearly a quarter of what Metro proposes to spend on all the projects.
Though both the 3-yearold Green Line and the Purple Line have not reached their expected ridership, City Council members in southern and eastern Houston, Metro and neighborhood groups have made the extension of both lines to Hobby a priority.
Airport connections in other U.S. cities trail other lines in those metro areas and only a smattering of travelers take transit.
“The best airport rail connections in the country have less than 15 percent of passengers take the train,” said Christof Spieler, a former Metro board member who has researched and authored a book on metro transit systems.
Based on January to November figures, about 13,650 travelers have a flight originating from Hobby each day. Capturing about 12 percent of that — an optimistic estimate given Houstonians’ use of transit — would be about 1,638 people each day.
The lines often cater far more to workers at the airports than passengers, making them appealing as a way to connect to a job center.
However, Spieler said, the airports are not the most densely populated places people work. About 6,200 jobs — from pilots to baggage handlers and waitresses and cashiers — emanate from Hobby.
By comparison, employment in Uptown hovers around 130,000.
Meanwhile, the rail lines deliver better service to far fewer riders or potential riders than other Metro proposals. Extending the Purple and Green trains to Hobby is expected to increase ridership by 2,800 and 4,400, respectively, and add nine new stations on each of the lines.
By comparison, Metro’s plan for bus rapid transit from the Tidwell Transit Center south to the University of Houston area and then west along Interstate 69, Richmond or Westpark corridor to the Westpark park and ride is expected to serve 54,000 riders. In fact, the so-called University Corridor BRT has an expected ridership of three times the four light rail lines combined, for about $1 billion less.
Even as officials plan to spend $1.8 billion on rail to Hobby, Metro’s proposed solution for linking to Bush Intercontinental Airport — which serves three times as many passengers daily — is bus rapid transit at an estimated cost of $242 million, one-sixth the cost of the two Hobby lines with the expectation that it will carry slightly more passengers.
Spieler said the bus rapid transit would be “a relatively easy, inexpensive project with big benefits. That line is a better version of the (Route) 102, which is already a pretty good performer.”
Even if buses to Bush make sense, Spieler said, he can support rail to Hobby despite low anticipated use by travelers.
“Hobby Airport is right next to a significant cluster of population density, and a hub for the (southwest) Houston bus network,” he said. “So, on that basis I think a line to Hobby make sense, not as the highest priority — that’s Greenway and Uptown, in my mind, which is in the plan — but as one of the priorities.”