Commuter rail and DFW's transportation future
Sorry about the late start to the blog this week. A little tip from me to you: if you can avoid it (and we couldn't), don't have multiple guests stay at your house while simultaneously having your foundation repaired, especially if such repair involves multiple large holes in your living room floor. Trust me, chaos will result.Moving on, I came across this op-ed from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on the future transportation options being explored for the DFW Metroplex. They are in the same hyper-growth boat as Houston (actually a bit faster), expected to grow from 5m in 2000 to 9m by 2030. Much of the article talks about the multiple routes Trans-Texas Corridor 35 might take coming up from San Antonio and Austin: west around Ft. Worth, east around Dallas, or right up the middle to DFW airport. Local leaders seem to want all three, and get the state or others to pay for it. Good luck with that. If they get it, Houston should demand the state essentially build the entire Grand Parkway, including connections to the port and IAH.
They seem to have a heavier emphasis on regional commuter rail than Houston, which, as I have said before, is a dangerously flawed strategy in sprawling metros with multiple job centers like Houston and the Metroplex - and the DFW job centers and residents are even more dispersed than Houston. They seem to have the same unsound logic routinely seen with commuter rail network plans:
- The belief that a suburban city connected to the rail network is the same as the employers and residents of that city being connected (even if 90%+ of them are more than a half-mile from the stops).
- The belief that because two points are connected by the rail network, people will make the trip, no matter how many transfers, waits, walks, and slow trains are required or how poorly the trip times compare to using their cars, or even a point-to-point HOV express bus for that matter.
Many local elected officials would like a more reliable, ongoing funding source such as a dedicated sales tax to finance expanded regional rail transit. But some statewide elected officials and legislators have balked at supporting legislation to enable that.No kidding. Maybe they see the folly? Even though it's a tad harsh and out-of-character for me, I think I'm going to have to blatently rip off a Clinton campaign slogan that should become the rallying cry for transit agencies everywhere:
"It's the door-to-door trip times, stupid."
posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:39 PM
9 Comments:
they're adding 4 million people by 2030, and who's to say that by 2055 they won't add another 4 million, which would then put total population at 14 million. And by 2080, maybe another 4 nillion, which puts them at 18 million total population. Seems like investing in a regional high-capacity non-single-occupancy system has to be part of the solution, along with changes in land use to shape growth around that system.
excuse my math...
adding 5m + 4m + 4m = 13m by 2055, not 14m. And then another 4m gets you to 17m by 2080, not 18m. Darn 3am diaper changes!
They may, and that would make them equal to the current LA, which still can't make rail transit work (see
http://houstonstrategies.blogspot.com/
2006/02/reality-of-transit.html )
The vast majority of growth these days is dispersion, not concentration. Yes, there will be some dense new urbanism along a few transit lines, but the vast majority of residents *and* employers will continue to spread the suburbs. It's what most people want. And if the DFW region for some reason decides to stop offering it, then the growth will move to other metros that do.
The vast majority of growth these days is dispersion
These days, yes. But do you think that model be perpetuated indefinitely?
oh brother... now I'm missing entire words.
What I meant to ask was "do you think that model can be perpetuated indefinitely?"
KBJ: Thanks for the long, detailed, and insightful comment. And yes, I do think HOV/HOT would be adequate to Galveston, although there's a slight chance commmuter rail might make sense if it was a cheap enough conversion.
RJ: "do you think that model can be perpetuated indefinitely?"
Actually, I kind of do. Affluence seeks space, and society is always getting more affluent. And technology is eliminating much of the need for concentrating employment. Only 5% of US land is currently urbanized, and trends suggest our population will eventually level off and maybe even start dropping - maybe worst case at 10% of our available land? (and I think that's aggressive) There's talk of sprawling "megapolitan" areas like the Texas Triangle, and I believe it. When metros run out of room to grow - whether from geographic or govt constraints - home prices skyrocket and instead of substantially densifying, people start moving elsewhere, slowing or even stopping growth in that metro. Census numbers suggest domestic migrant growth moves away from 5M+ metros towards 1-5M cities like Austin, San Antonio, Raleigh-Durham, Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, Orlando, etc.
For the most part, I agree with Tory's response. At a minimum a regional fixed-guideway system needs to serve at least one relatively dense, walkable major destination, which usually is an employment center. In our region, The Woodlands and Sugar Land Town Square aside, there is little evidence that employers are gravitating to such locations on an appreciable scale. If most office and retail development continues to be of the "low-rise box in a parking lot along a highway frontage road" type, commuter rail (and most any type of transit) will have a very limited application in growing Texas regions.
That said, if folks think that we'll keeping growing employment and population at either low or high densities and somehow highway investments will suffice to eliminate congestion, I think they're rather deluded. I'm convinced that traffic congestion in a thriving, expanding region is a given - it doesn't go away. You want an inexpensive single family home and yard with convenient big-box strip malls and office parks nearby, unavoidable congestion (no reasonable travel alternative) is just part of the price you will pay. And consumers seem quite willing to accept it to pursue the "American Dream."
Affluence seeks space, and society is always getting more affluent.
While I have some disagreements with that statement, that doesn't really matter as much as the observation that much of the population growth in places like Houston and DFW over the next several decades is not likely to reflect affluence.
> much of the population growth in places like Houston and DFW over the next several decades is not likely to reflect affluence.
Much of the new population may not, but the existing population is always moving inexorably up in a steady flow. We're not static. And most newer suburban/exurban construction is aimed at housing upgrades for the middle class and above, as poor immigrants fill in older, smaller, existing housing.
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