Houston Strategies

This week we have another excellent analytical post from Oscar Slotboom debunking TXDoT's fairly insane state transit plan. Let's hope this thing goes on a shelf somewhere never to be opened again...

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TxDOT recently published a 91-page report called "Texas State Multimodal Transit Plan 2050", with a shorter executive summary also available (KUHF NPR story). This sprawling document is so heavily overloaded with pro-transit fallacies, platitudes and bogus numbers that it cannot be debunked in a single post.

The staff or consultants at TxDOT who authored this report are either grossly uninformed or delusional about the ability of public transit to serve transportation needs.

The best response to the report is this: we've had large increases in transit agency budgets and massive spending on rail systems in recent decades, and transit ridership goes DOWN, both in Texas and nationally, even with ongoing population increases, strong economic growth, and increasing roadway traffic.

Houston transit ridership peaked in 2006

Regular readers of this blog have seen my analysis of Houston Metro's annual statements. Ridership peaked at in 2006. Ridership never fully recovered from the 2008 recession. Heavy spending on bus improvements in the 2010s held ridership flat, but then Covid in 2020 cut ridership in half and it has slowly recovered during the last five years.

Dallas: extensive rail system plagued by low ridership

DART's 93-mile light rail system is one of the most extensive in the United States. It is built to much higher standards than Houston's MetroRail, nearly entirely on dedicated right-of-way, including a subway, long elevated sections and DFW airport service.

The first section of DART light rail opened in 1996. It was steadily expanded in the 2000s and 2010s, reaching its current 93-mile length in 2021. As the plot shows, overall (bus and rail) ridership growth before Covid was minimal with the massive rail investment, only 5.6% between 2002 and 2018, but 17.1% between 2002 and 2019 due to a spike in 2019. Then Covid hit and 2024 overall DART ridership is 23.4% below the 2013 peak.

DART's ridership page reports 68,700 weekday light rail boardings in September 2025, which is around 34,350 riders making a roundtrip. For comparison, Houston's busiest bus line, 82-Westheimer, had 14,345 boardings. Rider security has always been a challenge for DART. In October there were two fatal shootings on the light rail system (1, 2), and a non-fatal shooting this month. DART ridership has had a weaker recovery from Covid than Houston, and it will likely take a very long time for DART to reach pre-Covid ridership, if ever.

A post I did in 2021 revealed that the DART Las Colinas station, in the middle of an area with dense apartments in all directions, had the second-lowest ridership of all stations in the DART system. (plot) So much for transit-oriented development!

The Los Angeles ridership disaster

Around 2010, Los Angeles (excluding Orange County) ended virtually all freeway improvements and put all its resources into public transit. The result: steadily decreasing ridership since 2013, with overall ridership down 36.8% in 2024. Hugely expensive investments in rail systems are especially disastrous, with ridership down 43.5% since the 2013 peak and down 30.7% from the 2019 pre-Covid value.

National Data

This plot from the Antiplanner based on data from the National Transit Database shows flat or declining transit ridership since around 2007, with steadily escalating operating costs during this period.

Taxpayers get stuck with the large subsidy bill

Public transit operating expenses and operating losses (i.e. taxpayer subsidy) have escalated in the last 25 years, including Houston. The plot below shows the operating loss from audited financial statements, which in 2024 was $939 million for Houston and $952 million for Dallas.

Page 64 of the TxDOT document predicts continued rapid escalation of operating expenses.

With flat or declining ridership and costs going up, taxpayer subsidy per boarding have soared upward. In 2024 Houston taxpayers contributed $12.37 every time someone stepped on a Metro bus or train. The only good news is that per-boarding subsidy in Houston is much lower than Dallas and subsidies have been decreasing since peak Covid impact in 2021. (See post with time series)

Lowball Cost Numbers

As usual, pro-transit documents use unrealistically low cost numbers. For example, it says that light rail costs $200-250 per mile (pages 33, 62). This listing of new projects on the Federal Transit Administration site shows seven light projects which vary in cost between $153 and $964 million per mile, with the average cost $408 million per mile. The current cost estimate for the planned 9.8-mile Austin light rail system, which will run on surface streets like Houston's MetroRail, is now a stunning $8.2 billion, or $840 million per mile. From the article: "Soaring rail transit costs are 'not necessarily unique to Austin,' said transit engineer Chetan Sharma. 'It’s essentially a national problem.'"

Page 62 says bus rapid transit costs $30-65 million per mile, but the suspended 25-mile Metro University BRT was estimated to cost $2.2 billion, $88 million per mile. Metro's Gulfton BRT is included on the FTA list at $54 million per mile.

Page 44 says that intercity high-speed rail costs $65 million per mile, but the most recent cost number for the 240-mile Texas Central project is "over $40 billion", or over $167 million per mile. The most recent cost estimate for California high-speed rail is $135 billion and the ultimate cost is surely much higher. The system length for this cost is not clear, but phase 1 is listed at 494 miles, which would be $273 million per mile.

On page 43 there is a section for "Funding Intercity Connectivity" which states "A high-level analysis estimates that building rail and bus infrastructure would require an estimated $30 to $40 billion in capital investment and operating costs greater than $5 billion annually." It's impossible to analyze this statement without any project details, but if this number includes Texas Central then it is far too low. This is a huge cost, and history tells us any such spending will not increase transit ridership and probably become a Los Angeles-style disaster.

Look to new technology to save public transit (and taxpayers)

There are powerful forces at work pushing down public transit ridership, and no amount of public transit spending can overcome them. Before Covid, employers were steadily relocating from downtown to suburban locations which are very difficult or impossible to serve with transit. Then Covid hit in 2020, greatly increasing work from home. On the horizon are driverless vehicles, which could deliver yet another blow to transit ridership.

Attempting to solve future transportation needs with absurdly expensive legacy transit solutions is a recipe for disaster, both for ridership and taxpayers. The only way we'll ever get better results for transit expenditures is with new technology. Fortunately, technologies are in development which could eventually deliver much-needed productivity improvements for transit and nearby intercity travel.

While driverless vehicles did not deliver on their initial hype, Tesla and Google's Waymo are making steady progress toward service rollouts. Waymo recently expanded to freeway service in three cities, and driverless taxi services - "robotaxi" - are now Tesla's main focus to achieve future profits, with Tesla's latest self-driving software FSD v14 getting mostly good reviews. In 5 to 10 years, these technologies may be viable and, like all new technologies, we can expect prices to drop. Driverless taxis will be ideal for many public transit needs, particularly for rural and exurban transit discussed in the TxDOT document.

The Boring Company is actively building projects in Las Vegas and Nashville. If successful, this technology will provide an affordable alternative to legacy public transit tunneling, which now costs a minimum of $1 billion per mile and is financially prohibitive.

For longer distances between cities, there are many companies developing electric-powered vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. (Full list) Joby, Archer and Beta are the best-known American companies developing taxis, and Archer recently purchased the Hawthorne Municipal airport near LAX to base its operations. Flight speeds are comparable to high-speed rail, although initial ranges are expected to be around 100 miles. Of course we can expect improvements in range, and Beta CTOL (C=conventional) lists a range of 387 miles. If these technologies become reality, they could be far more practical than a high-speed rail project.

Suppose you are in the Woodlands or Clear Lake City area and you want to go to Plano. With Texas Central high-speed rail, you would need to fight traffic to the Texas Central station at the Northwest Mall site, then buy a ticket which Texas Central has stated will be priced comparable to airline service. In Dallas you would still need to cover the long distance from downtown Dallas to Plano. A VTOL could leave from Hooks Airport or Ellington Field and go to Addison or McKinney Airport (much closer to Plano), or perhaps a VTOL port very close to activity centers in Plano like Legacy. Capital costs will be minimal, instead of at least $40 billion for Texas Central. Repeat this scenario for an innumerable number of start-to-end points, like Sugar Land to Austin, Katy to Waco, Baytown to Fort Worth, etc.