Clean energy entrepreneurship in Houston, densification, welcoming refugees, Dallas TOD failure, ADUs, population gains, rankings, and more
Continuing to clear out some backlogged smaller items. A lot of these I tweeted while I was out of town for much of the summer, but just now getting a chance to bring them to the blog:
“Every day I meet another oil and gas guy who is now a climate entrepreneur. I think there is going to be an explosion of clean energy activity out of the O&G sector, and we’ll be stunned in the next 5-7 years by how many of these problems they handle.”
"Austin isn’t the densest metropolitan area in Texas. That honor belongs to the nine-county Houston region, which increased from 1,560 residents per square mile in 2010 to 1,858 in 2020, an increase of about 19%."
"H-Town exudes Southern hospitality: The pace of life is more relaxed than many major cities, and they're welcoming, polite, and eager to share the delights of their city with visitors...make Houstonians less cliquey and more hospitable towards newcomers."
This makes me proud. Houston's doors are always open to those seeking a fresh start and new opportunity: "Volunteers from Houston Welcomes Refugees showed up with boxes of items to furnish the family’s new home." NYT: From Kabul Airport to a Houston Walmart
"In short, TOD is simply a scam. Like Portland’s light-rail mafia, which guided subsidies to favored developers who would build TODs, Dallas light rail and TODs are merely a way of transferring money from taxpayers to developers."
"There are more than 3,600 ADUs in Houston (according to HCAD data) of which the median size is 530 square feet (max allowed=900sqft). ADUs offer more housing options while maintaining the existing community character."
Infrastructure bill problems, Dallas TOD failure, CA vs TX, why transit has trouble competing, and more
I apologize for the sporadic posts over the summer while I was out-of-town with family, but I'm back and looking forward to catching up on a big backlog of smaller items that will probably take several weekly posts to get through.
"In short, TOD is simply a scam. Like Portland’s light-rail mafia, which guided subsidies to favored developers who would build TODs, Dallas light rail and TODs are merely a way of transferring money from taxpayers to developers."
"This page is not calling for abandonment of transit or extolling the virtues of the automobile. It is an attempt to lay out what transit is up against if it is to succeed. Pretending that the economic issues I describe can be made to go away is a guaranteed recipe for failure."
“Right now market forces are telling California, ‘Get your s-- together,’ ” said report co-author Mark Duggan, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. “This exodus thing — I think it’s a risk.”
"the number of companies relocating their HQs out of CA is running at twice the rate of recent years and is showing no signs of slowing...The winning state is Texas, which for many years has been the most popular destination for CA company relocations"
"Like many other tech executives, I think Texas is positioned to outpace California due to its proximity to the world's top companies in energy, healthcare, and aerospace, to name a few, and its willingness to innovate with technology in those industries."
Painted Into a Corner - It could be time to reconsider land-use laws that contribute to runaway housing costs. Hat tip to George. Really glad to see Houston avoid a lot of these issues. Conclusion:
"The role of cities in the 21st century has not yet been determined. Cities with outdated housing policies may no longer be aspirational. The future of successful cities must begin with enabling a broad set of people to live there, which necessitates affordable housing. Making housing affordable to a large set of people with a range of incomes has its advantages.
This allows people who have lower-paying, service-industry jobs to live near where they work. It promotes a broader set of cultures within a city. Multiculturalism should be one of the values of large cities. When a city is large enough, it can support such things as museums, art galleries, performing arts and professional sports franchises. The greatest thing that a city can provide is social mobility."
WSJ: Mass Spending for Mass Transit - Democrats want the GOP to rescue big-city rail and public unions. This is why I have mixed feelings about the $1T infrastructure bill - a whole heap of the money will be going into a black hole, especially Amtrak.
METRO Update, Inner Katy BRT, and Epic Failure of Transit-Oriented Development Ridership in Dallas
This week is an excellent analytical guest post from Oscar Slotboom.
The Latest Metro Ridership
Metro ridership has been stuck around 55% down for the last year, and was down 54% with 138,975 weekday boardings in the most recent data. Nationally, transit patronage has come up from its 2020 low point, reaching 50% of pre-covid patronage in June.
For perspective, average daily highway traffic on the Katy Freeway near Gessner dropped 18% from 387,769 in 2019 to 317,629 in 2020. Traffic counts are reported with a single annual value, and highway traffic in 2021 has returned to near pre-Covid levels in most places.
The Inner Katy BRT
Metro held a virtual meeting on August 16 for the Inner Katy bus rapid transit (BRT), part of the MetroRapid feature of MetroNext, which will provide a fast connection to downtown for commuter bus services on the Katy and Northwest freeways, and also provide service to the new Uptown BRT. A nice feature of the Metro's depictions is that the stations will have bypass lanes for express buses, so they won't be slowed by local service.
Separately, TxDOT is studying the addition of managed lanes on this segment, and one of TxDOT's options is covered by Metro Option 3 (Tell Metro you support Option 3 here!). The managed lanes are the most critical link in the MaX lanes network which Tory and I have promoted, and would also be part the REAL Network being planned by TxDOT. Unfortunately, H-GAC recently denied TxDOT's request to include the managed lanes in the regional plan. The project will be reconsidered for inclusion in May 2023.
Regular readers will know that Tory and I are big advocates of BRT as a much better alternative to light rail, so we are glad to see this BRT project moving forward. To summarize the advantages of BRT:
Light rail is obscenely expensive, with the most recent Metro expansions which opened in 2013 and 2015 costing around $152 million per mile, and the current national average just over $200 million per mile. BRT is far less expensive. Although cost reduction will vary, a good estimate is that BRT costs one-third as much as light rail.
Light rail is painfully slow, with MetroRail averaging 14 miles per hour, slightly slower than than the national light rail average of 15.8 mph (page 5). Street-level BRT will be about the same, but grade-separated BRT such as the Inner Katy BRT should be at least twice as fast.
Light rail is totally inflexible and unadaptable, usable only by trains. With BRT, buses can serve any route and then enter the BRT facilty. A BRT guideway could potentially be used by technologies of the future, such as automated transit vehicles.
Metro's light rail expansions opened in 2013 and 2015 have low ridership. Pre-covid (Jan 2019 through March 2020), the Red Line north extension ridership on a per-mile basis was only 24% of the original Red Line, and the Green/Purple Lines combined were only 21% of the original red line.
Street-level light rail is subject to conflicts with cars and pedestrians, while grade-separated BRT as planned for the Inner Katy project eliminates this hazard.
Metro's project site does not provide a cost estimate for the overall 7.6-mile project, and the final cost may vary substantially depending on the option selected and the number of stations. The current H-GAC TIP (page 4-55) lists construction cost at $190 million and total cost at $228 million, which seems low. All Metro's options include an elevated guideway section along the Katy Freeway about 4 miles long.
Difficult-to-reach Stations
Metro's depictions show very inconvenient access to the BRT stations. Starting at ground level, patrons will need to go up an access tower to reach a skybridge which is 35 to 40 feet above the ground, cross the skybridge to the station and then go down to reach the platform. Mobility-impaired patrons will need to take two elevators to travel from ground level to the platform. It will take at least 30 seconds to reach the platform from ground level, making security more difficult.
My immediate reaction was that Metro should consider shifting the stations to be just south of the freeway so there is only a single, shorter ascent/descent for the boarding platform. At most proposed locations, this would require only minor additional right-of-way, such as the Circle K at Shepherd or the warehouse at Studemont.
Number of Stations: Less is More
Metro originally planned two stations at Shepherd/Durham and Studemont, but due to community input they are now looking at 4 additional stations, at Houston Avenue, Yale/Heights, TC Jester and Memorial Park.
Every station imposes a cost. There is the initial construction cost, and then the ongoing cost of operation, maintenance, and security. But the most significant impact is on the service speed: every station causes a slowdown in the average speed of service, and slower service makes transit less attractive to potential users. So it's a bad policy to add stations just to placate a few people who want a stop.
None of the 6 potential station locations have the characteristics for high ridership, because none are near an employment center, transit-dependent populations or high-density housing (but more on that subject later).
The Houston Avenue station can't be justified. It's already served by Metro Route 44, and it's so close to downtown that time savings for local residents using the BRT would be minimal. The number of residents near this station going in the reverse direction to Uptown is surely negligible. In addition, the area to the north has no opportunities for new development.
Five stations on this 3.4 mile section can't be justified, so Metro will need to carefully consider the locations and hopefully stick with two.
Can a Memorial Park Station be Justified?
The Memorial Park station ranks highest in community feedback, with around 46% of respondents rating it as extremely important. But is the public being realistic about actually using public transit to go to a park? I think this situation is very similar to public transit service to the airports. People view it as highly desirable, but for many reasons very few people actually use it.
There is ample parking available at Memorial Park, free outside the main activity area, which eliminates a major reason to use public transit.
Many park users bring equipment and drinks. This especially includes golfers but also softball players, tennis players, and people with children in strollers. Driving is much more convenient when you have equipment.
After completion of park activities, most people will want go home quickly. If you're tired and/or sweaty, do you want to walk the distance to the BRT station and wait for the next bus?
Most park visitors go to the park outside of peak traffic periods, so traffic is light for most visitors, eliminating another reason to use public transit.
Since park patrons outside the loop and in Uptown are most likely to drive, patrons using BRT would be coming from inner loop stations and downtown. There is generally a low number of residences within 1/4 mile of the proposed stations.
In Dallas, White Rock Lake Park is their approximate equivalent to Memorial Park. The DART Blue Line light rail has its White Rock station on the north edge of the park near a major street (Loop 12). Granted, this is not a perfect analogy since White Rock Lake park is so large. The White Rock station served 406 weekday boardings in the most recent data, which is the second lowest ridership for a station on the north Blue Line and ranks #50 among the 64 DART light rail stations.
Realistically, the main ridership of a Memorial Park station would be people living in the Rice Military area who will use it to go to work downtown or Uptown. Metro will need to carefully consider if that is enough to justify a station.
Epic Failure of Transit-Oriented Development LRT Ridership at Irving's Las Colinas
Transit-oriented development seeks to build high-density housing near transit stations to encourage use of public transit. There's limited or minimal opportunity for TOD near the proposed BRT stations, but even if there was good opportunity, we can't assume TOD would increase ridership.
In Irving (just northwest of Dallas), DART's Las Colinas Urban Center seems to be a perfect implementation of TOD: there are thousands of apartments within easy walking distance of the station, and numerous large office buildings about 1/4 mile away. The DART Orange Line provides direct service to major employment centers at DFW Airport, the Dallas medical district, Uptown/Victory and downtown Dallas. A university and community college also have stations on the line. So this should be one of the best performing stations in the DART system, right?
No, just the opposite. The Las Colinas Urban Center station has the second-lowest ridership in the DART system (see above chart, data source). It served a dismal 170 boardings (roughly 85 people on a round-trip) per weekday in DART FY 2020, which was partially affected by Covid, and had low ridership before Covid. The adjacent Irving convention Center station has the fourth lowest ridership in the system, and the other adjacent station at the University of Dallas has the lowest ridership in the system.
It's poignant to realize that the Orange Line was routed through the middle of Las Colinas to make it convenient to potential users, but the street-level alignment forces it to go slowly through the area, reducing service speed and possibly lowering ridership on the overall Orange Line.
Sure, someone may be able to point to a TOD somewhere which can claim improved transit patronage. But TOD is a total bust for public transit patronage in Las Colinas. So be skeptical when officials promote transit-oriented development.
"Houston Public Works has pulled proposals to permanently close the Brazos Street bridge and implement new pedestrian features around a corridor threaded between the Montrose area and Midtown.
“Please be advised that the Houston Public Works Department along with Mayor Turner has made the decision to resume the project with the original design,” reads a Public Works notice sent to stakeholders on April 2."
"Of the 10 counties with the largest population growth in the country between 2010 and 2019, six of them are in Texas. Harris/Houston had the 2nd largest population increase adding more than 620,000 people just behind Maricopa/Phoenix."
"Large metro areas had the steepest decline over the course of the decade, Mr. Frey found in an analysis, with the growth rate down by nearly half. Rural areas, in contrast, grew slightly by the end of the decade, though that followed several years of declines.
Places that had once been popular destinations for young people — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — ended the decade with some of the biggest declines. New York began losing population in 2017, and last year it registered a loss of more than 60,000 people, the biggest population decline of any American city, Mr. Frey found.
The housing market collapse of 2008 and the rising prices in suburbs prompted millennials to move to big coastal cities. But that pattern reversed by mid-decade, Mr. Frey said, as millennials fled rising rents and home prices.
Places with the biggest gains for the decade were Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Medium-size metro areas, like Las Vegas, have also moved up the ranks of gainers, as have Charlotte, N.C.; Seattle; and Austin, Texas.
"The experience of Los Angeles County — with its dense urbanization and ideal weather — should be a warning to those, in California and elsewhere, who assume that high density, “transit oriented development” and substituting transit for driving alone naturally go together. In fact, they do not."
Three perfect days in HTX, growth forecasts, increasing our density, reducing homelessness, protesting property taxes, and more
Happy New Year/Decade everyone! Hope you enjoyed your holidays as much as I did (OC/LA w/ family). Lots of backlogged smaller items, but before we get to them, a short word about our sponsor: if one of your new year's resolutions is to save big money on electricity this year, My Best Plan is incredible at absolutely optimizing the lowest-cost electricity plan for you. I've known David over there for years (fellow Rice MBA), and his optimization algorithm is the best, bar none. And completely unbiased too, which can't be said for some of the other optimizers out there that have been uncovered as fronts for electricity marketing companies. Send him (or me) your latest electricity bill to get an estimate of your potential savings - it's free, and you have nothing to lose while potentially saving hundreds or even thousands of dollars (as he's saved me over the years).
On to this week's items:
The Greater Houston Partnership has released its 2020 Employment Forecast. Only time will tell if their vision is 20/20... (sorry, couldn't help myself! ;-)
Speaking of density, the City is moving forward with plans to allow more density (reduced setbacks and parking) near transit, but Michael Skelly doesn't think they're going far enough. I think it's a modest start that can be expanded incrementally to minimize opposition.
HTX population crosses 7 million milestone, smart growth is dumb about commuting, BRT beats LRT, and more
Happy Easter! This week's items:
We're at 7 million people in the Houston metro area folks! Yes, I realize the official number is 6,997,384 on 12/31/18, but it also says we're adding 229 new residents a day, so we crossed 7 million around January 12th of this year. Still 5th-largest metro in the country behind NYC, LA, Chicago, and DFW, but this should also put us ahead of the combined San Jose + San Francisco Bay Area, which is split by the census into two separate metros for some reason, while Dallas and Ft. Worth are combined into one. Makes no sense to me either.
This Grace Rodriguez interview has some good insights on Houston's entrepreneurship scene - both challenges and opportunities. My favorite excerpt:
"The challenge in Houston is trying to be shiny and polished. And, to me, shiny and polished is Dallas. No one in Houston wants to be Dallas. Let's accept the fact that we are an R&D city. We are a city that researches and develops and experiments new things. Let's lean hard into that and not say we're going to be perfect, and if we do that, then the need to try to appear perfect can go away. Being transparent on the things we are trying makes us become a role model for other cities. I feel like the feeling that we have to be polished and perfect for the rest of the world to be interested in us is the biggest hindrance to our progress. I already know the rest of the world is interested in us."
Here's the specific report excerpt with the broader context:
“US cities generally search for the sweet spot in the demand-to-capacity ratio and try not to provide service frequencies that are so high that their vehicles run empty. Thus, since LRT vehicles are larger, in order to justify providing LRT capacities that are similar to a BRT, LRT tends to operate at lower frequencies. As mentioned above, due to the perceived capacity constraint of BRT there are currently no cases in the US where LRT should be favored over BRT.”
Now we just need MetroNext to go from 70% embracing this principle to 100%...
"Building more market rate housing sets off a chain reaction supply increase that reaches low income neighborhoods. Households moving into new market rate units move out of other, lower cost housing, making it available to other households; the propagation of this effect produces additional housing supply in lower income neighborhoods."
"To achieve higher economic productivity, they recommend fostering speedier rather than slower commuting; more rather than less commuting; and longer rather than shorter commutes.
These policies would expand the opportunity circles of employers and employees, enabling a more productive urban economy. But these are exactly the opposite of the policy prescriptions of smart growth, which generally seek to confine people's economic activity to a small portion of a larger metro area.
...
A less extreme version of smart growth says that we should discourage car travel and shift resources heavily toward transit. People should be encouraged to live in high-density "villages" where they can easily obtain transit service to jobs elsewhere in the metro area. The problem with this vision is the inability of transit to effectively compete with the auto highway system.
Simply put, cars work better for workers. A 2012 Brookings study analyzing data from 371 transit providers in America's largest 100 metro areas found that over three-fourths of all jobs are in neighborhoods with transit service—but only about a quarter of those jobs can be reached by transit within 90 minutes. That's more than three times the national average commute time."
Vote for mobility solns, defending the Katy expansion, H-GAC cool tools, and more
A few quick small items this week followed by my response on debate about the Katy Freeway expansion:
The Mobility Houston traffic solution forum was launched this month (background here) to crowdsource solutions to Houston's mobility problems, and I'd like to request up-votes for my proposal on MaX Lanes as well as this proposal for intersection improvements. I know it's a slight hassle to register to up-vote, but there's not that many votes on the site, so yours can really make a difference and help good ideas get in front of public officials. Thanks in advance for your support.
Today I attended an impressive H-GAC presentation by Jeff Taebel on new mapping tools for figuring out which parts of the city are the best for investing to create dense mixed-use neighborhoods. One tool makes it easy to identify neighborhoods that have the right density and street connectivity, and the other has impressive data on commuting patterns. They are extremely slick tools, and wide open to the public, so try them out - I'm pretty sure you'll be impressed. I really like and support their approach, which acknowledges the car-centric spread-out nature of our region, but rather than trying a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all, top-down approach to planning, they figure out targeted neighborhoods to prioritize investments (like bike and pedestrian amenities) where they'll have the most impact and do the most good. An interesting data tidbit that came out of the presentation: average commute times have actually dropped in Houston since 2000, and at ~28 mins are only the 11th-worst in the country - not bad for the 5th largest metro area. I'm guessing you're incredulous at that stat, but there's a good reason: as we added more than a million jobs, all of those newcomers tried to pick housing near their new jobs (including all of those recent college grads inside the Loop), thus lowering the overall average commute times for the region.
Joel Kotkin in Forbes on America's Next Boomtowns. Houston is #6, although that's dependent on oil coming back to a more reasonable price. Really nice picture of the Chevron buildings and circular skywalk downtown.
Joe Cortright responded to my post a couple weeks ago defending the Katy freeway expansion, but strangely chooses not to address the core points of not getting proper before and after congestion data (the expansion opened in 2009, not 2011 or later, so his data just shows the added congestion of the oil boom after it had already opened) or that more employers would have given up on the core city for the suburbs. He does make a point about properly valuing external impacts like pollution, but that's not the role of transportation planners - that's the role of gas tax policy, CAFE mileage standards, and pollution control regulations (set those and then let people make choices). He raises the alternative of investing in denser housing (the private free market does this, not government - and they're free to build as much as they like wherever they like, and they do wherever there's demand) or transit - but by any measure an equivalent spend on transit would have moved far, far fewer people for the tax dollars invested. His data chart is actually a fantastic argument for Houston's freeway-heavy transportation spending: peoples' commute time tolerance is pretty much the same all over the world (roughly a half-hour), but in Houston (and DFW) they're able to go 12.2 miles during that time vs. much shorter distances in other cities. That means they were able to access a better value house in a better neighborhood with better schools while still staying within a reasonable commute of their work.
Restricting freeways has three obvious consequences: 1) housing gets much more expensive, since there's less of it within commuting range of employers, 2) employers give up on the city and move to the suburbs with better value houses, neighborhoods, and schools for their employees (reducing the tax base), and 3) a city/metro becomes less of a unified economy and more of a series of fragmented, disconnected islands where people have limited employment options without moving. I have no problem with dense or transit-oriented neighborhoods (see H-GAC bullet point above), and we have those options that people are welcome to choose. But the fact that we build freeways and they fill up mean that the majority of people are making different choices based on weighing up their own values. Since we live in a democracy, it seems reasonable for our elected representatives and their transportation planners to respond to those market choices rather than trying to force some socially-engineered alternative. I stand by my original point: the government invested in a piece of infrastructure that has proven extremely popular and highly utilized - isn't that what we want from government investments of tax dollars?
METRO improvements, MaX Lines, UT vs. UH, Houston > Toronto, regulation trying to solve over-regulation
This week I got to attend a blogger lunch meeting at METRO (pic here) to get an update on things over there, which are definitely on a strong upswing (note to the new Turner administration: please be careful not to screw it up with bad board changes). The good news:
Ridership is already up 10% since the redesigned bus network started a few months ago. Transit agencies all over the country are asking how they can do it too. Nice to see Houston a real innovative leader here rather than a follower.
Low-demand neighborhoods like the new "flex routes" once they get used to them.
They are continuing to tweak routes to improve service, including a new set of changes this week.
They're simplifying transfers with unlimited transfers in any direction for 3 hours, which will even allow people to do short errands round trip with one ticket.
They now offer a Park-and-Ride lot at Space Center Houston as I suggested long ago, allowing tourists downtown (or connecting from elsewhere) to use transit to visit our most popular tourist attraction.
Better technology options, including texting for next-bus timing, service alerts, and a better phone app. Ticketing on your mobile phone is coming soon.
The not-so-good news:
They still struggle with inter-agency coordination, especially road construction/closures (although improving) and getting popular transit destinations like new health, education, and government facilities located along major arterial routes instead of far back on side streets.
The ongoing "squeaky wheel" problem where a vocal few push the board to make changes that are better for them but make service worse for the majority across the broader transit network. This "death by a thousand cuts" is part of how the old bus network got so out of whack.
I also had a good conversation with Christof Spieler of the METRO board about a vision for expanding a more comprehensive MaX (Managed eXpress) lane network across region in collaboration with TXDoT, HCTRA, and H-GAC, and then unifying the branding for different commuter services (like METRO's P&R express buses, Woodlands Express, etc.) under something like "MaX Lines" with unified ticketing, service maps, coordination, etc. I think it would be a huge asset and benefit for the region to have such MaX service connecting all parts of our metro area to our multiple job centers. If you know someone with any of those agencies, please pass it along...
A few smaller items I'd like to respond to this week:
UT closes on 100 acres in Houston, plans to buy 200 more. UH is definitely not happy - HAIF debate here. I think the simple answer from a Houston perspective is that more is better. That's certainly the case with the Texas Medical Center - why not other higher ed institutions? UT is going to deploy the resources from that $25 billion endowment somewhere in the state - why not try to maximize the amount coming to Houston? UH should negotiate Big 12 entry and a no-faculty-poaching agreement (which should actually be policy between all Texas public schools - it just raises faculty costs for taxpayers with no added benefit to the state) and get back to focusing on their own improving trajectory rather than worrying about any potential competition.
This Chronicle op-ed calling for more prescriptive urban planning in Houston to be like Toronto. Ugh. Long-term readers know my feelings on this. First, the million-dollar lifetime savings estimate for using transit is a joke once you consider how much more expensive housing is under such a regime (it also ignores the costs of actually riding the transit). Second, there's nothing stopping anybody in Houston from living within easy walking or transit distance of any of our job centers - it's just that people are making value trade-offs and choosing not to. The value equation in the suburbs (housing, neighborhoods, schools, crime) is just too compelling for most. Third, our downtown is growing and developing just fine - why would we want to mess with success?
WSJ: Turning the Twin Cities Into Sim City (hat tip to George) As much as I sympathize with opportunity and the problems of zoning, I can see all sorts of ways this federal and regional regulatory hammer can go very, very wrong (like it already has in Portland and California). More regulation isn't going to solve over-regulation. It's sort of like a car that isn't going anywhere because you've got your foot on the brake plus the parking brake engaged, and thinking the answer is just to push down harder on the accelerator until the car moves, when a lot better answer is to just release the brakes - i.e. reduce regulations and let free choice and free markets solve the problem.
Life is better in red states, plus smart greenways, stupid rail, rising suburbia, reducing crime, and more
Happy new year everyone. Unfortunately I'm going to have to open up the new year on a negative note with a take-down of a pretty absurd op-ed in the Chronicle today essentially calling for a multi-billion dollar commuter rail and monorail plan as well as aggressive land use regulation to go with it. In a world where the consensus is that the 2020s will have self-driving cars and incredibly affordable autonomous taxis that all together improve road capacity as much as 4x, why would any city in its right mind invest billions of dollars over decades to install old rail technology? Especially a city with jobs spread over multiple decentralized job centers instead of concentrated in a single downtown? In the meantime, he never explains what's wrong with our vast and cost-effective HOV lane network and express park-and-ride buses, or why we should just chuck that system for far more expensive and less flexible rail. An express bus can get in the express lanes and go to any job center, as well as circulate there to get people to their buildings and keep them out of the weather - rail can only go to one destination, and it can't circulate when it gets there. And when it comes to the land-use regulation to force dense development near transit stops: the LA Times looked at the data and found people in transit-oriented developments don't really shift their trips from cars to transit all that much.
And one more thing: I'm going to have to quibble with his estimate that we'll add 3.5 million people over the next 15 years to our existing 6.6m. Sorry, we're growing fast, but not nearly that fast. The GHP estimates our growth at between 1.5m and 2.7m over that time. It will be all Metro's budget can do to just buy enough express buses to keep up with that growth, much less scrap the whole system and go to a multi-billion dollar commuter rail system of any kind.
Moving on to some smaller miscellaneous items this week:
Richard Florida asks if life is better in red states with a lower cost of living - and especially housing - creating a higher standard of living. He makes some good points until the goes completely off the rails in the last few paragraphs, arguing that somehow the red states are getting some sort of free ride from the blue states?!
Finally, I really like Jay Crossley's Neighborhood Greenways concept with the caveat that it focus on a grid of low volume residential streets - not our already strained arterials. I think it's been a mistake in the past when we've lost critical arterial lanes to bike lanes nobody wants to use because they've got too much fast traffic all around them. Be sure to check out the cool pics, graphics and maps.
Rebutting the pro-rail op-eds and how to fix Houston's top issues
I wanted to focus this week's post on the GHP's new "No Limits" branding campaign for Houston, but multiple op-eds in today's Chronicle need an immediate response, so it'll have to wait a week. I'm referring to both of the pro-rail ones (here and here) as well as the board editorial calling out Houston's leadership on multiple issues.
"It's got strong public support" - The 2003 referendum passed by 52% to 48% and that was when the budget estimates were one-half or less of what the spending has actually turned out to be. If you're so confident in public support, run the referendum again (or heck just take an unbiased poll with real cost effectiveness numbers). It will get slaughtered, and they know it.
"Millennials/knowledge workers/surveyed Houstonians love transit and density" - That's great - when the existing and newly opening lines are absolutely packed with high-density transit-oriented development around the stops and we need to build more rail to accommodate demand, get back to me and we'll look at building some more. Given trends around the well-routed Main St. line, I'm guessing we might have that conversation in the 2030's or 2040's, if we're lucky. In fact, I really hope that development does happen, because the only way I see these new lines adding enough value to justify their insane cost is if they spark a massive new housing supply on the north and east sides to reduce the relentless upward pricing pressure on Houston housing, which is putting our much-vaunted affordability advantage at risk.
"We can do everything, including light rail" - Let me introduce you to the concept of opportunity cost: if we spend $150+ million per mile (!!!) for light rail, we lose the ability to spend that money on other things. What other things might we spend it on? Certainly better local bus service would be great, and I applaud Metro's re-imagining plan designed to fit within the existing budget. Imagine how much better it could be if it had that rail money available, with more frequency on more routes to more places connecting more people? But even more critical for Houston is expanding our suburban express bus transit network to all of the job centers in the city with a much more comprehensive express lane network. I agree we can't build enough freeway capacity to keep up with growth - we can't afford it and there isn't the right-of-way available even if we could. But if we don't make it easier for suburban employees (who are out there for nice affordable houses in good neighborhoods with good schools) to get to their employers in the core, more and more of those employers are going to give up on the city, pull an Exxon, and head out the 'burbs with a nice campus in The Woodlands, Katy, Sugar Land, or Pearland.. And that will leave Houston with a deteriorating core and tax base. A great core light rail network does no good if all the employers move to the outer rim. They'll let the young single 20% of their employees that live in the core reverse-commute while the 80% families have a much easier local suburb commute. This *will* happen if we don't address the suburban commuter problem, which we can't do right now because massively expensive light rail is sucking all of the air out of Metro's budget.
You heard it here first, note it for posterity: when Google's little driverless taxis are running around all over the place a decade from now, whisking people from anywhere to anywhere at the touch of a smart phone button for 50 cents/mile, we will look at all the white elephant rail lines we built and wonder what the heck we were thinking given that the technology trends were so utterly obvious at the time, yet we still thought sinking $150+ million a mile into light rail was a good idea?!
Finally, my thoughts on some of the issues brought up in the board editorial that I didn't address above:
Pensions busting the budget: the Mayor needs to go nuclear on this. By that I mean stop all city contributions to the pension plans until the legislature gives her the authority to fix them. It will generate massive much-needed media attention and legislators will have to explain why they won't give the city the power to fix its own budget. In her last term with no higher-office aspirations (that I know of - but unlike her successor, I'm sure), she is our last hope to stand up to the police, firefighters, and city employees and get this fixed. If she doesn't, then I foresee an epic failure of an attempt to raise tax revenue followed by massive cuts to city services followed by a long, slow, Detroit-like decline. All of the city's public and private leadership needs to be focused on this, and most especially you, Madam Mayor, backed up by the GHP lobbying machine.
Fixing HPD and its budget: Total agreement with Bill King's op-ed today calling for a detailed investigation into how the department is run. The numbers simply don't add up and imply massive mismanagement. Note to Bob Harvey at the GHP: get a McKinsey team on it!;-)
Hurricane risk and the stalled Ike Dike plan: Think creatively on funding it: it should reduce home insurance rates dramatically, so why not just tax those insurance plans equal to the savings to pay off the dike and come out ahead? Nobody pays any more than they already are, and we go ahead and skip all the death and destruction.
End venting. Looking forward to your thoughts in the comments. I'll be back next week to discuss the city branding campaign.
Friday morning METRO gave the media a preview of the new North line set to open December 21st. First some pics, then thoughts... (click on any picture to see the full size version)
New maps are on the trains. The left side red section is opening this month.
The Burnett St. Station and Transit Center has an impressive elevated platform view of downtown. The bus transit center is under construction.
The Burnett Station just north of downtown has 3 tracks, enabling trains north and south of it to run at different frequencies (more frequent/faster headways to the south)
More of the skyline view from the Burnett platform
Skyline view pulling into Burnett station.
The Christmas Train!
The Christmas train announces the opening date. Get it? It's a Christmas gift from METRO to the city.
Riding up front!
The strangeness of houses directly in front of the station. And they have to listen to those repetitive station announcements all day long...
Some observations/thoughts:
You will now be able to reach a Wal-Mart Supercenter by rail, which includes groceries. Actually, Northline Commons has a lot of retail, and an HCC campus. And Midtown has the Randall's grocery store just a couple blocks off the line. It now actually might be possible to manage most everyday shopping trips off of the rail line if one were so inclined.
The stations are very well done with nice artwork.
Signs of new development are thin: I counted one new townhome development, another small apartment complex, and a nice strip center or two. The train buzzed with speculation of how fast any new investment and redevelopment would occur. It's a big open question at this point. My guess is very slowly, especially looking at the rail-served parts of Midtown 10 years after the line opened. Sure, there are signs of good stuff happening (like MidMain), but they've been very slow to develop. And, frankly, the north side doesn't have the same location advantages as Midtown.
The current estimate is that the train will take about 20 mins from UHD to the Northline end covering 5.3 miles. Add that to the current Main St. line, and you have ~50 mins end-to-end for about 12 miles. That's about 14mph net speed - not exactly flying. Somebody living up there could easily be looking at a 30-40 min commute to the medical center - surprisingly long given the short distance. To put that in context, in non-rush-hour traffic it takes me about 45 mins to get from Midtown to Tomball! But it honestly might be somewhat competitive with driving at rush hour, especially when you consider the cost and hassle of med center traffic and parking.
That last point reinforces something I've been saying for a while: people may still face some daunting travel times to their final destination even after they've been connected into the rail network. I occasionally hear people sort of hand wave that once somebody has transferred to the rails they're magically at their destination, whether that's downtown, TMC, UH, or, one day, Greenway or Uptown. That is far from the case. I think once you add up the travel times, very few people will want to take an HOV bus downtown and then transfer to UH, TMC, or elsewhere. METRO still needs to work on more direct express lane service to alternate job centers like TMC and Uptown. Rail network connections are not a magic silver bullet for that.
Overall, METRO seems to have done a solid job on the new line. Only time will tell what ridership develops and how the neighborhood transforms.
Last week I attended the GHP State of METRO luncheon and was pleasantly surprised. The running theme is "Back to Basics" which I heartily applaud. They are aggressively focusing on improving the core bus network and reversing the massive bus ridership losses of the last few years (from 90m in 1999 to 60m/year today). Ridership is back on the upswing, and they're working a very promising new initiative to re-imagine the entire bus network. They've completed a great initiative to convert the HOV lanes to HOT lanes, and they're expanding the P&R network.
Of course, rail is still the big issue. The 3 new lines have consumed billions, and readers of this blog know I'm skeptical of their value. To pay off they'll need to lead to a massive redevelopment and revitalization of the north, east, and southeast side neighborhoods they cross. There is excitement about the Uptown BRT plan, although it won't be connected to the rest of the network until the University Line gets built, which is an open question. Gilbert Garcia stated that they're studying doing a first phase shortened version of the U-Line "to Greenway Plaza", although it's unclear to me where that would start. It seems obvious to me that if they're going to do a shortened University Line in the short-term it should connect the new Uptown BRT to the Main St. line - and they can circle back and add the Hillcroft transit center and UH later (UH is already on the SE line, so it would just require some transfers).
One really good idea I heard from an attendee that METRO needs to strongly consider: making the new protected Uptown BRT lanes open to vehicles from the I-10 and 59 HOV/HOT lanes, so a bus could exit directly into those lanes and get their passengers right to their buildings instead of requiring a transfer. Brilliant. I'm guessing the mixing of those buses with the BRT could be a little tricky, but I don't see why it would be impossible.
But what I really want to do here is back up and look at the big picture future for transit. I don't think people truly appreciate how much self-driving vehicles will change things 10 and 20 years from now. Not only will the capacity of the freeways vastly increase (automatic vehicles can travel much closer together and at higher speeds), but imagine this: waves of automated, driverless, small shuttle buses and taxis wandering the city all the time. You tell your smartphone where you want to go, and the network automatically sends the right shuttle your way to pick you up and take you nearly directly to your destination, with the potential for a few stops along the way to pick-up or disembark other passengers. Now imagine the capacity of the freeways if they not only have more vehicles much closer together at higher speeds, but they're also carrying multiple passengers each in this manner. And congestion priced lanes to keep them free-flowing. Rail can't compete with that, either on a travel time or overall cost basis. Investments we make in rail over the coming years may look particularly foolish a decade or two from now as these automated vehicles become more ubiquitous. I'm not sure any transit agency today is really thinking about this in their planning. Houston should be the first.
Ironically, what destroys the viability of rail may actually stimulate higher-density mixed-use/TOD-type development. What really impedes street-level retail is the lack of easy parking. But that's not a problem if you can just step out of your vehicle and it can putter off on its own to remote parking. Later, you just call it up on your phone and have it come right over to pick you up. This could also reinvigorate retail in downtowns, including Houston, which has been trying desperately for years to do so.
There is growing consensus that this technology is coming. We need to start integrating it into our planning instead of wasting money on the next wave of rail assets that will soon be obsolete.
A busy holiday season week with a business trip to Austin thrown in, so just a few small misc items to pass along:
Fast Company on "How an Army of Techies Is Taking on City Hall: Still waiting for a full reboot in Washington, D.C., an army of citizen techies is redefining civic engagement on a hyperlocal level." Houston could definitely benefit from some of these Gov 2.0 initiatives which can reduce costs and increase innovation, citizen engagement, and economic development (by cultivating Gov 2.0 software startups). If anybody at city hall would like to discuss this in more depth, please don't hesitate to contact me (tgattis (at) pdq.net).
David Brooks at the NYT on our "Crossroads Nation", which is optimistic about America's future, and its description makes me optimistic about Houston's future as we're a global crossroads for energy, medical, and port trade.
"In fact, the U.S. is well situated to be the crossroads nation. It is well situated to be the center of global networks and to nurture the right kinds of networks. Building that America means doing everything possible to thicken connections: finance research to attract scientists; improve infrastructure to ease travel; fix immigration to funnel talent; reform taxes to attract superstars; make study abroad a rite of passage for college students; take advantage of the millions of veterans who have served overseas.
The nation with the thickest and most expansive networks will define the age. There’s no reason to be pessimistic about that."
Don't let federal subsidies over-warp your thinking about what the right answers are and are not for Houston. Chasing federal money often leads to bad decisions and boondoggle projects.
Given current fiscal realities, it is unreasonable to expect the Metro communities to give up their 1/4% sales tax for general transportation improvements.
If we simply can't afford the Metro Solutions rail plan, and it must be stretched out or even canceled, the low-cost alternative is to replace those lines with frequent, free signature bus service. I've heard that the FTA wants to spread limited funds around and they will only strongly subsidize a single major project in each city. If we can only afford one line, make sure it's the east-west Universities line, which connects the most important destinations in central Houston not already connected by the Main St. line. More here: Adapting Metro Solutions to the new realities
Commuter rail rarely works in a post-WW2 car-based city. Old cities in Europe and America were built with dense cores for the primary mobility mode of the time: walking. Rail allowed people to move to the suburbs and still commute to the single dense core of jobs (like Manhattan or downtown Chicago). Newer, mostly post-WW2, car-based, Sunbelt cities like Houston have decentralized jobs spread over many different centers, like Downtown, Uptown, the Texas Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, the Energy Corridor, Westchase, Greenspoint, Clear Lake, and more. Less than 7% of our jobs are downtown. Trying to connect commuters to these job centers with rail would not only be astronomically expensive, but would lead to impractically long commute times with multiple transfers and long walks for people to reach their final destination buildings. The better solution: express buses. They whisk commuters nonstop at 65mph directly to their job center and then circulate to get them right to their building. No transfers, no waits, and no walking in our unpredictable weather. They also compliment technology trends to be the ideal commute of the future.
Open up the express commuter bus/shuttle market to private competition by offering a flat subsidy per passenger-trip + per passenger-mile and letting private companies compete on service, routes, schedules, and amenities (like wi-fi). Let them use the existing Park-and-Rides or cut deals with private parking lots like churches and malls. This is the fastest way to not only improve commuter service, but also maximize ridership to reduce rush hour congestion.
To encourage more dense inside-the-loop living (i.e. transit-oriented development) and reduced congestion, make Metro buses and rail free inside the loop (with high-frequency service). It might also make sense to eliminate all fares at Metro, but this could be a good first step in that direction.
Wherever we do decide to build rail, listen very carefully to Christof to get the details right.
Critiquing Gene Locke's Transportation Plan (and HRG, NPR)
Today I attended mayoral candidate Gene Locke's transportation briefing, during which he unveiled his transportation plan, which had the usual stuff (improve regional coordination, get more state and federal money, etc.) but also introduced a few novel items (including the cute C.H.O.I.C.E.S. acronym).
I also had the opportunity to attend the Quality of Life forum last evening, in which all the major mayoral candidates contributed their particular policy dish to a political buffet intended to appeal to the most democratic palette possible. Over the course of the evening, the mayoral candidates spoke about parks, trails, trees, water, visual blight, etc. So this one is easy to sum up: "We all support improving quality of life within tight city budget constraints." No news there.
Here are some of the Gene Locke plan points that jumped out at me, most of which I support:
Creating a "City Department of Mobility" and a Director of Mobility. Long overdue.
Syncing traffic lights across the city as well as regionally. Fantastic idea. Although, good luck with cities like Bellaire, West U., and the Villages, which seem to revel in making it as slow as possible to cross their cities. Of course, their motivation is understandable: they don't want the Houstonians' traffic. But then, we do control their water supply, so we might have some leverage there...
Expanding HOV service, which would mean longer hours, more Park-and-Ride centers, and, most importantly, increased service to business centers outside of downtown like Uptown/Galleria, Greenway Plaza, the Medical Center, and the Energy Corridor (a tough one because of widely spaced destinations).
Getting real-time bus status online. Locke mentioned an iPhone, but I think any plain cell phone should be able to text a stop number to Metro and instantly receive a text reply with the bus routes headed to that stop along with their estimated times of arrival.
Bring back the downtown trolleys. (And maybe also in Uptown and the TMC-Rice Village area.)
"Reducing bus fares to increase ridership." That one's a direct quote from the plan, which went on to say that the city would "also look at a pilot program to eliminate bus fares at certain times" (like rush hour). Similar to Bill King's op-ed, this concept could substantially increase ridership, reduce cars on the road, and speed trip times (no fumbling for money).
Promoting transit-oriented development, or "TOD," which can help accommodate growth without adding much traffic. Significantly, Locke does not support government planning to dictate how or where to build. "Let the market figure it out." Huzzah!
Accelerating commuter rail. My long-time readers know I have mixed opinions when it comes to commuter rail. Some lines may make sense in narrow circumstances, but economics tend to force the shutdown of any express buses that even remotely compete with the rail line, often leading to longer commutes for riders (more stops and transfers, slower net speeds, longer walks to their final destination).
In Q&A, Locke endorsed continuing Mayor White's Safe Clear program, a very successful program recently backed up by a study. As far as what to do with the 25% of Metro's revenue that they turn over for "general mobility" (i.e. street improvements), he believes that decision will be decided by the voters. Personally, he would like to see some flexibility in how it's spent to improve regional mobility. I don't see any of Metro's member cities wanting to give it up, including Houston Public Works, despite Metro's desire to redirect it to transit/rail.
Overall, a pretty good plan.
Speaking of mayoral candidates, Houstonians for Responsible Growth came out with their endorsement yesterday of both Annise Parker and Gene Locke, while, not surprisingly, taking some shots at Peter Brown. Chronicle coverage and Brown response here. Even though some people believe HRG = "evil developers against neighborhoods," they're really a broader collection of well-intentioned people that want to preserve the strengths -- including vibrancy, competition, and affordability -- of Houston's historical free-market approach to development. That includes reforming and strengthening deed restrictions to protect neighborhoods. And don't forget that developers transform underutilized land into better and higher uses by increasing property value, which adds to the city's tax base to support public safety, schools, libraries, parks, flood control, and infrastructure investment and renewal.
Finally, if you haven't heard already, NPR is doing a series of stories on Houston this week (hat tip to Mark). This is the lead story, which contains links to the others. Two stories so far will particularly appeal to readers of this blog: this one on our approach to growth (including great comments by Rice prof Stephen Klineberg and Harvard professor Edward Glaeser), and this interview with Mayor White, which include discussion of energy efficiency, Ashby, light rail, and TOD.
An open dialogue on serious strategies for making Houston a better city, as well as a coalition-builder to make them happen. All comments, email, and support welcome.
