Transportation has been one of the last refuges of cash. But that’s changing as technology moves in. Examples:

• EZ Tag has been around for a while. But we’ll be seeing a lot more of them. HCTRA has moved to a new sticker-type tag; its lower cost compared to the old plastic boxes has allowed HCTRA to eliminate monthly rental charges. But the EZ Tag is not only easier to get; it’s also more necessary. The new Katy Freeway toll lanes, like the Westpark Toll Road, will be EZ Tag only. That not only saves toll collector salaries; it saves space and reduces congestion.
• The new City of Houston parking meters, linked together by a wifi network, take credit cards. They’re also smart enough not to charge for parking when it’s free or when it’s not allowed. And they sell “downtown hopper” passes that allow you to park multiple times and pay once.
• I’ve been using METRO’s Q Card for a few months now, and it makes boarding bus or a train a lot easier: unlike the old magnetic media, it reads reliably every time, and it’s a lot quicker to scan. METRO has prepaid cards before, but the Q card will be easier to get and easier to use, and it will mean the end of fumbling for coins for a lot of riders.

The next step will be linking these new technologies to more places. As I suggested earlier this week, it would be natural to let Q cards be used to pay for coffee on a commuter train. The new parking meter technology could be used to let merchants validate parking. HCTRA is in the lead here: you can now use an EZ Tg to pay for parking at Intercontinental and Hobby airports.

There’s a side benefit as well: better data. EZ Tag readers all over Houston are used by Houston Transtar to measure traffic speeds and post them on the Web. Smart parking meters could allow he city to track how much spaces are used and set parking fees accordingly. And METRO’s new GPS equipped buses put together with the transfer information on Q cards should provide the best ridership data ever, allowing METRO to build a system that serves riders better.

So what’s the catch? For one thing, privacy. There was a CSI episode recently in which the perpetrator was caught because toll records showed them being in the right place at the right time. How much do we want government to know about our travel patterns? The new technology also tends to work against occasional users or visitors. If you’re from out of town, you don’t have an EZ Tag, and you can’t use the Westpark Toll Road. Once Q Card is fully rolled out, someone boarding a bus with cash won’t get a transfer. Solutions are in the works for both, but until then, you’re out of luck.

But these concerns don;t seem to be holding up the technology. And it’s entirely possible that one day we will have a little card that will let us do everything we need — from getting on to toll road to getting lunch to getting in the front door — and keep track of all of that. Life will be easier, but less anonymous.

All this is a reminder that while it’s easy to think of transportation in terms of hardware (lanes, tracks, buses, and terminals), software (toll collection, tickets, trip planners, signage, traffic signal sequencing, motorists assistance and online maps) is equally important.

Our forums are pretty smart, too. But that’s because of the people, not the technology.

(photo: Deutsche Bahn)

This Friday, the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation (THSRTC) is holding an event (by invite, booked full) to discuss high speed passenger rail between Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because a very similar idea was studied in the early 1990s. Ultimately, the Texas TGV project failed because of uncertain financing and political opposition.

So what’s different now? Gas prices are higher, and people are somewhat more environmentally conscious. There are successful rail transit systems in Houston and Dallas that could act as local feeders and that have left more people open to rail in general. And the project has the support of Continental and American Airlines, which may act as a counterweight to Southwest, whose lobbying was instrumental in killing the project last time around. Is that enough?

The more important question, though, is whether the project fills a need.

THSRTC “Texas T-Bone” proposal envisions a new rail line paralleling I-35 from San Antonio via Austin, Temple, and Waco to Dallas Fort Worth (this route could follow the Trans-Texas Corridor to some extent, but unlike the TTC it would have to go into cities, not past their fringes), and another from Houston via College Station to Temple. Their web site looks at this route only in broad strokes, so let’s get a bit more specific about stations:

(base map: Texas population density, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Texas_population_map.png)

This system looks roundabout: you’d never consider driving from Houston to Austin via College Station. But speed has a way of making up for that. At 200 mph — the design speed for current French, German, and Japanese steel-wheel-on-steel-rail high speed trains — we’d have travel times, including stops, like this:

Those times are quite competitive with air travel. Trains don’t need security screening like planes do — there’s no way to highjack a train, nor can it be blown out of the sky. That saves at least half an hour compared to the plane trip. And stations would be closer to many destinations — on a trip from Downtown Houston to Downtown Dallas, one could save an hour on travel time. Trains are also much more reliable than planes: Spain’s AVE gives riders their money back when the train is more than 5 minutes late, and they’ve only had to pay out 0.16% of the time. And, of course, a trains is much more comfortable than a plane: wide seats, more legroom, space to walk around, a cafe car, onboard wifi, even seats arranged around a table for meetings en route.

Experience from across the world indicates that high speed rail is competitive with planes on trip under four hours. Some examples:

The demand for service between Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio is clearly there: Southwest flies Houston-Dallas 29 times a day, Continental 12 times, and American 6 times. But there’s demand from the smaller cities, too. Places like College Station and Waco don’t get very good airline service now; they would be much better connect then they are now. And rail service would likely take travelers off the highway, too. Overall, this system would serve Houston’s 4 biggest metropolitan areas as well as 3 smaller ones, adding up to 75% of the state’s population.

The participation of Continental and American adds another travel market. Both airlines already operate codeshares with high speed rail in the Northeast, France, and Germany, and the German service even includes checked baggage on the train that’s seamlessly transferred to the plane. A high speed rail system in Texas could act as an integral part of their route network. To “fly” from Austin to Paris, for example, you could check luggage and get boarding passes at the Downtown Austin station, take the train to IAH, then go through security and board the plane without having to deal with your luggage again. The same baggage facilties would also mean that a Houston traveler could check in at the Downtown Intermodal Center, then take the train to IAH for a flight.

Portions of the route would also serve a commuter market. A station in the Woodlands, for example, would make sense as a way for people from north and northwest Houston to catch the train to Dallas. But it would also become a commuter facility, probably with extra local trains going only this far. The same kind of thing would happen in Round Rock.

The big question: money. To be fast, a rail line has to be relatively straight, and it has to be grade-seprated. You can’t get 200 mph on existing rail lines; you need to build new ones (though they can follow existing highways or rail lines to minimize impacts.) In urban areas, tunneling may well be required. This isn’t as big a project as, say, the Trans-Texas Corridor. But it is big and expensive.

So far, the only high speed rail in the United States (and it just barely qualifies as high speed) is in the Northeast, on a route built to high standards and electrified in the 1930s. In Texas, we’d need to start from scratch. California is the state that’s come closest to doing this; the California High Speed Rail Authority has completed environmental studies for a San Diego-Los Angeles-Bakersfield-Fresno-Stockton-San Francisco/Sacramento system, the governor is in a support, and a ballot measure will go to the voters next year. Texas doesn’t have the same level of congestion (on highways or airports) or the developed local and regional transit service that California does. But we do have populous urban centers close enough together, and a history of ambitious public works. We can do it. The question is whether we want to spend the money to do it.

Speed on down to our forums with your thoughts.

The draft Regional Transportation Plan issued on Friday neatly sorts projects into modes: a highway project here, a pedestrian project over here, and transit project there.

No wonder we have such a hard time building good streets.

In Houston, most planners are still working under the idea that a street is a pathway for cars. A good street, though, is a pathway for cars, a transit corridor, a bike path, a pedestrian walkway, a shopping mall, a parking lot, a gathering space, and a public park. We knew how to build good streets once, and we have a few in Houston: Texas Avenue, Main Street at the Mecom Fountain, Rice Boulevard in the Village. But then came road planners, and land use planners, and transportation planners, and federal funding streams and in the process we forgot how all this stuff works together. For 50 years now, city transportation departments have been building streets for cars, and letting other agencies figure out the rest somehow. (For a case in point, see Dan Lundeen’s crosswalk post in our forums.)

Then I saw Washington D.C.’s Great Streets Initiative and I thought, that’s more like it. They’ve brought together the transportation department, the planning department, and the parks department, and they’re working with the transit agency as well. They’ve chosen six streets and they’re doing a master plan for each one. They’re looking at traffic lanes, turn lanes, traffic signals, parking, sidewalks, lighting, crosswalks, bus stops, bike lanes, street trees, and more. They’re looking at land use, because there’s no way to design a good street without knowing how it will be used, and they’re talking to the neighborhoods and businesses along the streets, because they know the streets best.

It all sounds obvious, actually. But it’s stunning. They’re looking (pdf) at an intersection and considering traffic flow, pedestrian flows, and transit , and they’re modeling all of this to minimize backup at the light, minimize walking distances between major pedestrian destinations, and locate bus stops so that riders can transfer easily and won’t be tempted to jaywalk. Different city departments are interacting an a way that’s as complicated as the world they’re actually building.

And it looks like we have the start of the same thinking in Houston. The city’s Urban Corridor Planning process,
which wraps up a phase of public workshops with a presentation Wednesday night at the George R. Brown 6:00-9:00, is looking at all of these issues. I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen so far. The city has hired some top-notch consultants, the Planning Partnership from Toronto. They’ve done some of the best work I’ve seen in trying to understand what our city is actually like and how it works. And they’ve done a great job of letting the public into that process.

But the real question for us is how much support the city — its elected leaders and its departments — will give to this process. I can already hear the predictable anti-zoning chorus. But the fact is we’re already regulating this stuff. The city already designs traffic lanes and turn lanes and signals and signage and sidewalks and bike lanes. METRO already designs bus stops and rail lines. The city regulates how far buildings have to be set back from the sidewalk, how much landscaping they need to have, how many curb cuts they can build, and how many parking spots they need to have. We’re already planning streets. But we’re planning haphazardly. We have to do better if we want to have better streets.

To create a good street, the public sector has to be in sync with what the private sector does. We don’t need the city to decide whether a street will be commercial or residential, dense or less dense. Neighborhoods, developers, homebuyers, and businesses are deciding that already. But it’s the city’s job, the county’s job, and METRO’s job to make sure those streets are suited to those uses. And that requires us to think of the whole street, not just the traffic lanes or the transit or the sidewalk alone.

We have our own public space in the forums. And you won’t get run over on your way there.

I grew up in a town — Pinole, California — that was served by no less than three fixed route bus operators. The San Francisco Bay Area as whole has over 50 transit operators. From a passenger standpoint, it can be a mess. Schedules are uncoordinated, transfer stations are confusing, every system has their own map, and it’s not uncommon to need two or three different tickets for one trip. There have been efforts to improve the situation — a single trip planner at transit.511.org (covering most of the important agencies), and a new smart card ticketing system, Translink (accepted by two bus operators) — but it’s still a mess. Just this year, the new Third Street Light Rail in San Francisco opened minus its end station, a transfer to Caltrain commuter rail, because at the same time that MUNI was designing the transfer Caltrain decided to move its part of it.

In Houston, we haven’t had this problem because transit has been dominated by one agency. But as the region grows, that’s changing. METRO’s boundaries were set by the state legislature in 1978, and they reflect the where the limits of suburban growth were back then. Since then, the Woodlands, Sugar Land, and Pearland hove grown up outside METRO’s area, and METRO is not permitted to fund service in those areas.

If we build regional commuter rail lines we’re only going to make matters worse. There are already 3 non-METRO bus operators in the 13-county HGAC region, and several more are being planned. Consider the proposed College Station – Cypress – Houston – Clear Lake – Galveston commuter rail line: it would connect to Brazos Transit District service in Bryan/College Station, planned Colorado Transit District Service in Hempstead, Prairie View, and Waller, METRO, proposed Harris County transit service in Clear Lake, proposed Connect Transit Service in Texas City and LaMarque, and Island Transit service in Galveston.

Imagine you’re a doctor at UTMB in Galveston, traveling to M.D. Anderson for a conference in a decade or so. You go the regional online trip planner, and it finds a trip for you. You catch the Island Transit Trolley at UTMB and swipe you Q Card for the $1.25 fare. You get off at the Galveston trains station and walk right onto the commuter train, swiping your card at a reader on the platform. It sees that you’ve just paid to ridden local transit and, rather than charging you the full $7 fare, charges you only $5.75. After a nice ride (improved by a coffee you bought on the train with same Q card) you get off at the Intermodal Terminal in Houston and ride up the escalator to the light rail line. You swipe you card on the platform; it gives you a free transfer. You ride to the TMC and get off, right on schedule.

That’s the best case. The worst case? Finding your way through three web sites to find the best itinerary. Three different ticket systems that leave you fumbling for change two or three times in your trip. A new Houston commuter rail stop for the Galveston line that’s a three block walk from light rail.

There are political and organizational reasons for having multiple transit agencies. I’m not saying those are good reasons: I think it makes much more sense to expand METRO than to create new operators next door with their own fleets, maintenance facilities, and administrative overhead. But I don’t think METRO should be running buses in College Station or Lake Jackson.

Regardless, passengers shouldn’t have to think about what agency they’re riding. As I noted last week, Germany has created a seamless system with multiple operators. They even have a nationwide transit trip planner. We need some central entity that will centralize trip planning and ticketing. We could create a new one. Or we could have METRO take on that function since they already have the technology in place, and because they make up 95% or the regional transit fleet. METRO might produce maps and schedules for all the transit operations in HGAC, and administer a uniform ticketing system, letting the individual agencies buy the fare equipment under METRO’s bulk contract. Individual agencies would still decide what service to offer and what to charge for it.

We haven’t reached the point yet where coordination between different transit agencies is affecting riders in the Houston area. Now’s the time to make sure it never will.

What is the capital of Texas? Austin. But only politically. Texas has no true capital in the sense of London or Paris — we have several major metro areas, and no single one dominates.

What is the center of Houston? Downtown, perhaps. But not really. There’s more retail in the Galleria, more health care in the Medical Center, and new centers growing up in places like the Woodlands. Houston is a metropolitan area with multiple centers, and it’s getting more so.

So how do we build transit for a place with many centers?

Here’s a clue. This is a swatch of Germany, one of the most multi-centered countries in the world. At the top is Frankfurt, and at the bottom is Stuttgart. Here’s what the map shows:

• Black lines are the national passenger trains network, the DB. The thin lines are branches, served perhaps by a local train every hour or two. The thick lines carry not just local trains but intercity and international trains, to places as far away as Paris and Warsaw.
• Green lines are commuter trains, called S-Bahn in Germany. The S-Bahn connects major cities to nearby cities and the suburbs. These run all day, every day, every 15 minutes to half an hour. For the most part, these systems use the same tracks as DB trains. In Frankfurt and Stuttgart, though, they run in subway tunnels in the city center. In Karlsruhe, the S-Bahn is operated using light rail vehicles which share tracks with DB trains on most of the system but run on city streets in Downtown. Here we see four of these networks; three are connected at their outer ends.
• Blue lines are light rail, called U-Bahn, serving city cores, outer neighborhoods, and inner suburbs. Both Frankfurt and Stuttgart have light rail systems that run in subway in the center, then in reserved lanes further out.
• Red lines are streetcars. They use the same technology as light rail, but to a different end: they run in city streets to serve close in neighborhoods and circulate people in the core. In this region, there are six such networks, in addition to two suburban lines that use the same urban networks.

Why use four different rail systems? Because they all serve different purposes. The Germans have concluded that a light rail system isn’t suited for getting you to a different city, and a commuter train system isn’t suited for getting you from one urban neighborhood to another.

But the key is linking these systems. The white dots on map are high speed rail (PDF) stops, and almost all of them are also major intermodal hubs, usually located at downtown train stations. Here’s one, at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof:

All of the different modes I’ve mentioned are here. Transferring from one to the other is simple. Once you arrive at this hub, you can get anywhere in Frankfurt easily. This isn’t the only hub like this. Every city center on this map has one. So do the airports: Frankfurt airport is served by S-Bahn trains to Frankfurt and to other local cities like Mainz and Wiesbaden. It’s also served by high speed trains to German cities like Stuttgart, Cologne, and Hamburg and international trains to Vienna.

But while the system is set up to make transfers easy, it’s also designed to minimize them. There was already a streetcar line from the Hauptbahnhof into Downtown (PDF) when the S-Bahn opened, but planners didn’t want to force transfers. So the S-Bahn keeps going, diving into its downtown tunnel and stopping right where the jobs and the stores are. Multiple systems run parallel, providing different kind of service.

Perhaps the most important part of the system doesn’t show on the map. Consider the immediate Frankfurt area: there are half a dozen different agencies operating rail transit. But the passengers don’t need to care about that. You can ride light rail in Frankfurt, transfer to the S-Bahn, ride to Mainz, and get on a streetcar for the end of your trip (PDF), all with a single ticket. That’s three different operators, but there’s one blanket agency that coordinates ticketing and rider information.

Here’s the kicker: this map covers about the same area as the greater Houston region. Here’s the comparison:

Like the Frankfurt area, we’re a region of multiple centers. Of course, we don’t have nearly the same transit system. But our system is growing. We should take some lessons:

• Provide multiple systems to meet multiple needs. Don’t make suburban passengers ride through 12 stops to try to serve urban passengers as well. And don’t make urban passengers walk out of their way to a station so that the trains can run faster for the suburban passengers.
• Link systems. Wherever two transit systems meet, there should be an easy connection between them. And at key places there should be important nodes that bring all the systems together.
• Make the experience seamless for the passenger. Put all of the systems in one online trip planner. Make sure the person sitting at the ticket window in the transit center has all that information as well. And sell the passenger one ticket for their entire trip.

In a few years, it may be possible to do the same kind of light rail-commuter rail-streetcar trip I described above in traveling from Houston to Galveston. Will we make it as easy?

Tell us in our forums.

The hard part about putting transit where the people are is that there’s stuff there already. It’s easy to build new transportation infrastructure through open fields. It’s much trickier to do it in a built up city.

The good news is that it’s been done before. We have 150 years of experience in building rail transit in cities. Along the way, we’ve created up a toolbox of ways to make transit work better and fit into the city better. Today, some of my favorite tools. Some are already in use in Houston. Others come from across the country and across the world. But we know they work.

Green track

Transportation engineers are comfortable with concrete. But a train doesn’t need pavement; it only needs a pair of two inch wide rails. What’s in between them is irrelevant. In France, they’ve re-discovered what New Orleans has known for 150 years: you can grow grass between the tracks. It looks a lot better. It absorbs water. And it makes it obvious to motorists that they shouldn’t drive on the tracks.

(photos from the Paris tram official site)

Street trees

Trees belong in streets: they shade, they beautify, and they absorb pollution. They also go well with light rail, either along the sidewalks or in the center of the street.

Signalized left turn lanes

Left turns are traffic trouble spots, regardless of whether rail is involved or not. And by far the best solution is left turn lanes. They’re safer than left turns from through lanes, reducing crashes by 50%, and they’re not ignored like “no left turn” signs. Where rail runs in the middle of the street, signalized left turn lanes are a safe way to allow turn across the tracks. The bonus: capacity. A 4-lane street with left turn lanes has has 30% more capacity than a 4-lane street without turn lanes. Conversely, a 2-lane street with turn lanes has 2/3 of the capacity of a 4-lane street, but takes only 3/4 as much space at intersections and 1/2 as much elsewhere.

Pedestrian crossings

There can be good reasons to close some cross streets to through traffic at the rail line. We did that in Midtown, and it hasn’t harmed traffic. But it can be very disruptive for pedestrians. The solution? Pedestrian-only crossings. There are a few in Midtown, and they work very well — there’s never been a pedestrian hit by a train on any of them. The secret? The crossing zig-zags in the median, forcing pedestrians to look down the track they’re about to cross so they will see an oncoming train. And the median acts as a pedestrian refuge, so one only has to cross one half of the street at once. That reduces the chance of pedestrians being hit by cars, actually making the crossing safer than before the train was there.

lane reductions

Just because a street has four lanes doesn’t mean it needs four lanes. Some street capacity is desperately needed. But other streets can be narrowed without affecting traffic. Consider Main Street Downtown: there are a pair of high-capacity one way streets on either side that don’t run close to capacity even at rush hour. In Downtown, reducing Main from six lanes to two meant wider sidewalks and landscaping. Elsewhere, it could eliminate the need to take property, or it could mean added parking. And fewer lanes doesn’t need to mean no left turns: you could still have turn lanes at intersections.

fencing

Rail can be separated from traffic lanes by curbs or by lane markers. But it can make sense to provide a more prominent barrier. Fences make it obvious to drivers which lane they should be in and prevent jaywalking. And, if they’re well designed, they can look good, too.

sidewalks

Sidewalks aren’t beautification; they’re transportation. Wide sidewalks enable people to walk more. And people need to walk to get to a train station. The bottom line: wide, shaded, attractive sidewalks will encourage more people to leave their cars at home and ride rail. They’ll also make for a better neighborhood.

bike racks

We tend to think of bikes as recreation. But they’re transportation, too. A bike can be a really good way to get to a rail station if it’s a bit too far away to walk. But where do you put the bike? Lockers, rented and locked, if you ride every day. Racks if you don’t.

Yes, that’s 2/3 of the CTC logo. San Jose believes in intermodality.

OK, you say. We have tools. But who decides how to use them? METRO, for one. But also the City of Houston. They will do that right only if the public — the people who live and work in these neighborhoods — has its say. How does that happen? Here’s one way:

HOUSTON’S URBAN CORRIDOR PLANNING
kick-off workshop for all six corridors
Saturday, April 14, 2007 at 8:30 am
George R. Brown Convention Center

See you there? And in our forums?

The bus stop we saw yesterday was in dire need of a makeover. This light rail station is doing a lot better. It has nice wide sidewalks leading to it, benches and shelter, and trains every 6 minutes for most of the day. But it turns out that some of the same things missing at the bus stop are missing here, too.

1. Schedule information. When’s the last train of the day? When’s the first train? How often do the trains run? Which station does the number 2 bus connect to? All really good questions. But you can’t find the answers here. METRO actually prints posters with all this information. They’re posted at only 3 stations, though, and only in the bus waiting areas, not the station platforms.

2. Next train information. There are sensors embedded in the trackways. METRO can tell where every train is at every time. There are data links between stations and the central control centers. There are LED displays at the stations. And yet the best way to tell if a train is coming soon is to lean over the track and peer into the distance.

Here’s how Washington METRO does it:

Knowing that there’s another train in 3 minutes makes me feel a lot better about just barely missing the one you see here. And yesterday, I linked to San Francisco MUNI’s online realtime map of its trains:

why not here?

3. Wayfinding. There are maps at each station of the surroundings. That’s good. But where do I catch the bus? The maps on the trains list 39 buses that connect at this station. But there’s nothing to tell a passenger where to find the bus stop. At some stations, there is more information: the Downtown stations have maps on the sidewalks showing not just major landmarks but restaurants and office buildings. And the Museum District station has a neat sign post pointing the way to the museums. Neither of those were placed by METRO. But perhaps they should have been, at all the stations.

Like I said yesterday, this isn’t rocket science. Everything on this list has been done elsewhere, and two of the three don’t even require technology. But these things matter. 40,000 people a day ride these trains. If we make every one of their trips a little easier — and save a few of them from wandering around puzzled for 10 minutes — we’ve made a big difference.

Find your way to our forums with your comments.

Today, the start of an occasional series of transportation makeovers.
Our first subject: a bus stop. This is one of the two stops I can choose from for my bus ride home. What could we do to make it better?

(1) Destination signs. The sign on this bus stop reads “9 Gulfton.” The sign on the bus stop across the street reads “9 Gulfton.” Which stop do I wait at to catch the bus to Gulfton? The other one, it turns out. How about signs that read “9 Gulfton to Downtown” and “9 Gulfton to Gulfton”?

(2) Schedules. Speaking of destinations, wouldn’t it be nice if I could walk up to the bus stop and find out where the bus goes and when it’s scheduled to come? Like a printed bus schedule, but attached to the bus stop sign?

(3) Real time bus arrival information. Let’s get a little more high tech here. It’s useful to know when the next bus is scheduled to arrive; it’s far better to know when it actually will arrive. METRO buses are equipped with GPS units and wireless communication that reports their position. It’s not a big leap to use that information to predict arrival times based on where the bus is right now, then display the results on LED displays at each stop. If that’s too expensive, an alternative: a sign on each bus stop that gives a phone number and a bus stop code; call the number and punch in the code and an automated voice tells you which buses are coming. In either case, those arrival times should be on a web page, too.

(4) A bench. Let’s get basic again. Unlike many, this stop has a bench. But it’s behind a hedge; if you sit there the bus driver can’t see you until he’s at the stop. In other words, sit, and your bus may drive right by. Every stop should have a bench, and the bench should be placed so you can look down the road.

(5) A shelter. Because it’s not always a nice day in Houston.

(6) A sidewalk. The only way to get to this stop is to walk in the street. There are three large office buildings in the same block, but no sidewalk leading there. And there’s a middle school and an HCC campus a little further down; the only way to get to those is through a gap in a hedge.

(7) More frequent service. This is the best improvement any bus stop could get. If the buses run every 15 minutes instead of every 30, missing a bus is no longer traumatic. If they run every ten, you don’t even need to look at a schedule.

The theme of this series: this isn’t rocket science. A big part of quality transit is getting little things right. Posted schedules, real-time arrival times, and shelters won’t turn a bus into light rail. But they will make riding the bus easier and more pleasant, and make many people’s daily trips better.

Luckily, it seems METRO is starting to get this. There’s already a pilot program to post schedules on some routes, with more in the works. There’s been discussion of an advertising contract that would include new shelters at no cost to METRO. Real time arrival information at bus stops — either via display or via cellphone — is part of METRO’s FY 2007 budget (PDF). And the same budget includes much more significant improvements on certain heavily traveled “signature” routes. Meanwhile, “Project Grid” is underway, looking at how to restructure routes to make it easier to get from one part of town to another without going through Downtown. I hope METRO will tell us more soon. But it’s good to know that the local bus system is finally getting some more attention.

Give our forums a makeover with your comments.

photo: COLIN MCCONNELL/TORONTO STAR

One of the oddities of Houston transit is the difference between how Houstonians perceive their transit system and how the rest of the world perceives it. Over and over again, I hear the same criticisms of the Main Street Line: “It needs to go to the suburbs.” “It should be elevated.” “It stops too often.” But in the rest of the transit world, Houston’s little rail line is perceived, for good reason, as a huge success.

Historically, most U.S. light rail lines have run in streets only for short stretches near downtown, then used other rights of way — usually abandoned railroad tracks — to run fast out to the suburbs. Four years ago, when METRO put together a plan for a 73 mile system composed almost entirely of street alignments, Houston seemed to be bucking that trend.

But it’s looking more and more like Houston was not an aberration but a trendsetter. In retrospect, the cities that built light rail early were those that had convenient abandoned railroad tracks. In some cases, these cities were extremely fortunate: St. Louis had not only an abandoned rail line to the airport and the northwest suburbs but an abandoned downtown subway. But those cities like Houston that don’t have such luck want good transit, too. Meanwhile, tightening federal funding requirements make it all the more important that light rail lines carry as many people as possible, and that means going right to where people want to go, not just downtown but all over the system.

It turns out our Main Street line wasn’t the only line being built in streets to serve acitivity centers and urban neighborhoods. In 2004, Portland opened the Interstate line, running 4.5 miles right down a major commercial street. Salt Lake City’s University Line connected Downtown to the the University of Utah along 400 South Street in 2001. San Francisco’s Third Street Line, entirely in city streets through commercial and residential neighborhoods, opened this January. Almost all of the new Phoenix system, now under construction, will be in streets. And planning is almost complete on the Central Corridor Line, connecting Downtown Minneapolis to Downtown St. Paul by way of the University of Minnesota, 11 miles of light rail, almost all of it down the center of University Avenue.

Perhaps the most notable convert is Toronto. Toronto is one of North America’s most transit-oriented cities. Toronto knows all about rail in city streets: they still have a streetcar system: 11 lines, 190 miles. This isn’t light rail: these streetcars share lanes with cars, and reliability and speed suffer accordingly.

The shortcomings of the streetcars lead to an explicit policy, from the 1950s onwards, of replacing streetcars with subways. The Toronto subway has been a success by any measure, but it’s come painfully slowly. So far: 43 miles in 60 years, replacing less than a fifth of the streetcar system.

Now comes a change in direction. The new plan: only minor subway extensions. Instead, 75 miles of new true light rail, almost all of it in reserved lanes in city streets. Meanwhile, streetcar lines will be upgraded with reserved lanes and new stations. That was already done on one short line in the 1990s; it’s underway now on St. Clair Avenue. Ironically, St. Clair had reserved streetcar lanes until 1935. They made way for cars; now Toronto is saying that was a mistake. The way forward is street-running light rail in reserved lanes.
As lightrailnow.org notes, the Toronto Sun recently carried a column by Rob Granatstein making the case for light rail:

Sure, we dream of subways every which way across [Toronto], but it’s not realistic, would take forever and blow our blown budget. It’s hard to imagine a subway line built after the York U. extension.

That leaves us with light rail. If you’ve been to places like Europe, Houston or Minnesota, you know Toronto’s already decades behind on this mode of travel.

I’m used to Houstonians saying we should be more like Toronto or Dallas or Denver. I tend to be hesitant — Houston is a wonderful and unique city, and we need to build on what we are, rather than try to be something we’re not. But those comparisons are a sign those other cities are doing something right. And when a columnist in Toronto — one of the most urban and transit-rich cities in North America — says they should be more like Houston, we’re doing something right.

Toronto, by the way, is home to the best urban design blog I know, spacingwire. It makes me want to visit. Unfortunately, I haven’t, so I had to use someone else’s photo for this post. Have you been? Tell us in the forums.

Successful rail transit systems serve dense employment centers. Our light rail line is successful because it serves two, and it goes right into the middle of both of them. People don’t like to transfer; they want to be able to get off the train and walk to work.

Want proof? Look at Denver. Denver’s light rail system is unusual in that it has two Downtown branches. One runs on city streets through the heart of Downtown (top picture, above). The other follows a rail line around Downtown, then stops at an intermodal center (Union Station, bottom picture, above) where riders transfer to frequent bus service that runs through Downtown on a transit mall.

Denver is also unusual in that it’s a big believer in one seat rides. In Houston, I’ve had several METRO planners tell me they are concerned about the operational issues of having two lines share track. In Denver, they have 5 different lines running on the same two-track alignment, and three lines sharing the same tracks on Downtown streets. Both of the two major suburban corridors have direct service to both of the downtown branches.

Finally, Denver is one of the handful of cities that has tried to build light rail to serve a spread out suburban employment center. Denver’s Tech Center resembles not the Galleria but rather the Energy Corridor: office parks scattered around freeway exits with big gaps between them.

All of this sets up an experiment: how do we get ridership? Lightrailnow.org gives us the data to run that experiment. Here’s February’s average weekday ridership on each of the lines:

Lines running into Downtown

D: 24,785

F: 14,285

H: 12,668

Lines running into an intermodal center at the edge of Downtown

C: 4,416

E: 5,693

Lines running from a suburb to a low-density suburban employment corridor

G: 678

Notice a pattern? Passengers don’t want to transfer to a circulator service to get to work, even a high-quality circulator like Denver’s. And serving suburban employment densities with rail transit is just about futile: 80% of Houston’s bus routes have higher ridership than Denver’s suburb to suburb rail line.

Trains aren’t vacuum cleaners. You don’t just put them next to a freeway and hope they suck people out of their cars. People will ride transit if it gets them where they want to go conveniently. If we want to maximize the number of people who will take transit (which should be the goal) we need to find places where transit will serve as many people as possible as conveniently as possible. That means serving density, particularly employment density, directly.

At CTC, all routes lead to our forums.