A SPECIAL KIND OF LIMBO FOR METRO’S UNIVERSITY LINE 
Have plans for a light-rail line along Westpark and Richmond from Hillcroft to Eastwood been dealt a deathblow? In a story aired this evening, Ted Oberg claims Metro “recently took that project off the table” — and that “nothing will be built until at least 2025 if Metro gets its way.” But transit agency spokesperson Jerome Gray says the patient is still alive: “The Metro Board has not scrapped plans for the University Line,” he tells Swamplot. “While work has slowed down Metro has not pulled this project out of its rail expansion program. . . . Metro will proceed with rail expansion as funds become available.” [abc13] Map: Metro
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That’s METRO-speak for: “There’s no way in hell we are ever going to build this route, but there’s a whole bunch of people working on it who still want to receive their paychecks long into the future.
Millions of us are out in the county, completely un-served by Metro. Why are we paying for this? Why are people within the City of Houston paying for this? It is monumental incompetence. Metro is frittering away close to $100 million of our tax dollars. For what? I bet there were lots of out-of-town junkets involved. Lots of fat salaries and guaranteed pensions for people who accomplished exactly nothing. Prove me wrong.
Damn, it is safe to say that this city/county/region/state is pathetic when it comes to it’s citizens’ needs of movement, which become more and more dire with every 6 passing months, especially in Houston. When will the voters here wake up? I am so glad to be going back to my home town on the west coast where there is Amtrack, commuter rail, and light rail. I don’t understand how people put up with the heat, humidity, and lack of reasonable means of movement here… Perhaps people are waiting for reasonable-priced housing to accompany a two hour commute before they realize that Houston’s “cheap” cost of housing/living is off-set by the astronomical cost of transportation, money lost in terms of time in traffic, or waiting for a ridiculous BRT system. Yee-haw Houston/Texas! Let’s go buy another friggin’ Suburban! (Excuse me while I go puke a little bit in my mouth.)
Well, that pretty much sucks the big one. A ton of work on my end for the past 5 years for nothing.
@bare..san jose = home? if so, commuter rail is slow and insolvent, light rail is just slow, and amtrak is irrelevant. The cost of living within the loop isn’t bad and the traffic is mostly avoidable if you work downtown.
I work in the UH-TSU area, and both MLK and Wheeler are torn up with Metro rail work. So I don’t get it. All I’ve seen so far are a bunch of heated opinions. Anyone out there have some facts to share?
Bare,
Well, thousands upon thousands of “West Coast” types are coming here to Houston. Don’t let the proverbial door hit ya on the way out, now.
I myself never want to go back to California to live.
Houston’s always been generally good to me (and a lot of other people) and I do get curious why bitter a-holes like you going back to Class-Ridden Paradise even need to remark about H-town.
And moreover, Bare,
How does anyone live with the specter of the Big One out there?
When I lived in SoCal, I felt a momentary tremor coming from San Ysidro. That was far more scary than any heat and humidity I ever deal with here.
I use public transportation more than I drive my own car here. San Fran has how many square miles compared to Houston? Yet Houston is decently served by its bus system. The METRORAIL has the second largest number of riders per square mile in the country.
Unlike you self-entitled Houston-bashers…some of us former Californians KNOW how to make Houston work for us.
Be gone, Bare.
In Houston, we don’t sit around awaiting for the government to allow us to go places or for the government or provide us with a means to get there. We just turn the key and go. Car. Truck. SUV. Motorcycle. Bus. Bike. Walk. There are LOTS of options. Freedom at its VERY best.
Don’t like commuting? Don’t live in the suburbs. Isn’t it nice to have options?
I for one am THRILLED that METRO isn’t going to confiscate an incredibly valuable COMMUNITY asset knows as Richmond Ave and reserve its use exclusively for the tiny fraction of one percent of Houstonians who would ever set foot on a choo choo train.
METRO Rail is joke. And a bad one at that.
@Bare, if we could send you to the broke state of Commie-fornia today, we would.
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Good riddance on the light rail, I still can’t even imagine a scenario where I or anyone I know would use it. Additionally, public transport involves lots of walking, lots of walking only promotes the sweaty odor of the population.
Isn’t it clear that the problems with the University line aren’t Metro’s doing? Culberson has pronounced a fatwa against the line, and that’s that.
Oberg’s piece was a one-sided hatchet job. I guess he’s trying to be Delchifino. He didn’t bother to mention that the University line was side-tracked by Republican politicians year after year including Delay, Culbertson,and Wong – who all blocked funds for the line; in deference to the Texas highway building lobby. After all, we first voted FOR this line when Kathy Whitmire was mayor! He didn’t mention the ridiculous but effective opposition from the tiny, but apparently well-connected Afton Oaks neighborhood who got the line diverted from Richmond to Westpark; one of the dumbest things ever. Metro is not blameless in this, but they are hardly solely responsible. Houston’s media continues to suck.
With luck Houston will implement autodriving cars, jitneys and taxis by then. We can get rid of the whole ugly monstrosity from end to end.
Hey Lou,
We feel the same way each time we have to build an 8-lane highway feeding your McMansions their fake ugly yards at the end of endless dead end cup de sacs stacking up endless with giant SUV’s for a family of 4 with teenage children that already have their own giant SUV.
sfdisturbed – yes, bus service from most of Houston, in to Downtown is pretty good. But if you happen to work elsewhere – say, Uptown, like me – you’re pretty much out of luck.
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What’s also troubling is that the Park & Rides, as well as the Transit Centers (other than the Downtown Transit Center) are islands, accessible by car but not on foot. The Bellaire Transit Center literally is on a road median – and it’s actually the easiest to get to on the Southwest side of town. The Brays Bayou Hike & Bike Trail sails right on past the West Loop Park & Ride – with no link to it. And perhaps most egregious on the Southwest side – the Hillcroft Park & Ride is completely surrounded by Freeway Interchanges; it is completely impossible to walk or bike there from anywhere!
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That said, it is very frustrating that the University Line has stopped in its tracks. Of course, it never really was a university line in the strict sense of the word: it started at a university (UH), and went past a university (Rice), but they never went the extra mile or so to end it at Houston Baptist University; which would have really made it The University Line. This also would have let the commercial core of Sharpstown have a light rail stop – big plus in my book.
Agree with Jon that as a reminder, we the citizens of Houston voted for the Richmond line and the Republicans, backed by the highway construction lobby have shredded the line. Houston will ultimately choke on our own smog if we don’t do something about mass transit. The system that is being developed certainly has its fair share of faults but it is a start to an overall system.
Bare, please don’t take time in leaving this god foresaken place, get the hell out now.
It would be a shame for it not to be built. By connecting that line in with the others it would be a rail system that made sence. METRO just needs to cut through the bull s@^* and just go out and start digging.
Lou: As pointed out, “we” have to pay for 1000’s of miles of more and more freeways to bring the burbs into civilization. Roads that I’ll never use (thankfully).
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I’m not making an argument for or against rail, but you having to waste money on a rail you won’t use isn’t any different from burbways that innerloopers don’t want/need.
I don’t know what the Republicans did, but I do know that the former Metro administration did a ton of damage. I seem to recall that they secured federal stimulus funds (~$900 million worth) based on outdated sales tax numbers. And didn’t they also violate the Buy America clause, which led the FTC to revoke those funds? Seems like any other obstructions are ancillary to Metro’s own $900 million mistake.
For those blaming politicians in Washington, you do realize that METRO just doesn’t have the matching funds to build the line even if the Feds contributed their portions. So cutting the funding was preventing the situation where we would be handed the funds and the rail still wouldn’t have been built.
METRO is just about broke building these lines has cut bus services and seen ridership decrease.
I don’t know why we can’t learn from Dallas or Los Angeles’ folly that rail is a waste of public money.
And those complaining about wide freeways, you do realize that U.S. commerce would come to a grinding halt without them. Freeways and freight rail move goods and they are both needed.
There is a place for rail transit, but not yet in Houston. New York, Boston, and Chicago didn’t start building there lines until critical mass was reached. Houston is no where near that since we have a highway and surface street system that is not at capacity.
Unfortunate. This was the best line in the whole system and would have the greatest positive impact. It’s a shame how backwards a lot of people in Houston are towards public transit. While the rest of the world moves forward, we are moving backward.
From kjb434:
METRO is just about broke building these lines has cut bus services and seen ridership decrease.
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Just about? Our mayors, Lanier, White, and Whats-Her-Name have all pandered to the developers who hope to somehow build along the lines and get rich off it. Didn’t work too well with the Main Street line. You would think someone would have gotten the message. The only message the politicians seem to get is the message sent by the campain contributions from the developers. Hate to say it but everyone should have listened to Tom De Lay with regadr to the disaster that METRO has become. Billions of dollars spent to serve a few while those who would benefit most still have no real rapid transit system and have no choice but to ride the freeways instead of the rail. Or even the bus.
Republican politicians are partially to blame. So who keeps voting in these loonies when the majority of citizens have already voted in favor of more light rail?
I don’t know what was supposed to make the University Line so great (other than for UH and TSU students who live along the west side of the Loop, maybe.
I think that Metro should have focused its energy on linking up the existing Red Line to both airports.
I suggest everyone stop blaming METRO and look to those who have done everything they could since 1988 to stop METRO from developing a full transit system. Does it give you a clue that most or all of the people are political appointees? Even further does it tell you anything when during the public meetings METRO recently held that there was a very small group of people saying even if the public voted to give all METRO’s sales tax to METRO (from 1988 to now 2.5 billion dollars has been diverted from METRO) the group would go to the State Legislature to stop METRO from moving forward with it’s transit plans.
If you think this is wrong, having someone else work to circumvent our Transit Agency from doing it’s job in spite of the citizen’s vote, then learn how you can turn this around. Read Houston Tomorrow for more info, sign up for Citizen’s Transportation Coalition’s newsletter.. and learn what you can do.
oh look, the project that would have eliminated one of the most used thoroughfares in the montrose area, added tons of new intersections and helped cause further traffic and pollution on surrounding surface streets just got canned…good riddance.
all this does is connect business districts, which is served much more efficiently and economically through buses and surface streets. if we start talking about connecting retail and business districts by plowing through westheimer to actually make it beneficial to everyone then i’d start listening, but this thing was a waste of money and effort from day one.
Richmond has relatively very little traffic for 22 hours a day, so except for commuter traffic during the remaining 2 hours I don’t see the “most used thoroughfare” being much of an issue currently.
However, this may not be some for much longer. There are thousands of apartments currently under construction between Midtown and the Galleria. The new residents, along with the Transit Oriented Development plans envisioned by Bellaire and the Galleria area, mean that transit improvements are going to be necessary, and there is very little right of way remaining anywhere between downtown and the Galleria to accommodate more cars. The Galleria area is already at near gridlock during rush hour, weekends, and the holiday season. Highways such as the Beltway, Outer Belt, and even I-10 have been constructed in anticipation of future growth, and often are built in order to spur growth in a particular area. Mass transit has to be part of the solution in managing the increased growth and density of the inner loop.
I hope they build it; tons of density being added inside the loop without any new streets. Mass transit is the way to go and linking galleria to downtown makes sense; would be even better if a line went to one of the airports.
I drive Richmond almost every day, and the temporary delay of this project makes my day. But like heartburn it just keeps coming back. There is a need deep in Metro to ruin one more Houston steeet. Like the undead nightmare that it is, rail on Rail on Richmond won’t die.
And despite walking that street every day as a child, driving it in my teenage years, and using it to day, I have lived in SF and Seattle. Ridden the N-car or the T-car every day and I much prefer driving on Richmond a nd being able to make left turn.
[quote]I’m not making an argument for or against rail, but you having to waste money on a rail you won’t use isn’t any different from burbways that innerloopers don’t want/need.[/quote]
There’s a huge difference. Almost every single thing you eat and almost everything in your house is delivered on those burbways. Everyone uses highways, even if you don’t own a car you are dependent on them for your very life. You can’t say that about light rail.
Someone here is confusing interstate highway development for commerce with suburban road development to undeveloped or lightly developed parts of the region. Eighteen-wheelers don’t need a 24-lane I-10. That’s silly!
You don’t want to pay for the transit system that can get a very large number of people across town, that supports walkable neighborhoods, and generates less emissions? I don’t want to pay for your useless, overbuilt col-de-sac that you need to park your third SUV, which you practically live in and which generates emissions that I don’t want to have to breathe, and which you use to speed down Richmond and nearly run over my children as they walk to the park.
By the way, rail is not going to “ruin” Richmond. People who travel along it are still going to have two lanes to speed down just as they do now. You might not be able to turn left into my neighborhood so you can speed through it in an effort to avoid the stop lights, but good riddance to that.
Bernard says “In Houston, we don’t sit around awaiting for the government to allow us to go places or for the government or provide us with a means to get there. We just turn the key and go. Car. Truck. SUV. Motorcycle. Bus. Bike. Walk. There are LOTS of options. Freedom at its VERY best.”
It’s almost like this is some sort of absurdist comedy routine. The government built every linear mile of road and sidewalk you depend on for each of the modes of transportation you mentioned. And unless you’re talking about a toll road, it was built entirely with some combination of state and local taxes and generates no revenue at all (and yet some complain about the “subsidy” we pay for mass transit!)
Then you mention the bus. Other than a few commercial bus companies, by and large only serving long-distance trips, the government operates the bus system too.
It is my neighborhood too and the trees on the esplanade are part of my quality of life, as is turning left off of Richmond in order to go home, or visit friends, or patronized friends as has been done for decades.
Why don’t we talk about rail on Holcombe/Bellaire? Oh could it be that Southside Place and Bellaire are too tough a nut to crack? Or maybe an el down bissonnet, replacing the overcrowded 65 line?
Talk about wasting money on rail, have any of you noticed how much of our taxable base is being lost to freeway construction? Take a look at the 290/N. Loop project. Whole warehouses being torn down, land unusable into the far future for anything but more pathetic freeway lanes that will never be enough to solve our problems. We never want to take into acount the incredible drain on our wallet that these freeways are causing for us. Instead, we blame “rail” for the waste of tax payer dollars, while we keep taking away taxable land. Man, are we dumb.
“Good riddance on the light rail, I still can’t even imagine a scenario where I or anyone I know would use it.”
Hmmm… maybe if you wanted to go from downtown to the Galleria, and the freeways were jammed with traffic, and you’d rather relax and read a book than have road rage for an hour?
“Additionally, public transport involves lots of walking, lots of walking only promotes the sweaty odor of the population.”
If you call going from office building A to Main Street, and then Post Oak Blvd. to office building B “lots of walking.” Modest walking like this helps the population not become out of shape to the point where a few city blocks seems like “lots of walking.”
Mike, why in the world would I want to go from Downtown to Galleria? If I work downtown, I would only go shopping to Galleria, and that would happen only on weekends or after traffic time. If I live by galleria and work downtown, then chances are I would have to walk several blocks to reach the rail on Post Oak. If one has to wear a suit (or any non hippy clothing) to work, then 1-2 block walk in Houston’s heat and humidity will make you sweat and is unacceptable in most business environments.
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Let face it, the rail so far and in near future does not go from/to where majority of people need to go. Additionally, Houston climate is NOT conducive to walking as a norm.
Houston is dangerous city to walk in. The drivers dont yield or slow down, sidewalks are busted or have standing water, and it is generally over 90 degrees here. I think the anti-rail crew is just against moving low end people to the high end part of town. The original rail that operates now was built in order to get a superbowl, end of story!
commonsense…have you ever actually taken a ride on the rail here? I used to work in the medical center and took it every day from a bus that connected with it. It made my life easier, and at the time saved me a bundle in parking costs in the med ctr. So yes, it is useful to those who choose to take it. And yes, people do walk in Houston as well.
From Jgriff: “There’s a huge difference. Almost every single thing you eat and almost everything in your house is delivered on those burbways…”
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I understand that, but they keep making more and more freeways wider and wider so people can live in burbtopia and commute to work. That extra expansion isn’t needed for our delivery needs — it’s being overbuilt to support massive commuters.
commonsense – Can you really not envision a situation in which people might want to move between Houston’s two principal office and activity clusters?
Your “hippy” reference suggests that your views of mass transit are colored by deep-seated cultural prejudices and stereotypes. It’s kind of laughable, but when I see the same attitudes over and over again in Houston, kind of disturbing.
Are we really complaining about walking because they’ll sweat?? lol…
Average Annual High Temperatures in Houston are 79.7 degrees..In Hong Kong it’s 78.1 degrees F. Pretty sure they manage to do business A-okay. (oh and, they receive nearly 10 times the rainfall we do)
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Want to know what percentage of transportation is mass transit there?- 90 percent… highest in the world.
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If your best argument against mass transit systems is “I can’t be outside because I sweat and that’s bad for business…” its not a very compelling case.
This F’in sucks. An East-West line is absolutely necessary. The only good news I can think of is that maybe it will come back to life without the stupid Westpark diversion. Connecting UH, TSU, Third Ward, Midtown, HCC Central, Montrose, St Thomas, Menil Collection, Upper Kirby, Greenway Plaza, the Galleria, and Gulfton to the other lines simply makes too much sense to leave it off the table.
@Mike…Ohhhh Snap! Tell em brother.
@doofus… I whole heartily agree. This line has always made the most sense to me. Originally however, I disagreed with Metro taking peoples property frontage through eminent domain for ROW purposes.
If Metro chooses to temporarily suspend work on this line, they could have done it before people sold their property and shuttered their businesses.
I have run and lived in the strees of Montrose for over twenty five years. If something is not done soon about the
gentrification and traffic coming into one o the best inner city residential neighborhoods in Houston, we’re in trouble…
Reading that some Comment-leavers see Houston (I assume this means the region) as not “ready” for LRT/Commuter rail is confusing. METRO already has one of the most-ridden LRT lines/sq mile in the country. And Galveston, Hempstead, and Ft Bend all want Commuter (heavy track) rail.
Also, the idea that unincorporated Harris County is “paying” for this work is an altered version of reality. The work so far has mainly been funded by FTA funds, an combo of federal, state, regional, and local dollars. Fares and the sales tax the “public” pays mainly go to METRO’s systems operations. That is beside the point, though. If Harris County could pay for LRT expansion, it should: the regional transportation network is cohesive & connected. Where congestion mitigation occurs in one area is to the benefit of all partner areas.
“The Alamo” as a theme is powerful bc everybody stayed.
I don’t think either side is being very convincing here. You can go on and on how great you think light rail is, but there’s no question that we can’t afford it. You use highways funds as a diversion, but those major freeways are going in regardless because our population is expanding tremendously yet the area’s average income is nowhere near close to being able to afford inner-loop living. The population will grow out long before it starts to grow up, and most of the best communities are hell-bent on ensuring things don’t grow up and grow out instead, that is certainly our sitting mayors policy at least. To restrict the growth of our burb’s, where business districts are expanding the most, to simply penalize these people is absurd (though the fact that gas taxes haven’t gone up to accurately account for the cost of living in the burb’s is also ridiculous, but blame your neighbors and fellow citizens who vote for our sitting pols). Freeways must expand, even to meet the need of a few hours a day because you’re talking about 100,000’s of people time and thousands of commercial trucks trying to make deadlines. Take the average wage and multiply the lost time and productivity of an entire city by 30 minutes and you’re quickly talking about vast sums of money. That is why freeway funding will continue to expand. This is also a huge safety factor for the city as there’s clear links between stress and accidents with clogged roads. Of course you’d be right to complain about our city council intentionally decreasing the efficiency of our freeways to raise funding for more roads with the HOT lanes.
For me, I live in Vermont commons and the rail would be completely useless to me, but would also greatly inhibit my transportation within the area I live in by diverting further traffic into areas like Alabama that will never receive the proper funding or right-of-ways to be able to safely manage that traffic. Does anyone even have an accurate count of how many people take the Richmond buses. How many people commute from the galleria to downtown, etc. Because I can guarantee you any hopes of greatly reducing the number of cars on the road due to light rail will not pan out. Jobs are growing at far higher rates in other parts of town besides downtown and galleria. That is what this should be about, reducing the cars on the road to provide better transportation to the city as a whole. Building a rail line simply because we have to connect it to others we’ve already wasted our money on is a ridiculous concept. From here on out, all comments should address the best way to remove the greatest number of cars off our roads using limited funds. The city engineers should be able to tell us that, ask your local council before you start advocating piling on the debt.
What we most require right now, is flexibility with future accounts to spend appropriately once critical mass is reached. We aren’t even close to that yet and we’ll already be strapping ourselves with a huge debt load that will limit future flexibility.
Its amazing how we’re in 2012 and the right is still against improving infrastructure. The fact that the fourth largest city in the country still does not have decent mass transportation is why people from new york, los angeles, and Chicago view us as backwards oil rich hill bullies…. Because we are.
BWAHAAAAAA! Infighting is FUNNY! And one of the many reasons Houston will never be world class!
Houston not world class??? We dominate energy, we have jobs, we have land, we have wealth, and most importantly, we don’t give a sh*t what anybody thinks … “World Class” is afraid of us, we’re the Chuck Norris of cities!
@joel
You are delusional if you think that the purpose of the university line is to connect the galleria and down. The line would have connected some of the most popular residential neighborhoods to the best this city has to offer in terms of entertainment and employment. The line would have also passed by Gulfton which is by far the most dense and poorest area in the city of houston which would have gave those residents easy access to the city’s amenities as well. Considering the explosion of growth occuring inside and just outside the loop, this is a tremendous loss for the city of Houston. As the inner core urbanizes, there will be a demand for mass transit so I doubt this is the last of the university line, it will come back in some shape or form. Maybe not this decade, or even the next, but it will come back and by then you wont be able to stop it.
To follow up on what robertrulez said:
I have lived in several cities with good (I’ll reserve great for places not in the US) mass transit. Rarely, if ever, did I ride the full length of a given line. But I sure did hop on/off to get where I needed/wanted to go. And that is the whole point. Person A might get on at stop 1, off at stop 4. Person B, on at stop 2, off at stop 10. And so on. What do they all have in common? They did not use their cars to get there, thus reducing traffic and pollution–benefits that extend to everyone in the area. Those on for the long haul can enjoy a book or some music without worrying about aggressive and distracted drivers.
If anyone could make a solid argument for why mass transit is a bad idea, I would listen. But having lived in cities where it works, I don’t think I will hold my breath.
My gut feeling is that METRO is attempting to lay low on the U. Line while it gets the North/East/Southeast lines to a point where the GOP can’t kill ’em. Once that portion of the system is a done deal you can go to the mattresses on the U. Line. Yes, this is basically Culberson’s doing.
And kjb is completely wrong, the eastern and midwestern cities with rail systems used them as tools for development, and you can find period photographs of elevated trains running past vacant lots… entirely analogous to Midtown today.
Why do we need light rail? Wouldn’t a dedicated bus lane be more practical and cheaper? Couldn’t we buy large buses, or just more buses, put up some of those annoying road bumps, and call it a day?
@Sara
Sorry but you dont speak for everyone. Im really tired of the arguments here ranging from “I dont know anyone that would ride it” to “I wont ride it”. Your opinion or personal experience isn’t an accurate predictor of daily ridership for the system and believing that it is a fallacy in itself. We can argue on rail design all day but its hard to argue against street level light rail when plenty of cities have implemented the system with success. In addition, the empirical data from the current red line DOES show that plenty of people ride the system meaning that there is most definitely a use for light rise. So this right wing speculation about the university line’s failure is inherently flawed.
@robertrulez I wasn’t arguing with you at all! I agree with everything you said!
I think transit can be used to increase urban density, reduce pollution, grow business, encourage walking, etc. etc. You were spot on.
@robertrulez and for whatever it’s worth at the end of a very long string of comments, I ride the light rail every day for a few stops & bought a house near the rail for that very purpose.
I personally love to walk down to the rail (bonus: my stop is by Tacos a Go Go) and zip downtown, medical center, herman park, stadium, etc.
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The reason I almost never go to the Galleria is the “to hell with that” traffic. If I could zip down via rail, I’d go there much more often.
“Why do we need light rail? Wouldn’t a dedicated bus lane be more practical and cheaper? Couldn’t we buy large buses, or just more buses, put up some of those annoying road bumps, and call it a day?”
Go the cheap route you get cheap results. BRT’s while good in their own is not as efficient on moving people at anytime compare to the rail. Honestly though, I think Houston should have gotten the DC style rail system. But oh well.
Ron, do you have any data re: using rail to move people vs. a BRT? Just wondering–I’d like to see it.
Roy, a light rail is not going to prevent you from turning left into your neighborhood. Might you have to wait until a more major intersection? Yes. Will it hurt you? Nah. It’ll be alright.