Transportation

Metro hasn’t sent out an overview of its updated light-rail plans recently . . . but blogger Christof Spieler of the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition, who follows Metro’s plans carefully, has put together his own revised map showing the latest changes to the complete Houston-area “fixed guideway” transit map expected to be in place by 2012.

What’s new? Spieler notes plenty of adjustments. East of Downtown, the track carrying the East End and Southeast lines

swings around the future soccer stadium on Texas, then squiggles onto Capitol (the westbound track) and Rusk (the eastbound track), passing Discover Green, Minute Maid Park, and the Convention Center. At Main Street, a new station on the Main Street line allows for fairly easy transfers between the lines (unlike the old plan). At the same location, connection tracks allow East End Line trains to swing north onto the Main Street track, serving Preston and UH Downtown before terminating at the Intermodal Center. Southeast Line trains don’t make this turn; they continue on to the Theater District.

Also, changes to planned station locations:

there’s a new station on the Uptown Line north of Memorial Drive, but no Memorial Park station; there’s a station added in the Uptown area; there are new stations on the University Line in Gulfton and at Eastside; and the North Line has two more stations . . .

More detail — including the new express bus service from Downtown to IAH — in Spieler’s report.

• The map keeps changing [Intermodality]
• Metro 2012 Light Rail Map (PDF) [Intermodality]
• Metro 2012 Fixed-Guideway Transit Map (PDF) [Intermodality]

It’s all over ’cept the land speculating—and, of course, the lawsuits. The Metro Board has announced the alignments for the new light-rail University Line:

• Rail goes on Richmond, all the way to Cummins before zagging. No Culberson freeway cantilever freakout.
• To the east, a new route-combo twist: The line will run from Wheeler to Ennis to Alabama to Scott to Elgin. Then, somehow, maybe—to the Eastwood Transit Center. Third Ward: You’re toast!

Plus some other news:

• Light rail all the way, sez the board. That weird rail-on-rubber “bus rapid transit” thing? Not gonna happen.
• Which means, notes rail obsessive Christof Spieler, that you won’t have to switch cars to hop to the North Line from the existing Main Street Line. Soon you’ll be able to sit in the same train seat from the Northline Mall all the way to the Astroworld Sam’s Club without once adjusting your buns.
• Same goes for the University Line-Uptown Line link. If you’ve got nothing better to do—and maybe an afternoon to kill—you’ll be able to ride a single train car from the Eastwood Transit Center to the Northwest Transit Center, passing through Midtown, Greenway Plaza, the Galleria, and Memorial Park on the way. (Come to think of it, this last route sounds like a light-rail version of the 610 Loop—or at least half of one. To L with the missing North and East segments!)

• Houston, we have a map [Intermodality]
• Metro panel votes for light rail on all five planned lines [Houston Chronicle]

Houston 2012 Light Rail Map: Christof Spieler