Surely it is unintended humor, but Lucas Wall’s story in today’s Chronicle is pretty funny. You see, Metro has decided to look into starting an “express” bus route from downtown to Bush Intercontinental and Lucas gives us the heads up.
It’s humorous because Ken Hoffman already covered this, weeks ago. He wrote a laugh-out-loud column, that Publiustx highlighted, about his own experience with the current Metro “express” from Bush Intercontinental to downtown. Here’s a taste of that:
According to METRO’s itinerary, the 102 Bush IAH Express makes five stops between Terminal C and downtown. Sounds good to me.
You know how when you get off a long flight, you just want to get home, right?
Ever want to just scream?
I knew I was in trouble when the bus left the airport and didn’t turn onto Interstate 45. Instead, it started hitting side streets and feeder roads.
And stopping. And stopping. And stopping. And stopping.
Stop with the stopping already!
I wasn’t counting, but I swear the bus stopped 20-plus times before we reached Gallery Furniture “on I-45 between Tidwell and Parker.”
Along Greens Road, we stopped every two blocks. Then we made some weird turns on small streets. I thought I saw Hansel and Gretel dropping bread crumbs so they’d remember how to get back.
That was at the beginning of September. One month later, Hoffman wrote this:
Right now, the proposal is to run buses from the Downtown Transit Center on Travis and St. Joseph to Terminal C at Bush Intercontinental Airport — and vice-versa — every 30 minutes during the day.
“Cost, fare and source of funding issues must be worked out before a decision is made. So I don’t have a date for start of service,” Connaughton said.
It’s about time, Metro. It’s unbelievable that Houston doesn’t already provide an inexpensive way for people to get from the airport to downtown. Almost every other major city has buses or trains to take visitors to places where they can spend money.
It is head-scratching that Houston doesn’t have a bus route dedicated to run exclusively between downtown and Bush Intercontinental. I mean, the Metro folks have no problem throwing gazillions of dollars down the light rail toilet – what’s a few more dollars for a bus route that could be considered a public service for travelers and tourists?
Enter Lucas Wall, traffic guy extraordinaire: two months after Hoffman’s first column (don’t say Wall missed the bandwagon, or bus, no siree), he shares this breaking news:
The Metropolitan Transit Authority is considering plans to improve the bus service next year. Metro is discussing a nonstop bus from the airport to the city center, connecting with the Main Street light rail line and numerous bus routes at the Downtown Transit Center. It might also stop at major hotels.
Those of us who enjoy Ken Hoffman’s columns already knew about this. And then Lucas throws in these inconvenient paragraphs:
Options for getting to and from Houston’s major airport became even fewer last week as Metro eliminated two of its routes serving Bush Intercontinental in a cost-cutting measure.
Route 55, which provided service between Greenspoint and Kingwood, and Route 101, which linked Bush Intercontinental and Hobby airports, stopped running a week ago.
The cutbacks leave travelers with only Route 102 to the airport. And it attracts few fliers because of its lengthy travel time to downtown. It takes about an hour to travel downtown because of numerous stops at apartment complexes and other locations between the airport and Interstate 45.
As Ken Hoffman told us, two months ago.
Which begs the question, how much do these Metro people get paid (out of taxpayer dollars, of course) for all this mobility expertise?
