In last week’s Chronicle story about how the Katy Freeway expansion isn’t leaving room for commuter rail, Metro board chairman David Wolff admitted there is demand for commuter rail:
Metro vice president Bryan Pennington told the agency board Friday it was “very realistic” to believe Metro could be operating rail in the Katy Freeway corridor within five to seven years.
“I think that’s optimistic,” Wolff said afterward. “It’s intriguing because the demand is there in the I-10 corridor for rail — but the demand is there for traffic, too.”
Well, duh! And if this is the plan Metro had run with, instead of its current boutique-y, light-rail-as-taxi-cab-service plan, there’d probably be more support for rail. As we’ve said previously, a commuter line along the Katy (Metro was offered that rail-line right of way years ago, but declined it), along with a commuter line along the Hardy Toll Road (perhaps with a jog to Bush Intercontinental), would undoubtedly have greater support and ridership. Anyone who has seen The Woodlands Express buses running down I-45 knows what I’m talking about. Plus, a focus on commuter rail means Metro wouldn’t have cut bus service so drastically — the flexible service that Houston’s poor, elderly and handicapped have depended upon for years.
If the goal were truly to get some cars off the roads, commuter rail would be the way to go. But that’s not the direction Metro is headed any time soon.
KEVIN WHITED ADDS: This passage caught my eye:
However, Clark said the toll lanes were not Metro’s only option for rail. Besides, he said, those lanes would pose problems getting passengers to and from the trains in the middle of a busy freeway.
The Red line and the Blue line in Chicago both have significant stretches that travel along the middle of busy freeways, and people use crossovers with no problems. The locals who criticize the idea of putting rail lines along freeways might want to look at how it works in Chicago, which has one of the nation’s better mass transit systems. They might also consider that the Chicago Transit Authority makes very good use of its bus system to circulate riders from rail (people there don’t think of buses as “icky”), and that transit users actually do expect to walk short distances. This notion from some locals that local light rail should be akin to a taxi (i.e. running right up to the doorways of “where the people are” as they like to say), in the middle of busy roads (like Main and Richmond), is just bizarre.
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