Houston Rapid Transit--in 1983!?

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So, apparently in 1983 Metro (the Houston-area equivalent to BART) tried to set up a heavy-rail (that is, mass transit) system serving the city, only to be handed a sound no from voters on the needed bond issue. So, the scenario here is that the election went the other way and Metro started building a proper mass transit system for the Houston area in 1983. What happens?
 
I lived in Houston from 1966 until 1994

my guess, traffic is even more horrific than it actually was during the rest of the 1980s but it might have provided some much needed jobs during the recession Houston had from 84-88. Otherwise, I don't see any particular differences except maybe Beltway 8 isn't built.

However, if Houston was able to finish it on a reasonable time frame and relatively close to budget, most likely LA, Dallas, San Antonio and other cities would have been more likely to adopt such a system. Which might have brought unit costs and total costs down for those cities due to economies of scale in production.

Certainly Houston might have cleaner air and perhaps my oldest son would have had fewer asthma problems
 

FDW

Banned
Source

So, apparently in 1983 Metro (the Houston-area equivalent to BART) tried to set up a heavy-rail (that is, mass transit) system serving the city, only to be handed a sound no from voters on the needed bond issue. So, the scenario here is that the election went the other way and Metro started building a proper mass transit system for the Houston area in 1983. What happens?

First, a better to Houston's METRO would be the Los Angeles's LACMTA, Atlanta's MARTA, and Washington DC's WAMTA, rather than BART. (Because BART doesn't run any of own it's bus service)

Okay, now to main point, what was the route of the proposed line and where was it going to stop? Those two question should be answered first for me to provide a real answer about it's impacts. Now given Houston's vulnerability to flooding (If I remember right) You might not see much of system be in a subway. Rather, It would be like Miami's Metro system Elevated most of it's route.
 
First, a better to Houston's METRO would be the Los Angeles's LACMTA, Atlanta's MARTA, and Washington DC's WAMTA, rather than BART. (Because BART doesn't run any of own it's bus service)

Well, I was more thinking of the geographical spread--Metro doesn't just serve Houston and the immediate suburbs, it's a regional agency.

Okay, now to main point, what was the route of the proposed line and where was it going to stop? Those two question should be answered first for me to provide a real answer about it's impacts. Now given Houston's vulnerability to flooding (If I remember right) You might not see much of system be in a subway. Rather, It would be like Miami's Metro system Elevated most of it's route.

It certainly isn't going to be a subway; we're the least suitable city on the planet for that, more or less, between the high, high water table and the clay underpinnings.

I don't know what the proposed route(s)--it was a ~$2 billion system, after all--or stops were. Just threw it out there for anyone interested.
 
There would be far fewer drunk drivers coming and going from downtown to the burbs on the weekends for one. You might see an earlier revitalization of downtown before all the stadiums popped up. Heck you'd likely have different locations for the stadiums if areas began to revitalize before they appeared.

Lee Brown wouldn't have had to fight so hard and spend so much of his time as mayor working just to get light rail started...so there would be a different aspect on Houstonian politics. Enough to butterfly away Bill White from being mayor and running for governor now? Maybe...

I have to agree with FDW...its hard to tell much of the impact without knowing the routes
 

FDW

Banned
Well, I was more thinking of the geographical spread--Metro doesn't just serve Houston and the immediate suburbs, it's a regional agency.



It certainly isn't going to be a subway; we're the least suitable city on the planet for that, more or less, between the high, high water table and the clay underpinnings.

I don't know what the proposed route(s)--it was a ~$2 billion system, after all--or stops were. Just threw it out there for anyone interested.

Chance's are the Main Branch of the Houston Public Library would the place to look for the info that I'm asking for. (I say this because A lot of the files about transit proposals of the pre-internet have really yet to be on the Internet. But the Libraries should stuff like that if you ask around enough, that's what I did here in the Bay Area when I was looking for information on the early years of the BART system.)

There would be far fewer drunk drivers coming and going from downtown to the burbs on the weekends for one. You might see an earlier revitalization of downtown before all the stadiums popped up. Heck you'd likely have different locations for the stadiums if areas began to revitalize before they appeared.

Lee Brown wouldn't have had to fight so hard and spend so much of his time as mayor working just to get light rail started...so there would be a different aspect on Houstonian politics. Enough to butterfly away Bill White from being mayor and running for governor now? Maybe...

I have to agree with FDW...its hard to tell much of the impact without knowing the routes

One thing about Mass transit is that it doesn't really reduce congestion, it merely makes it easier to ignore for some people. And yeah, the speed of the revitalization of Houston's would really depend on what the development policies along the line would be. (While plunking a mass transit line down does lead to development, there are policies you can put into place to help speed things up.)
 
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going from memory (I watched that election because I lived in Galveston County and wasn't eligible to vote in a Harris County election) the proposed routes intended to use existing RR right of ways as much as possible.. in some respects like the current LA system. Granted that was 27 years ago, so my memory could be faulty. The current Houston metro system is pretty much what they had in mind really, just with heavy rail. Instead for most of the 80s-early 90s (can't attest to what it looked like after that) Houston had a really good bus system, with a lot of Park and Ride lots as well as contra-flow lanes extending out on all of its freeways. Plus Houston spent a lot of money on the Beltway 8, Sam Houston Tollway and other extra freeways to relieve congestion. It might have been cheaper to have built the rail actually.

Sorry that they didn't build it myself, I eventually spent many hours in Houston traffic commuting after college, sometimes driving about 70 miles a day (round trip) or more, and spending about 3 hours a day in traffic.

It would have been a simple matter to extend that system of rail out to Galveston, Conroe, Katy and Baytown and eventually even further out to Huntsville. It would probably have eventually led to high speed rail connecting other Texas cities too, although Southwest Airlines would have spent every dime it could spare to fight such a thing.

Most definitely it would be an above ground system. The geology of Houston is clay and silt with a shallow water table as well, and that clay is one of the reasons the Houston area floods frequently.. the water doesn't soak in, it sits there on top and runs off into the innumerable creeks and bayous.
 
I Can't Resist Chiming In!

As a former Dallasite, I know squat about Houston politics.
I do know that in Texas, urban planning is an oxymoron and what's nice and concentrated in eastern seaboard cities and Midwestern cities is scattered all over hell and gone in isolated little islands which makes mass transit planning challenging after forty years' unplanned growth.
Your standard model of all roads lead to the CBD and back doesn't work very well, when cities are arranged more like a target with various rings along interstate highways and various loops connecting them with people moving as much around the metro area as directly going downtown and back.

I'd have loved to have seen it. Houston's what, the 4th largest city in the US now? A working mass-transit system in the heart of American car culture would do wonders as a bellwether to do better everywhere in congestion, air pollution, etc. I'd like to see what the impact DART has had on the DFW area since its start as a comparison.
 
First, a better to Houston's METRO would be the Los Angeles's LACMTA, Atlanta's MARTA, and Washington DC's WAMTA, rather than BART. (Because BART doesn't run any of own it's bus service)

Okay, now to main point, what was the route of the proposed line and where was it going to stop? Those two question should be answered first for me to provide a real answer about it's impacts. Now given Houston's vulnerability to flooding (If I remember right) You might not see much of system be in a subway. Rather, It would be like Miami's Metro system Elevated most of it's route.

Actually, BART used to run feeder bus service to its suburban stations that around the year 2000 was devolved to the local transit systems. I'm not sure if BART actually operated the buses or contracted the service out, but the service was BART-branded with special BART buses and unique BART fare tickets (not integrated with the train tickets, however).
 
So I guess we'd have BART, DART, and now HART{H for 'Houston}?

What would be next, CART{Chicago Area Rapid Transit}? LMAO. :D :D
 
I lived in Houston from 1966 until 1994

my guess, traffic is even more horrific than it actually was during the rest of the 1980s but it might have provided some much needed jobs during the recession Houston had from 84-88. Otherwise, I don't see any particular differences except maybe Beltway 8 isn't built.

However, if Houston was able to finish it on a reasonable time frame and relatively close to budget, most likely LA, Dallas, San Antonio and other cities would have been more likely to adopt such a system. Which might have brought unit costs and total costs down for those cities due to economies of scale in production.

Certainly Houston might have cleaner air and perhaps my oldest son would have had fewer asthma problems

Sorry, but I have to call you out on that one...Houston would most defintely NOT have cleaner air with a mass transit system.
1) Houston is too close to huge oil and gas refineries in the surrounding areas. They put out a huge amount of pollution..as they say, "The air is always greener in Pasadeener".
2) Houston has the 8th largest seaport in the world and has two major airports plus loads of private fields.
3) Houston has loads of factories around town
4) Houston (and the surrounding Metro area) is a huge area and you are not going to be able to stop all the cars from being on the road.

To make mass transit work in Houston, you would have to get Harris County and ALL of the surrounding counties to agree...and then pass the needed bonds to get the funding. Good luck on that. The problem is that Houston is very spread out. Texans love their space. That's just how we are.
They would need to build and ELEVATED mass transit system. Let me repeat that...ELEVATED. The rail system they have downtown is a JOKE. You have car accidents and delays with this system almost each and every week. If they elevated the train, you wouldn't have those problems. Unfortunately, we live in a city where we have problems with pot-holes an road buckling. The reason why we have these problems is that the entire city was built on flood plains and old rice fields. So, you would need to engineer a very good foundation for the trains.

Do we need mass transit. Absolutely. Do we have the funds for it. NO. Do people want their taxes raised for such a huge project. NO.

It would be a logistical nightmare to make this happen. You think traffic is bad now?
You would need to build both an elevated train system and one with numerous branches, not merely parallel with the existing highways (to account for the huge urban sprawl). You would need branches going beyond Beltway 8, possibly out to the proposed Grand Parkway Corridor. Yes, if you want to plan for the future and do it right, plan for urban sprawl to go past the Grand Parkway Corridor (all the way around). That, in and of itself, will encompass Harris County, Ft. Bend County, Liberty County, Brazoria County, Waller County, Montgomery County.

Or, the city of Houston could just do a half-assed, bureacracy-bloated, crappy rail system...Oh wait, they've done that already!!
:mad:
 
Sorry, but I have to call you out on that one...Houston would most defintely NOT have cleaner air with a mass transit system.
1) Houston is too close to huge oil and gas refineries in the surrounding areas. They put out a huge amount of pollution..as they say, "The air is always greener in Pasadeener".
2) Houston has the 8th largest seaport in the world and has two major airports plus loads of private fields.
3) Houston has loads of factories around town
4) Houston (and the surrounding Metro area) is a huge area and you are not going to be able to stop all the cars from being on the road.

To make mass transit work in Houston, you would have to get Harris County and ALL of the surrounding counties to agree...and then pass the needed bonds to get the funding. Good luck on that. The problem is that Houston is very spread out. Texans love their space. That's just how we are.
They would need to build and ELEVATED mass transit system. Let me repeat that...ELEVATED. The rail system they have downtown is a JOKE. You have car accidents and delays with this system almost each and every week. If they elevated the train, you wouldn't have those problems. Unfortunately, we live in a city where we have problems with pot-holes an road buckling. The reason why we have these problems is that the entire city was built on flood plains and old rice fields. So, you would need to engineer a very good foundation for the trains.

Do we need mass transit. Absolutely. Do we have the funds for it. NO. Do people want their taxes raised for such a huge project. NO.

It would be a logistical nightmare to make this happen. You think traffic is bad now?
You would need to build both an elevated train system and one with numerous branches, not merely parallel with the existing highways (to account for the huge urban sprawl). You would need branches going beyond Beltway 8, possibly out to the proposed Grand Parkway Corridor. Yes, if you want to plan for the future and do it right, plan for urban sprawl to go past the Grand Parkway Corridor (all the way around). That, in and of itself, will encompass Harris County, Ft. Bend County, Liberty County, Brazoria County, Waller County, Montgomery County.

Or, the city of Houston could just do a half-assed, bureacracy-bloated, crappy rail system...Oh wait, they've done

that already!!
:mad:

I remember well the wonderful smell from the Texas City and Pasadena petrochemical industry (I lived in League City/Kemah, and on a bad day could smell both). Urban planning in Texas is always an iffy proposition (at best) that is for sure. I left Texas in 1994, so missed the rail projects in Houston so I don't know much about it. Traffic by the way was pretty amazingly bad in the 1980s and early 1990s with the continual construction on the freeways at the time. I don't know if building the rail projects would have been all that much worse really. For years at a time there were freeways that had 2 lane stretches that stretched for miles (and abrupt funneling from 4 or even 5 lanes down to 2 to make things even more fun).

Air quality would likely improve though... even a little bit would have been nice. Simply removing 10-30% of the cars at rush hour (which went from 6 AM-930 AM in the morning it seemed, and 4-7 PM or later in the evening) would have been an improvement.
 

FDW

Banned

Some of the Outer area's would be better off given passenger flows to be connected to Houston via Commuter Rail as opposed to a metro line (I don't the metro would go that far beyond the Sam Houston Tollway, but I do think the lines would go beyond it for a ways to reach certain centers outside of that loop.)

About the soil, while Houston's Geology makes building more difficult, it would not be impossible (Look at Shanghai, Amsterdam, and St. Petersburg), and it would probably be easier than making a subway segment for Miami for that matter, you just need to build the station entrance's right, and have good pumping and drainage systems.


Well, DART is one of the more successful LRT systems so far getting almost 60,000 passengers daily on an average weekday, the commuter rail between Dallas and Ft. Worth adds another 9,000 passengers daily on top of that, the planned expansions of both LRT and CR should more than double that number. In physical presence, there's been some significant Transit Oriented development around several stations that I've been to, but at same time more could be done.


No, mass transit won't reduce pollution or congestion, but again, it provides a way to reliably beat congestion, provided people take advantage of it. And while the current LRT line in downtown Houston may look like a joke, it punches above it's weight given it's small size, it carries over 5,000 passengers per mile on weekdays despite being only 7.5 miles long, to ram this stat further, only one system in the US has better ridership per mile, and that system is Boston's Green line, which is 3 times longer and carries 6 times more passengers than Houston's system. And the planned expansions would quintuple the size of the system, and at a minimum triple rail ridership, sure there's a lot of controversy, scandal and politics going around, but don't worry Houston will realize, like Los Angeles did in the last few years how badly it needs public transportation, and will be more than willing to fork over the money for it just like Los Angeles did. (And the "Buy America" regulation is a bunch of bullshit anyways for public transit systems.)

While Rail construction wouldn't be all more onerous than Rail construction, it probably wouldn't reduce freeway congestion that much nor improve air quality by the amount you're thinking.
 
a humerous look at why Houston needed (and still does) a heavy rail system

You know You're from Houston When ............(courtesy of a long since forgotten online source)


1.You must learn to pronounce the city name. It is "Ewe-stun", not "Huestun."
Oh yea, it is pronounced "San Phil-a-pee," not "San Phil-eep" (San Felipe).
2. Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere. Houston has its own version of traffic rules...Hold on and pray. There is no such thing as a dangerous high-speed chase in Houston. We all drive like that.
3. All directions start with, "Go down to Loop 610".... which has no beginning and no end.
4. The Chamber of Commerce calls getting through traffic... a "Scenic Drive."
5. The morning rush hour is from 6:00AM to 10:00AM. The evening rush hour is from 3:00PM to 7:00PM. Friday's rush hour starts Thursday morning.
6. If you actually stop at a yellow light, you will be rear-ended, cussed out and possibly shot. When you are the first one off the starting line, count to five when the light turns green before going, to avoid getting into any cross-traffic's way. *You can ask my sister about getting plowed down by a person who strongly believes in this one!
7. Kuykendahl Road can ONLY be pronounced by a native Houstonian.
8. Construction on I-10, I-45, US 59 and Loop 610 is a way of life and a permanent form of entertainment.
9. All unexplained smells are explained by the phrase, "Oh, we must be in Pasadena!!!."
10. If someone actually has their turn signal on, it is probably a factory defect.
11. All old ladies with blue hair in a pink Cadillac have total right-of-way.
12. The minimum acceptable speed on Loop 610 is 85 mph. Anything less is considered downright sissy.
13. The wrought iron on windows in east Houston is NOT ornamental.
14. Never stare at the driver of the car with the bumper sticker that says, "Keep honking, I'm reloading." In fact, don't honk at anyone. *THIS IS NOT A JOKE EITHER*
15. If you are in the left lane, and only going 70 mph in a 60 mph zone, people are not waving when they go by.
16. The Sam Houston Toll road is our daily version of NASCAR.
17. If it's 100 degrees, Thanksgiving must be next weekend.
18. When in doubt, remember that all unmarked exits lead to Louisiana.
19. You don't have to wait for an exit to get off a freeway, just follow the ruts in the grass to the frontage road like everyone else.This is how Houston residents notify Texas Department of Transportation where exits should have been built.
 
I watched a doco on Portland Oregon and one thing struck me was they said that rails have a permanence that roads don't. If you build a rail line through an area it will stay for the long haul, wheras a bus route can be changed on the slightest whim. As such Portland businesses have boomed along their light rail lines because of the garuntee that the area will have people going through it indefinately.

So perhaps HRT would have a similar effect, keep the areas it served humming along economically due to the permanence of rail transport.
 

FDW

Banned
I watched a doco on Portland Oregon and one thing struck me was they said that rails have a permanence that roads don't. If you build a rail line through an area it will stay for the long haul, wheras a bus route can be changed on the slightest whim. As such Portland businesses have boomed along their light rail lines because of the garuntee that the area will have people going through it indefinately.

So perhaps HRT would have a similar effect, keep the areas it served humming along economically due to the permanence of rail transport.

Again, this will depend on where the lines are built, alignments along freeways are less appealing in terms of business acess for those coming on transit.
 
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