OK, I am going to shock everyone here by pulling a complete 180 on Houston but after reading this article in the Houston Chronicle I have to say the below… As unpopular as the idea is in Houston, Houston and the surrounding area desperately need rail transit, both commuter AND light rail. How do you reduce traffic? Take drivers OFF the road! This is a new and mind-boggling topic in Houston. Rail instead of freeways, better yet tollways!?! OH MY GOD MADNESS!!! Look at other major cities that have rail transit. Seattle is a good example. Not many rail lines, but downtown is connected to a major part of the city and connected to the airport so it affords visitors the luxury of not needing to rent a car thus reducing vehicular traffic to the city. Houston visitors MUST rent a car if they want to get anywhere in the Houston area in a timely manner. The bus system does not service the entire metropolitan area; just the city limits of Houston and a handful of suburbs and is slower than a limping dinosaur. Imagine if The Woodlands were connected to downtown via commuter rail line. How many thousands of cars would be taken off of the 45 and the Hardy daily? What if Cypress were connected to uptown and downtown via commuter rail? There would be a DRASTIC reduction of cars on the 290 and the 610 west loop. How about add commuter rail to the 45 southbound towards Galveston? Heres another area that could desperately use the reduction of vehicles. It seems Houston is so concerned with pouring new concrete (particularly tollways) that it forgets about repairing EXISTING concrete. If the city cannot maintain current roads, how will it be able to maintain new ones? How will it be able to make existing roads work better for its citizens? Now look at downtown, if people could get to downtown easier, what would happen to the downtown economy? People, not to mention businesses, would actually want to work in downtown, people would save money on parking being they would no longer need to bring their vehicle into downtown, the increase in demand to want to be in downtown would drive up the interest to build and invest in downtown properties and incentives to build in downtown would no longer be needed if people genuinely wanted to be in downtown because they can actually get in and out of downtown effortlessly. Houston really needs to take a long, good look at other metropolitan areas that have both commuter and light rail. Take Salt Lake City for example. The metropolitan area has both and it makes a huge impact on rush hour traffic, not to mention peoples frustration and also reduction of pollution. Come on Houston, it is 2014 so stop using 1940s technology to address modern problems. There comes a point when enough freeways, not to mention tollways, are enough. Someone in Houston needs to seriously present rail transit to help fix its traffic problems instead of putting a bandage on it.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 22:47:03 +0000