King: Raise the rail in the Med Center
In Sunday's Chronicle, area businessman and former Kemah Mayor Bill King described problems with the rail line in The Medical Center area with which blogHOUSTON readers are very familiar:
- An at-grade alignment in a dense automobile and foot traffic corridor that has led to numerous accidents.
- Confusing signs and lights providing directions.
- Stray current problems that will have to be monitored for the life of the light rail, and may require millions of dollars' worth of rehabilitation to prevent catastrophic structural failures.
King's solution?
Elevate the rail, at least in the Med Center and other dense areas.
As King concedes, paying for such a good idea is the problem. Elevating the rail can drive two to five times higher, according to King. "Despite Metro's multiple groundbreaking ceremonies," he writes, "federal funds have yet to be approved in amounts sufficient to actually construct any portion of the rail line."
King suggests one possible solution is federal "Fixed Guideway Rehabilitation" funding, which could provide up to 80% of the cost of elevating the rail line by the time plans were ready, which could drive the overall cost to METRO and area taxpayers down to amounts that might be required to mitigate stray-current issues anyway.
The entire op-ed is here. Please go give it a good read.
We have friends in the rail debate who argue it's important for Houston to move forward on rail as quickly as possible to set a precedent, however poor the plan, and fix any disastrous consequences later once a "rail culture" has taken hold. We have other friends in the debate who argue that rail is not a cost-effective solution for Houston because of the city's density, and that existing and future rail plans should simply be scrapped.
We take a position somewhere in the middle. Our friend Tory Gattis has argued that a rail network that connects Houston's major job centers/universities makes some sense. And that argument resonates to the extent that most serious people understand such a system needs to be aimed at future growth and needs (10, even 20 years down the road), since it's hard to argue we have the population density at the moment to support that kind of system. In reality, we have just enough density in certain areas to create more traffic nightmares if we continue laying rail down busy streets. That's why we should be talking about grade-separated rail (especially in denser areas) and connecting job centers inside the loop, with a view towards Houston's future growth. The next phase following construction of a well-planned, inner-city network would be enhancing commuter options (Park and Ride, commuter rail, and the like) -- since it doesn't make much sense to enhance those options if your transit organization can't get patrons to job centers effectively once they are inside the loop. Airports would be dead last on my list, given the distance involved, the cost, and the lack of immediate benefit to local taxpayers.
Obviously, constructing that sort of system would cost much more money than voters contemplated in the 2003 referendum (aspects of which METRO has disregarded anyway), and it shouldn't be undertaken without a robust, honest* debate over costs and benefits long-term -- and a vote. Unfortunately, we don't tend to have those sorts of debates over transit in Houston. And that's why Bill King's comparatively modest proposal likely didn't generate much more than a "harrumph" from Frank "Procurement Disaster" Wilson and METRO's acolytes.
* For example, we are tired of reading METRO claims that the next phase of light-rail expansion will create 60,000 jobs.
Photo of Med Center light rail/traffic sign from my personal flickr collection. Photo of a Chicago EL train by flickr user celikins, used via a Creative Commons license.
UPDATE (08/20/09): And here is the official "harrumph," in the form of a letter to the Chronicle, which we are reposting in its entirety due to the unreliability of Chron archives and the fact this is a statement from a public official:
Elevating rail not practical
Bill King's suggestion to reconstruct and elevate the existing light rail line through the Texas Medical Center (TMC) is an idea whose time has come and gone (Let's raise the rail in Medical Center, Page B10, Sunday) While his musings may be fanciful, they are certainly not practical. The elevated option and numerous others were considered prior to the launch of construction in 2001 and found unacceptable for various reasons. Fannin Street was selected for light rail at grade. The line was built and carries some 10,000 people in and out of the Medical Center every day. Those employees and visitors together with Houstonians traveling to downtown, Midtown and several college campuses contribute to making the Red Line the most successful new light rail project in the country on a passengers-per-mile basis, carrying over 40,000 riders per day. Aside from that, I feel compelled to correct several of the inaccuracies in his article, beginning with federal funding. King supposes that the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will help pay for rebuilding elevated track using dollars from the FTA's Fixed Guideway Modernization Program. In reality, tearing out an almost new section of rail to replace it with an elevated section would, in all likelihood, not even be considered by the FTA under this program. The alternative would be to apply for the funds through the federal New Starts program, and that would have us competing with ourselves on other METRO light rail projects. Also, the cost would be extremely high for the very few additional riders it would serve. Worse yet, proposing King's idea to the federal government would seriously damage the credibility that Metro has painstakingly built with FTA and the U.S. Department of Transportation. It is this credibility that helped produce the first-ever administration budget with major proposed funding for rail transit in Houston. Only five major transit projects out of all those proposed in the entire country from almost 100 cities were included in President Obama's fiscal 2010 budget, and two of those are for Metro's North and Southeast rail lines, for combined total funding of $150 million. King's other contention that elevated rail would resolve expensive stray electrical current issues is a solution without a problem. Stray current was found, and the problem was fixed. There are no ongoing costs other than periodic testing. This is hardly a basis for advocating above-grade rail. Finally, and perhaps more to the point of King's agenda, is his observation that our community has had difficulty in reaching a consensus on transit projects. I would submit, based on the results of the November 2003 referendum and Rice University Professor Stephen Klineberg's ongoing survey data, that this community and its congressional delegation have never been more united on transit. Fully 62 percent of area residents now say that a much improved transit system is very important for Houston's future. And a growing portion of those respondents (58 percent) believe that rail should be part of that transit system. Old debates are a distraction to moving our region forward.
DAVID S. WOLFF
Chairman, Metropolitan Transit Authority
UPDATE (08/21/09): Speaking of "harrumphs" from METRO's acolytes, here is Charles Kuffner right on cue, with a slightly reformulated snippet from Chairman Wolff's letter ("a solution without a problem") as his headline. Somehow he also (mis)read this post as anti-rail. Such is the stunted nature of the transit discussion in Houston.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 08/17/09 09:08 PM | Print | Comments (8)
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