A little appreciation for our downtown tunnels, please

Anne Belli Gesalman gives a pretty decent history and overview of downtown Houston's tunnel system in the September 15th Edition of The Greater Houston Weekly:

Each week day, thousands of office workers, tourists and other visitors to downtown take stairs, escalators and elevators down into this self-contained sub-grade world, sheltered from the elements and immune from such outdoor annoyances as construction zones, mosquitoes and bus fumes.

Not to mention annoyances such as crazed drivers, panhandlers, Metro officers on the prowl for jaywalkers, and Metro trains and buses that seem to have a penchant for hitting pedestrians.

Today, 77 building - officer towers, performance hall, government complexes and hotels - are connected, from the historic district on the northern edge of downtown, the skyline district to the south. The tunnel serves about 150,000 downtown workers.

We Houstonians are known for our love of cars and our lack of desire to walk instead of drive. The tunnel system stands in the face of that. It makes it easier for downtown workers to walk. Now that the free downtown trolly system is about to go by the wayside, the use of the tunnels might actually increase.

Ms. Gesalman goes on to give some historical and notable facts about the tunnel, but gets one thing wrong:

The tunnel may only be accessed directly from the street at one point - from Wells Fargo Plaza at McKinney and Louisiana. All other access points are through building lobbies.

Not true actually. There are at least ten other non-lobby entrances that I'm aware of. While most involve the Theater District Parking system, there is one entrance on the corner of Travis and Mckinney that offers direct access.

The tunnel system could see its biggest boost of all in the years ahead if Metro officials opt to build a subway line downtown instead of additional street-level light rail lines. The transit agency unveiled preliminary plans for a downtown subway this summer, and it says it will study the option in coming months. Construction would not begin until at least 2007.

That's reassuring (the part about the boost, not the part about the prospect of another Metro boondoggle). Several months ago there was talk of eliminating the tunnel system in Dallas to get people back on the streets for street-level retailers. Even our own downtown reps, in a piece by the Chronicle's Dallas bureau reporter, were trash talking the downtown office-worker-venerated tunnel.

"Clearly, they work like a giant vacuum. They suck people off the street," said Jodie Sinclair, spokeswoman for the Houston Downtown Management District. "I had a woman visiting from Manhattan ask me, `Where are all the people? It's Wednesday at 1 in the afternoon.' I told her, `Dear, they're all underground.' "Over the past decade, Sinclair said, Houston has come to terms with its tunnels, even though "behind the scenes, people wish they weren't there."

Behind the scenes? Houston has come to terms with its tunnels? Is someone going to come up with the bright idea that something this free and this used shouldn't be?

Posted by Callie Markantonis @ 09/25/04 10:35 AM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (2)

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