Study Finds Houston won't Curb its Driving Desires, Dug Begley, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
In keeping with fair use, a quick blurb:
Though transit, biking and other alternatives to driving have always been a tough sell in Houston, similar cities with harsh climates and sprawling urban footprints far outpaced Houston's slight decline in the percentage of people driving to work.
In short, the problem Houston, lies with you, and your infernal insistence on remaining anchored to your car, and continued insistence on electing folks who don't see things the way your intellectual betters feel you should. While I understand the argument that's being made and, at least in part, agree with it, there are other factors that need to be considered that I believe are even stronger drivers of Houston's car dependence.
The first of these, is HoustonMetro itself. Whether you're referring to "Old" Metro or "New" Metro the results are the same. In many cases the "New" Metro is even worse. To be blunt, the transit plan is a shambles. The agency is teetering on the verge of fiscal collapse there is increasing evidence that some of those currently in charge lack basic skills in budgeting and an understanding of transportation planning and the insistence on Inner-Loop, at-grade light rail has severely damaged the organization ability to provide basic transit service. Lest we forget, HoustonMetro is a regional organization. That they are a regional organization that's focusing 90% of their resources on approximately 40% of their covered region is something that's not widely discussed either in ChronBlog, by ChronBlog's Rah! Rah! transportation reporter, or many of the other local outlets who pretend to report the news.
The bus routing, something that would be key to promoting commutes by public transportation, is a sham, designed only to funnel bus riders downtown to force boardings onto the toy train to run a handful of blocks before getting on another bus that will take them back out to their destination. Don't believe me? Take a spin on Metro's trip planner and try to get from the Northwest side to either the Galleria or Greenway Plaza. The fact is, you cannot do this without going downtown, hopping on the DangerTrain before boarding another bus to be (eventually) dropped off at somewhere (sort of) near your final destination.
On top of that, with the new focus on ridership, Metro wants to make it harder, not easier, for those who need transit the most to make use of Metro's services. I've long stated, on previous blogs, that the true goal of the sardine urbanists, the unproductive class consisting of Houston Tomorrow and other groups of that ilk, really want to relocate the poor out of the city center and then devote the majority of transit resources to the so-called creative class. I've dubbed it the Paris model, where the city center is beautiful but the ring communities are full of mainly the poor who, through clever engineering, find it difficult to travel to the center and then can't find a place to park their cars when they get there. Sound familiar?
But let's be honest. Even IF Houston had a robust public transit system that served regional needs there'd still be a large portion of people who would not give up their cars. My guess is that would fall somewhere around 85-90% give or take. So from that point of view building out an expensive, working regional system doesn't make a lot of financial sense. It makes more sense then building a network designed to cater to 6% of the population however, which is what Metro is currently capturing. While it's easy for Metro advocates such as Houston Tomorrow, the Citizen's Transportation Coalition or ChronBlog to shake their heads and blame those mouth-breathers in the sticks, the real problem lies within their own ranks, with people who can't see the forest for the trees and lack the intellectual flexibility to understand that life in the suburbs is just as viable and sustainable as life in the City Center provided the busses and trains take people where they need to go. In Houston, those places are varied and not limited just inside Loop 610.
Until they fully understand this Houston's transit population will continue to stagnate, all of the finger pointing at politicians and those who don't choose to live life in a manner acceptable to the urbanists will actually make things worse. Who wants to get on a train with a humorless scold?
